Of The Terror 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville 
 
"DC 
 14- (. 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DC 146.F77D92 1913a 
 
 3 1924 024 298 519 
 
 Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 PRINTED IN 
 
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Cornell University 
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 The original of tiiis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024298519 
 
THE 
 
 PUBLIC 
 
 PROSECUTOR 
 
 OF 
 
 THE 
 
 TERROR 
 
^.J^^MZ^^^^/te- =.^^;^^^^z-^^^ <.^^.^^/.4Je^y- ^^.^?yi^'C6ey 
 
THE 
 PUBLIC PROSECUTOR 
 : : OF THE TERROR : : 
 
 ANTOINE QUENTIN FOUQUIER-TINVILLE 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 ALPHONSE JDUNOYER BY A. W, EVANS 
 WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE 
 AND FOURTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM*S SONS 
 PUBLISHERS © fiS MCMXIII 
 
32. CO 
 
 ^/^yj^^ 
 
 LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN the famous oval room of the Soubise Palace, where, 
 amid the gilded garlands of foliage and flowers, the 
 eighteenth-century painter, Charles Natoire, grouped 
 the supple and youthful figures which he had borrowed 
 from the legend of Cupid and Psyche, there is a melancholy 
 glass case which to-day contains the will of Louis XVI. 
 and the last letter of Marie Antoinette. 
 
 A note it is, rather than a letter. Two yellow, rumpled, 
 ink-stained sheets on which the Queen of France, con- 
 demned to death, expressed her last thoughts and addressed 
 her final recommendations to her sister-in-law, Madame 
 Ehsabeth. 
 
 The note was written at the conclusion of that terrible 
 final appearance before the Revolutionary Tribunal. It is 
 dated, " This i6th of October, at half -past four in the 
 morning." Seven and a half hours before the execution ! 
 
 "It is to you, my sister, that I am writing for the last 
 time. I have just been condemned, not to a shameful 
 death, that is only for criminals, but to join your brother. 
 Innocent as he, I hope to show the same firmness in these 
 last moments. I am as calm as one whose conscience has no 
 reproach ; I feel profound regret at leaving my poor children, 
 you know that I only existed for them and for you, my good 
 and tender sister. In what a position do I leave you who 
 in your affection have sacrificed everything to be with us ! 
 I have learned from the speech for the defence in the trial 
 that my daughter has been separated from you. Alas ! 
 poor child, I dare not write to her, she would not receive my 
 letter ; I do not even know if this will reach you. Receive 
 for them both this my blessing ; I hope that one day, when 
 they are bigger, they will be re-united with you, and enjoy 
 to the full your tender care ; let them both think of what I 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 have not ceased to inspire in them, that the principles and 
 exact execution of one's duties are the fundamental basis 
 of life, that their friendship and mutual confidence will 
 cause its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her 
 age she ought always to help her brother by the counsels 
 that her greater experience and affection inspire her with ; let 
 my son, on his side, render to his sister every care, every 
 service that affection can inspire ; lastly, let both feel that 
 in whatever position they may find themselves, they will 
 be truly happy only by their union ; let them take example 
 from us. How much consolation has our friendship brought 
 us in our misfortunes ! Happiness is doubly enjoyed when one 
 can share it with a friend ; and where is a more tender or 
 devoted friend to be found than in one's own family ? Let 
 my son never forget his father's last words which I repeat 
 to him expressly ; let him never seek to avenge our death. 
 " I have to speak to you of something very painful to me. 
 I know how much trouble this child must have caused you. 
 Forgive him, dear sister ; think of his age and of how easy 
 it is to make a child say what one likes, and even what he 
 does not understand. A day will come, I hope, when he will 
 better reahse the value of your goodness and tenderness 
 towards both. It remains for me to confide my last thoughts 
 to you. I should have hked to write them to you from 
 the beginning of my trial, but, besides the fact that I was 
 not aljpwed to write, its course has been so rapid that I 
 really should not have had the time. 
 
 " I die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, 
 in that of my fathers, in that in which I have been brought 
 up and always professed ; having no spiritual consolations 
 to expect, not knowing if there are priests of that reUgion here ; 
 and if there were, the position in which I am would expose 
 them too much if once they entered here. I sincerely ask 
 God's pardon for all the faults I may have committed since 
 I came into being ; I hope that in His goodness He will 
 hear my last prayers as well as those that I have long made 
 that He will receive my soul in His mercy and goodness. I 
 ask pardon from all whom I know, and especially from you 
 my sister, for all the trouble that, without wishing it, I may 
 have caused them. I pardon all my enemies for the evil 
 they have done me. I here say adieu to my aunts and to 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 all my brothers and sisters. I once had friends : the idea 
 of being separated from them and their sufferings for ever is 
 one of the greatest regrets that I take with me in dying ; 
 let them know at least that to my last moment I have 
 thought of them. 
 
 " Adieu, my good and tender sister ; may this letter 
 reach you ! Think always of me. I embrace you with all 
 my heart as well as those poor dear children. Oh ! God ! 
 how heart-rending it is to leave them for ever ! Adieu ! 
 Adieu ! I am going to occupy myself with nothing more 
 except my spiritual duties. As I am not free in my actions, 
 perhaps they will bring me a priest^ ; but I here protest 
 that I shall not say a word and shall treat him as an absolute 
 stranger." 
 
 The Queen has not signed this note, which is entirely 
 written in her own hand. But the last page bears the five 
 following signatures. — A. Q. Fouquier, Lecointre, Legot, 
 Guffroy, and Massieu. 
 
 How is this to be explained ? 
 
 The first is the signature of Antoine Quentin Fouquier- 
 Tinville, PubUc Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 of Paris ; the other four are those of the members of the 
 National Convention, charged with the verification of the 
 ex-Public Prosecutor's papers when, after Robespierre's 
 fall, that magistrate was ordered to be indicted and, placed 
 on trial in his turn. 
 
 The gaoler of the Conciergerie had taken possession of 
 the Queen's last letter ; he had handed it over to Fouquier- 
 Tinville. Marie Antoinette's presentiment did not deceive 
 her when she wrote : " Alas ! poor child, I dare not write 
 to her, she would not receive my letter ; I do not even know 
 if this will reach you." " May this letter reach you ! " she 
 also wrote. Those pages never reached their address. The 
 Public Prosecutor kept among his papers this moving 
 expression of the last prayers of a dead woman. Without 
 any regard for the final wishes of a mother whom his Tribunal 
 sent to the scaffold, he arranged among his portfolios the note 
 
 > A priest who had taken the oath to the Civil Constitution of 
 the Clergy. — Tr. 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 in which Marie Antoinette breathed forth all the pride of 
 her character and all the ardent and simple tenderness of 
 her heart. 
 
 That is why to-day, after a hundred and seventeen years 
 have passed, those who visit the Princesse de Soubise's 
 drawing-room pause, filled with emotion, before the mysterj- 
 of this touching letter, countersigned in the clumsy and 
 uncouth handwriting of the famous Public Prosecutor. 
 They ask questions. They want to know. And when they 
 are given the above explanation, many of them remain 
 there, motionless, and ask in low tones and with a sort of 
 shiver in their voice : " What was Fouquier-TinviUe then ? 
 A brute ? A monster ? " 
 
 Fouquier-TinviUe does not seem to have had the appear- 
 ance of a monster, if we refer to these terms in a note which 
 was sent to him by Therdse Fran9oise de Stainville, Princesse 
 de Grimaldi-Monaco, guillotined on the 9th of Thermidor in 
 the year II., the very day of Robespierre's fall : — 
 
 " Citizen, I ask you, in the name of humanity, to have 
 this packet sent to my children ; you seemed to me to have a 
 humane look, and when I saw you I regretted that you were 
 not my judge ; perhaps I should not be charging you with 
 a last wish if you had been. Heed the request of an imhappy 
 mother, who perishes at the age of happiness and who leaves 
 children deprived of their only resource ; let them at least 
 receive this last evidence of my tenderness, and I shall 
 ever owe you gratitude."^ 
 
 The Princesse de Monaco had declared herself pregnant, 
 but soon afterwards she had written to Fouquier : — 
 
 " I warn you, citizen, that I am not with child. I wanted 
 to tell you so ; no longer hoping that you will come, I send 
 you word. I have not stained my mouth with this lie 
 through fear of death, or to avoid it, but to give myself a 
 day longer in order to cut off my hair myself and not to yield 
 it to be cut by the hand of the executioner. It is the only 
 legacy I can leave to my children ; at least it must be 
 unstained. Choiseul Stainville Josephe Grimaldi-Monaco, 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 121, ist dossier, pidce 100. 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 a foreign princess dying by the injustice of French 
 judges." 1 
 
 The princess's hair was enclosed in a paper containing 
 two notes, one addressed to her two daughters, the other to 
 their governess. 
 
 ' ' My children, this is my hair. I have put off my death for a 
 day not out of fear, but because I wished to be able to cut off 
 this sad spoil myself in order to give it to you ; I did not 
 want it done by the executioner's hand, and I had only this 
 means ; I have passed a day more in this agony, but I do 
 not complain of it ; I ask that my hair be kept in a phial 
 covered with black crape, and locked up throughout the 
 year, and that only three or four times in a year you have 
 in your room before your eyes what remains of your unhappy 
 mother who died loving you, and who regrets life only because 
 she cannot be useful to you. I recommend you to your 
 grandfather ; if you see him, tell him that I am filled with 
 the thought of him, and let him keep you in place of every- 
 thing, and you, my children, take care of his old age and 
 make him forget his misfortunes." 
 
 To the governess she wrote : — 
 
 " I have already written to you: one word and now I 
 write another to recommend my children to you ; when you 
 receive this I shall be no more, but may my memory cause 
 you to take pity on my unfortunate children, for that is the 
 only feeUng they can then inspire. The ring in which my 
 children's names were written, and which you ought to have 
 received, is a keepsake that I offer you. It is the only thing 
 of which I can dispose ; let Louise know the reason why I 
 have postponed my death ; let her not suspect me of 
 weakness."* 
 
 In spite of " the humane look " that the Princesse de 
 Monaco found in him, Fouquier-Tinville did not forward 
 these affecting notes to the orphans for whom they had 
 been written. The Public Prosecutor arranged them among 
 the papers of his daily correspondence, where they are pre- 
 served in the portfolios of the National Archives. 
 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 431, dossier 968, piSce 7. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 121, ist dossier, pp. 100 bis and 100 ier. 
 
xii , INTRODlTfcTION 
 
 A sombre and enigmatical figure is Fouquier-Tinville. 
 For a long time his name was in men's memory the symbol 
 of the whole past of the Terror, and for a long time to come 
 this tragic name will remain the symbol of the " judicial 
 assassinations "^ committed by the Tribunal established on 
 March lo, 1793. 
 
 Yet in the scales of impartial history, the Pubhc Prosecu- 
 tor's responsibility is a little less heavy than that of Presi- 
 dent Dumas, President Herman, Judge Cofifinhal, Lescot- 
 Fleuriot, the Public Prosecutor's deputy, and the jurors. 
 
 Paradoxical as the assertion may appear, Fouquier- 
 TinviUe displayed sentiments of humanity on rare occasions. 
 The others never did. They questioned the accused, and 
 their questions were propounded with such a refinement of 
 perfidy, with such a hypocritical though seeming regard for 
 legahty, that the accused felt condemned in advance. It is 
 only necessary to read Herman's cross-examination of Marie 
 Antoinette and his summing-up in the Queen's trial to form 
 an opinion of the worth of that civil-spoken and inexorable 
 personage. President at the trial of the Girondins, at those 
 of the Duo d'Orleans, of Bamave, of Danton and the 
 Dantonists, this official saw his zeal rewarded by an excel- 
 lent place which, indeed, was no sinecure and involved 
 risks. Three days after Danton's execution, Herman suc- 
 ceeded Pare ; he was appointed Minister of Justice, being 
 replaced in the Presidency of the Tribunal by Dumas. 
 
 Dumas distinguished himself by his brutality. He is 
 said to have been an habitual drunkard. He was continu- 
 ally in rivalry with Fouquier-Tinville, who at the time of 
 his own trial said, " He was my mortal enemy." He was 
 always armed with two pistols which, when in court, he 
 placed on the table before him. He interrupted the accused. 
 During the adjournment, he would slip among the jury 
 and hold conversations with them.^ He was ferocious, 
 aggressive, and ill-tempered. His usual procedure, when an 
 
 ' The phrase is that of Boissy d'Anglas in the Moniteur March 
 23. 1795. P- 747. col. 3. 
 
 « Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier p 63 
 
MADAME ROLAND 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 accused person spoke, was to cut him short, and definitely 
 refuse him the right to speak. Fouquier opposed him, and 
 caused witnesses to be heard in spite of the President. 
 
 After the law of the 22nd of Prairial, we shall see that 
 Dumas and Coffinhal contented themselves with asking the 
 accused their names and positions, and briefly reminding 
 them of the heads of the indictment brought against them. 
 When the accused answered, Dumas would exclaim : " We 
 were expecting what you are sajdng. You are priests and 
 nobles. That is enough. Let us go on to the next."'^ 
 
 When he cross-examined Madame Roland, the sculptor 
 Lescot-Fleuriot, Fouquier-Tinville's deputy, propounded 
 to the accused long, embarrassing questions. He demanded 
 clear, short answers. Then he interrupted the examination, 
 burst into a rage, and said : " With such a chatterbox we 
 shall never finish. Besides, we are not at the Ministry of 
 the Interior^ to indulge in wit." 
 
 When Pache, the Mayor of Paris, being compromised in 
 the case of Hebert and the Hebertists, was imprisoned, Lescot- 
 Fleuriot took his place and became one of Robespierre's 
 firmest supporters until the decisive night between the 9th 
 and loth of Thermidor. 
 
 When sitting as President at the trial of the elder LoizeroUes, 
 the old man who was arraigned before the Tribunal when it 
 was his son who had been summoned to appear, Coffinhal, 
 on the 8th of Thermidor, calmly allowed the one to be con- 
 demned for the other. He washed his hands of the matter. 
 Some months later, Fouquier-Tinville could justly say : 
 " That omission and that crime, if they really exist, are 
 personal to Coffinhal and to the registrar's 'clerk who had 
 charge of the case." It was Coffinhal who, revising and 
 correcting the Hst of accused in the " batch " * among which 
 the poets Roucher and Andre Chenier appeared on the 7th 
 of Thermidor, added these words in the margin facing the 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63. 
 ' Roland had been Minister of the Interior. — Tr. 
 ' Fournde, the term generally applied to a number of prisoners 
 tried and executed together. — Tr. 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 name of Louis Sers, "captain of infantry in command at 
 Chambamagot." Chambarnagot for Chandemagor l^ Some 
 important depositions at Fouquier-Tinville's trial seem to 
 attribute to Coffinhal, " that brutality which was natural to 
 him," the execution of women who were with child.^ 
 
 As for the motley troop of jurors, each of them had his 
 proper share, his terrible share, in the hecatombs of Prainal 
 and of Messidor. What about their consciences ? Fouquier- 
 Tinville liked to style some of them, " my solid men." These 
 solid men had not, on the whole, been more criminal than 
 the others. They liked to utter big words which, for 
 the most part, they did not understand— liberty, equality, 
 fraternity, unity, indivisibility, or death. They were 
 proud and happy to speak and write these words, to 
 see them printed on fine engraved paper. They were 
 playing an overwhelming part, and thought it agreeable 
 and right to be paid eighteen Kvres a day for playing that 
 part. Several among them were both members of the Popular 
 Commissions and jurors of the Tribunal of the Terror. 
 
 But they themselves experienced the terror they inspired. 
 Veritable tjnrants, each in his own Section, in his own 
 Commission, in his own street, at the Tribimal they feared 
 being denounced by men more tyrannous than themselves, 
 and this is why they became ferocious and implacable. 
 They played the part of informers from fear of being accused 
 in that same part. For some of them, it was enough to see 
 the prisoners in order to decide on their verdicts. The mere 
 inspection of a face determined them to vote for death. 
 One of them said : " Were I the PubUc Prosecutor, I would 
 have the condemned bled before their execution so as to 
 weaken their courageous bearing." Another publicly boasted 
 of " never having voted except for death when it was a case 
 of trying priests or nobles, for they were all food for the 
 guillotine."* Another having asked permission to address the 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 431, No. 969. 
 = Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 3. 
 
 ' Aubry, the tailor. Archives Nationales, W. 500 3rd dossier 
 p. 58. 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 court, said : " Is it not enough to show you are an aristocrat, 
 that you have served a noble ? " ^ This man said to his 
 colleagues, just after they rose from a sitting : " We have 
 only taken two hours and a half this time, because we had 
 only to refer to the letter that was beside the name." An- 
 other stated that " when there was no crime, it was necessary 
 to imagine one." Some of them could neither read nor 
 write. Others, on the contrary, men of letters or of fashion, 
 or artists, voted for death with a sort of bored carelessness, 
 a mocking air — and to put an end to the matter. 
 
 It ought to be said that nothing is less just than to attri- 
 bute entire responsibility to Fouquier-Tinville for the 
 judicial crimes committed by the Tribunal established on 
 March lo, 1793, an exceptional, " provisional " Tribunal, a 
 sort of " military justice applied by civil judges." It was 
 not he who cross-examined ; it was not he who voted for 
 death. He was neither judge nor juror.^ 
 
 A servant of the law, he took care to keep within the bounds 
 of the law. What he seemed essentially to desire, ' ' entrusted 
 as he was for eighteen months with the painful duty of seeking 
 out crime and prosecuting it," was to discover the guilty ; 
 and that because his two formidable patrons, the Committee 
 of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, 
 exacted it. The men who composed those Committees 
 made him " walk " as they wanted. He carried out their 
 orders exactly, and in particular the orders of the most violent 
 and most sinister among them, Vadier, Voulland, and Amar.* 
 
 At the Committee meetings, to which he went every 
 evening, and where he often remained until an advanced 
 hour of the night, he waited for the Usts of persons to be 
 charged, and he handed them over to others. He was exact, 
 and fulfilled precisely the intentions and resolutions of the two 
 
 ' This juror was Didier. Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd, dossier 
 p. 58. 
 
 • He said so in reply to Cambon at his cross-examination on the 9th 
 of Germinal in the year III. (Buchez and Roux XXXIV., p. 329.) 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46. The witness 
 Advenier saw Voulland, Vadier, and Amar go fairly often to 
 Fouquier's room and lock themselves in with him " carefully." 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 Committees. He remembered this when, torn from his 
 power, imprisoned, and ready, in his turn, to appear before 
 his judges, he wrote, on the 19th of Thermidor : " If it is 
 a crime to have given effect to the resolutions of the 
 Committees of Pubhc Safety and of General Security, I 
 confess that I am guilty ; I should have been guilty if I did 
 not execute them. What then ought I to have done ? " 
 In the same manner, on the 14th of Thermidor, addressing 
 Louis (of the Bas-Rhin) and Moyse Bayle, he wrote : " My 
 defence is hmited to a recital of the events that took place 
 between the Committees and myself. ... Is there a 
 more frightful position than mine, after having spent days 
 and nights in the public service ? " He wrote in one of the 
 memorials for his defence : " No appeals of any sort whatever 
 could have stopped me ; the execution of the laws that 
 emanated from the Convention, justice, and humanity — 
 these have been my rule of conduct." He also wrote this to 
 Merlin (of Douai) : " It is a slanderous wound which time 
 will heal. I repeat it. My crime is that I have been the 
 instrument of too severe laws, and that it was not in my 
 power not to execute them ; hence hatred and resentment." 
 
 He is the " executor of the laws." He is the axe and 
 rods ; he is the Revolutionary bludgeon. The laws often 
 change. A struggle for power, an uninterrupted pitiless 
 struggle, was entered upon by political parties. The con- 
 queror slew the conquered, and was himself then conquered 
 and killed. It was the business of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal and its Pubhc Prosecutor to perform this task. 
 
 It was thus that Fouquier-Tinville drew up in succession 
 indictments against Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, 
 Olympe de Gouges, Madame du Barry, Hubert and the 
 Hebertists, Danton and the Dantonists, the alleged con- 
 spiracy in the prisons, etc., etc., until the day when he 
 saw himself obliged to plead in court against his friends, 
 Lescot-Fleuriot and others. 
 
 The study of the part played by Fouquier-TinviUe will 
 be the purpose of the first part of this book. We have 
 entitled it " The Public Prosecutor." The trials have been 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 ,^ 
 
 studied by the historians of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 MM. Campardon, WaUon, and Lendtre, and we do not flatter 
 ourselves that this book contains ansrthing new in this respect. 
 But it seemed to us useful and interesting to undertake it 
 for the better understanding of the second part of the book, 
 entitled " The Prisoner." In this latter portion we have 
 appUed ovurselves to a minute re-examination of Fouquier- 
 TinvUle's trial. 
 
 It is by making this slow and minute re-examination that 
 we best xmderstand the sort of man this tragic Fouquier- 
 Tinville was. In so far as he was PubHc Prosecutor, he 
 appears to us clearly as a public official, bent on keeping his 
 place and the handsome salary it represented, at the price of 
 every form of serviUty, even the basest, most criminal, and 
 most dishonourable. Ordered to be placed on trial by 
 the National Convention some moments after having been 
 nominated in the same Assembly as Public Prosecutor for 
 a fresh period, Fouquier-Tinville, a prisoner, fallen, hemmed 
 in, deserted, scoffed at, defended himself with such argu- 
 mentative vigour, such presence of mind, in a word, such 
 talent ; he demonstrated with such skill that he was the 
 scapegoat for others whose exact and imtiring agent he 
 had been ; he explained so completely the wheels of the 
 blood-stained machine of which he himself had been one 
 of the wheels that moved most easily ; he challenged the 
 evidence so audaciously and coolly, especially that of his 
 mortal enemies, the clerks in the registry, that, in spite of his 
 horrible activity, his case became curious and extremely 
 interesting. It was that of a former procurator, a former 
 advocate, firmly bound to procedure, a former lawyer 
 whose brain had been misshapen and his reason led astray 
 through the abuse of chicanery, and who, heedy and the 
 father of a family, seeking a situation, fell into the midst of 
 the Revolution, was taken seriously, took himself seriously, 
 and into whose hands, companions, as unconscious as he of 
 the responsibiUty of their acts, placed the machine for 
 judging others. The reader will see, in the first part of this 
 study, what effect such a machine can produce, and what 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 in such hands it did produce both before and after the 22nd 
 of Prairial. 
 
 And now, let us be pardoned if, in writing the history " of 
 those rigorous times " — to use the words of a contemporary, 
 the poet Vig6e — we have not thought it our duty to give 
 details of what befell the family of him who was guillotined 
 in the month of Floreal. His family is not responsible for 
 his judicial crimes. Under what pretext and by what right 
 should we question, in their eternal peace, the piteous and 
 innocent ashes of those whom he loved and who loved him ? 
 As Pubhc Prosecutor of the Terror, Antoine Quentin Fou- 
 quier-Tinville is on trial at the bar of History. It is on this 
 ground that he interests us, and on this ground that we mean 
 to study him, not without having always in mind the cynical 
 sapng of Carrier, the pro-consul of Nantes, when in his turn 
 brought to trial, he exclaimed : " Everything here is guilty, 
 down to the President's bell ! " 
 
 A. D. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 fouquier-tinville's beginnings 
 
 The Commune against the Legislative Assembly — ^Robe- 
 spierre's speecli — ^Required, " a court of popular justice " 
 — The Tribunal of August 17th, 1792 — Fonquier-Tinville, 
 third director of the jury d' accusation — Fouquier's origins 
 — His portrait — ^His letter to Camille Desmoulins — The 
 tribunal of August 17th suppressed — Fouquier ap- 
 pointed deputy to the Public Prosecutor of the Criminal 
 Tribunal of the Department of Paris — ^March loth, 1793 
 — Serious reverses of the French armies — ^Danton's 
 speech — " Let us be terrible in order to prevent the 
 people £rom being terrible " — Creation of the Tribunal of 
 the Terror — Fouquier-Tinville made Public Prosecutor . 29 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 " THE DICTATORSHIP OF JUSTICE " 
 
 Powers of the Public Prosecutor — The writs of indictment — 
 Fouquier is pitiless towards those who are drunk or 
 mad — Growth of the work of the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 — It is reinforced by the Convention — On September 5th, 
 1793, the Sections come to demand that terror be made 
 the order of the day — The suspects — ^The strength of 
 the revolutionary government is in " virtue " and 
 " terror " — ^The people are hungry — Trial of Hebert, 
 Ronsin, and others — ^Danton's trial — ^Part played by 
 Fouquier-Tinville — His letter to the Committee of 
 Public Safety — Saint- Just's attitude — ^The arguments 
 ended without having been begun — ^Fouquier and Madame 
 de Lavergne's indictment — A mysterious affair — Chau- 
 mette's trial and the first idea of the Conspiracy in the 
 Prisons — Fouquier and his correspondence . . 39 
 
 xix 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE AND THE CONSPIRACIES IN THE PRISONS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 The attempt on CoUot-d'Herbois— The Law of the 22iid of 
 Prairial — The " batches " of Prairial — ^Fouquier's task 
 becomes more complicated — How the writs of indict- 
 ment are drawn up — ^The sessions of the Tribunal — ^The 
 " red shirts " — ^The spies — ^The conspiracies in the prisons 
 — Summary of the Public Prosecutor's work, and judg- 
 ment passed on that work ..... 68 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE AND THE NINTH OF THERMIDOR 
 
 The sessions of the Tribunal in the Hall of Equality — ^The 
 amalgams — No material evidence — ^The paralytic Durand 
 Puy de Verine — ^The arrest of President Dumas — 
 Fouquier-Tinville's attitude — ^The departure of the siif 
 carts — Fouquier goes to dine with Vergnhes — " I cannot 
 stop the course of justice " — The dinner at Vergnhes's — 
 New grounds for uneasiness — The rising — Fouquier goes 
 back to the Palace — He sends for information about 
 what is happening — " I remain at my post " — ^The 
 evening in the refreshment room — Fouquier leaves for 
 the Committee of Public Safety .... 104 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REACTION OF THERMIDOR AND FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S 
 
 ARREST 
 
 The loth of Thermidor at the Tribunal — Fouquier pleads 
 against Robespierre, Couthon, Lavalette, Hanriot,' 
 Dumas, Saint- Just, Payan, Bernard, Gobeau, Gency and 
 Vivier — ^He leaves the session so as not to plead against 
 his friend Lescot-Fleuriot, the Mayor of Paris — ^The out- 
 lawry of the loth of Thermidor — The outlawry of the nth 
 —The Session of the 14th of Thermidor at the Conven- 
 tion — "All Paris asks you for the execution of Fouquier- 
 Tinville " — Fouquier's arrest — ^Fouquier at the Con- 
 
 ciergerie — ^Reflections during a first night in prison 
 
 First " Defensive Memorial " — Fouquier says he is inno- 
 cent and a victim — He invokes humanity and justice in 
 
 his favour ... t^« 
 
 • . . 119 
 
CONTENTS xxi 
 
 PART II 
 
 CHAPTER VT 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE PREPARES HIS DEFENCE 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Second memorial for the defence — The affair of the Strasburg 
 patriots — ^Fouquier clears himself — Re-organisation of 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal — ^The Tribunal of the 23rd of 
 Thermidor — Fouquier is heard at the bar of the Gjnven- 
 tion — On the 12th of Fructidor Lecointre (of Versailles) 
 raises Fouquier's case — ^A stormy session — Fouquier pro- 
 tests against certain allegations — ^Errors of journalists — 
 Fouquier sisks to be heard again — He learns of the 
 acquittal of the ninety-four inhabitants of Nantes who 
 owe him their lives . . . . . .139 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S first trial : THE INQUIRY 
 (VENDEMIAIRE AND BRUMAIRE OF THE YEAR II) 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville's letters to his wife — ^He has but to wait 
 until his fate is decided — ^His anxiety is lest he should be 
 " sacrificed and not judged " — Why without systemati- 
 cally disregarding the evidence of the Parliamentary His- 
 tory and that of Fouquier-Tinville's Printed Trial, we 
 desire to have special recourse to the manuscript docu- 
 ments relating to the inquiry — ^Beginning of that inquiry 156 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S FIRST TRIAL: CONTINUATION AND 
 END OF THE INQUIRY. (VENDEMIAIRE AND BRUMAIRE 
 OF THE YEAR III) 
 
 Depositions concerning Fouquier and the prisoners' claims in 
 regard to their money — " Give me the list of these beg- 
 gars. I will make them pass through it to-morrow " — 
 " Come, fellows, things must move " — Fouquier does not 
 wish that defenders of the country who are only guilty of 
 foolish actions should be put to death — Fouquier would 
 have saved some counter-revolutionary ex-nobles from 
 execution — Comte de Fleury's letter — At Danton's trial 
 
xxii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fouquier ought not to have made himself the accuser 
 of the Dantonists and imputed to them false and calum- 
 nious facts — "I want to induce the Tribunal to do without 
 witnesses " — ^Fouquier's terrible violence — " He was, so 
 to speak, unapproachable " — ^The affair of Darmaing and 
 Vadier— The case of Freteau— " Ready for delivery " — 
 Madame Fouquier-Tinville's efforts on her husband's 
 behalf I77 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE AFFIRMS HIS INNOCENCE AND HIS 
 HUMANITY. PUBLIC PROSECUTOR LEBLOIS ARGUES 
 AGAINST HIM 
 
 Fouquier's first examination (ist of Frimaire of the year III., 
 November 21, 1794) — His system of defence — He is not 
 responsible for the groupings, for the putting of masses of 
 accused persons on trial together, for the substitution of 
 one accused person for another — He has not prepared and 
 arranged for the guillotine, the carts, and the sentences 
 beforehand — Blank sentences are not his doing — He has 
 not made a selection of the jurors — ^He has not influenced 
 the witnesses — He has not kept back documents for the 
 defence — ^The answer of Public Prosecutor Leblois to 
 these denials of Fouquier — He charges him with having 
 betrayed his oflace, with having conspired against the 
 State and against the people, and with having promoted 
 the re-establishment of royalty . . . .195 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S second TRIAL : THE INQUIRY BY THE 
 TRIBUNAL established ON THE EIGHTH OF NIVOSE IN 
 THE YEAR III 
 
 The Tribunal of the 8th of Nivose in the year III. — ^First session 
 — ^Aumont's speech — That of President Agier — The 
 preliminary investigation for Fouquier's trial begins 
 again on a wider basis and with new means of informa- 
 tion — ^Depositions- — ^Madame Comulier, who had miracu- 
 lously escaped the guillotine — Long depositions of the 
 Morisans, the attendants in the refreshment-room of the 
 Tribunal — What the hearings of the Tribunal were like 
 after the 22nd of Prairial . . . . .216 
 
CONTENTS xxiii 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S second trial : CONTINUATION OF 
 THE INQUIRY j 
 
 FAOB 
 
 Depositions of Loizerolles the younger, whose father was 
 guillotined through an error — The defenders became 
 useless after the 22nd of Prairial — ^Vadier and Amar in 
 Fouquier's room — ^Manini, spy and man of letters — ^The 
 spy Beausire, husband of the woman Oliva — ^The batches 
 of the Tribunal — " The Tribunal was not a tribunal of 
 morality and justice but a political tribunal, established 
 to judge in accordance with pronounced public opinion " 
 — " Strangling the proceedings " — Guy Marie Sallier, 
 whose father was guillotined through an error — Long 
 depositions of P&ris, called Fabricius, a friend of Danton, 
 and registrar of the Revolutionary Tribunal . . 236 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S SECOND TRIAL : END OF THE INQUIRY : 
 INDICTMENT FORMULATED BY JUDICIS 
 
 Depositions regarding the execution of the Marquise de 
 Feuquidres — ^Had Fouquier given orders that the child- 
 ren at the Conciergerie should want for nothing ? — 
 Evidence of Robert Wolff, clerk to the registrar — ^Fou- 
 quier's outbursts and violence — ^It was dangerous under 
 the Terror to have an income of 300,000 livres. Fou- 
 quier's part in Danton's case, in that of Leonard Bourdon, 
 in the alleged conspiracies in the prisons — ^His relations 
 with certain jurors — ^The indictment formulated by 
 Judicis ....... 257 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FINAL EXAMINATION OF FOUQUIER. THE PROCEEDINGS 
 IN COURT. VERDICT AND DEATH . . .275 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONCLUSION ....... 304 
 
 INDEX ........ 311 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville {Photo- 
 gravure) ....... Frontispiece 
 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Madame Roland 
 
 xii 
 
 Peter Gaspar Chaumette .... 
 
 • 58 
 
 John May Roland de la Platiere . 
 
 60 
 
 The Night of the Ninth of Thermidor, in 
 
 the 
 
 Year II 
 
 106 
 
 The Arrest of Robespierre 
 
 . 116 
 
 Saint- Just 
 
 120 
 
 Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville . 
 
 140 
 
 Madame Tallien ..... 
 
 . 148 
 
 Charlotte Corday 
 
 . 180 
 
 Danton 
 
 184 
 
 The Guillotine 
 
 196 
 
 Camille Desmoulins 
 
 • 254 
 
 The Trial of Fouquier-Tinville 
 
 . 282 
 
 Bertrand Barere 
 
 296 
 
PART I 
 
THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR 
 OF THE TERROR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 fouquier-tinville's beginnings 
 
 ON August 14, 1792, four days after the fall of the 
 French Monarchy and the pillage of the Tuileries, 
 a decree of the National Legislative Assembly 
 ordered that the forty-eight Sections of Paris should 
 appoint a jury d'accusation and a jury de jugemenf- to take 
 cognisance of the crimes committed on August 10 against 
 the people. The Commune did not accept this decision 
 of the Legislative Assembly. It wished to have a Court 
 of Popular Justice. 
 
 On the evening of the 15th, it sent a deputation to the 
 Assembly. MaximiUen Robespierre spoke on its behalf. 
 He said that pubUc tranquillity and, above all, liberty 
 depended on the punishment of the guilty. The people's 
 vengeance had not yet been satisfied. The men who had 
 hidden themselves under the mask of patriotism, the men 
 who had affected to speak the language of the laws in 
 order to overthrow the laws, " that Lafayette who was not 
 in Paris, but who could be there," were they to escape the 
 national vengeance ? The guilty must be judged, finally 
 and in the last resort, by commissioners chosen in each of 
 the forty-eight Sections of the city.^ 
 
 ' The jury d'accusation corresponded in some respects to our 
 grand jury ; but its procedure was iiot public. It cross-examined 
 prisoners, and prepared the case for trial before the jury de jugemenf. 
 — Tr. 
 
 " Moniteur for August 18, 1792. 
 
 29 
 
30 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 The Assembly endeavoured to oppose this. The Com- 
 mune insisted, even threatened. On Friday, the 17th, at 
 ten o'clock in the morning, an orator whom it had sent to 
 the Feuillants proclaimed that a rising would take place at 
 midnight. The tocsin would be sounded, and drams would 
 beat to arms. The people were weary of not being avenged. 
 
 The Commune gained the day. The Assembly capitu- 
 lated. The decree was passed. The extraordinary criminal 
 tribunal was about to set to work. It was to judge the 
 crimes committed on the day of August 10, and " other 
 crimes relative to it." It was to be composed of seven 
 directors of the jury, who were to investigate and arrange 
 its business ; of two presidents and six judges ; of two com- 
 missioners and two prosecutors ; of four registrars and eight 
 registrars' clerks ; of ninety-six members of the jury 
 d' accusation and ninety-six members of the jury de jugement. 
 
 The judges and the members of the jury of this tribunal 
 were appointed during the night between the 17th and the 
 i8th of August. Robespierre was at the head of the list,* 
 and Coffinhal was one of the judges. On August 25 the 
 electors, in thirty-two sections, chose " Monsieur Fouquier- 
 TinviUe " as one of the directors of the jury d' accusation. 
 
 Antoine Quentin Fouquier was then forty-six years of 
 age. He was bom at Herouel, near Saint-Quentin, on 
 June 10, 1746. " His father," M. Campardon writes, "was 
 a rich agriculturalist^ of the district, who gave him so good 
 an education that, at the period in his life when his occupa- 
 tions least permitted him to think of Latin, he still liked to 
 remember it ; for when he was Public Prosecutor of the Revo- 
 lutionary Tribunal, he listened with pleasure to quotations 
 from the ancient authors he had studied in his youth. He 
 
 » Robespierre refused this post, as the performance of its duties 
 were incompatible with those of a representative of the Commune 
 of Paris. As he explains in a letter, he could not be the judge of 
 those whose opponent he had been. {Moniieur for August 28, 1792.) 
 
 ' His name was Eloy Fouquier, and he died in 1759, as is mentioned 
 in the Prints pour le Comte FSHx de Pardieu et demoiselle Lelong 
 de \Vadancort, son Spouse, intimSs, contre la dame veuve Fouquier 
 d'Etinville appellante, preserved in the National Archives. 
 
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S BEGINNINGS 31 
 
 was destined by his family for the bar ; accordingly, when his 
 studies were completed, he went to Paris and entered a pro- 
 curator's office ; he then signed himself Fouquier de Tinville, 
 and had himself called by that name. His three brothers 
 acted in the same way, and also added territorial titles to 
 their patronymics ; one, Pierre Eloi Fouquier, became 
 Fouquier d'H^rouel ; another, Charles Frangois Fouquier, 
 called himself Fouquier de VauviU6. Both were equerries 
 and agents of the Royal Household. The third, Quentin 
 Fouquier, who was only an advocate in the Parlement, 
 none the less signed himself Fouquier de Forest. The future 
 PubUc Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal was 
 engaged, up to the end of the year 1773, in obtaining, through 
 the medium of the procurators' offices in the capital, the 
 practical knowledge which was indispensable if he were to 
 perform correctly the duties of the office he desired to 
 purchase. On January 21, 1774, the Chamber of Procura- 
 tors of the Chatelet of Paris (now the solicitors of the lower 
 court) granted him an admittatur." ^ Some days later he 
 received his provisional letters of appointment. 
 
 Those letters, dated January 25, gave and conceded to 
 him the office of candidate procurator at the Chatelet of 
 Paris, which had been held and exercised by Jean Louis 
 Comillier. The customary inquiry had been favourable. 
 He was acknowledged to be " of good life, morals, and con- 
 versation, and of the Catholic, ApostoUc, and Roman 
 religion." He took the oath, and was put into possession of 
 his offices. Rue du Foin-Saint-Jacques, in the College of 
 Maitre Gervais, parish of Saint-Severin, Sorbonne district. 
 Two years later, he went to live in the Rue Pavee-Saint- 
 Sauveur, " facing the Rue Fran^aise." We find him in- 
 stalled there on January 23, 1776. In October, 1778, he was 
 hving in the Rue Bourbon- Villeneuve, in a iine house, " by 
 the side of the great balcony, near the corner of the Rue 
 Saint-PhiUppe." 
 
 Maitre Fouquier de Tinville' s practice was a good one, 
 
 ^ Campardon : Le Tribunal RSvolutionnaire de Paris. Tome I.- 
 p. 13 (Plon 1866). 
 
32 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 and included a large number of clients, drawn chiefly from 
 the lower middle-classes — shopkeepers, artisans and traders. 
 Some agriculturalists, farmers and wine-growers from the 
 neighbourhood of Paris, from Charonne, Suresnes, Villiers- 
 le-Bel, and elsewhere, also came to entrust their cases to 
 him ; as did some rehgious estabUshments, such as the 
 Enghsh Nuns, estabUshed in Paris in the Rue des Fosses- 
 Saint- Victor, and the Nuns of Saint-Thomas, of the Order 
 of Saint Dominic, in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. 
 Fouqmer, inteUigent and active, was well suited for the 
 management of affairs and for the subtleties of chicanery. 
 
 He had married his cousin, Genevifeve Dorothee Saugnier, 
 on October 19, 1775, at the parish church of Notre-Dame- 
 du-Mont-Saint-Martin, in the diocese of Cambrai. In the 
 following year a son was bom — Pierre Quentin Fouquier. 
 Then he had four daughters — Genevieve Louise Sophie, 
 bom on January 2, 1778 ; Emilie Frangoise, bom on Decem- 
 ber 7, 1778 ; Marie Adelaide, bom on January 19, 1782. 
 Three months later, April 24, 1782, Fouquier's young wife 
 died, at the age of twenty-eight.^ 
 
 Within less than five months, Fouquier married again. 
 His second wife was Henriette Gerard d'Aucourt, the 
 daughter of a colonist who had died at San Domingo. In 
 September, 1783, he sold his practice. For what reasons 
 remains a mystery. It is noteworthy that " for motives of 
 interest " Maitre Bligny, his successor, broke off aU relations 
 with him for more than ten years, and did not see him again 
 until he had become Pubhc Prosecutor. ^ 
 
 At this period he was engaged in doubtful affairs, leading 
 a submerged existence in Paris. He no longer Uved in the 
 Rue Bourbon-ViUeneuve. He frequently changed his dwel- 
 ling. In 1785, he was in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, after- 
 wards in the Rue VieiUe-du-Temple ; in 1788, in the Rue 
 
 > All the information given here is taken from the documents 
 preserved among the National Archives. Those documents include 
 many powers and discharges given by clients to Maitre Fouquier de 
 Tinville, procurator at the Chitelet. They also include baptismal 
 and death certificates of the children and of Fouquier's first wife. 
 
 * See later p. 232. 
 
A TRUE DESPOT 33 
 
 Saint-Croix de la Bretonnerie ; in 1789, in the Rue Barre- 
 du-Bec (which began at the Rue de la Verrerie, and ended 
 at the Rue Saint-Merri and the Rue Saint-Croix de la 
 Bretonnerie) ; in 1791, in the Rue des Chartres and the 
 Rue des Enfants Rouges ; in 1793, at Number 356, Rue 
 Saint-Honore. 
 
 On January 9, 1790, a son was born to his second wife ; 
 in 1792, she had twins. One of his daughters, Marie Ade- 
 laide, having died on May i, 1786, Fouquier had, at this 
 period, seven children. ^ 
 
 Antoine Quentin Fouquier was a robust and strapping 
 Picard, with large and strongly moulded neck and shoulders. 
 His hair was dark and smooth, his forehead high, his face 
 full and pitted with smallpox. He had a Roman nose and 
 extremely arched and elevated eyebrows. His glance was 
 keen, searching, disquieting, and very restless. Contem- 
 poraries, who witnessed his trial, said that he was moody, 
 but a good fellow. Many agreed in declaring that he was 
 of a terribly violent and passionate, even brutal, character, 
 a true " despot." 
 
 How did this ex-procurator, who had become a vague 
 " man of the law," and fallen into a precarious position, 
 suddenly find a situation in the magistracy and become 
 one of the directors of the jury d' accusation established by 
 the law of August 17, 1792 ? The thing has been related 
 by M. Campardon with the aid of M. Edouard Fleury's 
 Camille Desmoulins and the papers relating to the tribunal 
 of August 17 preserved among the Archives. 
 
 Fouquier was a compatriot and even a distant relative of 
 Camille DesmouUns. On August 20, 1792, he wrote to him : 
 
 " Until the ever memorable day of the tenth of this month, 
 my dear relative, the title of patriot has been not only a 
 cause of exclusion from every office, but even a ground for 
 persecution ; you yourself are an example of this. The 
 time has come at last, we may hope, when true patriotism 
 must conquer. . . . My patriotism is known to you, 
 
 ' See Len6tre : Le Tribunal RSvolutionnaire (Paris : Perrin, 1908). 
 c 
 
34 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 as well as my capacity in contentious matters. I flatter 
 myself that you wiU be good enough to intercede for me with 
 the Minister of Justice * in order to procure me a situation 
 either in his own office or elsewhere. You know that I am 
 the father of a numerous family and am badly off ; my eldest 
 son, aged sixteen, who has rushed to the frontier, has cost 
 and still costs me a great deal, etc., etc.* 
 
 " I am very truly, my dear relative, your very humble and 
 most obedient servant. 
 
 " FouQUiER, lawyer, 
 
 " Rue Saint-Honor^, 356, opposite the Assumption." 
 
 Five days afterwards Fouquier was appointed one of the 
 directors of the jury d' accusation. The Tribunal, established 
 on August 17, lasted only three months. It was suppressed 
 on November 29, 1792. During this period Fouquier had 
 spoken in twenty-five cases ; the first, that of Nicolas Cazotte, 
 who was charged with having counter-revolutionary con- 
 nections, and condemned to death. The visionary Cazotte, 
 who, thanks to the devotion of his daughter Ehsabeth, had 
 escaped the massacres of September, was arrested owing 
 to his " mystic correspondence," which had been seized at 
 the Tuileries after August 10, and condemned for his letters 
 to Pouteau. He had almost reached his seventy-third year. 
 " Old man," said Lavaux, the President of the Tribimal, 
 to him, " face death without fear : it has nothing that can 
 frighten you." An unnecessary recommendation. Cazotte 
 remained impassive in the face of death. 
 
 In the performance of his duties Fouquier-Tinville had 
 given proof of an edif5nng zeal and a remarkable knowledge 
 
 » Danton. 
 
 » Two years later, on the 15th of Gennmal in the year II., M. Des- 
 moulins, the father, wrote to Fouquier to intercede for his son, 
 who had been brought to trial with Danton and the Dantonists. 
 " Greeting and fraternity," he wrote at the end of his letter, " from 
 your compatriot and feUow-citizen Desmoulins, he who has hitherto 
 honoured himself as being the father of Camille, the first and most 
 unflinching of republicans." 
 
 The letter arrived too late. Camille Desmoulins was already 
 dead. (Claretie : Camille Desmoulins et les Dantonistes, p. 328.) 
 
A LETTER OF RESIGNATION 35 
 
 of affairs. At the beginning of 1793, he wa? appointed 
 deputy to the PubUc Prosecutor of the Criminal Tribunal of 
 the Department of Paris, and on February 9, deputy for the 
 Procurator of the Commune of Paris ; but he resigned this 
 post in order that he might retain that of deputy to the 
 Public Prosecutor of the Criminal Tribunal, as being more 
 suited to his abihties and tastes. Three days later he wrote 
 to the Procurator-S3mdic of the Tribunal for the district of 
 Saint-Quentin : 
 
 " Paris, this 12th February, 1793, year II. of the 
 ]Repubhc. 
 
 " Citizen Procurator-Syndic, 
 
 " At the moment when I was elected by my fellow- 
 citizens to the position of judge of the Tribunal for the dis- 
 trict of Saint-Quentin, you know that I held the position of 
 •director of the jury d' accusation to the provisional Criminal 
 Tribunal estabHshed on August 17 last ; at least I informed 
 you of this. The duties of this latter position did not allow me 
 "to be present at the installation of the Tribunal, and since its 
 suppression I have been busied with the distribution of all 
 the suits in the ten Tribunals. This task has led me further 
 than I expected, and at the moment when I was preparing to 
 take up my duties, the electoral body appointed me to be 
 one of the PubUc Prosecutors of the Criminal Tribunal of the 
 Department of Paris. This position, which I beheved it my 
 •duty to accept both on account of its importance and as a 
 return for the confidence shown me by this great city, does 
 not permit me to take up the duties of judge of the Tribimal 
 of the district of Saint-Quentin, and by this present letter 
 I place my resignation in your hands. It is not without some 
 regret that I tender my resignation, because it would have 
 •enabled me to live among my fellow-citizens and my family. 
 But circumstances oblige me to take the present course, in spite 
 of the obvious fact that in accepting this post of Prosecutor 
 I impose upon myself the most stringent duty and privation. 
 You wiU obhge me by conveying to my colleagues my regrets 
 at not being able to join them. Moreover, my successor 
 
36 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 will not have cause to regret my resignation, the more so that 
 as I have not been received and installed, he has a right tO' 
 receive the whole of the emoluments by being himself 
 installed in my place. Even if I had not been appointed ta 
 the position of Prosecutor, I should still have been obhged 
 to send in my resignation, for on Sattirday last I was ap- 
 pointed deputy to the Procurator of the Commune of Paris, 
 and I am also about to send in to the Municipality my 
 resignation of that post. 
 
 " (Signed) Fouquier-Tinville." 
 
 On Sunday, March lo, 1793, the National Convention, 
 which, since the preceding day, had been occupied with 
 discussing the creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal to try 
 cases without appeal, was about to break up, exhausted, 
 when Danton leaped into the tribime and cried out : "I 
 call upon all good citizens not to leave their places ! " 
 
 It was half-past six in the evening. The Convention re- 
 mained motionless, subdued by Danton's voice. It was a 
 critical moment. Lidge was held by the enemy ; the French 
 army had been compelled to raise the siege of Maestricht ; 
 in Paris, preparations were being made for a riot. 
 
 " Nothing is so difficult," cried Danton, " as to define a 
 pohtical crime ; but if a man of the people receives instant 
 punishment for a private crime, if it is difficult to overtake 
 a political crime, is it not necessary that extraordinary 
 laws, taken from outside the social body, should terrify the 
 rebels and overtake the guilty ? 
 
 " The safety of the people now requires drastic meastures. 
 I see no middle course between the ordinary forms and a 
 revolutionary tribunal. History attests this truth ; and 
 since some in this assembly have dared to recall those blood- 
 stained days which every good citizen has deplored,^ I wiH 
 say, for my part, that if a tribunal had then existed, the 
 people, who have been reproached so often and so cruelly 
 for those days, would not have stained their hands with 
 blood ; I will say, and shall have the assent of all who 
 * The massacres of September, 1792. 
 
" LET ENGLAND'S COMMERCE BE RUINED " 37 
 
 witnessed those events, that no human power could check 
 "the outbreak of national vengeance. 
 
 " Let us profit by the faults of our predecessors. Let 
 us do what the Legislative Assembly failed to do ; let us 
 rather than the people be terrible ; let us organise a 
 tribunal, not a perfect one, for that is impossible, but 
 the best possible, in order that the people may know that 
 the sword of the Law is suspended over the heads of its 
 enemies. ... I demand, therefore, that the revo- 
 lutionary tribunal be organised before the present sitting 
 comes to an end, that the executive power in the new organ- 
 isation be entrusted with all the necessary powers of action 
 and energy. . . . Accordingly, I sum up what I have 
 said : this evening, the organisation of the tribunal, the 
 organisation of the executive power ; to-morrow, a miUtary 
 advance. By to-morrow let your commissioners have 
 started ; let all France arise, rush to arms, march against 
 the enemy ! Let Holland be invaded ; let Belgium be 
 free ; let England's commerce be ruined ; let the friends of 
 liberty triumph over that country ; let our arms, every- 
 where victorious, bring dehverance and happiness to the 
 people, and let the world be avenged ! " (Loud applause.) 
 
 The sitting was adjourned at seven o'clock in the evening, 
 after Danton's speech, and resumed at nine o'clock. The 
 Convention voted the construction and organisation of an 
 extraordinary Criminal Tribunal. It voted the penalties. 
 At five o'clock in the morning the sitting was adjourned. 
 
 This Tribimal, as everybody knows, was to try cases 
 involving every counter-revolutionary enterprise, every 
 attempt against the Uberty, equality, unity, and indivisi- 
 biUty of the Repubhc, against the internal and external 
 security of the State, all plots tending to re-estabhsh royalty 
 or to estabUsh any authority hostile to the liberty, equaUty, 
 and sovereignty of the people. It was composed of a jury 
 and five judges. The judge who was elected first was to be 
 president. The Tribunal was to have a Public Prosecutor 
 and two deputies, chosen, like the judges and the jurors, 
 by the Convention. 
 
38 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 On the 13th the Convention appointed the members of 
 the Tribunal. The President was Jacques-Bemard-Marie 
 Montane, special Ueutenant of the Seneschal's Court at 
 Toulouse, born at Grenade in the Haute-Garonne. The 
 Pubhc Prosecutor, chosen by 180 votes, was Faure, his 
 deputies, Fouquier-Tinville (163 votes), Donz6-Verteuil, an 
 ex-monk, and Lescot-Fleuriot, a sculptor (162 votes) . Faure 
 resigned. Fouquier-Tinville was appointed in his place by a 
 decree of the Convention dated the 15th, and accepted the 
 post without hesitation. He regarded it " a duty " to do so, 
 as he wrote on March 29, 1793, to the Minister of Justice.^ 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, BB« bis 25. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 " THE DICTATORSHIP OF JUSTICE " » 
 
 ON April 5, 1793, the Public Prosecutor was invested 
 with the right of causing the arrest, prosecution, 
 and trial of aU persons accused of the crime of 
 conspiracy or of " national offences," Deputies and 
 generals excepted. An information lodged by the consti- 
 tuted authorities, or even by private citizens, was sufficient. 
 On his warrant, any individual was at once arrested, 
 prosecuted and tried. The accused was incarcerated in 
 one of the prisons with which Paris abounded from the 
 beginning of the year II. 
 
 To analyse the trials, great and small, which occupied the 
 officials and the sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal from 
 April, 1793, to the end of July, 1794, would be to perform a 
 useless work. They have been examined, and that in a 
 definitive fashion. What took place is known. Moreover, 
 our subject is not the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 but a study of Fouquier-Tinville's responsibihty as Public 
 Prosecutor. 
 
 An individual was arrested as a suspect. The official 
 report of his arrest was drawn up at the committee of -sur- 
 veillance of his Section. This document contained the cross- 
 examination he had undergone before the members of that 
 committee. The accused person was then sent, with the 
 documents relating to him, before the Committee of General 
 Security, where he was again questioned. Thence he was 
 despatched to the Revolutionary Tribunal. The documents 
 were sent by the Committee of General Security to the 
 Pubhc Prosecutor, who examined them, made a summary of 
 the facts, arranged the charges, quoted the incriminating 
 ' Saint- Just's phrase. 
 39 
 
40 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 words or writings, noted the denials of the accused. In a 
 word he drew up his indictment. He took care to indicate 
 that the accused person acted " wickedly and intentionally " 
 with a view " to provoke the national dissolution and the 
 re-estabUshment of royalty." In consequence, he demanded 
 that the assembled Tribunal should grant him a writ of 
 indictment, that the person of the accused be seized, and 
 that he be entered on the gaol-book of the house of detention 
 of the Conciergerie, to remain there as in a house of justice. 
 
 At the hearing of the case before the Tribimal, Fonquier- 
 Tinville supported the accusation. If the declaration of the 
 jury were negative, the accused was set at hberty, at least 
 unless Fouquier demanded his detention in prison" as a 
 measure of general security. (We shall see that in this way 
 some accused persons, such as Freteau, were acquitted by the 
 jury, to be rearrested afterwards by Fouquier, again brought 
 before the Tribimal, and this time condemned.) If the 
 declaration of the jury were affirmative, the PubUc Prosecu- 
 tor moved that the law be appUed, which meant sending the 
 prisoner to the guillotine. 
 
 It would be wearisome to analyse Fouquier-Tinville's 
 writs of indictment, so monotonous is their style, marked 
 as it is throughout with the revolutionary phraseology whose 
 continuous exaggeration and terrible vagueness we can 
 scaircely understand to-day. The only fact that stands 
 out from them is that, during the first period of his magis- 
 tracy (from April, 1793, to April, 1794), Fouquier drew up his 
 indictments conscientiously enough and in accordance with 
 the cross-examination of the accused persons and the docu- 
 ments that had been transmitted to his office. He showed 
 himself, on the whole, careful in observing the law, and did not 
 go beyond the rights and powers that it conferred upon him. 
 He did not discuss the component parts of the accusation 
 that he had in his hands. He criticised neither their value 
 nor their origin. He did not stop to weigh the for and 
 against. He did not ask whether such and such an affirma- 
 tion, such and such a demmciation, deserved credit or not. 
 He admitted in its entirety the most questionable evidence. 
 
THE PLEADING AGAINST THE QUEEN 41 
 
 He accepted everything and gave a summary of all. He 
 expounded and affirmed. He was the organ of the law. He 
 adapted himself exactly, with activity, zeal, and application, 
 to the designs and intentions of the legislators. His pleadings 
 for the prosecution fell upon the accused like the blows of a 
 club. Moreover, he struck without discrimination all those 
 who were pointed out to him, whatever the social class to 
 which they belonged, and whatever their position, their 
 origin, or their opinions. 
 
 But if, in the mass, Fouquier-Tinville's indictments seem 
 to us tiresome to read, we must except some upon which he 
 expended imagination and style. Such, for example, are 
 those of Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry. " From 
 an examination made of all the documents transmitted by 
 (sic) the Public Prosecutor," say the pleadings drawn up 
 by Fouquier against the Queen, "it is clear that, like the 
 Messalinas, Brunehaut, Fredegonde and Medicis, who 
 were formerly described as Queens of France and whose 
 eternally odious names wiU not be effaced from the annals of 
 history, Marie Antoinette, the widow of Louis Capet, has 
 since her residence in France been the scourge and blood- 
 sucker of the French people ; that she had poUtical relations 
 with the man described as the King of Bohemia and of 
 Hungary even before the happy revolution that has given 
 back their sovereignty to the French people ; that those 
 relations were contrary to the interests of France. . . ." 
 
 " Citizens and jurors," said he, when summing up his 
 indictment against Madame du Barry, " you have given 
 your verdict on the plots of the wife of the last tjrrant of the 
 French ; you have at this moment to give your verdict on 
 the conspiracies of her infamous predecessor. You see 
 before you this Lais, famed for the licentiousness of her 
 morals, the publicity and the display of her debauchery, 
 whose wantonness alone made her share the destinies of the 
 despot who sacrificed the blood and treasure of the people to 
 his shameful pleasures." 
 
 From the outset of his magistracy, at the beginning 
 of April, 1793, Fouquier was as a rule pitiless towards 
 
42 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 drunkards 1 and madmen, and on April lo he asked the 
 Court to inflict the punishment of death on Luttier, an 
 old soldier, who, overcome by drink, asked some work- 
 men at the corner of the Rue de la Huchette " whether 
 they were Repubhcans and whether they had a soul, 
 affirming to them that he had a soul, that it was for his 
 king who had paid for it ; « that the king was not dead ; but 
 that he still existed and would soon appear ; that France 
 was ruined unless there was a king, because France was too 
 large for a RepubUc. . . ." Luttier was guillotined. On 
 April i8, Fouquier appeared against a Paris cook, Catherine 
 Clere, who, on the night of the 7th of March preceding, 
 had been seen to fall down by a municipal officer who 
 was returning home. He picked her up drunk, and she 
 immediately said to him " that she would not allow the son's 
 head to be cut off like his father's," adding that she meant 
 " the Httle boy who is in the Temple." She was brought to 
 the police station, and called out " Long live the King ! " 
 and, say Fouquier's pleadings, indulged in talk which 
 " manifested the disorder of drunkenness." But Fou- 
 quier demanded the punishment of death for Catherine 
 Cltre, " for having wickedly and designedly, in caf^s and at 
 the poUce station, publicly indulged in conversation tending 
 to provoke murder, the dissolution of the national repre- 
 sentation, and the re-estabhshment of royalty in France." 
 Fouquier was not embarrassed by the evident contradiction 
 existing between the disordered ideas and words of the 
 unhappy woman under the influence of drunkenness, and 
 
 1 It was not the offence of drunkenness that he proceeded against. 
 He explains his conduct in this matter on the occasion of the im- 
 peachment of Menou, an officer of the Carabineers, on the 15th 
 of Messidor in the year II. 
 
 " The drunkenness in which it appears that he was plunged at the 
 time of this counter-revolutionary excess cannot serve him as an 
 excuse. A drunken republican has never asked for a king ; but it 
 is not astonishing that a royalist, masked as a republican, should, 
 in the disorder of drunkenness, allow his secret to escape." — Archives 
 Nationales, W. 404, No. 933, 2nd part. 
 
 ' He had served in what had been the king's regiment of infantry. 
 Archives Nationales, W. 268, No. 4. 
 
THE LAW'S BUTCHERIES 43 
 
 the intention of having wickedly, and therefore knowingly, 
 conspired against the Convention. Catherine Clere was 
 guillotined, although her master, M. de Wailly, and other 
 witnesses had come forward to declare they had never 
 known her to be against the Revolution. 
 
 We could go on with these quotations, drawing from 
 them sinister or dramatic effects. We prefer to expound 
 succinctly but clearly the legislative measures in virtue of 
 which Fouquier's powers become more and more excessive. 
 
 This exposition is necessary to give some idea of how the 
 Public Prosecutor, who was only an agent, though a supple, 
 zealous and active agent — one who, moreover, felt himself 
 closely watched by terrible political chiefs — came, quite 
 naturally and by an implacable interpretation of the revolu- 
 tionary laws, to sjmibolise Terror and Dismay, at first 
 almost insensibly, then in crescendo to the final butchery. 
 We must not forget, that if in thirteen months (from April, 
 1793, to the 22nd of Prairial in the year II.) 1,259 victims 
 mounted the scaffold ; during the last forty-nine days of 
 the Terror (from the 22nd Prairial to the gth of Thermidor) 
 1,366 persons were guillotined as conspirators. 
 
 On July 19, 1793, Fouquier directed the attention of the 
 Convention to the continuous increase of work that was 
 thrown upon the Tribunal by " circumstances." " The 
 mass of business," he writes, " would require at least eight 
 judges, five of whom would be occupied with the hearings 
 and the other three with the preliminaries. In this way, 
 I venture to assure the Convention that I shall attend to all 
 the business as promptly as circumstances permit." 
 
 The external situation of France was most critical. 
 Mayence capitulated on July 23 ; Valenciennes on the 28th. 
 After Conde's surrender. General Custines had been recalled 
 to Paris on the 12th. The Convention increased the staff 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal. On July 24 the number of 
 judges was raised from five to seven. The PubUc Prosecutor 
 and the President were to have a salary of 8,000 livres per 
 annum. Then, on July 31, two sections were created. The 
 number of judges and jurors was raised to ten ; the number 
 
44 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 of Fouquier's deputies from two to three; that of the 
 registrar's clerks from three to four^ ; and that of the corre- 
 spondence clerks from three to four. The number of jurors 
 was raised to thirty. 
 
 The following were appointed judges : Coffinhal, an 
 ex-doctor, formerly a national commissioner of the Tribunal 
 of the Second Arrondissement of Paris ; Nicolas Grebeau- 
 val, formerly Fouquier's secretary ; Gabriel Toussaint 
 SceUier, the judge-director of the jury d' accusation. 
 
 On August 28, Armand Martial Joseph Herman, the 
 President of the Criminal Tribunal of the Pas-de-Calais, 
 a compatriot of Robespierre, was appointed Vice-President 
 of the Tribunal, in Montane's place. Why was Montane 
 replaced ? Fouquier-Tinville had denounced him to the 
 Convention on July 30 for having committed two grave 
 mistakes. First, at Charlotte Corday's trial, Montane had 
 substituted " criminal intentions " for " counter-revolu- 
 tionary tendencies," a change that might have saved the 
 prisoner's life. Secondly, at the trial of Leonard Bourdon's 
 assailants he had erased from the minute the clause about 
 the confiscation of property. ^ Montana was summoned 
 before the second section of the Tribunal which had just 
 been created, but he did not put in an appearance. He was 
 arrested ; but Fouquier forgot him in his prison, in spite of 
 the entreaties of Montan6, who wished to be tried. This 
 touch of humanity on Fouquier's part saved Montana's 
 life. He outhved the gtb of Thermidor, and was acquitted 
 after many months of detention. 
 
 On August 25 Marseilles was taJien ; on the 28th Toulon 
 surrendered to the EngHsh. Lyons was in open insurrection. 
 
 On September 5 the Sections demanded that Terror should 
 be the order of the day. Merhn (of Douai) told the Con- 
 vention that the Tribimal was overwhelmed with business ; 
 prisoners were coming in from all parts of France. Still, 
 it was necessary for " prompt justice to be granted to the 
 people." By decrees of September 5 and 14, the Tribunal 
 
 ' There was only a single registrar. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 91. 
 
EVERY NOBLE AND PRIEST A SUSPECT 45 
 
 was to be composed of four sections and sixteen judges (in- 
 cluding the President and the Vice-President), sixty jurors, 
 eight registrar's clerks, and eight correspondence clerks. 
 " The scope of the Tribunal " had to be increased more 
 and more. 
 
 In order to make it more effective it was necessary to 
 have the assistance of the Revolutionary Committees. These 
 reorganised Committees were charged with the task of 
 proceeding immediately to the arrest of suspected persons. 
 Full powers were granted them for this purpose. Billaud- 
 Varenne had said : " We must search out our enemies in 
 their dens. Night and day will hardly suffice to arrest them. 
 I demand that we regard as a suspect every noble and 
 every priest who, on the adoption of this decree, is not f oimd 
 residing in his municipaUty." " There are other suspects," 
 Bazire had added, " there are shopkeepers, wholesale mer- 
 chants, stock-jobbers, ex-procurators (solicitors), baiUffs, 
 insolent servants, stewards and men of business, men of 
 large independent means, tricksters in essence, profession, 
 and education." 
 
 These propositions were carried unanimously.^ 
 
 A decree of September 6 ordered the arrest of all 
 foreigners resident iii France. The committees of 
 surveillance " were to draw up lists of suspects, and to 
 issue warrants for their arrest. At the sitting of September 
 14, Merlin (of Douai) caused the work to be divided among 
 the four sections of the Tribunal. Every day two sections, 
 alternately, were to try cases ; the other two, in the 
 Council Chamber, were to be engaged in the preUminary 
 preparations for other trials. 
 
 Fouquier's tasks became very much heavier from day to 
 day. He took his inspiration from the propositions enun- 
 ciated by Chaumette on October 10, 1793, at the Council of 
 the Commune. 
 
 " Those are suspects who, in the Assemblies of the people, 
 check its energy by astute speeches, turbulent cries, and 
 
 ' Moniteur for September 7, 1793. 
 ' Established by the law of March 21. 
 
46 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 murmurs ; those who, more prudent, speak mysteriously 
 of the ills of the RepubUc, pity the fate of the people, and 
 are always ready to spread evil tidings with an affectation of 
 grief ; those who have changed their conduct and their lan- 
 guage in accordance with events ; those who, silent about 
 the crimes of royahsts and federaUsts, declaim with em- 
 phasis against the sHght faults of patriots, and, in order to 
 appear repubhcan, affect a studied austerity and severity ; 
 those who contradict themselves when it is a question of a 
 moderate or an aristocrat ; those who pity the farmers and 
 the rapacious merchants against whom the law is obhged 
 to take measures ; those who, having always on their hps 
 such words as hberty, repubhc and country, associate with 
 the men who were formerly nobles, with counter-revolution- 
 ary priests, aristocrats, feuillants and moderates, concerning 
 themselves about their fate ; those who, having done 
 nothing against hberty, also do nothing for it."^ 
 
 The strength of the revolutionary government lay in 
 " virtue " and " terror. "^ But the people were hungry, 
 were dying of himger. They were offered the spectacle of 
 the scaffold and the daily execution of conspirators. At the 
 hour of the executions they crowded to the Place de la 
 Revolution. On the 4th of Germinal in the year II., the 
 ChaMer Section informed the General Council of the Com- 
 mime that on that day several unfortunate accidents had 
 been caused by the great crowds of citizens, and the private 
 stands erected on the Place. The General Council ordered 
 that in future there should neither be private stands nor 
 carts that could block the way ; that citizens should be 
 forbidden to lift up their canes or their hats at the 
 moment when the sword of the law was about to strike 
 the guilty. 3 
 
 On the 5th of Germinal (March 25, 1794) Fouquier wrote 
 the following letter to Hanriot, the commander-in-chief of 
 the Parisian guard : 
 
 ' Moniteur for October I2, 1793. 
 
 ' The saying is Robespierre's. 
 
 * Moniteur for the 9th of Germinal, year II. 
 
FOUQUIER'S METHODS 47 
 
 " Citizen, 
 
 " The burial place of the condemned having been trans- 
 ferred to Mousseaux,^ and the police force of the Tribunal 
 being insufficient for this daily and continual service of the 
 Tribunal, would it not be well for you to give orders that 
 four mounted men should be an escort from the place of 
 execution to the place where the bodies are deposited ? In 
 this manner the police would be able to return promptly 
 to their post, and the work of the Tribunal would not be 
 delayed. I beg you to take this matter into consideration. 
 
 " Greeting and fraternity, 
 
 " A. Q. FouQUiER." 
 
 The 5th of Germinal was the day following the condemna- 
 tion of Hebert, Vincent, Ronsin, and their associates (20 
 accused persons in all). In spite of virtue, liberty, unity, 
 indivisibility, equality, in spite of the laws made for them, 
 the people suffered greatly. They were hungry. They 
 drank. The drunkards who were arrested as conspirators 
 demanded a king " because things cannot go on like this." 
 They were too wretched. " As for the crowd of those who 
 are accustomed to attend the sittings of the Tribunal, indig- 
 nant as it is," says a police observer, " it sees with uneasiness 
 the Tribunal pursuing a course contrary to the laws of 
 humanity and justice."^ 
 
 This phrase of the observer was written at the close of 
 one of the sittings during Hubert's trial, a trial conducted 
 rapidly and harshly by Dumas, the Vice-President. 
 Fouquier did not trouble himself much about investi- 
 gations or proofs in drawing up his indictment against 
 the editor of the Pere Duchesne and his nineteen fellow- 
 prisoners (one of whom was a woman, Catherine Qu6tineau, 
 the widow of the republican colonel who was guillotined on 
 the 26th of Ventose in the year II.). Moral proofs and his 
 orders were enough for Fouquier. If he were inspired by 
 the words spoken by Chaumette at the Council of the Com- 
 mune on October 10, 1793, he was also mindful of the more 
 
 ' This was the name then given to the village of Monceau. 
 ' Situation de Paris du 2 germinal, an II. — Schmidt, II., p. 178, 
 
48 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 recent political speeches of Robespierre and Saint-Just. 
 It was a matter of crushing the " lenient " among the party 
 of the Mountain in the person of Danton, and of suppressing 
 the rising insurrection of the Commune in the person of 
 Hebert. Robespierre branded them as the moderates and the 
 ultras. At the Convention, on the 8th of Ventose (February 
 26, 1794), Saint-Just said : — 
 
 " What establishes a repubUc is the total destruction of 
 all that is opposed to it. People complain of revolutionary 
 measiures ; but we are moderates in comparison with all 
 other governments. ... A striking sign of treason is 
 the pity shown towards crime in a repubhc which can be 
 based only on inflexibility. . . . The revolutionary 
 government which had estabUshed the dictatorship of justice 
 no longer soars as it did. . . . Destroy the rebel party ; 
 paint liberty in the colour of bronze."^ And, when he 
 asked for judicial weapons against the " corrupt and violent" 
 who had sold themselves to the foreigner, those weapons 
 were granted. This is the decree of the 23rd of Ventose of 
 the year II. : 
 
 " ... The Revolutionary Tribunal will continue 
 to give information against the authors and accomphces of 
 the conspiracy directed against the French people and their 
 liberty. It will cause prisoners to be promptly arraigned 
 before it and will bring them to trial. . . ." 
 
 That very night, Hebert, Ronsin, Vincent, and their 
 associates were arrested. " Never," wrote Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville in his indictment, " has there existed against the 
 sovereignty of the French people and its Uberty a conspiracy 
 more atrocious in its object, vaster, more immense in its 
 connections and details ; but the active vigilance of the 
 Convention has caused its failure by unmasking it and by 
 handing over to the Tribunal those who appear to have been 
 its principal instruments."^ Then he summed up the facts 
 in his own way, in conformity with the directions of the two 
 Committees. 
 
 ' Moniteur for the 9th of Ventdse, year II. 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 339, dossier 617. 
 
FOUQUIER'S DILIGENCE 49 
 
 Every one knows the piteous attitude of Hebert during 
 his trial. He did not defend himself. He answered with a 
 " yes " or " no." The violent editor of the Pere Duchesne 
 was in a state of utter collapse. On the other hand, Vincent, 
 Momoro, and Ronsin rivalled one another in insolence.'^ 
 Three of the accused were acquitted. Laboureau, a medical 
 student, forty-one years of age, was acquitted and received 
 the fraternal embrace. He was a pohce spy. Colonel 
 Quetineau's widow declared herself enceinte. She was taken 
 to the Ev6ch6 hospital, and was perceived to be four months 
 gone with child. The Tribunal ordered a postponement of 
 her execution ; but misfortune followed her. Some days 
 later, she had a miscarriage. On May 11, Bayard and Thery, 
 officers of health, handed her a certificate of convalescence. 
 Fouquier-Tinville immediately applied to the Tribunal, and 
 the Tribimal ordered "that within twenty-four hours the 
 judgment of the 4th of Germinal last, which condemned the 
 widow Quetineau to death, should be proceeded with, the 
 whole matter being at the suit of the Public Prosecutor." 
 She was guillotined on the same day. 
 
 The Public Prosecutor's diUgence was extreme. In order 
 
 not to lose time in going and coming he Uved close to the 
 
 Palace of Justice, in the Place ThionviUe (now the Place 
 
 Dauphine). Rising at dawn, he was in his office before the 
 
 beginning of the sittings, which generally opened at nine or 
 
 ten o'clock in the morning, going through the formidable 
 
 correspondence which reached him from the Departments, 
 
 preparing the work of the Tribunal, spurring on his 
 
 secretaries, directing his deputies. " Business " flowed in 
 
 pell-mell. How was he to cope with it ? It was necessary 
 
 to act quickly and to strike hard. His pohtical chiefs 
 
 ' The day on which Hubert appeared for his trial (ist of Germinal 
 in the year II., March 21, 1794) Legendre, at the Jacobin Club, had 
 energetically expounded what the sentiments of patriots ought to 
 be; he declared that, as soon as the Committee of PubUc Safety 
 designated those who were factious, all good citizens ought to dis- 
 regard the bonds of blood and of friendship. Legendre himself 
 promised to deliver to the sword of the law those who were dearest 
 to him, if they were designated as traitors. (Moniteur of the 5th 
 of Germinal, year II.) 
 
 D 
 
50 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 were there watching him. Would he give it up ? Would 
 he send in his resignation ? He could not even dream of 
 doing so. What would become of him ? What would 
 become of his family ? He must obey. And he obeyed. 
 He was an executive agent. 
 
 Hitherto he had contented himself with observing and 
 following the law — that law which changed so often. His 
 indictments were, in reaUty, only written summaries of the 
 documents that had been handed to him, or of the examina- 
 tions of the prisoners. Fouquier himself was content 
 to execute the law and administer the decrees, and had 
 shown himself a strict and hard observer of that law and 
 of those decrees. Now he was to give proof of initiative, to 
 play a personal part, to show himself. He would violate the 
 judicial forms ; he would be partial. He would suggest to 
 his chiefs of the two Committees of General Security and 
 of Pubhc Safety that the powers at his command were 
 too small, that it was possible, by decrees adapted to the 
 circumstances, to go farther, to strike conspirators and 
 suspects more surely. 
 
 Herault de S^cheUes had been arrested. And Billaud- 
 Varenne had declared it necessary " to kill Danton." Saint- 
 Just had said : " If we do not have him guillotined, we shall 
 be guillotined." On the loth of Germinal (March 30, 1794), 
 Danton was arrested at six o'clock in the morning. So 
 were PhiUppeaux, Lacroix, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre and 
 Chabot. 
 
 In his indictment Fouquier-Tinville intended to amalga- 
 mate old charges, recent documents, and quite new denmi- 
 ciations, intentionally confusing political prisoners and those 
 charged with gambling in the funds. The bankers, Frey, 
 Gusman and Deisderichen were to be associated with Danton 
 and his friends on the grounds of compUcity in the affair of 
 the East India Company. No proof was adduced to support 
 this audacious affirmation. The Freys, for example, a 
 couple of German Jews who had come to Paris in order, so 
 they said, to breathe " the air of liberty," and who became 
 army contractors in 1792, had doubtless been speculators but 
 
GENERAL WESTERMANN'S TRIAL 52 
 
 not State conspirators. Fouquier describes Deisderichen 
 as " one of the lawyers of the King of Denmark." This is 
 neither a charge nor an argument, but seems to insinuate 
 that he had communications with the foreigner. Just as 
 the foreigners, Proly, Cloots, Pere5nra, had, on the 4th of 
 Germinal, been guillotined along with the violent party, the 
 ■ultras, H6bert, Ronsin and Vincent ; so Gusman, Frey, and 
 Deisderichen were accused together with the moderates, 
 with Danton and the others. This indictment was drawn 
 Tip from the manuscript of a speech made at the Convention 
 by Amar, a member of the Committee of General Security, 
 on the affair of the East India Company. 
 
 General Westermann was also among the accused. 
 " Westermann," writes Dr. Robinet, " was placed in the 
 dock without any of the customary judicial preUminaries. 
 He had not been questioned. His indictment, which had 
 not been commimicated to him (how then could he prepare 
 his defence ?), bad been drawn up by Fouquier on the basis of 
 documents that he had not even seen, for theyiwere sealed up, 
 as is proved by the official report made out cfti that very day 
 at the General's house, 63, Rue Mesle, by.ttiembers of the 
 Committee of Surveillance of the Gravilliers Section."^ 
 In fact, the warrant for the General's arrest, the order for 
 his attachment, confirmed by a decree of the Convention, 
 and his writ of indictment are all of the same date, the 13th 
 of Germinal (April 2, 1794).* The 14th is the date of the 
 order for his trial by the Tribunal, the verification of the 
 prisoner's identity, his examination and appearance in 
 court. Fouquier drew up his writ of indictment on the 
 13th, and says in it " that an examination of the report of 
 the questions put to Westermann to-day before the Tribunal, 
 as well as of the documents (which the court had not yet at 
 its disposal, and which, on the contrary, it was at that very 
 moment arranging to have seized and placed under seals) 
 «hows that Westermann has supported the conspiracy of 
 Dumouriez with all his power." 
 
 ' Robinet : Le Prods des Dantonistes, p 440. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 342, dossier 648, 3™« partie. 
 
52 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 But there was more to come, viz. : the part played by 
 the Public Prosecutor at the sitting of the 15th of Germinal 
 (April 4, 1794). 
 
 It is not necessary to linger over the charge made by Piris, 
 the registrar, called Fabricius, against Fouquier-Tinville, at 
 the time of his trial, that he, along with Lescot-Fleuriot, had 
 selected the jurors for Danton's trial instead of choosing 
 them by lot. Paris, the registrar, was a friend of Danton. 
 He was arrested for refusing to sign the document containing 
 Danton's sentence. It is possible that on the day when he 
 had to give evidence against Fouquier, he may, out of ill- 
 will towards him, have imputed everything to him. 
 
 In the notes of Topino-Lebrun, who was present at the 
 sitting, it is stated that Fouquier and Herman, the presiding 
 judge, acted together in directing the proceedings. They 
 passed notes to one another of this character : — 
 
 " Herman. — In half-an-hour I shall close Danton's 
 defence. . . ." 
 
 " Fouquier. — I have a question to ask Danton relating to 
 Belgium when you have finished your questions." 
 
 " Herman. — We must not enter into the Belgian business 
 in regard to anybody except Lacroix and Danton ; and 
 when we have reached that point, we must hurry on. . ." 
 
 Herman and Fouquier were continually interrupting the 
 prisoners' defence in order to exhaust the three days at the 
 end of which the presiding judge of the Tribunal had a 
 right to ask the jury if they would declare themselves 
 sufficiently informed and ready to close the case.i 
 
 There is another significant fact — that Lacroix insisted 
 on being allowed to speak, and said that it was impossible 
 for the jury to be sufiiciently informed since they had not 
 heard the witnesses. Addressing Fouquier, he asked him 
 if he had summoned the witnesses, a list of whom he had sent 
 him. At this question Fouquier was " a little taken aback." 
 He answered that he had lost it. Lacroix expressed aston- 
 
 » On the initiative of Fouquier-Tinville this right had been given 
 to the presiding judge by a decree of the 7th of Brumaire in the year 
 II., on the occasion of the trial of the Girondins. 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE COMMITTEE 53 
 
 ishment. Fouquier replied that he was within his rights, 
 according to the law, in not giving witnesses to the prisoners. 
 Lacroix and the others pointed out that as they themselves 
 had helped to pass this law, they knew it, and that it did 
 not state what the PubUc Prosecutor wanted to make it 
 say. Then Fouquier declared that he would write to the 
 Convention in order that " the fact might be cleared up."^ 
 
 During the hearing he wrote, not to the Convention, but 
 to the Committee of PubUc Safety, the famous letter in 
 which he gave an account of the prisoners' demands. 
 
 " Paris, this 15th of Germinal in the Second Year of the 
 Republic one and indivisible." 
 
 " Citizens and representatives, 
 
 " A horrible storm has been raging from the moment 
 that the session began : the prisoners, like madmen, are 
 demanding the hearing of witnesses for the defence, the 
 citizens and Deputies, Simon, Courtois, Laignelot, Freron, 
 Panis, Ludot, Callon, Merlin (of Douai), Gossuin, Legendre, 
 Robert Lindet, Robin, GoupiUeau (of Montaigu), Lecointre 
 (of Versailles), Brival, and Merlin (of Thionville). They are 
 appealing to the people against the refusal which they say 
 they have received ; in spite of the firmness of the presiding 
 judge and of the entire Tribunal, their repeated demands 
 disturb the sitting, and they openly proclaim that they 
 will not be silent until their witnesses are heard and that 
 without a decree ; we request you definitely to lay down a 
 course for us to follow in regard to this demand, the judicial 
 procedure not furnishing us with any means of justifying 
 this refusal. 
 
 "A. Q. Fouquier, Herman, presiding judge."* 
 
 Saint- Just cjmically abstained from reading this letter to 
 the Convention. He exclaimed : " The wretches ! They 
 confess their crime by resisting the law ! ... At this 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58. 
 
 • Before composing this letter with Herman, Fouquier had 
 written another, differing considerably from this, which contained 
 the words ; " The only method would in our opinion be a decree." 
 
54 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 moment conspiracies in their favour are being organised 
 in the prisons ; at this moment the aristocrats are stirring ! " 
 He informed the Convention of the denunciation of Citizen 
 Laflotte, a spy in the Luxembourg prison, showing that a 
 conspiracy with the object of miurdering the members of the 
 Convention and of the Tribunal existed among the prisoners 
 and the accused. He proposed a decree depriving them of 
 the right to plead. " Every person accused of conspiracy 
 who shall resist or insult the national justice, shall immedi- 
 ately be deprived of the right to plead." The decree was 
 passed. Amar and VouUand carried it to the Tribunal. 
 Fouquier requested that the decree be read and registered. 
 On the i6th, at the opening of the hearing, he declared to 
 Danton and Lacroix that their witnesses would not be heard. 
 The presiding judge read the decree of the 7th of Brumaire 
 of the year IL, authorising the Tribunal to ask the jury if 
 they were sufficiently informed. The jury retired. After 
 a fairly long interval they returned. On the same evening, 
 Trinchard, the foreman of the jury, declared that they were 
 sufficiently informed. Fouquier then stated that, owing 
 to the indecency and blasphemy of the accused during the 
 trial, he saw himself obUged to take measures proportionate 
 to the gravity of the circumstances. At his request the 
 Tribunal had ordered that the questions should be put to 
 the jury and sentence passed in the absence of the accused. 
 Carts were waiting in the courtyard of the Conciergerie. 
 The Dantonists passed from the audience chamber to the 
 condemned cell. They heard their death sentence whilst 
 they were being prepared for execution. They then set 
 out for the guillotine. 
 
 In reaUty the pleadings had been closed without ever 
 having begun. No document had been read. None of the 
 witnesses who were asked for had been heard. Fouquier 
 had assumed a terrible responsibility. Besides the fact, 
 of which Paris afterwards accused him, that he and 
 Herman had gone into the jurors' room in order to 
 influence them during their deUberations, he had dis- 
 torted the character of the protests made by the accused 
 
A MONSTROUS DECREE 55 
 
 when they insisted on having witnesses, as was their right, 
 and this was a crime. Moreover, when he suggested in his 
 letter to the Committee of Public Safety that it was possible, 
 by a decree, to deprive the accused of speech and hberty 
 of defence, he committed a second crime. He gave Saint- 
 Just a weapon for his judicial coup d'etat. 
 
 Later, when he was accused in his turn, he denied that 
 he was responsible for the judgment passed on Danton 
 and for his death. 
 
 " I appeal to common sense and to reason. If I had an 
 understanding with the ferocious and sanguinary Robes- 
 pierre and his accompUces^ to deprive Danton and the 
 other accused of all means of justif3dng themselves : ist. 
 should I have written the letter of which I have just spoken ? 
 2nd. should I have informed the Committee that the accused 
 demanded with loud outcries to have a certain number of 
 Deputies heard in their defence ? 3rd. should I have 
 stated that the accused appealed to the entire people 
 against the refusal they received ? No, certainly not, 
 unless, indeed, you wish to find evil in the simplest and most 
 correct acts, etc. . . . Could I expect that by an act 
 of perfidy as guilty as it was incredible. Saint- Just, who 
 received my letter, would change its text and attribute to 
 me the assertion that the accused were in open rebellion, 
 etc. ? " 
 
 Why, instead of addressing his letter to the Committee 
 of Public Safety, where he knew Saint- Just and Robespierre 
 were determined to crush Danton, had he not addressed 
 it to the Convention ? Danton might perhaps have been 
 saved. Why should we be dupes of the words, " unless, 
 indeed, we wish to find evil in the simplest and most correct 
 acts," when we have in mind the last phrase in his first letter 
 to the Committee : " It is urgent that you indicate a 
 course for us to follow, and the only method would in our 
 opinion be a decree " ? By these words he obviously 
 suggests a judicial method of preventing the defence. This 
 would be a decree. Saint-Just did not need to be told twice. 
 • This was written after the gth of Thennidor. 
 
56 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 The decree was passed. It is possible that this single letter 
 
 of Fouquier's may have caused his ruin some months later. 
 
 Fouquier was an agent of the law ; but should aU feeling 
 
 of humanity, aU pity, be abolished when it was a matter of 
 
 applying that law? Why should he have no share in the 
 
 responsibiUty for the atrocious condemnation of Madame 
 
 de Lavergne, on the day before Danton's trial ? The facts 
 
 are these. Louis Frangois de Lavergne-Champlaurier, Ueu- 
 
 tenant-colonel, miUtary commander of Longwy, had just 
 
 been condemned for having dehvered Longwy to the enemy. 
 
 He was very ill and aged. His wife had personally taken 
 
 steps with the Committee of General Security to ask for a 
 
 reprieve. Madame de Lavergne was twenty-six, young 
 
 and beautiful. Amar, old Vadier (called " sixty years of 
 
 virtue "), and VouUand received her banteringly, pretendiog 
 
 to be surprised that "she wished to put off the moment 
 
 that would rid her of an old and infirm husband." ^ She 
 
 went to the Vice-President of the Tribunal. Dumas received 
 
 her as Amar, Vadier, and VouUand had done. Then she 
 
 understood there was nothing left for her to do. She went 
 
 to the Tribunal and seated herself on the ground in the 
 
 middle of the crowd. She waited until the hearing began. 
 
 Then she saw the gaolers of the Conciergerie carry in her 
 
 husband on a mattress, in a dying condition. The writ of 
 
 indictment was read, and sentence of death pronounced. 
 
 Suddenly a cry rose from the middle of the crowd in one 
 of the halls adjacent to that of the Tribtmal, a cry of " Long 
 live the King ! " — several times repeated. It was Madame 
 de Lavergne " who wanted to be guillotined because they 
 were going to murder her husband," as she declared to the 
 oificials before whom she was immediately led by the poUce.^ 
 She had suddenly become mad from grief. Questioned 
 repeatedly, she could only say : "I have asked for a King. 
 I want to be guillotined. They are going to murder my 
 husband. I want to go to bed." And when her examina- 
 tion was read, she declared that she no longer knew what 
 they had asked her, or what she had answered. She was 
 > Campardon, I. 287. « Archives Nationales, W. 342, dossier 643. 
 
AFTER DANTON'S DEATH 57 
 
 placed on the benches for the prisoners. It was Gr^beauval, 
 the PubUc Prosecutor's deputy, who pleaded against her. 
 She was condemned to death. Herman, icy and im- 
 penetrable, presided over the sitting. 
 
 The writ of indictment, which may be seen among the 
 Archives, had been prepared by one of Fouquier's secre- 
 taries ; but the Pubhc Prosecutor had signed it, and added 
 in the margin some notes, " some exact statements." Can 
 it be said that he had no responsibility for the death of 
 Madame de Lavergne, who was guillotined at the age of 
 twenty-six for having tenderly loved her aged husband ? 
 
 The consequences of Danton's death made themselves 
 felt from the i6th of Germinal (April 5, 1794) onwards. 
 It was necessary to keep the pubhc mind occupied, to set 
 pubhc opinion on the wrong track, to prove that the Con- 
 spiracy existed, that it was not an invention of the pohce, 
 that the patriots ran the greatest dangers, that they risked 
 assassination. For this business the Committees of Public 
 Safety and of General Security used one of their creatures 
 whom they kept for some time in the house of detention of 
 the Luxembourg. His name was Laflotte, " an ex-Minister 
 of the Repubhc of Florence." Laflotte was a prison spy 
 and an agent provocateur. It was he who lodged informa- 
 tion against the Conspirators. He was the principal 
 witness at the trial. On the proposal of Billaud-Varenne his 
 declaration was read by a secretary at the Convention on 
 the 15th of Germinal. It dealt with a plot contrived by 
 certain prisoners at the head of whom were General Arthur 
 DiUon and Deputy Phihbert Simond. Dillon had written 
 to the wife of Camille Desmouhns, offering her a thousand 
 crowns to hire people, and to :|xave the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal surroimded during Danton's trial. Chaumette's 
 wife had passed through the Luxembourg ; she had made 
 signs of satisfaction to her husband by clapping her hands. 
 Dillon claimed that in the Luxembourg prison there were 200 
 men wilhng to do his bidding ; Simond that he had forty. 
 The blow was to be struck at night. They would then go 
 to the Committee of PubUc Safety, and " slaughter it." 
 
58 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 First of all, to collect the prisoners and, fetch them out, the 
 alarm would have to be given in the prison. Dillon charged 
 himself with leading the armed force. He claimed that 
 he had on his side the writer and a turnkey who would 
 compel the officer of the guard to give the pass-word. The 
 conspirators had admitted Laflotte into their secret. The 
 spy " passed a very agitated night, fearing that Dillon 
 might take it into his head to execute his plan in the middle 
 of the night." He got up at dawn and hastened to com- 
 municate with the Committee of Public Safety. 
 
 It is an obscure affair. How much truth was there in all 
 this ? Was the plot real ? The information laid by the spy 
 Laflotte came at a singularly opportune moment during 
 Danton's trial. A pretext had been found. This same 
 pretext was to serve, during their trial before the Tribunal 
 from the 2ist to the 24th of Germinal, against Chaumette, 
 the national agent of the Commune of Paris ; against Gobel, 
 the renegade Bishop of Paris, " apostles of atheism " ; 
 against Arthur Dillon, the treacherous general; against 
 Deputy Philibert Simond, and against twenty-one other 
 prisoners in the Luxembourg, among whom were Lucille, the 
 pathetic young wife of Camille Desmoulins, and Hubert's 
 widow. 
 
 According to Fouquier-Tinville these prisoners, all of such 
 different circumstances and origins, conspired together in 
 the Luxembourg prison to replace the son of Louis XVI. 
 on the throne of France. Their machinations were paid for 
 by the Foreigner's gold. The Public Prosecutor saw in them, 
 moreover, accomplices of Hebert and " of other conspirators 
 already smitten by the sword of the Law." 
 
 In the spring of 1794, a shudder of terror shook France 
 to her foundations. Alarm was ever5nvhere. The " batches "^ 
 were beginning. It was Saint- Just who denounced the 
 slackness of the Provincial Tribtinals. He carried the law 
 of the 27th of Germinal (April 16). " Persons accused of 
 
 ' FournSes, or batches of loaves for the oven, the name given to 
 the groups of condemned persons tried at the same time and sent 
 together to the guillotine; — ^Tr. 
 
PBTER CASPAR CHAUMETTE 
 
WHOLESALE DENUNCIATIONS 59 
 
 conspiracy will be brought before the Revolutionary Tri- 
 bunal from all quarters of the Republic. The Committees 
 of Public Safety and of General Security will promptly 
 search out the accomplices of conspirators and cause 
 them to be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal." 
 Denunciations were forwarded to the Pubhc Prosecutor: 
 denunciations voluntary and subsidised, made " in the 
 name of the hberty and happiness of the French 
 people " ; denimciations of servants against their masters, 
 of clerks against their employers, of deserted women 
 against their lovers, of debtors against their creditors, 
 and vice versa, of soldiers against their officers. Billaud- 
 Varenne, in his report to the Convention on the ist of 
 Flor6al, depicts in blazing Unes a project for national 
 regeneration by means of the guillotine : " Vigorous action 
 is necessary. . . . The inflexible austerity of Lycurgus 
 became at Sparta the immovable foundation of the Republic ; 
 the weak and trusting character of Solon plunged Athens 
 again into slavery. . . , This parallel contained the 
 whole science of government. . . . The pretensions 
 of Prussia and of England vanished with Brissot, Carra, 
 Hebert, Danton, and Fabre d'Eglantine. . . ." War 
 continued, however. Armies and generals were needed. 
 Billaud-Varenne drew an " enchanting " picture of a France 
 regenerated by virtue and justice that had been made the 
 order of the day : instruction made universal ; purification 
 of heart ; egoism destroyed ; no more beggary ; no more 
 hospitals ; charity bestowed in the dwellings ; work for 
 all ; well-being for all ; the triumph of citizenship and 
 sensibiUty.^ 
 
 On that day the Revolutionary Tribunal tried a large 
 " batch " of twenty-five former members of the Parlements 
 of Paris and of Toulouse, Lepeletier-Rosambo, Bourree- 
 Corberon, Bochart de Saron, Mole de Champlatreux, Lefebvre 
 d'Ormesson, Pasquier, etc. They were accused of having 
 protested against the decrees of the National Assembly. 
 They appeared before " soHd " jurors who were not " gentle- 
 ^ Monitew of 2nd of Floreal, year II. 
 
6o THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 men " as they were — Gravier, the vinegar-seller, Brochet, 
 the ex-lackey, Trinchard, the ex-dragoon and carpenter, 
 etc. 
 
 Among the accused was Henry Guy Sallier, a former 
 President of the Cour des Aides. " You are mistaken," he 
 protested, " f or I was not a member of the Parlement, but 
 a President of the Cour des Aides. The matter has to do 
 with my son, Guy Marie SaUier, a Councillor in the Parle- 
 ment." His protest was in vain. He was guillotined. There 
 was even an error regarding his person. At his examina- 
 tion, which took place in Fouquier's presence, he had 
 declared that his name was Henry Guy SaUier and not Guy 
 Marie. Fouquier had in his hands all the documents relating 
 to the matter. He was not present at the actual trial, 
 his deputy, Gilbert Liendon, pleading in his stead. But 
 it is none the less true that Fouquier had carelessly issued a 
 warrant for the arrest of the father instead of the son, and 
 had equally carelessly drawn up his indictment against the 
 father. 
 
 Later, at Fouquier's trial, SalHer's son came forward to give 
 evidence. His declaration was clear.^ It should be noted 
 that on this ist of Floreal, Fouquier wrote to Hanriot, the 
 commander of the armed forces of Paris, to tell him that 
 " the verdict will be given at three o'clock." ^ Was he 
 then sure of it beforehand ? It must be noted, finally, that 
 the farewell letter of Honors Rigaud, one of the Parliamen- 
 tarians of Toulouse, written to his wife at the moment 
 when he was starting for the scaffold, was never sent to the 
 address it bore. It is still to be found in the bundle of papers 
 pertaining to the Tribunal preserved among the Archives.' 
 It is a sad letter, full of noble resignation, in which the 
 imhappy man forgives his enemies, begs his family not to 
 attempt to avenge his death, and sends to his wife and 
 children his last thoughts. Fouquier-TinviUe did not take 
 the trouble to forward it. Herman had ceased to be Presi- 
 dent of the Tribunal some days before. In reward for his 
 
 * See page 244. • Archives Nationales, A. F. II., 48, No. 200. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 121, pi^ce no. 
 
JOHN MAY ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 
 
FOUQUIER'S VIOLENCE 6i 
 
 attitude during Danton's trial, he had, on the 19th of 
 Germinal, been appointed Minister of Justice in succession 
 to Pare. Dumas, the Vice-President, had succeeded him 
 as President. Fouquier was on bad terms with Dumas, 
 a notorious dnmkard, whom the Public Prosecutor spoke 
 of as his " mortal enemy." Fouquier's position became 
 difficult. Watched closely by the Committees, detested by 
 his President, he often gave vent to sudden bursts of anger 
 against his secretaries and the jurors.^ His violent character 
 and his overbearing temperament were ill adapted to the 
 limitations of his office. 
 
 Herman, however, thought that " the law gave too 
 much power to the Public Prosecutor and did not allow to 
 the Tribunal so much supervision as was desirable." He 
 considered that " Fouquier did his work somewhat in the 
 style of a Procurator. "^ This ex-Procurator was impa- 
 tient with the caprices of Dumas, with the abrupt, incoherent 
 manner in which the presiding judge conducted the pro- 
 ceedings, and interrupted and silenced the accused. He 
 opposed him ; he insisted that certain witnesses should 
 be heard. These two magistrates were in constant rivalry. 
 
 However, business kept coming in on all sides. On the 
 5th of Floreal (April 24) thirty-five inhabitants of Verdun 
 were placed in the dock. They were charged with having 
 given up Verdun to the King of Prussia. Several of them 
 were old men of seventy, seventy-two, seventy-five, and 
 seventy-six years of age. There were young girls, two of 
 whom, Claire TabouiUot and Barbe Henry, were only 
 seventeen. 
 
 These last were not condemned to death, but to twenty 
 years' detention and to exposure on the scaffold for six 
 hours.* On the 6th of Floreal (April 25), Anisson Duperron, 
 
 » He was snappish and rough to the jurors. One day as he was 
 coming away from a hearing, he said to them, "How could you 
 declare that that man was guilty ? He was not even brought to 
 plead." On other occasions he would burst into a rage against them 
 because they had acquitted. 
 
 " Archives Nationales, W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 78. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 352, No. 718. 
 
62 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 the Director of the National Printing Office of the Louvre, 
 was condemned to death. His magnificent estate of Ris 
 became the property of the nation. Very generous in his 
 district of Ris (re-named Brutus), he died the victim of an 
 abominable attempt at blackmailing on the part of the 
 Mayor and some other inhabitants who were jealous of his 
 immense fortune. On the gth of Floreal (April 28) Fouquier 
 mistook two accused persons for one. And this fact tends 
 to justify Herman's criticism when, as a witness in Fouquier's 
 trial, he affirmed " that personally he regarded him as a bit of 
 a blunderer, that is to say that his office was not orderly 
 enough," and that " the Tribunal had often reprimanded 
 him for want of accuracy and precision in his writs of indict- 
 ment."i The two accused persons who were mistaken for 
 one on this 9th of Floreal were Pichard-Dupage and Olivier- 
 Despalliferes. Their names were mixed up into Pichard- 
 DespaUidres. In the " batch " for this day ^ there figured 
 Denis Francois Angram d'Alleray, a former civil heutenant 
 at the Chatelet. He had rendered some services to Fouquier 
 when he was a Procurator at the Chatelet. The PubUc 
 Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribimal remembered the 
 debt of gratitude contracted by the Procurator before the 
 Revolution. He told Citizen Angram to deny everything.* 
 
 The latter was charged with having sent assistance to one 
 of his children who had emigrated. He did not deny the fact, 
 but openly declared : "I know the law. It forbids all com- 
 munication with the emigrants. But the laws of nature 
 take precedence over the laws of the Republic." He was 
 guillotined. 
 
 On the same day Fouquier asked the Committee of Public 
 Safety for a remuneration of from fifteen to twenty thousand 
 livres for Sanson, the public executioner. The Committee 
 granted twenty thousand livres* 
 
 Among others brought before the Tribimal during Flor^al 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 78. 
 ■ Archives Nationales, W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 78. 
 ' Campardon, I., p. 312. 
 * Archives Nationales A.F., 22, dossier 69, p. 81. 
 
MADAME ELISABETH 63 
 
 were soldiers, sans-culoUes, drunkards, cabmen, national 
 guards, vine-growers, milliners, dressmakers, men of the 
 Court and of the people, artisans and peasants. The grounds 
 of offence were seditious cries, and, above aU, that of " Long 
 live the King ! " which continually issued from the mouths 
 of the humble as the supreme expression of their misery and 
 despair. On the 13th and 14th of Floreal the accused con- 
 sisted of officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers 
 of the battahons of the National Guard ot the districts of the 
 Filles-Saint-Thomas and of the Petits-Peres. On the 15th 
 of Floreal, of aristocrats and sans-culoUes guilty of counter- 
 revolutionary utterances. On the i6th of Floreal, there was 
 Claude Fran^oise Loisilher, " a maker of milhnery," who 
 had stuck up royahst placards on the walls in her district. 
 Two other women, a hairdresser and a miUiner, appeared in 
 the dock with her. They were tried and condemned to death 
 for seditious cries. A cook was acquitted. She, it appears, 
 had not acted " knowingly." On the 17th of Floreal, there 
 were " batches " of eleven and of thirteen accused persons ; 
 on the i8th, " batches " of eighteen and of seven ; on the 
 19th, Lavoisier and the Farmers-General (to the number of 
 twenty-eight). They were charged with falsifying their 
 accounts ; but this crime did not involve appearance before 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal. A plot had accordingly been 
 trumped up. In reaUty it was their property that was 
 desired. They offered two miUions out of this property. 
 They defended themselves in long, carefuUy prepared, and 
 very circumstantial Memorials. It was lost labour. There 
 was no time to take account of them. Speed was necessary. 
 Fouquier-Tinville had made out his writ of indictment, and 
 they were condemned to death. ^ 
 
 On the 2ist of Floreal Madame EUsabeth was brought 
 before the Tribunal with twenty-three other prisoners, 
 including four members of the de Lomenie family (Francois, 
 Charles, Athanase, and Martial) . Fouquier-TinviUe affirmed, 
 at the time of his trial, that he wished to divert the argu- 
 ments, and to save Athanase de Lomenie, a former Minister 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 358 to 362. 
 
64 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 of War. " Imbued with veneration and respect for the ex- 
 Minister," he said, " I had arranged to turn to account all 
 that was memorable and advantageous for that worthy 
 ex-Minister ; but, having foreseen my laudable intentions, 
 Liendon, my deputy, anticipated me at the hearing ; he 
 arranged to have the case tried before my arrival at the 
 Tribunal, and I was not able to fulfil my good intentions." 
 Then followed a eulogy of M. de Lomenie, whose virtues 
 he proclaimed, which brought upon him this reply from 
 Cambon, one of the deputies of the Pubhc Prosecutor. 
 " I hold in my hand the writ of indictment presented by you 
 and signed by you against Lomenie." Cambon read this 
 document and said : " You have just made a very pompous 
 and well-merited eulogy on Lomenie, the ex-Minister, and 
 yet in your writ of indictment you make it out a crime that he 
 captured votes to become the Mayor of his district, and that 
 he asked for petitions from neighbouring districts. Why, 
 then, do you shelter yourself to-day under his qualities in 
 order to excuse a conviction that your eulogies now deny ? 
 Did your heart formerly deny what your mouth utters 
 to-day." We do not possess Fouquier's answer.^ 
 
 If we are to beUeve Madame Elisabeth's defender, Chau- 
 veau-Lagarde, Fouquier-Tinville was so perfidious as to 
 deceive him by assuring him that her trial would not take 
 place so soon, and he refused him authority to confer with 
 her. On the following day, her lawyer saw her in the 
 dock, and in a prominent position.* Fouquier had been 
 present at her examination. He was not present at the 
 hearing of the case. It was Gilbert Liendon who occupied 
 his place, and Dumas who presided. The beginning of the 
 indictment is written in Fouquier's hand : " Ehsabeth Capet, 
 sister of Louis Capet, the last tyrant of the French, aged 
 thirty, bom at Versailles." The document is in Fouquier's 
 style. He revised and signed it. This document lays it 
 down that " it is to the family of the Capets that the people 
 
 ' Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 441. 
 
 » Chauveau-Lagaxde ; Note historiqiK sur Us proces de Marie- 
 Antoinette et de Madame Elisabeth, p. 50. 
 
BLANK DEATH WARRANTS 65 
 
 owe all the evils under the weight of which they have groaned 
 for so many centuries. It is at the moment when excess of 
 oppression has forced the people to break their chains that 
 all the members of this family united to plunge them into a 
 state of slavery more cruel than that from which they were 
 trying to emerge. The crimes of aU kinds, the wicked deeds 
 heaped up by Capet, by the MessaUna, Antoinette, by the 
 two brothers Capet, and by Ehsabeth, are too well known 
 to make it necessary again to paint here the horrible picture ; 
 they are written in letters of blood in the annals of the Revo- 
 lution, and the unheard-of atrocities perpetrated by the bar- 
 barous emigrants or the sanguinary satelUtes of the despots, 
 the murders, the incendiaries, the ravages, and, finally, the 
 assassinations, unknown to the most ferocious monsters, 
 which they commit on French territory, are stiU ordered by 
 this detestable family in order to deliver a great nation to 
 the despotism and fury of a few individuals. Elisabeth has 
 participated in aU these crimes." 
 
 The document is well known, and it is not necessary for us 
 to reproduce it in its entirety. It is interesting to note that a 
 blank death warrant must have been signed. In the original, 
 which may be seen at the Archives, a considerable space 
 separates the text of this warrant from the formula, " given 
 and deUvered," followed by the signatures of the judges. 
 Many other warrants at this period show the same 
 irregularity. 
 
 On the 25th of Floreal, Madame Douet, who appeared as a 
 witness at the trial of her husband, Jean Claude Douet, an 
 ex-noble and Farmer-General, was placed among the 
 accused and guillotined along with them.^ 
 
 On the 26th of Flor6al, Freteau (Emmanuel Marie Michel 
 Philippe), ex-Cotmcillor of theParlement of Paris, was brought 
 before the Tribunal among a " batch " of prisoners, and 
 acquitted, but detained in prison. Fouquier caused him to 
 appear again before the Tribunal on the 26th of Prairial 
 when he was condemned to death. This affair will be dealt 
 with in the following chapter. ' 
 
 ■ Archives Nationales, W. 363, dossier 309. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 The connection between the Committee of Public Safety, 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the Prosecutor became 
 closer and closer. The popular tribunals and commis- 
 sions sent every day to the Committee of Public Safety a Ust 
 of all the judgments given, so that the Committee might 
 identify the persons tried and the nature of the cases. At 
 the beginning of each decade ^ the Prosecutor sent in a memo- 
 randum of the business which he proposed to bring before 
 the Tribunal in the course of the decade. Masses of 
 papers arrived daily. The "nature" of some allowed of no 
 delay, " owing to the character of the evidence." On the 
 other hand, some presented " obstacles." The former went 
 through as urgent ; the latter waited. Often also " the 
 business" was ready, but the accused persons had not arrived 
 from the provinces, or the ushers had not fotmd them in 
 the prisons of Paris. At the last moment Fouquier filled 
 up the vacancies in his own fashion from the hst approved 
 of by the Committee of Public Safety, and thus caused 
 terrible blunders. But the important thing was that the 
 Tribunal must not be idle. 
 
 The indefatigable Pubhc Prosecutor coped with this 
 crushing task. Every day eighty to ninety letters left his 
 office.* Thierriet-Grandpre, a witness who came forward 
 to give evidence at Fouquier-Tinville's trial, saw " a heap 
 of letters and memoranda addressed to him by accused 
 persons, which he neglected to open and which he took into 
 his office without breaking the seals." Those letters can be 
 read to-day by anyone who looks through the papers of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal among the Archives. Poor old 
 papers, moving and pathetic, pages for the most part 
 dictated by anguish, yet in a respectful or flattering tone, 
 or a touch of famihar sans-culottisme ! Most of them 
 plead on behalf of their writers. Some intercede for a 
 husband or a wife ; some want to know the prison in 
 
 > In the Revolutionary Calendar a period of ten days, called a 
 decade, was substituted for the week of seven days. — Tr. 
 
 ' Fouquier's declaration at his trial. Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., 
 p. 310. 
 
A TERRIBLE CORRESPONDENCE 67 
 
 which there is some dear one who has been arrested. Some 
 hideous letters grovel and lodge informations. Some ask 
 for places. Some are from prisoners who are ill and beg 
 for attention. Some, such as those of Claire Tabouillot and 
 of Barbe Henry, the young girls of Verdun who were con- 
 demned to twenty years' detention, but who escaped death, 
 express " eternal gratitude " to Fouquier ; but at the same 
 time they entreat the PubUc Prosecutor to give orders for 
 their repatriation. One feels that they are still far from being 
 reassured. A certain number appeal to Fouquier's humanity, 
 but in a tone that recalls Chabot's prayer to Robespierre 
 on the 4th of Frimaire, from the Luxembourg prison : " You 
 who love patriots, deign to remember that you have num- 
 bered me on their Ust." Finally, some are full of sincere 
 cordiality towards the man who has done them a service. 
 
 Evidently, the PubUc Prosecutor had not time to read 
 all those letters or to answer them. His day's work 
 would not permit it. Every evening he went to the 
 Committees of General Security and of Public Safety. 
 Sometimes he did not get home until five o'clock in the 
 morning. Very often he had not three hours' sleep, and, 
 in order that he might be at his post without delay, a decree 
 of the 2nd of Prairial granted him a suite of rooms in the 
 Palace of Justice.^ 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, AF. 22, dossier 69, p. 90. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE AND THE CONSPIRACIES IN THE PRISONS 
 
 ON the 4th of Prairial in the year II., at half-past 
 one o'clock in the morning, as he was going up 
 the staircase into his dwelUng, No. 4, Rue Favart, 
 Deputy Collot d'Herbois foimd himself confronted 
 by a man who attacked him, shouting out : " This is your 
 last hour ! " and two pistol shots were fired at him. The 
 first missed fire. Collot, throwing himself backward, avoided 
 the second. His walking-stick fell. He leant down to pick 
 it up. The man bounded upstairs. A door closed on the 
 sixth floor. It was there that the assailant lodged. 
 
 The Deputy's housekeeper, Suzanne Pr6v6t, who, when 
 she heard her master knock, had come down with a Ught, 
 was standing, candle in hand, in front of the door of the fiat, 
 on the fourth floor, ready to open the outer door. She saw a 
 man pass by her, with a pistol in each hand, which he kept 
 lowered close to his thighs. She heard the cry and the report 
 of the pistol. She rushed into the flat, opened a window, 
 and shouted into the courtyard : "It is Admiral ! " 
 
 The outer door of the house remained open. Collot 
 d'Herbois shouted into the night, " Help, they are shooting 
 me ! " A patrol of the Lepelletier Section was passing through 
 the square in front of the theatre.'^ The citizens saw the 
 Representative of the people, bare-headed and gesticulating. 
 Immediately three of these brave men entered the house 
 and resolutely climbed the stairs. They were neighbours, 
 belonging to the Rue Favart station, Nicolas Eloi Horgne, 
 an architect and corporal of the guard; FranQois Bion, a 
 barber ; and Geffroy, a locksmith. 
 
 The man was barricaded in his room, and heard them com- 
 • The National Op6ra-Comique. 
 68 
 
AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION 69 
 
 ing to arrest him. He shouted : " Come on, scoundrels, 
 and I will kill you." They struck at his door. CoUot 
 d'Herbois went up with them, and, as he wanted to go in first, 
 armed with a sabre that a volunteer had lent him. Citizen 
 Geffroy prevented him. He seized him by the arm, and 
 said to him : "I order you, in the name of the people, to 
 remain here. I shall either perish or place the assassin in 
 the hands of the Section. When virtues are the order of 
 the day, the first thing to do and doubtless the most useful 
 to the country is to relieve the soil of hberty of such a 
 monster." 
 
 The door opened. A shot was fired. Geffroy, the lock- 
 smith, was struck by a buUet, which passed through his 
 right shoulder. The assailant was overpowered and led to 
 the poHce-station in the Rue Favart, where he was searched. 
 In his pockets were found three bad coins, two of two sous, 
 one of one sou, four leaden bullets wrapped in two pieces 
 of paper, one of them being a pass dated the 27th of 
 Ventose, made out in the name of Admiral, and a pair 
 of spectacles. 
 
 A small, soUdly-built man with a stem face, he was 
 perfectly cahn. " There was austerity in his attitude." ^ 
 
 His answers were clear, and given in a firm tone, in the 
 cheerful, musical accent of his province. He came from the 
 Puy-de-D6me, and was a native of Auzolette in the Issoire 
 district. His name was Henri Admiral, " a former employee 
 in the former lotteries." 
 
 On the previous day he had waited for four hours at the 
 Committee of Pubhc Safety to assassinate Robespierre. 
 Not being successful in this, he had determined to assassinate 
 Collot d'Herbois. He was very sorry that he had failed. It 
 would have been a fine day's work for him. All France 
 would have admired him. He regretted that he paid ninety 
 Mvres for a pair of pistols that missed fire. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville was informed at once, and immediately 
 sent to Dumas, the President of the Tribunal, the following 
 letter :— 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 389, dossier 904. 
 
70 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 "Paris, this 4th of Prairial of the Second Year of the 
 Republic, one and indivisible. 
 
 " Citizen and President, 
 
 " I have the honour to send to the Convention a 
 memorandum, drawn up to-night, which states that a man 
 named Admiral conceived the frightful project of assass- 
 inating Citizens Robespierre and Collot d'Herbois ; that all 
 day yesterday he traversed the terrace of the FeuiUants and 
 the approaches to the Committee of Public Safety in order 
 to reach Citizen Robespierre ; that about half-past one 
 to-night, as he lodged in the same house as Citizen 
 Collot d'Herbois, this madman waited on the staircase, 
 and at the moment when Citizen Collot d'Herbois was going 
 up to his flat, fired at him a pistol shot which happily 
 miscarried and thus saved his hfe. 
 
 " As soon as I was informed of this outrage, I had the 
 murderous ruffian brought to the Conciergerie, and I propose 
 to have him tried to-morrow at two o'clock. Greeting and 
 fraternity. 
 
 " A. Q. FOUQUIER, 
 
 " Pubhc Prosecutor of the 
 
 Revolutionary Tribunal." ^ 
 
 At nine o'clock in the morning, Dvunas, accompanied 
 by Girard, the registrar's clerk, questioned Admiral at the 
 Palace of Justice. The prisoner answered simply and without 
 evasion. He had been a messenger in the offices of the royal 
 lottery ; he had then been employed in Minister Bertin's 
 house. He had served in Champagne as a volunteer in 
 the sixth Paris battalion. He had left the Filles-Saint- 
 Thomas battaUon. Dimias asked him who had given him 
 his appointment at the lottery. It was the Marquis de 
 Manzuy, the Emperor's chamberlain and Director of the 
 Brussels lottery. He saw him for the last time on October 
 6, 1789, with his wife, on the road from Versailles to Paris. 
 Why had he brought pistols ? For the crime committed 
 yesterday. What was his design ? To assassinate Collot 
 * Archives Nationales, W. 389, dossier 904. 
 
ROBESPIERRE'S ESCAPE 71 
 
 d'Herbois and Robespierre. He had carried the pistols 
 for three days in order to use them at the first opportunity. 
 On the previous day he had gone out at nine o'clock in 
 the morning. He had gone to the Rue Saint-Honore, and 
 had spoken to a fruiterer, asking him at what time Robes- 
 pierre went to the Committee. " Ask at the back of the 
 courtyard. He lives there," the woman had answered. He 
 took ten steps in the courtyard and met a volunteer with 
 his arm in a sling, and a citizeness. They told him that 
 Robespierre was engaged, and that he could not speak to 
 him. He went away. If he had met the tyrant he would 
 have accomplished his design. 
 
 From there he had gone to Roulot's, a restaurant at the 
 end of the terrace of the Feuillants, where he had lunched, 
 and then to the Convention, to the gallery. He had fallen 
 asleep there. At the end of the sitting he had stationed 
 himself in the gallery that leads to the Committee of PubUc 
 Safety. Under the pretext of going for news, he had gone 
 to the outer door of the Committee, where he had waited for 
 Robespierre in order to assassinate him. It was in vain. 
 He then stationed himself in the vestibule that separates 
 the Hall of the Convention from that of the Committee. 
 Some deputies passed through. He asked their names. 
 They were not those whom he sought. He then went 
 out. 
 
 He went to the Cafe Marie and to the Caf6 Gervoise, 
 where he played draughts with a young man. He supped 
 at Dufie's eating-house at the comer of the Rue Favart. 
 At eleven o'clock he went home. He waited xmtil Collot 
 d'Herbois came back. The rest was known. 
 
 Dumas asked him a last question in regard to the 
 sums of money " over and above his known resources " 
 which he had paid for his daily expenses. Those simis, he 
 said, were the result of his savings and of the sale of his 
 goods.^ 
 
 Without losing time Dumas drew up the following 
 note : — 
 
 ' Archires Nationales, W. 339, dossier 904. 
 
72 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 " Admiral's Attempt. 
 
 " It appears that the affair of the assailant of Robespierre 
 and Collot d'Herbois ought to be investigated in the follow- 
 ing respects : 
 
 " I. By all possible means to drag from the monster 
 confessions which can throw hght upon the conspiracies ; 
 
 "2. To consider this crime in its relations with foreign 
 countries and with the conspiracies of Hubert, Danton, and 
 all those that took place in the prisons ; 
 
 "3. To gain information as to his relations with persons 
 who have belonged to or who may belong to the conspiracies ; 
 
 " 4. Especially to gain information concerning the places 
 he has been in and the persons he has associated with for 
 the past fifteen days, and of the conversations' in which 
 he has engaged ; 
 
 "5. To gain information how it is that, being fifty years 
 of age and having a situation, he went into Champagne 
 with the sixth Paris battahon ; how he behaved there, how 
 and why he left the said battaUon, and what his relations 
 there were ; 
 
 " 6. Whether he had been a guard at the Temple, and, if so, 
 whether anything had been noticed in his conduct there ; 
 
 "7. To seek to discover whence the pistols came, and to 
 know why a gim had been given to him by preference." ^ 
 
 An actual conspirator had thus been taken. Admiral's act 
 belonged to the vast conspiracy which Diunas and Fouquier- 
 TinviUe were investigating. He was, doubtless, an agent 
 of the Foreigner, along with de Batz, the unseizable de Batz, 
 the terror of the Committees ; de Batz who had attempted 
 to save Louis XVI. during the passage from the Temple to the 
 scaffold, and who had tried to bring about the escape of Marie 
 Antoinette ; de Batz who at the height of the Terror walked 
 about Paris, had five or six lodgings, and, when they came 
 to arrest him, had gone from the place some moments before, 
 leaving his bed still warm.^ 
 
 » The gun which had been given to him three months before by 
 his captain at the Lepelletier Section. 
 
 ■ Campardon, Le Tribunal Rivolutionnaire, I., p. 363. 
 
"PITT'S GOLD" 73 
 
 Collot d'Herbois had been brought close to death by Pitt's 
 gold and royaUst conspiracies. But " the destiny of the 
 Republic watched over his life," as Bar^re said to the 
 excited and cheering members of the Convention. " This 
 time we have not to deplore the loss of a citizen nor to open 
 the doors of the Panthlon . . . d'Herbois, the people's 
 representative, is amongst you." ^ 
 
 That same evening, whilst Fouquier-Tinville, after a day 
 spent in investigations among the persons with whom 
 Admiral associated, was studying the report drawn up by 
 two commissioners of the committee of surveillance of the 
 Lepelletier Section, a young girl, C^cile Renault, presented 
 herself at the house of Duplay, the carpenter, where Maxi- 
 milien Robespierre hved, saying that she had been three 
 hours looking for him. 
 
 It was nine o'clock. Duplay's eldest daughter answered 
 that the Deputy was absent. C6cile Renault showed ill- 
 humour at this, and took an offended tone. She was sur- 
 prised that he was not at home. His duty as a public offi- 
 cial was to answer aU those who came to see him. Suspicions 
 were aroused ; the Committee of General Security was not 
 far away, and she was taken there. On the way, she declared 
 flatly that when people presented themselves at the King's 
 dwelling under the old regime they were allowed to 
 enter at once. She was asked if she would prefer to have a 
 king. She answered : "I want a king, because I prefer 
 one tyrant to fifty thousand." The Committee had her 
 searched. There were found on her only two small knives 
 with tortoiseshell and ivory handles ; but she spoke 
 in an excited fashion, and was locked up in the Concier- 
 gerie.2 
 
 The commissioners of the section immediately went 
 to her house. Her father was anxiously awaiting her. 
 They searched the yoimg girl's room. " We found there," 
 wrote the commissioners, " above her bed, a sort of banner 
 on which is printed a large crown surrounded with fleurs 
 
 » Moniteur of the 5th Prairial, year II. 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 389, dossier 904. 
 
74 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 de lys and on which there is a cross of silver paper." Renault, 
 the father, and all his family were arrested. 
 
 While investigations regarding the conspiracy were being 
 made, Fouquier-Tmville was not idle. During this month of 
 Prairial there were " batches " to be put on trial, " batches " 
 that had come from the Departments, composed of people 
 unacquainted with one another, aristocrats and sans-culoUes, 
 priests and ex-priests, notaries, notaries' clerks, traders, 
 teachers, workmen and workwomen, accused of counter- 
 revolutionary utterances and writings. The following are 
 some examples from among the mass of those accused. 
 
 On the 2nd of Prairial it was a teacher, Gabriel 
 DeUgnon, who had received an anon5mious letter com- 
 promising him in a conspiracy, and who had brought it 
 to the Commune. Death.* — On the 3rd, a notary, Jarzoufiflet, 
 who had no confidence in the assignats (paper-money), and 
 who had known a priest. Death.^ — On the 4th of Prairial, the 
 day of Admiral's attempts, it was the woman Costard, who 
 in despair at the fate of Boyer-Brun whom she loved, had 
 given utterance to her grief in a letter to the Committee of 
 General Security, ending with these words : " Strike, since 
 I have lost my lover ; end a life that is odious to me and that 
 I cannot endure without horror. Long Uve the King ! 
 Long live the King ! Do not beheve that I am mad ; I 
 am not ; I believe ever5^hing that you have just read, and 
 I sign it with my blood." Death. ^ — On the 6th of Prairial, 
 a fishmonger, his wife, and a washerwoman, Catherine 
 P6rard, were condemned to death. The two women were 
 drunk and shouted, " Long Uve the King ! " They were 
 held to be aristocrats, althdiugh, according to Judge Masson's 
 expression, " their external appearance was thoroughly 
 sans-culotte." * On the 8th of Prairial, it was a dentist who 
 said that he occupied himself with nothing but his business, 
 and did not knowwhat the National Convention was. Death. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 369, No. 824. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 370, No. 832. 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 374, No. 835 
 
 * Archives Nationales, W. 372, No. 840. 
 
THE REVOLUTIONARY CONSTITUTION 75 
 
 — ^A navvy who shouted out, " Long live the King ! Long 
 live the Queen ! " ^ etc., etc. 
 
 On the 6th of Prairial, Collot d'Herbois and Robespierre 
 appeared at the Jacobin Club. There was a prolonged 
 ovation, and they were welcomed " with transport." As 
 soon as they entered the hall, " all eyes were fixed on those 
 precious men ; all hearts leaped at once ; cheers of the 
 keenest joy proved to them the amount of interest they 
 inspired. . . . The God of free men watched over 
 them. . . . The people had not to shed tears on their 
 fimeral urns." Robespierre spoke. " I am one of those 
 whom the events that have taken place should interest least ; 
 it is not, however, possible for me to refrain from deaUng 
 with them in their relation to the pubUc interest. . . . 
 Frenchmen ! friends of equality ! leave it to us to employ the 
 small amount of Uf e that Providence grants us in fighting the 
 enemies that surround us. We swear by the daggers stained 
 with the blood of the martyrs of the Revolution and 
 recently sharpened against ourselves, to exterminate to the 
 last those scoundrels who would rob us of happiness and 
 Uberty." « 
 
 To " the plots of the Foreigner," Robespierre replied by 
 the law of the 22nd of Prairial (Jime 10, 1794). 
 
 After having heard the report of the paralysed Couthon, 
 " gentle in face and in language," the instrument of the 
 Committee of PubUc Safety, the National Convention 
 resolved : 
 
 " Article I. — ^There shall be in the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 a President and three Vice-Presidents, a Public Prosecutor, 
 four deputies for the Public Prosecutor, and twelve ju^iges. 
 
 " Article II. — The jurors shall be fifty in number. 
 
 " Article III. — ^These various functions shall be exercised 
 by the citizens whose names follow : Dumas, President ; 
 Coffinhal, Scellier, Naulin, Vice-Presidents ; Fouquier- 
 Tinville, Public Prosecutor ; his four deputies ; twelve 
 judges, and fifty jurors. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 373. No. 843. 
 • Moniteur, ibth of Prairial, year II. 
 
76 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 "Article IV.— The Revolutionary Tribunal has been 
 established to punish the enemies of the people. 
 
 " Article V.— The enemies of the people are those who 
 seek to destroy pubhc Uberty, either by force or fraud. 
 
 " Article VI.— Those are to be regarded as enemies of the 
 people who shall promote the re-estabhshment of royalty, 
 or seek to degrade the National Convention and the revolu- 
 tionary and repubUcan government of which it is the centre, 
 etc. 
 
 " Article VII. — ^The punishment for aU offences that come 
 within the scope of the Revolutionary Tribunal is death. 
 
 " Article IX. — Every citizen has a right to seize con- 
 spirators and counter-revolutionists, and to bring them before 
 the magistrates ; he is bound to inform against them as 
 soon as he knows them. 
 
 " Article XVI. — ^The law gives patriotic jurors as defenders 
 to patriots ; it does not grant them to conspirators." ^ 
 
 In reahty, there were to be no more preliminary investiga- 
 tions, no more examinations, no more pleadings. The 
 accused were to be at the mercy of the jurors. And it is 
 known what the jurors were. Furthermore, not only were 
 the accused refused a hearing at the preliminary investiga- 
 tion before the trial, but they were not even to be examined 
 at the pubhc hearing of the case. As an example, there was 
 a case on the 6th of Messidor when three young Bretons 
 of the Quimper district, Perron, Toupin, and Thomas 
 Andre, were suspected of having amused themselves by 
 cutting down the tree of hberty at Banalec, on the day in 
 October, 1793, on which they were summoned to join the 
 colours. There was no real evidence against them. Mathieu 
 Toupin and Corentin Perron were condemned to two years' 
 deportation, Thomas Andre to a year's imprisonment by the 
 Quimper tribunal. The moderation of these sentences was 
 denoimced to the Minister of Justice at Paris. The prisoners 
 were sent before the Revolutionary Tribimal by decree of 
 the Convention. 
 
 They were condemned to death. The official report of 
 1 Moniteuy, 24th Prairial, year II. 
 
FOUQUIER'S RECKLESSNESS yy 
 
 the trial contains these words written by the registrar's 
 clerk : " Note : It has been impossible to get the exact 
 names of Perron, Andre, and Toupin, because they were 
 from Lower Brittany and there were no interpreters." ^ 
 This requires no comment. 
 
 Fouquier's task was not simplified by the law of the 
 month of Prairial. On the contrary, the mass of conspira- 
 tors who had to be brought to trial increased to such an 
 extent that the PubUc Prosecutor, forced to act quickly, 
 no longer knew which way to turn. He would go into the 
 office of the ushers whose duty it was to fetch the accused 
 from the prisons, shouting and swearing, smashing the 
 portfolios, threatening and frightening everybody. " If 
 you don't make haste, I will lock you up. I wiU have you 
 locked up," he would exclaim, and then shout out insults. 
 Late in the evening after dinner the trembling clerks pointed 
 out to him that they had not time to transcribe and serve all 
 the indictments that he had ordered them to copy for the next 
 morning. "Do as you like ! " he would answer. " There 
 wiU always be enough of them ! Make haste ! Things 
 must move ! " If the indictments were signed by him alone, 
 and not by the judges, his clerks would point this out to him. 
 "Go on," was the reply, "their signatures shall be obtained."^ 
 
 At first Fouquier had drawn up the indictments himself 
 or in co-operation with his deputies. Then he had employed 
 a clerk, and finally two. As the number of conspirators 
 increased the more they were guillotined, Fouquier became 
 too much occupied, and left the task of drawing up the 
 indictments to his clerks.^ He contented himself with 
 signing his name at the bottom of each page, adding 
 some words on the margin or rectifying the text here 
 and there. This is why we can prove to-day (his deputy 
 Cambon did so at Fouquier's trial) that these indict- 
 ments are full of spaces between the Unes, erasures, 
 unauthorised commitments, and blank spaces intended 
 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 395, No. 916, 2nd part, p. 78. 
 ' Contat's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 ' Toutain's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
78 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 for the names of a greater number of victims, and that no 
 trouble had been taken to cancel these. Names of accused 
 persons had been added, in a strange hand, to the indict- 
 ments after they were drawn up. It is enough to open some 
 of the bundles of papers relating to the Tribunal for the 
 period comprised between the 22nd of Prairial and the 9th 
 of Thermidor to be convinced of all this. 
 
 These documents were served on the interested parties 
 only the day before the trial. Fouquier did not deny this at 
 the time of his own trial. He said that he always gave 
 orders to serve the writs of indictment in the evening. 
 Chi.teau, his former secretary, contradicted him on this 
 point, sa3dng : "It often happened that at nine o'clock 
 in the evening we did not know the names of those who 
 would be put on trial the next day. How could we give 
 them their writs of indictment that evening ? " ^ 
 
 At the hearing, the accused were not given time to speak. 
 And there was no one to defend them, for lawyers had no 
 longer a right to do so. The President would ask a prisoner : 
 " Did you do such and such a thing ? " On his negative 
 or affirmative reply, the President would say : " Next." 
 If the prisoner insisted, Dumas or Coffinhal shouted at him. 
 " You have no right to say any more. You have no right 
 to say any more." ^ In order to exonerate himself Fouquier 
 said : " That was the President's business, that did not 
 concern me. I have pointed out several times to Dumas 
 and Coffinhal that they did not give the accused enough 
 latitude. I have had altercations with Dumas on this 
 subject." But at Fouquier's trial, Berthaut,* registrar of 
 the Tribunal of the Theitre-Frangais Section, deposed that 
 at the hearing of the affair relating to the conspiracy in the 
 CarmeUte prison, the PubUc Prosecutor (who was sitting 
 that day) said to a witness for the defence : " Are not you 
 and the prisoner both of the same Section ? " " Yes." 
 Then Fouquier rejoined vehemently : "I have something 
 
 • ChS.teau's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
 • Brunet's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
 ' Berthaut's evidence on the 2nd of Germinal in the year III. 
 
AQUITTAL A PUBLIC CALAMITY 79 
 
 against you. You are of the same Section. You stand up 
 for one another." And he prevented the witness from 
 being heard further. 
 
 The law of the month of Prairial had hardly been passed, 
 when Fouquier, acting on the suggestion of Vadier, a member 
 of the Committee of General Security, brought to trial 
 eleven inhabitants of Pamiers, among whom were the two 
 Darmaings (John Pierre Jerome, a lawyer, and Frangois, 
 an ex-King's- Advocate). Vadier came originally from 
 Pamiers. He had a personal grudge against his compatriots. 
 One of them, CazSs, had refused his daughter to Vadier's 
 son. In two letters, one of the 4th of Prairial and the other 
 of the 7th, Vadier had expressed to Fouquier the hope that 
 they would be condemned. (" I point out to you that; if by 
 any iU-fortune those men could be acquitted, it would be 
 a public calamity.") The inhabitants of Pamiers were 
 condemned to death on the 23rd of Prairial (June 11). ^ 
 
 On the 26th of Prairial (Jime 14) a " batch " of thirty 
 Parliamentarians from Paris and Toulouse,^ appeared before 
 the Tribunal for having, on September 25 and 27, 1789, pro- 
 tested against the Acts of the National Assembly relating to 
 the Parlements. There were no incriminating documents 
 and no witnesses. The memorials drawn up by the prisoners 
 had been left by Fouquier among the papers in the registrar's 
 office. He had taken no account of them. All were 
 condemned. Among them was Fr^teau, an ex-CounciUor 
 of the Parlement of Paris, who had been acquitted on the 
 27th of Floreal. Fouquier had again seized him and sent 
 him for trial. " Freteau," say Fouquier's pleadings for the 
 prosecution, " has shown himself to be an enemy of the 
 people whose representative he was, and he has violated the 
 laws, whose observance is of the utmost importance to the 
 Empire, by confiding his son's education to a conspirator, 
 to one of those men animated by the most cruel fanaticism, 
 who had refused to take the oath due from every citizen 
 
 * Archives Nationales, W. 383, dossier 891. Among the con- 
 demned persons there was one, Larue, who was not even examined. 
 ' W. 386, dossier 897. 
 
8o THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 to the government under which he lives." ^ At the time 
 of his trial Fouquier was rigorously taken to task on the 
 subject of Freteau. It will be seen how he defended himself. 
 
 On the 29th of Prairial (June 17) Admiral, C^cile Renault, 
 her father, her brother, her aunt, and forty-nine other 
 prisoners were brought before the Tribunal. AU were con- 
 victed of having made themselves " the enemies of the people 
 by participating in the conspiracy of the foreigner, and at- 
 tempting, by assassination, famine, the fabrication and intro- 
 duction of forged paper-money (assignats) and base coin, the 
 depravation of morahty and pubhc spirit, and insurrections 
 in the prisons, to promote civil war, to dissolve the national 
 representation, to re-estabUsh royalty, or any other tyran- 
 nical domination." The hearing lasted only three hours.* 
 The Tribunal condemned them all to the punishment of 
 death, conformably with Articles 5, 6, and 7 of the law of the 
 22nd of Prairial, which it caused to be read to them. All were 
 to be brought to the place of execution and put on the scaffold 
 clothed in red shirts, as assassins of the Representatives of the 
 people. Yet only one of them had committed an attempt 
 at assassination. 
 
 The execution of the fifty-four, who have been called the 
 " red shirts," took place at four o'clock in the evening at the 
 Barrier of Vincennes.* 
 
 Excluding Admiral, the fifty-three others who were con- 
 demned might be regarded as conspirators, not as assassins. 
 Why did Fouquier inflict on them the indignity of the red 
 shirt ? At his own trial he answered this question. " Be- 
 cause the sentence so provided," he said. But Cambon, 
 the PubHc Prosecutor's deputy, denied this, and pro- 
 duced the sentence. Fouquier continued : "I claim that 
 
 ' A priest who had not taken the oath to the Civil Constitution of 
 the Clergy. W. 386, dossier 897, p. 135. 
 
 • Fouquier says five hours, but he was not sitting. 
 
 » On the 2ist of Prairial, the day following that of the Festival of 
 the Supreme Being, the guillotine had been transported from the 
 Place de la Revolution to ttie Place Sainte- Antoine in front of the site 
 occupied by the old Bastille. On the 26th, at the request of the 
 inhabitants of the district, it was transported to the Barrier of Vin- 
 
THE AFFAIR OF THE RED SHIRTS 8i 
 
 this is a mistake of the registrar, for that was the sentence 
 pronounced." He was contradicted by Hamy, an ex-judge 
 of the Tribunal, charged along with him : " I point out that 
 the Tribvmal did not pronounce that sentence. I was 
 astonished when I heard the order to have red shirts made, 
 I made some remarks about it, but was told it had nothing 
 to do with me." 
 
 In reaJity, it was the Committee of PubUc Safety that had 
 given this order to Fouquier-Tinville. 
 
 The affair of " the red shirts " has often been related, 
 and this is not the place to return to it. Let us only note that 
 it is sufficient to examine the list of accused persons to have 
 an idea of the strange " mixture " compounded by Fouquier. 
 Admiral, the man of Auvergne, rubs shoulders with people 
 of all conditions whom he certainly had never seen, such as 
 Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, her daughter, her son, and 
 the Comte de Fleury. The latter had been imprisoned in 
 the Luxembourg. There had been no question of an in- 
 vestigation into his case. He went into the dock and was 
 condemned for having written, on that day, the famous 
 letter to Dumas : " Courage, men of blood, invent conspira- 
 cies in order to send to the scaffold the remnant of honest 
 men who, having nothing with which to reproach themselves, 
 have remained passive beneath your blows. All my friends 
 or intimate acquaintances, the Prince de Rohan, Bossan- 
 court, Marsan, d'Hauteyille, Lecuyer, etc., conspirators ! 
 if ever they could have Ijeen that, join my name to theirs. 
 Having always shared their opinions and their mode of Ufe, 
 I ought to undergo the same fate. You tremble, souls of 
 mud, when you meet magnanimous courage which, fearing 
 nothing, reproaches you in crying tones for the crimes of 
 which you make yourselves guilty every day, by pronouncing 
 judgments dictated by hatred and vengeance. Tremble, 
 vile monsters, the moment is coming when you shall expiate 
 your crimes. Signed : The ex-Comte de Fleury, a prisoner 
 in the Luxembourg." Dumas had shown this letter to 
 Fouquier, saying : " Look here ! read this billet doux, 
 I believe this fine gentleman is in a hurry." " Yes," Fou- 
 
 F 
 
82 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 quier had answered, " he seems to me to be in a hurry, and 
 I am going to send for him." He did send for him, and 
 the Comte de Fleury was guillotined the same day. 
 
 This study is concerned with the responsibihty incurred 
 by Fouquier-Tinville as Pubhc Prosecutor, and not with the 
 history of the Revolutionary Tribunal. It is not necessary to 
 give here as full an account of the affair called " the conspira- 
 cies in the prisons " as a complete statement of the matter 
 would require. In the second part of this study the deposi- 
 tions made in the inquiry after Thermidor will be repro- 
 duced from the original papers preserved among the National 
 Archives, and as the general effect of those depositions will 
 enable us to imderstand Fouquier's activity in a vivid and 
 striking manner, it seems sufficient to say here, in a few 
 pages, what those conspiracies were, and what part was 
 reserved for the Pubhc Prosecutor by his chiefs. 
 
 At the beginning of Messidor there were in Paris forty 
 houses of detention,^ aU of which were full. As new prisoners 
 came continually from the Departments, it was necessary to 
 find accommodation for them. Room was made by empty- 
 ing the Paris prisons of some " lots " of prisoners who were 
 sent to the Conciergerie, then to the Tribunal, and then to 
 the scaffold. For this a motive, a pretext, was foun4 in the 
 Conspiracy of the Foreigner which gave rise to, ist, the 
 Conspiracy in Bic^tre (two " batches," one of 37 prisoners, 
 
 ' M. Wallon gives, following Proussinalle (Histoire Secrete du 
 Tribunal RSvoluHonnaire, I., p. 298), the list of the Paris prisons: 
 La Grande Force, la Petite Force, Sainte-Pelagie, les Madelonnettes, 
 I'Abbaye, les Capucins, BicStre, la Salp6tri6re, la Mairie, le Luxem- 
 bourg, la Bourbe, la Caserne, Rue de Vaugirard, Picpus, les Anglaises, 
 Rue de Lourcine, les Anglaises, Faubourg Sainte-Antoine, les 
 Ecossais, Saint-Lazare, la maison Belhomme, les B6nedictins Anglais, 
 le College du Plessis, la maison de Repression, la maison Coignard, 
 la maison Mallay, les Fermes, la caserne des Petits-P6res, la caseme, 
 Rue de Sfivres, la maison des Oiseaux, la caseme des Carmes, le 
 College des Quatre-Nations, Montaigu, Port-Royal, maison Escour- 
 biac, Hotel Talaru, Vincennes, maison Lachapelle, Hospice de 
 I'EvSchfe, maison Brunet, les Anglaises, Rue Saint- Victor, maison 
 Picquenot, Rue de Bercy, and la Conciergerie. One ought to add 
 the d6p6ts in the forty-eight sections. (Wallon ; Tribunal RSvolu- 
 Honnaire, IV., p. 263.) 
 
THE PRISON CONSPIRACIES 83 
 
 tried on the 28th of Floreal, the other of 37, tried on the 8th 
 of Messidor) ; 2nd, the Conspiracy in the Luxembourg (four 
 " batches," the first of 60 prisoners, tried on the 19th of Mes- 
 sidor in the Year II., the second of 50 prisoners, tried on the 
 2ist, the third of 46, tried on thie 22nd, and the foilrth of 
 18, tried on the 4th of Thermidor) ; 3rd, the Conspiracy in 
 the CarmeUte prison (49 prisoners, tried on the 5th of Thermi- 
 dor) ; 4th, the Conspiracy in Saint-Lazare (three " batches," 
 the first of 25 prisoners, tried on the 6th of Thermidor, the 
 second of 26, tried on the 7th of Thermidor, and the third 
 of 25, tried on the 8th of Thermidor) . There were, finally, 
 on the 9th of Thermidor, 25 prisoners at the hearing pre- 
 sided over by Dumas, and 23 at that presided over by 
 SceUier. We can see clearly now that the idea of these 
 conspiracies was nothing but a most outrageous fabrica- 
 tion. 
 
 Their true fomenters and agents were the prison spies — 
 Valagnos, Beausire, Benoit, Boyaval, Dupaumier, Vemey, 
 Guyard, Manini, Coquery, Jobert (the Belgian), and some 
 others. In the second part of this study it will be seen that 
 Fouquier had relations with those scoundrels. A good deal 
 of evidence given at his trial agrees in saying that he made 
 use of them, that he encoiuraged them. They were his 
 auxiliaries and those of the Committee of General Security. 
 
 It was Valagnos who invented the Bicfitre conspiracy. 
 Valagnos was an ex-house-painter, and ex-member of the 
 Revolutionary Committee of the ChaUer Section. He had 
 been condemned to twelve years in chains for dishonesty in 
 performing his duties as a commissioner of clothing. He 
 had been imprisoned at BicStre. He confided to one of his 
 fellow-prisoners ^ that he had " discovered a conspiracy, and 
 hoped that this would shorten his twelve years in chains." 
 In a first letter to his former committee, he denounced some 
 prisoners who were convicts Uke himself. He represented 
 them as determined to escape. This letter remained un- 
 answered. He wrote another to the same committee, 
 giving details. It was whilst going to the convict-prison, 
 ' Guillot, a defender in the Tribunal. 
 
84 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 during the journey from Paris to Brest, that the escape would 
 take place. The committee of the Section sent this second 
 letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which forwarded it 
 to Herman, the President of the Commission for the Adminis- 
 tration of Civil Affairs, of PoUce, and of Tribunals. By a 
 resolution of the Committee of PubUc Safety, passed on the 
 25th of Prairial, the prisoners who had been denounced were 
 brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. The same 
 resolution authorised the conunission to bring before the 
 Tribunal " all other individuals detained in the said house of 
 Bicfitre who might be suspected of having taken part in the 
 plot." On the 26th, Lanne, Herman's assistant, went to 
 BicMre. Fouquier-Tinville accompanied him. Fouquier 
 drew up a list, and sent it to Lanne with these words : 
 " Citizen, enclosed is the account of the suspects found in 
 our transaction. I request you to send me to-morrow, at 
 ten or eleven o'clock at latest, all the documents of this busi- 
 ness, in particular the resolutions." ^ On the 27th, Lanne 
 copied out the hst and sent it to Fouquier. He sent him at 
 the same time the resolution passed by the Committee of 
 PubUc Safety on the 25th, and the hst of prisoners whom that 
 Committee was sending before the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 In all, there were thirty-seven prisoners who appeared before 
 the Tribunal. Fouquier's writ of indictment affirms that 
 the aim of this plot was " to overcome the citizens forming 
 the armed force of the house of detention of Bicfitre, to force 
 the doors of the said house in order to go and kill the Repre- 
 sentatives of the people, members of the Convention's 
 Committees of Pubhc Safety and of General Security, to 
 tear out their hearts, to cook and eat them, and to put to 
 death the most conspicuous of them in a cask furnished with 
 spikes." No witnesses were heard, with the exception of 
 Valagnos, the convict. The thirty-seven Bic^tre prisoners 
 were condemned and executed. Fouquier, at his trial, said 
 that they were criminals, that they were condemned to 
 chains. A poor reason ! Had they conspired or not ? 
 If they had only attempted to escape, they did not deserve 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, ist dossier, p. 8. 
 
THE STATE OF THE PRISONS 85 
 
 the gtiillotine. Brunet, the chief surgeon of Bicfitre, a 
 ■witness at Fouquier's trial, said : " The conspiracy that the 
 murderers have imagined is a falsehood, I will even say, a 
 calumny. The law had seized the guilty. They ought, 
 doubtless, to have undergone their pimishment. But 
 no power, at least unless a fresh crime had been proved, 
 could strike beings who were expiating the punishment due 
 to their crimes." Brunet, passing through the haUs, the 
 rooms, and the cells several times a day, doubtless knew what 
 to think about the state of the prisons. And Deschamps, 
 the treasurer, deposed that when they came to take away 
 the prisoners in order to bring them before the Tribunal, 
 one of them, aged 79, was so frightened that he wounded 
 himself in the belly with his razor. 
 
 On the 17th of Messidor, the Committee of Public Safety 
 resolved that the commission over which Herman presided 
 should make a daily report to the Public Prosecutor on 
 the conduct of those detained in the different prisons of Paris. 
 The Revolutionary Tribunal was bound, in conformity 
 with the law, to try within twenty-four hours those who 
 attempted to revolt or excited any ferment.'^ 
 
 On the i8th, Fouquier wrote to Subleyras, the President 
 of the Popular Commission, to the Museum (the Louvre) : 
 
 " I send you herewith a list of the conspirators of the house 
 of detention of the Luxembourg whom I propose to have 
 put on trial to-morrow. I ask you in consequence to trans- 
 mit to me all information you may possess about these 
 individuals."* 
 
 On the same day he wrote to the Committee of Pubhc 
 Safety to inform them that he " would bring the conspira- 
 tors of the Luxembourg to trial, the next day, in the HaU of 
 Liberty." 
 
 At eleven o'clock in the evening on that 18th of Messi- 
 dor, whilst the prison was asleep and everything quiet, a 
 considerable armed force invaded the large court-yard. 
 There was an alarm. Calls were heard in the rooms, hurried 
 
 • W. 500, dossier 3, p. 79, and, W. 501, dossier i, p. 55. 
 
 • W. 501, ist dossier, p. 45. 
 
86 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 footsteps on the stairs. A hundred and fifty-six prisoners 
 were transferred to the house of justice, counted, and 
 crowded together at the Conciergerie while waiting for the 
 hour of the sitting. President Dumas had caused an enor- 
 mous scaffolding ^ to be erected in the hall of the Tribunal, 
 the benches of which rose as high as the cornices of the 
 ceihng and filled a large part of the enclosure. It was on 
 this scaffolding that he intended to place the conspirators 
 of the Luxembourg. 
 
 But that night Fouquier went to the Committee. He 
 saw Collot d'Herbois, Billaud, Saint- Just, and Robespierre, 
 and it was decided that instead of being tried in the mass 
 (which might arouse too violent a feeling among the pubhc) 
 the himdred and fifty-six would be tried in three lots. The 
 scaffolding was accordingly demolished. 
 
 At nine o'clock in the morning of the igth of Messidor, 
 the prisoners of the first batch received their writs of 
 indictment. At ten o'clock they entered the dock, to the 
 nimiber of sixty. At three o'clock they had all been tried 
 and sent to the guillotine. Madame de Boisgehn, as she 
 was leaving the Tribunal and crossing the courtyard, 
 said to those of the prisoners who had not been tried : " We 
 have not been allowed to speak. It will be your turn 
 to-morrow." ^ 
 
 At this hearing there had been condemned Jean Dominique 
 Maiirin, " 47 years of age, born at Barcdlonnette, in the 
 department of the Basses- Alpes. Before the Revolution 
 he had been a book-keeper to different merchants, and since 
 then a steward of the Duchesse d'Estissac's estate at HaUuin, 
 and an agent of the ex-Marechale de Biron," says the judg- 
 ment. Now the writ of indictment has : " Jean Dominique 
 Morin, formerly quarter-master, aged 47 years, born at Barce- 
 lonnette, in the department of the Basses-Alpes." The 
 
 ' It is this scafiolding (ichafaud) that M. Thiers confused with the 
 guillotine in his Histoire de la Revolution Franqaise, 9th edition. 
 Fume, 1839, p. 138, when he says : " It was necessary to order 
 Fouquier-TinvUle a second time to remove the guillotine from the hall 
 of the Tribunal." 
 
 " Jobert's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
THE BOGUS CONSPIRACIES 87 
 
 accused man, hearing the statement for the prosecution 
 read, and understanding that there was a mistake, protested : 
 " It is not I." He was condemned. But Fouquier im- 
 mediately claimed, 1 and the Tribunal ordered, that Louis 
 Clerc Morin should also be brought to trial. The latter 
 was guillotined three days after his namesake on the 22nd 
 of Messidor. He formed part of the third " batch " from 
 the Luxembourg. At Fouquier' s trial a witness, Vauchelet, 
 said that Morin " so far from being concerned in that 
 alleged conspiracy, was not in the Luxembourg prison." 
 
 On the gth of Messidor, the Tribunal had heard only five 
 witnesses. These were four poUce spies (Boyaval,^ Meunier, 
 Vemey, Benoit), and a turnkey of the Luxembourg, Lesenne. 
 This latter declared that there had been no conspiracy. 
 Fouquier immediately demanded his arrest. 
 
 The Swiss porter of the Luxembourg, Nicolas Strahl, and 
 others gave evidence afterwards at Fouquier-Tinville's 
 trial that no conspiracy had existed in the prison, and that 
 everything was calm. " Those conspiracies," he said, 
 " have only existed in the public prints." 
 
 A man who had a narrow escape was Jean Martin, a 
 lawyer, included in the third " batch " of the alleged 
 Luxembourg conspiracy, that of the 22nd of Messidor.* He 
 
 ' " The Public Prosecutor claims, and the Tribunal orders, that 
 there be given him a memorandum of the verbal indictment brought 
 by him against Morin." Archives Nationales, W. 409, dossier 941. 
 
 ' Boyaval was, with Benoit, one of the great makers of the lists. 
 A tailor and a lieutenant of light infantry, a narrow-minded, chatter- 
 ing liar, Boyaval boasted that he was entrusted with making out the 
 lists. Sometimes he said he had orders from the police officials, some- 
 times from Robespierre, and sometimes from Fouquier, He went to 
 the Tribunal to give evidence as a witness against those he had 
 denounced. 
 
 ' In the hst of unfortunate beings taken off during the night be- 
 tween the 1 8th and the 19th was found the name of Pierre Charles 
 Machet-Velye, an ex-Comptroller of Buildings to Monsieur, the king's 
 brother. Uncommunicative, always shut up in his room, living 
 isolated, and perpetually occupied with a law-suit which he was 
 carrying on against a former Procurator of the Parlement, Machet- 
 Velye had received, in his prison, the news that he had won his suit. 
 He was guillotined on the 22nd of Messidor as an accomplice in the 
 conspiracy of Grammont, who had been executed four months before 
 
88 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 was acquitted, perhaps because he said that he had known 
 " the project of making a scene in the prison which Gram- 
 mont carried out in part." After Robespierre's fall, he sent, 
 on the 13th of Thermidor, to the Committee of Pubhc 
 Safety a very curious report in which he described in a strik- 
 ing manner the sitting of the Tribunal on the day when he 
 appeared before it. Scellier presided. Royer deputised 
 for Fouquier-Tinville. Boyaval, the spy, was the first 
 to give evidence, then Verney, a turnkey at the Luxem- 
 bourg and an active informer, then Benoit, another spy. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a httle dialogue between the Presi- 
 dent and Goursault, one of the accused : 
 
 The President : — " Why have you been arrested ? " — "I 
 do not know." — ^The President : — " Are you noble ? " 
 " No, I am a labourer's son."— The President :— " All 
 right. We know the moral sense of an administrator of 
 lotteries ; you say no more." 
 
 his arrival at the Luxembourg I (Cf. Real's evidence at Fouquier's 
 trial.) 
 
 On the 2ist of Messidor, fifty prisoners appeared before the 
 Tribunal charged with taking part in the Luxembourg conspiracy ; 
 this was the second " batch." One of the accused, Pierre Louis 
 Moreau, an architect and a chevalier of Saint Louis, was a brother- 
 in-law of the poet, Ducis ; the latter wrote the following letter to 
 Fouquier to intercede with him on behalf of his relative : — 
 
 " Paris, the 20th of Messidor of the year II. : Citizen, I do not solicit 
 your justice, that would be to insult your well-known integrity, 
 but I yield to my wife's tears. The fate of her brother is to be 
 decided to-morrow by the Revolutionary Tribunal : he is Citizen 
 Moreau, formerly architect of the City of Paris. He has always 
 been obedient and faithful to the laws of our country, he has paid all 
 that was asked of him, in particular, thirty thousand francs for the 
 war in La Vendue ; nothing against him has been found among his 
 papers, on which official seals have been placed both in the city and 
 the country. He was engaged in no plot ; before his detention he 
 was farming an emigrant's land, for which he paid rent to the nation ; 
 he is a good father, tenderly loved by his wife and daughters ; we 
 hope, just and incorruptible citizen, that you will soon restore him 
 to the arms and the eyes of us who are waiting for him. We are sure 
 that you will bring his innocence into full light. Accept the assur- 
 ance of my veneration and my entire confidence in your wisdom and 
 virtue. Signed : Ducis, of the former French Academy." Archives 
 Nationales, W. 93. Moreau was condemned to death. Campardon, 
 L, p. 382. 
 
ROBESPIERRE AND THE CONSPIRACIES 89 
 
 The examination of each of the forty-six prisoners was 
 conducted in similar style. 
 
 On the 2ist of Messidor, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre 
 returned to the affair of the conspiracies. He spoke of 
 " the cabals secretly directed against the Revolutionary 
 Government and the plottings of those traitors who are 
 burning to sow dissension among the patriots." Accord- 
 ing to him, the recent victory of Fleurus threatened to lead 
 the pubhc mind towards leniency. " It is natural to slumber 
 after victory. . . . The true victory is that which 
 the Mends of Hberty gain over the factions." It was neces- 
 sary, therefore, that the extermination of the conspirators 
 should continue. 
 
 It was as a conspirator that Jean-Claude Pelchet, an 
 architect and ex-Chief Inspector of Buildings to the King, 
 appeared before the Tribunal, on the 25th of Messidor, because 
 a certain Dodin, who informed against him, declared that, 
 during a journey they had made together from Versailles 
 to Paris, the architect had expressed royalist sentiments 
 opposed to the principles of the Revolution. Witnesses 
 were not allowed him. Fouquier wrote to his deputy that 
 their appearance did not seem to him indispensable, and that 
 he ought to do all he could to prevent the prisoner's defence 
 from being cut short. Fouquier's note is among the papers 
 relative to the case.^ 
 
 Those sixteen Carmehte nuns of Compiegne were conspira- 
 tors who were charged with fanaticism, together with Citizen 
 Mulot de la Menardi^re, a townsman of Compiegne and a 
 very indifferent poet, who had sent counter-revolutionary 
 verses to one of the nuns, his cousin. He was married. 
 Fouquier, in his indictment, describes him as " a rebellious 
 ex-priest," though he had never been a priest. In the writ of 
 indictment he becomes " the chief of a counter-revolutionary 
 assembly at Compifegne, of a sort of Vendean focus. His 
 correspondence with those women who were subject to his 
 will gives evidence of the counter-revolutionary sentiments 
 that animated him, and one sees in it especially that pro- 
 * Archives Nationales, W. 414, No. 949, 3rd part. 
 
90 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 found knavery familiar to those hypocrites who are accus- 
 tomed to give out that their own passions are the rule 
 established by Heaven's will."i Documents were produced 
 against him which were hot in his writing. Fouquier had 
 no longer sufficient time to identify documents. 
 
 All the nuns were sentenced to death, even those against 
 whom there was nothing, even the two non-cloistered sisters. 
 
 On the ist of Thermidor (July 19, 1794), three generations 
 of the same family were in the dock. This was what 
 Fouquier called " the Magon conspiracy," comprising J. B. 
 Magon de la Balue, a merchant and an ex-noble, 81 years of 
 age ; Luc Magon de Labelinaye, a merchant and an ex-noble, 
 80 years of age ; Erasme Charltes Auguste Lalande Magon, 
 his son ; Fran9oise Magon, his daughter, Saint-Pern's wife ; 
 Saint-Pern ; Fran9ois Joseph ComuUer, twenty-two years 
 of age, and his wife (the same age) ; AmeUe Laurence Celeste, 
 Saint-Pern's daughter — and others. Saint-Pern's son, aged 
 seventeen, was brought before the Tribimal. He protested, 
 told his age ; his sister and his mother confirmed his state- 
 ments. Then Dimias declared : " Citizen jurors, you see that 
 he is conspiring at this very moment, for he is more than 
 seventeen years old." ^ He was condemned ; but the fact 
 that he was seventeen years of age was allowed to remain in the 
 sentence. It was his father against whom the indictment 
 was directed. Here Fouquier's responsibiUty was directly 
 involved. The indictment read : " No. 5, Saint-Pern — 
 without Christian names or descriptions ; No. 6, Saint-Pern's 
 wife." * In the questions propounded to the jury, we read : 
 " No. 5, Jean Baptiste Marie Bertrand Saint-Pern, aged 
 seventeen, a native of Rennes, residing at Paris, an ex-noble, 
 without occupation." The Christian names and the rest 
 were added afterwards. The writ of indictment aimed at 
 the father, but with such lack of precision was it drawn that 
 it was the son who was condemned ! This was a criminal 
 irregularity. But there was more to come. The daughter, 
 
 » W. 421, No. 956, p. 125. 
 
 " Ducray's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 423, No. 958, 2nd part, p. 41. 
 
MADAME CORNULIER'S ESCAPE 91 
 
 young Saint-Pern's sister, was condemned on the indict- 
 ment made out against her father. Fouquier's responsibility 
 is still graver in this case. The indictment states that : 
 " Comuillier, son-in-law of Saint-Pern and his wife was 
 also an accompUce in the Magon conspiracy and one of 
 the assassins of the people on the day of August 10." 
 
 Madame Comulier was six months gone with child. Her 
 execution was postponed. Eight days later Robespierre's 
 fall took place. She was set at liberty and came to give 
 evidence against Fouquier. Her evidence will be given in 
 the second part of this study. The official report of the 
 sitting at which her family was condemned did not contain 
 the names of the jurors ; but she had them always in her 
 memory — Prieur, Chatelet, and Renaudin, who were after- 
 wards accused in their turn. And she furnished an irrefut- 
 able proof against them in the paper in which her husband 
 had sent her a lock of his hair before he died, and which was 
 nothing else than the list of the jurors of the ist of Thermi- 
 dor. Fouquier exclaimed : "I was not sitting " ; but the 
 writ of indictment was his, and Lohier, a juror, charged 
 along with him, said : " The writ of indictment has nothing 
 to do with me." 
 
 Together with the Magons, a genuine sans-culotte, a lawyer, 
 Citizen Duchesne, called Duquesne, " a member of the 
 Versailles society of sans-culottes," was impeached as a 
 conspirator, although his hairdresser, an influential man, 
 had certified that he was " the warmest friend of the 
 Revolution." But there is some mystery here, for he was 
 condemned to death. 
 
 It is to be noted also that, with the Magons, there was 
 
 Legris, the registrar's clerk, the sad accomplice of so many 
 
 irregularities, so many blank warrants, Legris, in whom 
 
 Fouquier saw " the conspirator Havr6's agent with Magon 
 
 la Balue." ^ 
 
 ' " Legris, calling himself the conspirator Havre's steward, was 
 his agent with Magon la Balue in order to procure for him the funds 
 necessary for the execution of his hberticidal plots. He procured for 
 him in the month of March, 1792, a sum of thirty -two thousand three 
 hundred and seventy-five francs. He is known to have left French 
 
92 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 He was arrested at his house at five o'clock in the morning 
 while in his bed, and brought at seven o'clock to the Con- 
 ciergerie. At nine o'clock his writ of indictment was served 
 on him ; at ten o'clock he was in the.dock before the Tribimal; 
 at two o'clock he was no longer ahve.^ This summary execu- 
 tion terrified the clerical staff. It found itself threatened. 
 Whose turn would be next ? Neither the registrar nor the 
 surviving clerks forgave the Public Prosecutor. We shall 
 see the terrible and precise accusations made by Paris and 
 Wolff at his trial. 
 
 On the 4th of Thermidor the last " batch " from the 
 Luxembourg appeared. In this " batch " were the Noailles 
 ladies, " deaf and worn with age." The President asked 
 them their names. They did not hear him. They were 
 brought nearer. At last they understood, gave their 
 names, and were sent back to the benches on which the 
 prisoners sat.^ They were condemned and guillotined. 
 Joseph Meynard-Mellet (17 years old) was taken for young de 
 MaiU6 and guillotined in his place. A mistake in the name. 
 Moreover, young de Maille himself was also guillotined on 
 the 6th of Thermidor. He had flung a rotten fish at the 
 head of the purveyor of food during a meal in the prison. 
 Who were the witnesses at this trial ? Always the same — 
 Boyaval, Benoit and Beausire. 
 
 This is how Benoit afterwards gave an account of his 
 evidence at the Tribunal on that day : 
 
 " On the 4th of Thermidor an usher came with a poUce- 
 
 man to the Carmehte Prison to take me again to the Tribimal. 
 
 territory to go to Mons and confer with Havr6 on the execution of his 
 plots. Finally, he is known, in the months of February, March, April 
 and May, 1792, to have been lavish in attributing the feudal and 
 counter-revolutionary titles of duke and duchess to those infamous 
 conspirators, and to have described himself, at the end of his letters, 
 as M. le due d'Havrd's steward ; the mask of patriotism which he has 
 assumed and the audacity he has shown in daring to claim the confi- 
 dence of a Tribunal which punishes conspirators without distinction 
 will only render more terrible the punishment that awaits him and 
 serve as a lesson to those who dare to imitate him." {Signed, A. Q. 
 Fouquier.) W. 423, No. 958, 2nd part. 
 
 ' Tavernier's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
 " Julien's evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
THE JURORS' RESPONSIBILITY 93 
 
 On this occasion I was not made to repeat what I knew 
 of Grammont's conspiracy ; I was only asked if I knew the 
 accused. I knew three of them. I said what I knew 
 of them, without hatred as without fear, and I urged the 
 Tribunal not to trust to my evidence alone, but to send 
 for their room-mates, who would bear witness to the same 
 truth. In regard to the others all I knew of them was that 
 they were stajdng at the Luxembourg. 
 
 " How were those prisoners examined who were not 
 charged with belonging to this new conspiracy ? They were 
 only asked if they had any acquaintance with a conspiracy 
 that had existed in the Luxembourg, and still existed at 
 that very moment, and if they had given information about 
 it. On a negative or affirmative answer, they passed on to 
 the next." 
 
 He adds (let us not forget that this was written after 
 Thermidor, when he was in prison and defending his life) : — 
 
 " What a manner of trying men ! How the jurors 
 ought to reproach themselves for the deaths of those whose 
 defence they did not listen to ! " 
 
 " I remember," Benoit also writes, " that on each occasion 
 when we went to give evidence, Boyaval spent a good deal 
 of time alone in the room of the Public Prosecutor. Every- 
 thing leads to the presumption that he was well acquainted 
 with all that was happening. As we were returning from 
 the Tribunal on the 4th of Thermidor, I asked Boyaval 
 about a room-mate of his who had also been mine. ' We 
 shall have him guillotined soon,' Boyaval answered. ' He 
 is for the first " batch " as weU as Fosses and his father-in- 
 law. I have been twice to the Committee of Public Safety 
 during the last few days, I was there yesterday, and it is I 
 who am entrusted with that. We are going to hurry them 
 up. We leave some like him as bait for the others and we 
 pick them all up in a lump.' " ^ 
 
 Benoit sought, in writing these lines, to clear himself of 
 responsibility ; but letters, such as the following, from him 
 to Fouquier-Tinville are to be found among the Archives : — 
 ' W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 146. 
 
94 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 " Citizen, I have a declaration to make to you which will 
 perhaps be to the pubUc advantage, for the hydra of aristo- 
 cracy must be overthrown at all points. Benoist. This 
 2ist of Messidor of the year II. of the Republic one and 
 indivisible." ^ 
 
 Benoit had passed the 23rd of Messidor at the Carmelites.* 
 He occupied in that prison a private room where he could 
 write. At the CarmeUtes he did the same work as at the 
 Luxembourg. The j anitor, Roblitre, a brute who tormented 
 the prisoners iii order to drive them to exasperation, received 
 an order to treat him with consideration. In order the 
 better to gain the trust of the prisoners and to incline 
 them to make confidence, Benoit told some that he came 
 from the Department of Eure-et-Loir, others that he came 
 from Calvados, or from the Eure, whilst as a matter of 
 fact he came straight from the Luxembourg prison. He had 
 liberty to go and come, to enter and to leave ; he had a seal 
 bearing the arms of the Nation. 
 
 Another police spy at the Carmelites was Citizen Manuel.^ 
 
 » This also is a letter from Benoist (there are others in the same 
 portfoUo) : — 
 
 " (To the Citizen Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 at Paris.) 
 
 " This 25th of Messidor of the Year II. of the Republic one and 
 indivisible. 
 
 " Citizen, 
 
 " I believe I ought to denounce to you aU the scoundrels who 
 seek to humiliate the Convention. An individual about whom I 
 gave information, on the 23rd of this month, to the janitor of the 
 house of detention of the Luxembourg has said in the presence of 
 two citizens whom I pointed out to him, that the Committees of 
 PubUc Safety and of General Security had caused scoundrels to 
 be shut up in the Luxembourg in order to rid themselves of honest 
 people so that they might govern alone and despotically. I only 
 write this letter from a fear that he may not have informed you or 
 the Committee of General Security. Greetiug and fraternity, Benoist. 
 I have many other things of which I ought to inform you, but at the 
 moment when I was writing to you I was transferred to the Carme- 
 lites and I have been ill since then, but to-day I hope to be better 
 and to inform you as well as the Committees of General Security and 
 of Public Safety of all that I know." W. 501, 1st dossier, p. 33. 
 
 ' That is the day following the third Luxembourg " batch." 
 This comparison of dates is significant. 
 
 = See the evidence of Gouget-Deslandres at Fouquier's trial. 
 
THE CARMELITE CONSPIRACY 95 
 
 Fouquier, at the trials, would say to him : " Come, 
 patriot Manuel, enlighten the Tribunal regarding the per- 
 fidious intentions of these scoundrels." Then Manuel, 
 looking at the accused on the benches, would disclose what 
 he had noticed in prison regarding the conduct of each of 
 them. Fouquier, according to Gouget-Deslandres, " rubbing 
 his hands in token of the fullest satisfaction." 
 
 In reahty, the so-called conspiracy in the Carmehte 
 Prison seems to have been absolutely imaginary. It owed 
 its origin only to a plan of escape attempted by five or six 
 prisoners who had found a rope in the belfry, and who 
 with the help of this rope, which they transformed into a 
 ladder, had tried to escape. Faro and Arbeltier, officers of 
 police, went to the Carmehtes on the 30th of Messidor. They 
 questioned the prisoners. Virolle, a surgeon, suspected of 
 being the principal "conspirator," denied the remarks that 
 were attributed to him in regard to Robespierre and the 
 Committee of Pubhc Safety. Another, Champagnier, was 
 also denounced. A hst of forty-nine conspirators was 
 drawn up. Virolle, the surgeon, in desperation, threw him- 
 self out of a window and was killed. He was replaced by 
 another. Bourgeois, an ex-lawyer. The forty-nine appeared 
 before the Tribunal on the 5th of Thermidor (July 23). 
 Three only were acquitted. Fouquier's indictment is drawn 
 up with visible carelessness and haste. He furnished no 
 proof. " Virol, a prisoner in the house of the Carmelites, 
 was the head of this new conspiracy, which coincided with 
 those in the houses of detention of Bic6tre and of the Luxem- 
 bourg. It appears also that the conspirators in the first two 
 houses had an understanding and a secret correspondence 
 with those in the Carmelites." ^ There are all classes in the 
 list of accused — ex-nobles, a merchant, a teacher, ex-priests, 
 an ironmonger, a cutler, a shopkeeper, a haberdasher, a 
 lawyer, an upholsterer, sailors, a domestic servant, a prince 
 — Louis Armand Constantin de Montbazon-Rohan, ex- 
 
 ' Except for Virolle and Champagnier, none of the accused were 
 examined at the inquiry. There is no report of an examination 
 among the papers. 
 
96 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Vice-Admiral. The official report of the hearing bears the 
 name of Fouqnier-Tinville as present at the pleadings.^ 
 We shall see from the evidence of witnesses at his trial that 
 he spoke several times against the accused. 
 
 In spite of the extreme credulity of the pubUc, the system 
 of Dillon conspiracies, Grammont conspiracies, etc., became 
 worn out. " One blushed," says R^al, " at returning to this 
 commonplace method." A conspiracy at Saint-Lazare was 
 imagined. The informers were Manini, an ItaUan " man of 
 letters," and Coquery, a locksmith. According to their 
 statements, " the prisoners were to escape and massacre the 
 members of the Committee of Public Safety." In order to 
 give a material proof of the plot, Coquery sawed through 
 the bar of a window. On the 23rd of Messidor, the day 
 following the third " batch " from the Luxembourg, Faro 
 was commissioned to hold an inquiry at Saint-Lazare. He 
 heard Manini, Coquery, Desisnards, Allain, Gauthier, Scelle, 
 and Sem6, the janitor. Seme was replaced by a safe man, 
 Verney, the former turnkey of the Luxembourg, who 
 boasted of " despatching the prisoners at Saint-Lazare as 
 he had done at the Luxembourg." To these hired plotters 
 were joined Jobert (the Belgian), P^pin D6grouhette, 
 Roger La Pointe, Lepfecheux, Robinet, and Horace Molin. 
 They made out lists, and acted as witnesses at the 
 sessions of the Tribunal. P^pin D^grouhette especially 
 distinguished 'himself. He had been a judge of the 
 Tribunal established on August 17, and had afterwards 
 been sent to prison for dishonestly using his position to 
 enrich himself. He would return drunk from the Tribunal, 
 and boast that he had been embraced by Fouquier, that he 
 was all-powerful at the Tribunal. He was hated and feared. 
 
 The indictment for the Saint-Lazare Conspiracy contains 
 eighty names, two of which are erased. It was dealt with 
 on the three occasions (the 6th, 7th and 8th of Thermidor). 
 In the " batch " of the 6th, there was included young 
 Fortune Charles Louis Fran9ois de Maill6 (17 years of age), 
 who had thrown at the purveyor's head a rotten fish that 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 429, No. 965, 2nd part, p. 95. 
 
A DEMONSTRATION OF SYMPATHY 97 
 
 had been served up to him. Young Mellet, who had been 
 mistaken for him, had, as we have seen, been guillotined on 
 the 4th of Thermidor. In this " batch " of twenty-five 
 prisoners, tried on the 6th of Thermidor, and all condemned, 
 we may also mention the Abbess of Montmartre, Marie 
 Louise de Laval Montmorency, aged seventy-two, and young 
 Isabelle Pigret de Meursin, aged twenty-one, paralysed in 
 her legs. They were condemned as accomphces in the 
 plan to escape. How could this woman of seventy-two 
 and this paralysed girl have escaped through the window 
 which Coquery had sawn ? 
 
 Mesdaraes de Meursin, Joly de Fleury, and Saint-Aignan 
 declared themselves pregnant. Madame de Saint-Aignan 
 alone was recognised to be so by the officers of health. She 
 was detained along with her husband. As for the others, " it 
 is impossible," wrote Coffinhal on the revised memorandum 
 of the sentence, " for men to communicate with women in 
 the house of detention of Lazare." But, all the same, they 
 were prosecuted and condemned for having conspired with 
 them! 
 
 On the day of the 7th of Thermidor there were twenty-six 
 accused, twenty-five of whom were condemned. Here also 
 there is an error of name and of person. Madame de Mayet * 
 was brought to trial instead of the Vicomtesse de Maill6. 
 None the less Madame de Mayet was condemned to death 
 and executed. As for the Vicomtesse de Maill6 (she was 
 thirty-nine), they returned two days later to look for her 
 in her prison. She was led to the Tribunal. She appeared 
 as No. 23, the last on the hst, at the session presided over 
 , by SceUier on the gth of Thermidor. As she entered the 
 hall of audience she saw the benches on which her young son 
 had sat three days before. She fainted. The people — if you 
 can caU " the people " those who enjoyed attending the great 
 sessions of the Tribunal — the people murmured and made 
 a display in her favour. The judges adjourned her case 
 to a later session. She was transferred to the Hospice de 
 I'Evgch^. The next day was the loth of Thermidor. She 
 » Louise Elisabeth Gabrielle Mathy-Simon, Mayet's widow. 
 G 
 
98 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 was saved. She will be heard giving evidence at Fouqmer- 
 Tinville's trial. 
 
 It was at the session of the 7th of Thermidor, at the head 
 of the hst, that Antoine Roucher, man of letters, and his 
 friend, Andre Chenier, the poet, made their appearance. 
 Everybody knows their story and how they went to their 
 execution. The verses written by Andre Chenier are also 
 known, those splendid, vehement verses of the Jeune 
 Captive, that immortal cry of rage uttered by an honest man, 
 powerless before his executioners : 
 
 " Mourir sans vider mon carquois, 
 Sans percer, sans fouler, sans petrir dans leur fange 
 
 Ces bourreaux barbouilleurs de lois, 
 Ces vers cadavereux de la France asservie, 
 
 Egorgee ! " 
 
 Let us also note on the list of the twenty-five condemned 
 on the 7th of Thermidor, Louis Sers, fifty years of age, a 
 captain of infantry, commandant of Chandemagor. Coffin- 
 hal, when revising the hst of accused in order to propound 
 the questions to the jury, wrote on the margin before the 
 name of Louis Sers, these words : " Captain of infantry, 
 commandant of Chambarnagot." 
 
 At this session only three witnesses, three pohce spies, 
 were heard — Manini, " an author-artist," Pepin Desgrouettes 
 whom we know, and who styled himself official defender, and 
 Coquery, the locksmith. 
 
 In the third " batch," that of the 8th, there were 
 twenty-five accused and twenty-three condemned, among 
 them the two Trudaines, Charles Louis, twenty-nine 
 years old, and Charles Michel, twenty-eight, and Jean 
 Simon LoizeroUes, condemned in mistake for his son, 
 Fran9ois.^ Here the error was not due to Fouquier. 
 Coffinhal, who presided at the session on that day, and the 
 registrar's clerk must alone bear the responsibility for the 
 additional words that exist on the page of questions pro- 
 
 • M. Louis Comber gives an entirely different account of the 
 LoizeroUes trial. Cf. Episodes et CuriositSs RSvolutionnaires, 
 p. 307.— Tr. 
 
A FATHER'S SACRIFICE 99 
 
 pounded to the jury, and which were employed for drawing 
 up the verdict. The first document in this bundle^ is a 
 general Ust of the prisoners at Saint-Lazare, numbered 
 in the Public Prosecutor's hand. We read there : " No. 
 18, Loizerole, the son." This is not a reference to 
 the father. On the indictment, signed by Fouquier, 
 there is, in the Ust of accused persons : " No. 5, Frangois- 
 Simon Loizerolles, the son, aged twenty-two, bom in Paris, 
 residing at No. 82, Rue Victor." This is not a reference to 
 the father. In the body of this indictment : " Loizerolles, 
 Primpin (one of the accused), and others, the priests Brognard 
 and Broquet, have not ceased since the Revolution from 
 displaying the most pronounced aversion and hatred for the 
 sovereignty of the people and for equality." That is all. 
 Yet at the moment the questions were propounded to the 
 jury, Cofi&nhal's hand had corrected and written Jean 
 instead of Francois, father instead of son, sixty-one years 
 instead of twenty-two. Coflftnhal's hand had also added the 
 words " a former heutenant of the bailiwick of the Arsenal, 
 an ex-noble," which apply to the father. The official report 
 of the session and of the verdict^ reproduce the form adopted 
 and imposed by Coffinhal. 
 
 The father sacrificed himself for his son without protest, 
 and he stoically allowed himself to be guillotined in his place. 
 Fouquier, when brought to trial after the 9th of Thermidor, 
 defended himself against the charge of having committed 
 this criminal error by saying : " After the odious law of the 
 22nd of Prairial, there was no longer any examination in 
 order to procure the Christian names and descriptions of 
 the prisoners brought before the Tribunal ; it was necessary 
 to send to the different houses of detention where they were, 
 and the man who went to Lazare to take the Christian 
 names, the age, and the description of Loizerolles, the father, 
 did not take care to ask if there were several Loizerolles, and 
 he took the Christian names and description of the son, who 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 431, No. 968. 
 
 " They are in the handwriting of Jacques Derbez, registrar's clerk. 
 W. 431, No. 968. 
 
100 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 presented himself instead of the father, although his note 
 bears the name of Loizerolles, the father ; those names, 
 descriptions, and age were filled in by the secretary of -the 
 prosecutor's office just as they were brought back." 
 
 Fouquier blunders here. For on the general list of the 
 Saint-Lazare prisoners selected to be sent to the Tribunal, 
 can stili be read, under No. i8, the name of Loizerolles, the 
 son, and nowhere is there a reference to that of the father. 
 But where Fouquier is right is when he incriminates Coffinhal 
 and the registrar's clerk : " This omission and this crime, 
 if they really exist, are due to President Coffinhal and to 
 the registrar's clerk who was responsible for the session, 
 and not to the Public Prosecutor's deputy, who, no more 
 than the latter, ever signed the minutes of the verdicts, 
 and could in no way be responsible for them." We shall 
 hear the evidence of Loizerolles, the son, at Fouquier's, 
 trial. 
 
 In conclusion, let us recall that on the 7th of Therraidor 
 (July 25), at six o'clock in the evening, at the Oiseaux, a 
 tranquil prison where the prisoners paid very highly for their 
 board, and where it seems that until then there was a desire 
 to forget them, a noise was heard in the street. An immense 
 chariot, drawn by four horses, had stopped before the door. 
 Four gendarmes and an usher of the Revolutionary Tribimal 
 entered the prison. The janitor had to ring the bell. 
 At this siunmons, the prisoners assembled in the courtyard.* 
 The roll was called. Eleven prisoners were chosen to 
 enter the chariot. Among them were the Princesse de 
 Chimay, the Comtesses de Narbonne-Pelet and Ra3anond- 
 Narbonne, the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre (74 years old), 
 the Marquis de Crussol d'Amboise, and M. Simeon de Saint- 
 Simon, Bishop of Agde (70 years old). When these eleven 
 had entered, the chariot started off and went to Port- 
 Libre and to Plessis. It was at Plessis that it " loaded " 
 Therese-Frangoise de Stainville, Princesse de Grimaldi- 
 Monaco (26 years old), she whom Fouquier called " the 
 woman Monaco," in a letter of the same date addressed to the 
 * MSmoires sur les Prisons, II., p. 189. "^"SI-CjO 
 
MISTAKES IN IDENTITY loi 
 
 members of the Popular Commission, claiming from them 
 documents against a certain number of persons such as 
 " Crussol d'Amboise, Clermont-Tonnerre, the woman Chimay, 
 Saint-Simon, the woman Qu6rrohen, the woman Monaco," 
 etc., for he had not received the said documents, and " those 
 persons wiU be brought to trial to-morrow."* 
 
 The Princesse de Monaco declared herself pregnant. On 
 the following day she withdrew her statement. She had 
 only wanted to gain time to write to her children and to send 
 them her hair. The decision which declared her not preg- 
 nant and which ordered her execution is dated the gth of 
 Thermidor.^ She must have formed part of the last cart- 
 load. 
 
 To sum up : the PubUc Prosecutor, overworked and broken 
 down, was no longer able to draw up his writs of indict- 
 ment himself. He had them drawn up by his secretaries. 
 Those documents no longer contained even the semblance 
 of a proof. Entire famiUes were sent to the guillotine. The 
 motive ? They had conspired. Where ? When ? How ? 
 There was no answer. 
 
 Each evening Fouquier-TinviUe arranged that " batches " 
 of accused persons should be put on trial next day. Quanti- 
 ties oi documents were lacking. He claimed them. He 
 wanted them at once. But time pressed, and he had re- 
 ceived an order to draw up the case for the prosecution for 
 the next day. Mistakes as to persons were made, criminal, 
 irreparable mistakes, since there was but one penalty — the 
 guillotine. So-and-so was charged in mistake for so-and-so, 
 condenmed in mistake for so-and-so, guillotined for so-and- 
 so. All this is easy to verify to-day. The documents exist 
 among the Archives. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville was in close touch with those hirelings, 
 the police spies of the prisons. These wretches gave 
 evidence at the pleadings, if one can call pleadings sessions 
 of some hours at which sixty prisoners are tried in an after- 
 noon and condemned to death. Moreover, at some of the 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, F' 4, 436, liasse T., p. 9. 
 • W., 432, dossier 971, 2nd part, p. 47. 
 
102 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 sessions, only the police spies appeared as witnesses. Take 
 for example the session of the 19th of Messidor (the first 
 " batch " from the Luxembourg) when there were sixty 
 accused, aU of whom were condemned, and only five 
 witnesses, of whom four were spies, and the fifth a turnkey, 
 Lesenne, who, not having the heart to he, said he had not 
 known of a conspiracy in the prison. Fouquier had him 
 £|,rrested before the session ended. Take another example 
 — the second " batch " from Saint-Lazare,on the 7th of 
 Thermidor. There were three witnesses, three spies, 
 Manini, Pepin Desgrouettes and Coquery. 
 
 On the official reports of the sessions, the jurors were no 
 longer even designated by their names. Did they fear 
 future responsibihty if the form of government were to 
 change ? Was there not time enough, or did no one take 
 the trouble to inscribe their names ? The matter remains 
 a mystery. 
 
 That Fouquier, devoted as he was to his task, hardened as 
 he may have become, should feel himself exhausted ; that 
 he should recognise that he and his staff were worn out 
 beyond the limits of human strength ; that he no longer 
 saw clearly in that atmosphere of fever and blood in which he 
 hved ; that he declared himself overwhelmed ; that he said 
 to the attendants in the refreshment-room of the Tribunal, 
 the Morisans, in a moment of communicativeness and dis- 
 gust : "I would rather dig the ground ! " — all this is 
 reasonable and human. None the less, he remained at 
 his post and was anxious to remain at it. 
 
 Did he reflect, did he think, did he meditate on what had 
 been accomplished in sixteen months ? AU that blood ! 
 All that red frenzy ! All those heads that " fell " ! All 
 those human existences cut off ! Those young women ! 
 Those yoimg girls ! Those old men ! Those young men ! 
 So many human hves for an imaginary, or at least a doubt- 
 ful plot ! 
 
 But that he reprobated his task, that he understood that 
 too much was too much, and that the hour was near when he 
 must give account — for everything has to be paid for, and 
 
THE LAST ACT 103 
 
 violence attracts violence — this does not appear. Nothing 
 in his attitude as a tenacious official, exact and firm at hi? 
 post, indicates this. 
 
 The poUtical drama is at its last act. We have reached 
 the 9th of Thermidor. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE AND THE NINTH OF THERMIDOR 
 
 ON the night of the 9th of Thermidor, Fouquier- 
 TinviUe was late in retiurning home to the Palace 
 of Justice. 
 He had been to deHver to the Committees of 
 Public Safety and of General Security the two hsts it was 
 his duty to furnish to them ; one containing the names 
 of prisoners tried during the past ten days ; the other those 
 of the " conspirators " to be brought before the Tribunal 
 during the following ten days.^ 
 
 At ten o'clock on the morning of the gth of Thermidor, he 
 had taken his place at the Tribunal in the Hall of EquaUty. 
 Dumas presided over the session, assisted by Antoine Marie 
 Maire, Gabriel Deh^ge, and Jean Baptiste Henry Antoine 
 F61ix as judges. 
 
 The court was open to the pubhc. Nine jurors entered, 
 whose names on this day were given in the official report of 
 the session — Specht, Magnien, Potherat, Masson, Devize, 
 Buttin,^ Gauthier, Fenaux, and Laurent. 
 
 The accused were led to the bar. There were twenty-five. 
 Four old men of from seventy to seventy-five, beside young 
 men, and others in the prime of life, and there were three 
 women. A lamentable spectacle presented itself before the 
 
 1 It was by a resolution of the Committee of Public Safety that 
 Fouquier had to hand in these lists. He continued to furnish them 
 up to and inclusive of the 9th of Thermidor. Buchez and Roux, 
 XXXIV., p. 239. 
 
 ' Buttin is mentioned on this particular day in the two official 
 reports of the sessions held at the same time, one in the Hall of Equal- 
 ity, the other in that of Liberty. This demonstrates once again the 
 haste and carelessness with which the judicial documents were com- 
 piled during Messidor and at the beginning of Thermidor in the 
 year II. 
 
 104 
 
A PITILESS TRIBUNAL 105 
 
 public, a public, howeVer, surfeited by these exhibitions, 
 which had now lasted for sixteen months. One of the 
 accused, an old man, deaf, blind, and in his second child- 
 hood, was carried in by the gendarmes and placed on the 
 prisoners' bench. On the previous day he had been trans- 
 ferred from the Luxembourg to the Conciergerie. Three 
 gendarmes and Budelot, the coachman of the Tribunal, 
 helped him down from the carriage. The state he was in 
 when he arrived was such that the whole of his clothing had 
 to be changed. Too stupefied to know where he was, his 
 eyes deprived of hght, his ears not hearing the questions, 
 and his palsied tongue incapable of articulating any 
 intelligible sound, he was unaware of the terrible Tribunal. 
 He was the ex-Accountant-General, M. Durand Puy deVerine. 
 His wife appeared with him, she also was charged, then her 
 name erased, and finally re-inserted. 
 
 The Public Prosecutor's witnesses were introduced. To 
 twenty-five prisoners there were only five witnesses,^ and even 
 those five witnesses had only to do with three of the accused. 
 
 Dximas had the jurors sworn. These then took their 
 seats in the court, facing the accused and the witnesses. 
 The President told the accused that they could be seated, and 
 then questioned them on their names, ages, professions, resi- 
 dences, and places of birth. The registrar read the writ 
 of indictment. Drawn up, on the previous evening, under 
 Fauquier's supervision, this writ at first contained fifteen 
 names. But as it was impossible for him, in his rapid task, 
 to identify twelve of those names, the Public Prosecutor had 
 crossed out the twelve following — those of a stonemason, 
 an innkeeper, a seller of lemonade, three soldiers, a major 
 and his wife, those of three other persons, and, lastly, that of a 
 woman whose identity was not sufficiently established by two 
 masculine Christian names, doubtless those of her husband.* 
 Then making out a new hst, Fouquier rapidly drew up a writ 
 of indictment against twenty-one other prisoners. But 
 here again a difficulty arose. One of the accused, Louis 
 
 » W. 433, dossier 973. 
 
 ' Those twelve persons were saved by the gth of Thermidor. 
 
io6 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Clair Maurin, whose place of birth was tinknown, was affirmed 
 to be dead. Fouqmer wrote on the margin condemned. 
 Dimias wrote dead. As a matter of fact, Louis Clair Maurin, 
 who had been confused with Jean Dominique Maurin, guillo- 
 tined on the 19th of Messidor, had himself been guillotined 
 on the 22nd. Another, Jean Baptiste Lafond, 37 years of 
 age, an ex-priest, whose place of birth was also unknown, 
 and whomFouquier has described as " an intriguing ex-canon, 
 a frequenter of gambling dens, a gambler in the funds," 
 could not be found. He was mentioned under the heading 
 of absent. Was it in order to replace these two who were 
 missing that the Public Prosecutor " reinserted " on his Ust 
 Perronnet BriUon-Busse and Jeremie Saint-Hilaire, " at first 
 omitted as having been mistaken for others " ? Here 
 they were at the session. Fouquier's list is complete — 
 there are twenty-five accused in all.^ 
 
 The system of amalgams was working better than ever. At 
 this session, in the HaU of Equahty, a lawyer and former 
 agent of Conde's, was arraigned with an ex-Treasurer of 
 France ; an ex-Mayor with a captain of cavalry of Conde's 
 regiment ; an architect with an ex-justice of the peace. 
 Who were the others ? An ex-noble, an ex-cashier of a glass 
 factory, a teacher of astronomy bom at Oppenheim in the 
 Palatinate, an upholsterer of the Rue Mouffetard, an iron- 
 monger of the Rue Saint-Martin ; the divorced wife of a 
 commissary, an ex-legislator and an ex-noble, a merchant 
 bom at ViUeneuvei-d'Agen ; two poor chimney-sweepers, 
 whom the indictment described as ex-nobles, and who actually 
 were the Loisons, husband and wife, managers of the marion- 
 ette theatre of the Champs-Elysees ; a private in the 17th 
 battahon of infantry ; a captain of a mounted regiment ; 
 a clerk in the administration of pubhc lands ; an upholsterer 
 to " Capet's aimts " ; a bailiff of the Haute-Marne ; finally, 
 Pierre Durand Puy de Verine, ex-Acco\mtant-General, and 
 his wife, Marie Marguerite Barcos, a sad and dismal couple 
 already marked with the immobiUty of death. 
 
 All those accused persons are mentioned by Fouquier- 
 ' W. 433, dossier 973. 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE NINTH 01 
 
THERMIDOR, IN THE YEAR II. 
 
TRUMPED-UP CHARGES 107 
 
 Tinville as " suspected of having engaged in operations 
 tending to excite trouble, of having passed and signed 
 resolutions tending to favour and propagate the system of 
 federalism and to impede the circulation of provisions, of 
 having held communication and correspondence with the 
 internal and external enemies of the Republic, of having 
 caused help in money to be sent to them in order to facihtate 
 their invasion of French territory." 
 
 Care must be taken not to be deceived by the formulae dear 
 to Fouquier, Dtimas, and Coffinhal. In reality, the first three 
 prisoners, Jean Antoine Lhuillier, S6bastien Alaroze La- 
 breime, and Gabriel Frangois Sall6, were the only ones 
 against whom there exist the elements of proof in the port- 
 folios of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Vainly were proofs 
 sought against the others. And what proofs ! The facts 
 are that on August 4, 1793, the mmiicipal officers of the 
 seven municipalities forming the canton of Chevagne, in the 
 district of Moulins, in the Department of the AUier, assem- 
 bled at Chevagne, were confronted by a menacing dearth of 
 provisions, and had proposed to have recourse to mutual 
 union and assistance in all that concerned the means of 
 subsistence. They proposed to aid the adjoining districts 
 with their surplus of com, if there were any. They showed 
 themselves, besides, determined to defend the necessary and 
 indispensable products of their own district by aU legal means. 
 Could that be made out as a crime ? Very prudent and wise 
 measures were taken with a view to realise this aspiration. 
 But on August 13, the executive council of the Department 
 of the Allier had decreed that this deliberation bore aU the 
 marks of illegality and anarchy, that it " tended to give the 
 idea of federalism," and was " an attempt against unity 
 and indivisibility " and against " the distribution of pro- 
 visions." Out of fifteen who had signed the proposal, four 
 had been arrested — Lhuillier, Labrenne, Sall^ and Durand, 
 the President. Then the President had been set free. The 
 three others were to be tried in the revolutionary style. On 
 the 30th of Floreal they had appeared before the director of 
 the jury d' accusation of the tribunal of the district of Moulins. 
 
io8 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 They had to answer this question : " What had been their 
 views and for what motive had they proposed on August 4, 
 1793, in the canton of Chevagne, to prevent the distribution 
 of grain necessary for the existence of their fellow-citizens 
 who ought to be as dear to them as themselves, and to whom 
 they owed, according to natural law and humanity, every 
 assistance even to the exhaustion of the product of their 
 harvests which the Supreme Being had preserved and des- 
 tined for aU their fellow-citizens as well as for themselves. 
 The territory of France belongs to the whole Repubhc. 
 Consequently all individuals inhabiting it have equal rights. 
 If they were imbued with these truths, they would not have 
 fallen into the illegaUty of anarchy that could not but give 
 the idea of federaUsm." On the 6th of Messidor of the 
 year II., a judgment of the criminal tribunal of the Allier 
 ordered all the documents in the case to be sent to Fouquier- 
 Tinville. He was to " consider in his wisdom whether he 
 ought to cause those accused to be brought before the 
 Revolutionary Tribimal."^ The PubUc Prosecutor of Mou- 
 lins having asked his colleague of Paris if there was ground 
 for issuing a warrant only against the three accused persons 
 indicated as ring-leaders, or if it were necessary to include the 
 fifteen signatories to the measure, Fouquier-Tinville had 
 answered by the following note : " Warrant against the 
 three chiefs only." That was why Jean Antoine LhuiUier, 
 
 1 " While uncertain as to the line you wiU take," the Public Prose- 
 cutor of the Allier wrote to Fouquier, on the 9th, " I think I am antici- 
 pating your wishes in telling you that the general opinion of the 
 patriots of the district is that almost all the signatories of this pro- 
 posal are good ignorant citizens, as are our rural inhabitants, whose 
 signatures have been tricked from them, that they did not know 
 they were being made to commit an act of liberticide, and, on the 
 contrary, believed they were only labouring for the public good 
 which they have not ceased to love. It is thought also that the 
 author of this whole business is Lhuillier, a former agent of the traitor 
 Conde, and that Labresne and Sall6, formerly privileged persons, had 
 a great deal to do with it." It is thought I Everybody did not 
 think thus. For one can see among the papers a certificate and a 
 fervent petition from the citizens of the commune of Chezy in favour 
 ■of Alaroze Labresne, "a magistrate necessary to their commune." 
 signed by " the small number of those who can write." , 
 
THE ARREST OF THE PRESIDENT 109 
 
 Sebastian Alaroze Labrenne, and Gabriel Franfois Salle 
 appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal on this 9th of 
 Thermidor, in the Hall of EquaUty. 
 
 As for the others, nothing in the documents indicates 
 what really was their crime. There is no material evidence. 
 
 The reading of the writ of indictment had ended. The 
 voice of Pesme, the registrar, ceased. In the court five 
 individuals got up and went out. These were the witnesses 
 brought forward by the Pubhc Prosecutor and summoned 
 at his request. It was about noon. The weather was heavy 
 and thunder-laden. Through the open windows the great 
 hum of Paris was heard. A name rang out, called by the 
 usher. It was that of the first witness, Dupont, a member of 
 the revolutionary committee of the Beaurepaire Section. 
 He knew Loison, the director of the theatre of marionettes. 
 He made his declaration. One after another there entered 
 and gave evidence the spy Jobert (the Belgian) ; an engraver 
 who knew the prisoner Lavoisien ; Lambert, a trader ; 
 Descaffe, without profession, and Aubert, an innkeeper, 
 who knew the prisoner Marche, an usher. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville then began to speak, and expounded his 
 writ of indictment. He described the means by which he 
 would prove his case. No defender answered him, the 
 defence having been suppressed by the law of Prairial. 
 
 Then the jury were invited to retire to their room to 
 dehberate. The President caused the prisoners to with- 
 draw. The Tribunal remained in session. 
 
 Suddenly there was a thunderbolt. The President of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal had just been arrested whilst sitting. 
 An order of the Committee of Public Safety ! He was led 
 away. Citizen Maire, one of his assessors, replaced him, and 
 the session went on amid general amazement.^ 
 
 ' The judgment on Lhuillier and others, to the number of 25, 
 condemned to death, ends thus : — 
 
 " Given and pronounced on the gth of Thermidor of the second 
 year of the Republic, at the public session at which sat Ren6 Fran9ois 
 Dumas, President, Antoine Marie Maire, Gabriel Delidge, and Jean- 
 Baptiste Henry Antoine F61ix, judges, who have signed this present 
 judgment with the registrar's clerk, and at the moment of the 
 
no THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Nothing in Fouquier-TinviUe's attitude betrayed emotion 
 or anxiety. He was master of himself. Did he suspect 
 the causes of the brutal arrest of the President ? Did he 
 know of the violent speech deUvered by Dumas on the 
 previous day at the Jacobin Society during the tumultuous 
 session when Robespierre defined the pohtical situation in 
 these menacing terms : " It is easy to see that factious per- 
 sons are afraid of being unmasked in the people's presence ; 
 moreover, I thank them for having distinguished themselves 
 in so pronounced a manner, and for having made me better 
 acquainted with my enemies and those of our country " ? 
 
 Did Fouquier know that Dumas, mounting the tribune, 
 had denounced the conspiracy as by no means doubtful, 
 and the Government as counter-revolutionary ? Did he 
 know that, addressing those who, at the beginning of the 
 session, had quarrelled with Robespierre about the right to 
 speak, Dumas exclaimed : " It is strange that men who 
 for several months have kept silence, ask to be allowed to 
 speak to-day, doubtless to oppose the expression of the 
 crushing truths that Robespierre has just made. It is easy 
 to recognise in them the heirs of Hebert and Danton. I 
 prophesy to them that they wiU also inherit the fate of those 
 conspirators."^ 
 
 Towards half-past one, a report was current at the 
 Tribunal that the Faubourg Saint-Ant oine was in an uproar, 
 
 delivery of the jury's verdict, the President having retired. Citizen 
 Maire has performed his duties as President. (Signed) Maire, 
 DeliSge, F6Hx, Pesme." (W. 433, No. 973.) On the tnargui of the 
 third page of this judgment (on the back) Pesme, the registrar's clerk, 
 has written, " Note. This judgment was given on the day of the 
 arrest of the traitor Dumas, and it was impossible to procure the 
 names of some of the birthplaces and residences. — ^M. P." " Dumas 
 was arrested on his seat at noon." Robert Wolff's evidence at 
 Fouquier-Tinville's trial. W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 10. 
 
 ' Dumas when arrested was transported to and imprisoned in 
 Sainte-P61agie, at 4 o'clock. " Several individuals came to take him 
 away. The weakness of the janitor is the reason that he got out. 
 Immediately on learning this fact, we (the Committee of General 
 Security) had the janitor of Sainte-P61agie arrested." (VouUand at 
 the Convention. Session of the 13th of Fructidor, year II. See the 
 Moniteur.) 
 
THE VERDICT iii 
 
 that grave trouble was to be feared, that drums were beating 
 to arms.^ 
 
 The session continued, or rather the sessions. For in the 
 Hall of Liberty, at the same hour, twenty-three prisoners 
 were on trial. Scellier presided ; Grebeauval, Fouquier's 
 deputy, occupied the seat of the Public Prosecutor. Fou- 
 quier had revised and signed the indictment on the previous 
 day, the 8th of Thermidor. 
 
 But the jurors in the HaU of Equality caused Maire to be 
 informed that they were ready to give their verdict. They 
 entered and each resumed his place. One after another the 
 President called on them, and asked them to give their 
 " vote " on each of the questions propounded to them, and in 
 the order in which they appeared in the memorandum they 
 held in their hands. It was a memorandum drawn up by 
 Dumas before the trial, that morning or on the previous 
 evening, the terrible brevity and the embarrassing formula 
 of which deserve to be recorded. It is to those enigmatic 
 and evil questions that men incapable of judging in cold 
 blood or possessing a knowledge of the case were going to give 
 answer. From the way in which Dumas made out this 
 hst of questions they were certain to be completely bewil- 
 dered. Yet, on their " yes " the lives of twenty-five accused 
 persons depended. ^ 
 
 ' W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 10. 
 
 ^ Here are some of the questions propounded, as Dumas made out 
 the minute : — 
 
 " Are they convicted of having declared themselves enemies of 
 the people, that is to say : — 
 
 I, Charpentier ; 2, Valot ; 3, Durand (sic) ; 4, the woman Durand 
 (sic) ; 5, Larcher (sic) ; 6, Brillon Busse ; 7, Saiat-Hilaire ; 8, 
 Vrigny ; by keeping up a correspondence with the internal enemies 
 of the State, tending to favour the invasion of French territory and 
 to destroy public liberty. 9, Soumesson ; 10, Lavoisien ; 11, Gillet; 
 12, Loison ; 13, the woman Loison ; 14, Legay ; 15, Duval ; 16, 
 Mongelchot ; 17, Guerin ; 18, Foicier ; 19, Vatrin ; 20, Coqueau ; 
 by joining the coalition of conspirators leagued against the people, 
 seeking to corrupt the public mind, to repress patriotism, employing 
 trickery, menace, and violence to favour the tyranny of Capet, the 
 triumph of the factions, and the destruction of liberty. 21, the woman 
 Coriolis, by instigating the humiliation and dissolution of the national 
 representation. 22, LhuDlier ; 23, Alarose La Brenne ; 24, Sall6. 
 
112 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 The jury's declaration was afi&nnative in regard to all the 
 prisoners except the woman Coriolis, who was acquitted. 
 The other twenty-four were condemned to death in con- 
 formity with the provisions of Articles IV., V. and VI. of the 
 law of Prairial. Their property was declared confiscated 
 to the RepubUc to be used for the subsistence of widows and 
 orphans, " if they have no other resources." 
 
 The session ended. In the courtyard of the Conciergerie 
 was already heard the rumbling of the carts which Fouquier 
 caused to be prepared to carry away the condemned. There 
 were six of them, and none too many ; for the other session, 
 that of the Hall of Liberty, had decided well also. Twenty- 
 one had been condemned, and there was also the Princesse 
 de Monaco, whose death-warrant Dumas had signed that 
 morning in the council chamber.^ Total : forty-six heads 
 doomed to fall before night at the Barrier of Vincennes. 
 
 It was half-past two o'clock. At the Convention, Maxi- 
 mihen Robespierre had just flung at his opponents, who were 
 shouting, " Long hve the Republic ! " the bitter retort, 
 " The RepubUc ! It is already ruined, for the brigands are 
 triumphant." 
 
 Three days before, on the 6th of Thermidor, Fouquier had 
 dined at the house of Citizen La Jariette, in the Rue Meslay, 
 with Deputies Goupilleau de Fontenay, Cochon de Lapparent, 
 Morisson, and some members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 SceUier, Coifinhal, and Grebeauval. A friend of La Jariette, 
 Jean Baptiste Vergnhes, a man comfortably off, Hving on his 
 income, was at the dinner. Coffinhal, his neighbour in the 
 He Saint-Louis,^ had said to him : " You ought to invite 
 to your house to-morrow the members of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal who are here this evening." Vergnhes had said 
 " yes," and given the invitation. Fouquier, sajdng he had 
 
 by, on August 4, 1793, instigating the formation of illegal assemblies 
 and passing resolutions tending to prevent the distribution of pro- 
 visions and to excite civil war by famine. 25, Marech6, by instigating 
 through his speeches and proceedings the dissolution of the national 
 representation and the re-establishment of tyranny. 
 
 '■ Archives Nationales, W. 432, No. 971, 2nd part, p. 47. 
 
 * Coffinhal lived in the Rue Le Regrattier. 
 
A TRAGIC MOMENT 113 
 
 engagements on the 7th and 8th, proposed the gth, which 
 was adopted. 
 
 They had then arranged to meet on that day between 
 three and four o'clock, at the house of Vergnhes, at the 
 western end of the He Saint-Louis (He de la Fraternite) 
 at No. I, Quai EgaUt6, formerly Quai Bourbon.^ 
 
 Accompanied by Coffinhal, the Vice-President, and the 
 juror Desboisseaux, a member of the General Council of 
 the Commune of Paris, Fouquier-TinviUe was about to leave 
 the Palace of Justice to keep this invitation when one of the 
 executioner's assistants approached him. He informed the 
 Public Prosecutor that trouble had broken out in the Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Antoine through which the carts must pass 
 on their way to the Barrier of Vincennes. The same observa- 
 tion was made to him by two employees in the ushers' 
 of&ce, Andre Contat and Etienne Simonnet. They told him 
 that " things were going to happen in Paris f that it would be 
 prudent not to go on with the executions, that it might 
 endanger the guard, etc." Fouquier stopped and listened to 
 them. For a moment he paused to think. A tragic moment, 
 during which the fate of forty-six human beings was to be 
 decided ! For a moment he pondered, and turning to the 
 executioner's assistant said : " The course of justice must 
 not be stopped. Proceed ! " 
 
 A httle farther on he met Adnet, the captain of gendarmes, 
 who told him that Hanriot had given orders to arrest Botot- 
 Dumesnil, the commander of the gendarmes attached to 
 the Tribunals. Ought the carts to start ? This news should 
 have been enough to give pause to Fouquier. But nothing 
 could do that. " I cannot stop the course of justice," he 
 answered Captain Adnet. 
 
 The carts started, canying the imfortunate persons, who 
 twenty-four hours later would have been saved ; carrying 
 the paralytic Durand Puy de Verine and his wife, the 
 Loison couple, the charming and heroic Princesse de Monaco. 
 The carts started, and Fouquier departed to sup with 
 Vergnhes. 
 
 » W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46. « W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58. 
 
 H 
 
114 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 During the meal there was no discussion of the events 
 of the day, neither of the arrest of Dumas, which, however, 
 " had struck the guests who were members of the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal, and Fouquier^ in particular, with con- 
 sternation," nor the tragic facts of which at that very hour 
 the Convention was the scene. Fouquier ate httle.^ His 
 host, " who saw him only for the second time," asked himself 
 whether this consternation was " the result of astonishment 
 or of comphcity."* 
 
 From the windows of the house in which Vergnhes lived 
 it was easy to perceive what was taking place in the Com- 
 munal House. About five o'clock, at the moment when 
 this melancholy repast was ending, loud noises and a pro- 
 longed clamour were heard, and some one cried : 
 
 " Look at the crowd in the square. They are workmen. 
 It might be a riot." 
 
 Vergnhes's servant came to say that they were workmen 
 protesting against the law of the maximum. The noise 
 increased. A quarter of an hour afterwards this servant, 
 who had been out for news, returned to say that Robespierre 
 and his friends had been arrested, and that the crowd was 
 rushing towards the Commime. Coffinhal, a member of the 
 General Council, rose, and, sending for his sash, said : "I 
 am going there ! " " My post is in my office where I might 
 receive orders at any minute," said Fouquier. " I am going 
 there. ' ' Vergnhes, ' ' a little agitated by these disturbances, ' ' 
 Hstened to the advice of one of the guests, Tampon, a judge 
 of the Tribunal of the Third Arrondissement, and went to 
 his Section, and Tampon started for his.* 
 
 Fouquier, accordingly, returned straight home. Pro- 
 ceeding along the Quai aux Ormes, he encounted Oudart, 
 the President of the Criminal Tribunal.* They walked to- 
 gether to the Palace. Beside them, quite close, on the Place 
 
 ' W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46. 
 ' Ibid. 
 > Ibid. 
 
 * W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64. 
 
 ' The Criminal Tribunal tried crimes and offences against the 
 common law. 
 
"I REMAIN AT MY POST" 115 
 
 de la Maison Commune, the riot raged. They did not stop. 
 They edged past the riot, which ignored them. They were in 
 a hurry to get back, Fouquier above all. 
 
 At the Palace of Justice, in this company of Terrorist 
 officials, now terrorised, everybody was trembling for himself. 
 And here came the " chief." Usually violent and morose, 
 he was this evening silent, dejected, circumspect. He was 
 desirous of knowing what was going to happen. He sent out 
 for news. 
 
 He called for Adnet, the police officer, who gave him an 
 account of the different events of the day from the time of 
 his departure. Commander Botot-Dumesnil had been 
 arrested at four o'clock, in the midst of his troop, by order 
 of Hanriot, Lescot-Fleuriot, and Payan.^ 
 
 Fouquier said : "Iremainatmy post."^ At six o'clock in 
 the evening he was with his wife,* doubtless to reassure her, 
 whilst in his own mind there sprang up and increased an 
 anxiety that he did not wish to show. 
 
 At eight o'clock, Dubesne, the lieutenant of gendarmes, 
 called to give him an account of his mission. The execution 
 of the condemned had taken place " with the usual calm." 
 Fouquier at this hour was at home, " in his domicile," with 
 SceUier, the Vice-President of the Tribunal, and Grebeauval, 
 one of his deputies.* He left his apartments, and went to 
 the place where he usually spent his evenings before going 
 to the Committee, to the refreshment-room of the Tribunal, 
 where he was to remain throughout this long evening of the 
 9th of Thermidor. There he was to be seen and heard. 
 Witnesses were afterwards able to say how correct was his 
 attitude, how " pure " his conduct, how irreproachable his 
 utterances. The " scoundrel " Dumas, his enemy, was doubt- 
 less going to pay with his head for his audacity in having con- 
 spired against the Convention. He, Fouquier, the executant 
 of the law, the vigilant and indefatigable purveyor of the 
 guillotine, remained at his post, and, unshaken, awaited the 
 orders of the Convention and the Committees. 
 
 A melancholy evening, this spent with the Morisans, the 
 
 ' W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46, ' Ibid. ' Ibid. ' Ibid. 
 
Ii6 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 attendants in the refreshment-room of the Tribunal. The 
 toscin was heard sounding. An enormous clamour, like gusts 
 of wind, rose through the night, and died away against the 
 walls of the Palace of Justice. Groups formed in the 
 sweltering streets, and, in the depths of the gaols, prisoners, 
 who had resigned themselves to an early execution, were 
 astounded and attentive. 
 
 The man who, for sixteen months, had appeared as the all- 
 powerful exterminator, as the axe and rods suspended over 
 hvunan existence, this man was to the Morisans a customer, 
 regular in his habits, a good and homely fellow. Several 
 times they heard Fouquier complain that his trade was a 
 cruel one, that he would prefer "to dig the ground. ' ' Several 
 times they heard him ask : " Were there many people at 
 the executions ? " and when they answered, " Yes," he 
 would say : " It is frightful ! What a wretched trade ! " 
 And he would shrug his shoulders.^ Several times, after 
 the 22nd of Prairial, they had heard him say : " The times 
 are very cruel ; it cannot last." They often heard him 
 complain of Dumas, his rival. 
 
 The heat was stifling. About nine o'clock Fouquier 
 descended to the refreshment-room and ordered a bottle of 
 beer. He had just learned that Botot-Dumesnil had been 
 set at hberty by the Committee of General Security. He 
 sent for him, desirous of knowing what was happening. 
 Botot-Dumesnil despatched orderlies for news. Fouquier 
 also sent out Malarme,the secretary of the prosecutor's ofl&ce. 
 On several occasions he said : " Whatever is done, I remain 
 at my post." 
 
 One after another fragments of news came to him. Maxi- 
 mihen Robespierre, his brother Augustin, Couthon, Saint- 
 Just, and Lebas had been unanimously impeached by the 
 Convention. Lebas had been sent to the Conciergerie ; 
 Augustin to Saint -Lazare and then to La Force ; Saint- 
 Just to the Ecossais, Couthon to La Bourbe, Maximihen to 
 the Luxembourg. But the janitor of that house had, 
 it appears, refused to receive him by virtue of an injunction 
 ' W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 his. 
 
THE ARREST OF ROBESPIERRE 
 
A PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE 117 
 
 of the police administrators not to admit any prisoner 
 without their orders.^ Robespierre insisted on being im- 
 prisoned. In vain. He was then led to the offices of the 
 pohce administration on the Quai des Orf^vres. The General 
 Cotmcil of the Commune had appointed a provisional execu- 
 tive committee composed of nine members — Payan, Coffin- 
 hal, Louvet, Lerebours, Legrand, Desboisseaux (the Des- 
 boisseaux with whom Fouquier had dined at the house of 
 Vergnhes some hours before), Chatelet, Arthur, and Grenard, 
 Hanriot had been arrested and replaced by Giot, of the 
 Th6atre Fran9ais Section, who had taken an oath to serve 
 the country. Coflfinhal and Desboisseaux, about ten o'clock, 
 both wearing national sashes, sabre in hand and at the head 
 of a body of artillerymen, forcing all the doors of the Com- 
 mittee of General Security at the Tuileries, calling for 
 Robespierre with loud cries, had invaded the Committee, 
 gone over the whole building, and carried off Hanriot by 
 force.2 
 
 But the drama continued. On VouUand's proposal, the 
 Convention, sitting at night, had outlawed Robespierre, 
 his brother Augustin, Saint-Just, Couthon, and Lebas as 
 traitors to the country. Their friends rescued them from 
 the prisons. They were at the Commune. 
 
 Fouquier, on learning this news, said : "I remain at my 
 post even if I perish there." 
 
 On several occasions emissaries of the rebel Commune 
 came to him and tried to induce him and the members of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal to come " into its bosom," and to 
 make common cause with the refugees and the outlaws.^ 
 They invited him to the Hotel de Ville. He sent them back. 
 He answered that he recognised the Convention alone. 
 Twice during the evening he sent Malarme to the Committee. 
 He was anxious to make it known that he was at his post, 
 at the Tribunal. Malarme, coming back, found him at 
 supper with Morisan, the attendant in the refreshment- 
 room, his wife, their daughter, and their son-in-law, Gillier, 
 
 ' W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 39. « W. 434, No. 975, p. 23. 
 
 » Fouquier's Memorial for his defence. 
 
ii8 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 the secretary of the prosecutor's office.^ It was past mid- 
 night. 
 
 At this moment a torrential shower fell upon Paris, flooding 
 the streets, and dispersing the crowds and even the delegates 
 from the Convention, who, by the Ught of torches, had 
 just proclaimed the decree of outlawry. A sort of luU, an 
 abatement, took place. A long silence. Then, suddenly 
 on the other bank of the Seine, there was a volley of cannon 
 and the trampling of troops. The Convention, on Voulland's 
 proposal, had ordered Barras to lead his armed force against 
 the Hotel de ViUe, against the insurgent Communal House. 
 Barras and Leonard Bourdon had put themselves at the 
 head of the columns of the Convention, divided into two 
 sections — one proceeding along the quays with Barras, the 
 other along the Rue Saint-Honore with Bourdon. It was 
 one o'clock in the morning. 
 
 The Public Prosecutor, accompanied by Deguaign^, 
 the usher, Budelot, the Tribunal's coachman, and Demay, 
 left the Palace of Justice, crossed the Pont-Neuf, and went 
 to the Committees of PubUc Safety and of General Security, 
 which had assembled together. He was anxious to be seen 
 steadfast at his post. There he heard from Thuriot and 
 Merhn (of Thionville) of the victory of the Convention. 
 Maximihen Robespierre was grievously wounded. The 
 Commune w?"^ beaten. 
 
 Early morning approached. The gray dawn lit up the 
 victory of Thermidor. A new task was preparing for the 
 Tribunal and for Fouquier. He returned with his three 
 companions to the Palace of Justice. He had a right to a 
 weU-eamed rest. His conscience testified to him that it 
 would be difficult to have shown " purer behaviour " than 
 his. It was half-past three, and he went to bed. 
 
 But his sleep was of short duration. At five o'clock he 
 was awakened by Leonard Bourdon, the Representative of 
 the people, who brought him orders. 
 
 ' W. 500, 3rd, dossier, p. 45 ter. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REACTION OF THERMIDOR AND FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S 
 
 ARREST 
 
 SUSPENDED at six o'clock in the morning, the 
 session of the Convention was resumed at nine. 
 The Department of Paris came to congratulate 
 the Assembly on having saved the country. The 
 Revolutionary Tribunal was afterwards admitted to the bar. 
 One of its members spoke : ^ 
 
 " Citizens, representatives," he said, " you have just 
 covered yotu:selves with glory ; we come to join our congratu- 
 lations to those you will receive from the whole of France ; 
 we come to glory in our own immovable confidence — and 
 it will always be the same — in remaining attached to the 
 national representation in spite of the efforts the conspirators 
 last night did not cease to make to associate us with their 
 crimes. Some traitors had crept into our bosom ; you have 
 known how to distinguish them, and soon they shall feel 
 the punishment due to their crimes. For our part, entirely 
 devoted to the national representation and to our duty, 
 we come to take your orders for the trial of the conspirators." 
 (Applause.) 
 Fouquier-Tinville then made an observation : — 
 " There is a difficulty," he said, " which checks the 
 progress of the Tribxmal. The municipal officers are included 
 among the great offenders whom you have outlawed. Now, 
 in order to execute the decree against the rebels, it is only 
 necessary to verify the identity of their persons. But in this 
 respect I point out that there exists a decree requiring that 
 this identity should be verified in the presence of two 
 municipal officers of the accused Commune ; now, it is 
 • The Moniieur only calls him " the orator." 
 119 
 
120 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 impossible to perform this formality in the present circum- 
 stances when the municipal officers are themselves charged. 
 I ask the Convention to remove this difficulty." ^ 
 
 Thuriot answered : ' ' The Convention ought to take measures 
 in order that the conspirators may be punished without 
 delay ; any delay would be to the prejudice of the Republic. 
 The scaffold must be erected immediately, and with the heads 
 of his accompUces must fall the head of that infamous Robes- 
 pierre who proclaimed to us that he believed in the Supreme 
 Being, and who only beheved in the power of crime. The 
 soil of the RepubUc must be purged of a monster who was 
 in a position to have himself proclaimed king. I demand 
 that the Tribunal withdraws to the Committee of General 
 Security to take its orders and that it returns to its post." 
 
 This proposal was carried. ^ 
 
 On the same day, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the 
 Revolutionary Tribimal held a pubhc session with open 
 doors. SceUier presided. He had as assistant-judges 
 Foucault, Bravet, Maire, Felix, Laporte, Hamy, Dehdge, 
 and Garnier-Launay.* 
 
 Fouquier-TinviUe, assisted by his deputy, Liendon, was in 
 his place, and demanded the appearance at the session of the 
 twenty-two " conspirators," aU decreed to be guilty of 
 rebelMon and outlawed. They had been identified by 
 witnesses, and, moreover, all of them had confessed. 
 
 One by one the prisoners were introduced. The first was 
 Maximihen Robespierre, carried on a stretcher, his head 
 bandaged, and d3nng. His age ? Thirty-five. His identity 
 had been attested by Pierre Vincent Augustin Lecoin, an em- 
 ployee at the Commission of Relations, residing in Paris, at 
 the Rue du Bac, and by Jean Fabre, an employee in the office 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal, residing in the Rue Jacob. 
 — 2. Georges Couthon. — 3. Louis Jean Baptiste Lavalette, 
 brigadier-general of the army of the North. — 4. Franfois 
 Hanriot, ex-general of the armed forces of Paris. — 5. Ren6 
 Fran9ois Dumas, ex-President of the Revolutionary Tri- 
 
 » Moniteur, 12th of Thermidor, year II. • Moniteur, Ibid. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 434, No, 975. 
 
Saint-Just 
 
 ' - menitre cluComite aeSaiuip 
 
THE ROLL CALL 121 
 
 bunal. — 6. Antoihe Saint-Just, ex-Deputy of the Convention, 
 26 years old. — 7. Claude Frangois Payan, ex-juror of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, ex-agent of the Commune of Paris. 
 — 8. Jacques Claude Bernard, ex-priest, member of the 
 General Council of the Commune, and chief clerk in the 
 Mayor's Office. — 9. Adrien Nicolas Gobeau, provisional 
 deputy to Fouquier, member of the Commune of Paris. — 
 10. Antoine Gency, cooper and ex-member of the General 
 Council of the Commune. — 11. Nicolas Francois Vivier, 
 ex-lawyer and judge of the Tribunal of the Third Arron- 
 dissement, outlawed by the Convention. He had presided 
 at the Jacobin Club the night before. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville rose and, la57ing down his hat and cloak, 
 left the court. He did not wish to prosecute his friend, Lescot- 
 Fleuriot, the ex-Mayor of Paris. His deputy, Liendon, 
 took his place.^ 
 
 The roll-call went on. — 12. Jean Baptiste Edmond 
 Lescot-Flemiot, artist, ex-Mayor of Paris, 43 years old, 
 bom at Brussels. — 13. Antoine Simon, shoemaker, ex-member 
 of the General Council of the Commune, residing in Paris 
 at No. 32 Rue Marat (the Simon of the Temple, the Dauphin's 
 tormentor). — 14. Denis Etienne Laurent, municipal officer. 
 — 15. Jacques Louis Fr6d6ric Wouarn^, an employee at the 
 Commission of Commerce and Provisions. — 16. Jean 
 Etienne Forrestier, smelter, member of the Commune. — 
 17. Augustin Bon Joseph Robespierre (the younger), ex- 
 Deputy of the Convention. — 18. Nicolas Guerin, member 
 of the General Council of the Commune. — 19. Jean Baptiste 
 
 '■ But, as Public Prosecutor, Fouquier .had demanded the appear- 
 ance of his friend before the Tribunal. Here are the terms in which 
 he did so : — 
 
 " Citizens and representatives, 
 
 " A decree of to-day, providing that the Mayor and ex- 
 General Boulanger, both outlawed, shall be executed without delay, 
 both being at the Committee, I request you to give orders that the 
 gendarmes bearers of this present shall immediately bring them 
 before the Tribunal, the judges being in session to execute the law. 
 
 " Greeting and fraternity. 
 
 " The loth of Thermidor of the Year II. of the Republic one and 
 indivisible. A. Q. Fouquier." 
 
122 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Mathieu Dhazard, hair-dresser and ex-member of the Com- 
 mime. — 20. Christophe Cochefer, formerly an upholsterer, 
 member of the General Council of the Commune. — 21. 
 Charles Jacques Mathieu Bougon, an ex-messenger at the 
 stamp office, ex-member of the General Council of the 
 Commune. — 23. Jean Marie Guenet, timber merchant, 
 member of the General Council of the Commune. 
 
 The Tribunal ordered that the twenty-two above- 
 mentioned conspirators should be at once handed over to 
 the executioner of criminal judgments, the execution to 
 take place on the Place de la Revolution. By five o'clock 
 on the loth of Thermidor,. they were dead. 
 
 On the following day, the nth of Thermidor, seventy 
 outlaws, members of the General Council of the rebel Com- 
 mune, were handed over to the executioner of criminal judg- 
 ments.i Fouquier had, on the previous day, asked for 
 ten or eleven carts to be sent to the Conciergerie for this 
 execution. We know this from the evidence of Etienne 
 Desmorest, the executioner's assistant. But the official 
 report of the session has no mention of the PubUc Prosecutor's 
 name. He is represented by Liendon and Royer, his 
 deputies. 
 
 On the following day a last " batch " of twelve members 
 of the General Council of the Commune went to the scaffold. 
 They were " convicted of having taken part in the hberticidal 
 and rebelUous dehberations of the Commune of Paris on the 
 ninth day of the present month, and on the night between 
 
 1 Charles Huant Desboisseaux, the juror of the Revolutionary- 
 Tribunal and member of the Commune, who had sat with Fouquier 
 in the Hall of EquaUty on the gth of Thermidor, and afterwards 
 went with P'ouquier to dine at the house of Vergnhes — ^this Desbois- 
 seaux was included among the 70 outlaws. 
 
 During the tragic night he had gone out of the Commune between 
 midnight and one o'clock. Wandering about, he had been at differ- 
 ent eating-houses ; he had supped witihi Coffinhal, at the Ecu, in the 
 Rue d'Enfer, then had gone home to see his wife ; he did not find her, 
 saw the seals on his house, and again wandered about until six 
 o'clock in the evening, and finally entered the house of Citizen 
 Martin, a lemonade seller, on the Quai aux Ormes. Information 
 was lodged against him, and he was arrested there, and brought to 
 the Conciergerie. 
 
FOUQUIER DENOUNCED 123 
 
 the ninth and tenth, and of having participated in the said 
 dehberations whilst it (the Commune) sheltered in its bosom 
 traitors ordered by the National Convention to be arrested." ^ 
 
 At the session of the Convention on the 14th of Thermidor, 
 Lecointre (of Versailles) demanded the repeal of the law of 
 the 22nd of Prairial, relating to the organisation of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 
 " It is a veritable martial law," he said. 
 
 The saying was true. It met with success. There was 
 applause. The Convention unanimously repealed the law. 
 
 But the Tribunal, whose reconstruction the Committee 
 had proposed at the Convention, was about to be revived. 
 And at the head of the hst presented by Barfere, we read : 
 " Pubhc Prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville." 
 
 An unexpected and striking event then happened. Freron 
 the joumaUst, a violent man, " the saviour of the south," 
 Freron, who on the 9th of Thermidor, had demanded the 
 arrest of Couthon, Saint-Just, and Lebas, made a speech 
 denouncing Fouquier. 
 
 " All Paris demands from you the richly merited 
 punishment of Fouquier-TinviUe. You have sent to the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal the infamous Dumas and the 
 jurors who, along with him, shared the crimes of the scoundrel 
 Robespierre. I am going to prove to you that Fouquier 
 is as guilty as they were, for if the President, if the jurors, 
 were influenced by Robespierre, the Public Prosecutor was 
 equally influenced by him, for he drew up the writs of indict- 
 ment with the same intention. I demand that Fouquier- 
 Tinville be sent to stew in the hell of blood which he has 
 shed. I demand a decree for his accusation." 
 
 Ttunult. Applause on all sides. Cries of : " Put the 
 decree of accusation to the vote." 
 
 Turreau opposed the decree. "It would be honouring 
 that scoundrel too much. I demand that he be simply put 
 on trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal." 
 
 This proposal was carried, applause breaking forth several 
 times. By virtue of this decree, the Committee of General 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 434, No. 978. 
 
134 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Security passed a resolution the same day that Fouquier- 
 Tinville, thePubUc Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 be arrested immediately and taken to the prison of the 
 Conciergerie ; that he be brought to trial without delay, and 
 that seals be placed on his papers. Two officers of the 
 Committee, Chandeher and Limage, were charged with the 
 execution of these measures. 
 
 The victory of the men of Thermidor was complete. 
 Thus, the man who, four days before, went into the prosecu- 
 tor's office in the Revolutionary Tribunal, garbed in his short 
 cloak and wearing his raised Henry Quatre hat, who pleaded 
 against Maximilien Robespierre, against Saint- Just, against 
 his own enemy, Dumas, who " performed their toilet and 
 fitted them out for kingdom come," was to learn at his own 
 expense that, in its continuous evolutions. Humanity some- 
 times displays a sudden and pitiless abruptness. 
 
 On the afternoon of that 14th of Thermidor, about half- 
 past two o'clock, the news reached Fouquier that he was 
 to be brought to trial. He was in the refreshment-room 
 of the Tribimal, drinking his usual glass of brandy, and 
 talking over the events of the day with his colleagues. Two 
 men entered and went up to him. One of them was a small 
 hunchback, Jean FemUes, a secretary in the prosecutor's 
 office, and devoted to the Pubhc Prosecutor, the other was 
 tinknown to him ; both were deeply moved. 
 
 FeuiUes approached Fouquier and taking him aside 
 said: 
 
 " Here is a citizen who comes from the Convention. 
 He has been a witness of aU that has just happened there. 
 You are to be put on your trial and are about to be arrested. 
 This citizen is Cauchois, Poincarre's tmcle." 
 
 Fouquier knew Poincarr^, a secretary in the prosecutor's 
 office, weU. He had confidence in him, for the prosecutor's 
 office had not ceased to be favourable to the Public Prose- 
 cutor, while the registrar's office was hostile to him since 
 the arrest of Paris, called Fabricius, the chief registrar of 
 the Tribunal, and since the execution of Legris, the 
 registrar's clerk. 
 
LAST HOURS OF FREEDOM 125 
 
 " Did you hear the decree for arresting me ? " inquired 
 Fouquier. 
 
 " Yes, I heard it." 
 
 " I am quite easy in my mind. I am not guilty. I will 
 wait until they come to arrest me." 
 
 And he swallowed his brandy. 
 
 But a few moments afterwards, he left the refreshment- 
 room, went up to his office, and spoke of the decree that 
 had just been passed against him, adding that he feared 
 nothing. He afterwards went to warn his wife, the gentle 
 and loving Henriette Jean Gerard d'Aucourt, whom he mar- 
 ried as his second wife twelve years before. Having reas- 
 sured her, he proceeded to the Tuileries, to the Convention. 
 
 For the last time he pursued the way he had so often trav- 
 elled during the past sixteen months — over the Pont-Neuf, 
 and along the Quays. The heat of the August afternoon 
 was overwhelming. It was three o'clock. The murmur of the 
 city boomed in his ears. But he did not hear it. He did 
 not see the famihar spectacles of the streets. He walked on, 
 in a maze, in a dream that wotdd not end. The Com- 
 mittees would listen to the evidence. He was not guilty. 
 He was easy in his mind. Yet it was not long before that, 
 returning one evening from the Committee of PubUc Safety, 
 as he was crossing the Pont du Change, he seized his com- 
 panion, and, pointing to the Seine, exclaimed : " Look 
 how red it is ! " Was he drunk that evening ? Or was he 
 overwhelmed by fatigue, by the weight of his work, his 
 colossal labour, he who, during the last sixteen months, 
 had frequently not slept three hours a night ? To-day, this 
 14th of Thermidor, the Seine was not red. Its changing 
 waters fiowed on, dancing in the Hght. With his hat pulled 
 down over his face, he proceeded along the quays. He 
 paused before the Louvre of the Valois, his vigorous, 
 thick-set form wrapped in his blue frock-coat. He 
 continued his way to the Tuileries. 
 
 At that hour. Chandelier, Limage, and five members of the 
 Committee of General Security, accompanied by Debreaux, 
 the police-officer, presented themselves at his dwelling. They 
 
126 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 found there only a woman and children. They called upon 
 Citizeness Fouquier-Tinville to tell them where the PubUc 
 Prosecutor was. 
 
 "At the Convention, at least that is what the messengers 
 of the Tribunal have said." 
 
 " What has he gone to do at the Convention ? " 
 
 " I don't know, at all." 
 
 " You are deceiving us, for you knew that a warrant 
 had been issued for your husband's arrest and trial." 
 
 " Yes, I knew." 
 
 " Who told you ? " 
 
 " He, himseh ; but I do not know who told him. AU I 
 know is that the news was brought to him at his office ; 
 but I do not know the bearer. The office attendants might 
 tell you." 
 
 They immediately asked of the first attendant they 
 saw, Simon Malparti, if he knew who warned Fouquier. 
 
 " A private citizen who is the uncle of Poincarre, a secre- 
 tary in the prosecutor's office." 
 
 Malparti offered to take Chandelier into the offices to look 
 for this uncle in the presence of Derozi^re, the poUceman. 
 Cauchois was found in the refreshment room. 
 
 He was put through the usual cross-examination. He 
 told how he informed his nephew, and how, when he heard 
 it, " the Httle hunchback " as he was called at the Tribunal, 
 said that Fouquier ought to be warned immediately. He 
 had taken the Pubhc Prosecutor aside and had told hhn that 
 there was a warrant for his arrest ; that he had heard the 
 decree pronounced. Fouquier had ajiswered, in the presence 
 of DeU^ge, the Vice-President of the Tribrmal, that he was 
 quite easy in his mind, and was waiting until they came to 
 arrest him. It was Malparti who told Limage and ChandeUer 
 that, when he left the refreshment-room, Fouquier went up 
 to his office, and afterwards to the Convention. 
 
 It was the httle hunchback's turn to appear before the 
 members of the Committee. 
 
 His name was Jean Feuilles. He was twenty-seven years 
 old. He was bom at Viviers, in the district of Cojrron, in 
 
THE WARRANT OF ARREST 127 
 
 the Ardeche. He was an employee in the prosecutor's office 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and resided in the City, at 
 No. 14, Rue Lanteme. He confirmed the statements of 
 Cauchois. They overwhelmed him with questions. 
 
 " From whom did you hear that a warrant had been issued 
 for Fouquier-Tinville's arrest ? " 
 
 " I heard it from a citizen of whom I know nothing except 
 that he is a friend of Citizen Poincarr6." 
 
 " Did you not say that the Public Prosecutor should be 
 warned at once ? " 
 
 " I said so along with several others who were present, 
 as to who spoke first, I do not remember. All I know is that 
 the news was brought to the witness-room, that Poincarre 
 communicated it to those who were in the Council Chamber, 
 and that it was whenPoincarr^ came down from the Chamber 
 that it was said warning ought to be given to Fouquier- 
 TinviUe, who was then in the refreshment room." 
 
 " Could you give the names of those who were present and 
 who said with you that Fouquier ought to be warned ? " 
 
 " I cannot be certain of any of them. I know that Poin- 
 carre was present ; I went up with him to the refreshment- 
 room. Poincarre did not come up." 
 
 " You are afraid of giving the names of citizens, but the 
 truth will come out." 
 
 " If I were sure, I would give the names, but I am afraid 
 of speaking at a venture." 
 
 " Yet a witness declares that it was you who spoke." 
 
 " Certainly, I spoke." 
 
 " With what intention ? " 
 
 " I had none." 
 
 " Did you say that some one ought to go up to the refresh- 
 ment-room to warn him ? " 
 
 " I said so, and as a matter of fact I went up with several 
 citizens whose names I do not remember and with the man 
 who brought us the news." 
 
 " Did you not take him to the refreshment-room ? " 
 
 " I went with him there ; that is all I can say." 
 
 " Who spoke in the refreshment-room ? " 
 
128 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 " I said to Fouquier : ' Here is a citizen who comes from 
 the Convention and who has been a witness of what has just 
 taken place.' After which, that citizen, Poincarre's friend, 
 informed Fouquier of the decree which ordered his arrest." 
 
 " Yet a witness states that it was you who took him by 
 the arm, brought him to the refreshment-room, took Fouquier 
 aside, and told him what you had just heard." 
 
 " I do not remember exactly what took place ; as regards 
 what I said to Fouquier, I refer you to my previous answer." 
 
 " Knowing that this decree was in existence, instead of 
 warning him, why did not you, yourself, arrest him ? " 
 
 " I was not certain about it." 
 
 Cauchois and FeuUles were searched and their papers 
 examined, but nothing suspicious was found. The two 
 employees of the prosecutor's of&ce were arrested, and taken 
 to the Committee of General Security as suspected of having 
 helped in Fouquier-Tinville's escape. 
 
 A long search then began of the premises of the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribvmal and the Pubhc Prosecutor's apartments. 
 All the documents found in the prosecutor's office and the 
 registry were kept there under the guard of Captain Adnet 
 and his lieutenant, Bernard. Sentries were placed at all 
 the doors of the registry and the prosecutor's office. The 
 papers in Fouquier's apartments were collected and placed 
 in a cupboard near the door, to the right of the entrance-hall. 
 Citizens Courtier and Derozieres, the gendarmes, were 
 appointed their guardians. Those which the commissioners 
 found in " Citizeness Fouquier's " portfoho were placed 
 under seal. 
 
 The windows of the apartment opened on a httle balcony 
 overlooking the Quai de I'Horloge. In the course of their 
 search. Courtier and Derozidres, who had gone to the 
 window, noticed a bimdle of papers that had fallen or been 
 thrown on the balcony. This the agents of the Committee 
 of General Security seized, and it was foimd to contain six 
 documents which were placed in an envelope to be sent to 
 the Committee. 
 
 These judicial operations were not finished when Captain 
 
FOUQUIER AT THE CONCIERGERIE 129 
 
 Adnet and Lieutenant Bernard announced an important 
 piece of news to the commissioners. Fouquier-Tinville had 
 just gone back to the Conciergerie, where he had surrendered 
 himself as a prisoner. Botot-Dumesnil, commander of 
 the police attached to the Tribunal, placed him under arrest.^ 
 Richard, the turnkey, inscribed his name on the prison 
 registrar. The doors of the gaol closed upon him. 
 
 But the Conciergerie was full of those " counter-revolu- 
 tionaries " and those "conspirators" whom the PubUc 
 Prosecutor was reserving for the " batches " of the follow- 
 ing days. Two days previously, on the 12th of Thermidor, 
 if we are to beheve an usher of the Tribunal, he had said : 
 " The people must be satisfied. The guillotine is busy. It 
 will be busier still." * Fouquier was recognised. Hoots and 
 shouts of rage echoed all about him. " Wretch ! Scoundrel ! " 
 hostile and desperate voices called out. He was surroimded 
 and driven into a comer. He was on the point of faUing 
 when the janitor and his assistants intervened. To protect 
 this extraordinary prisoner, they shut him up in a dark room, 
 imder the guard of a gendarme. 
 
 There, at the mercy of his own thoughts, in the dark, like 
 a wild beast shut in his den, he waited and thought. 
 
 What hatred he had unloosed ! What a cursed, execrated 
 name was his ! How all those people detested him ! And 
 yet he asked himself whether he deserved such a fate. Day 
 and night he had worked " to lay the foundations of the 
 Revolution " so far as it lay in his power. Ah, why on the 
 22nd of Prairial, had his name not been erased from the list 
 of those who composed the Tribunal ? Why would they 
 
 • " Paris, 14th of Thermidor of the year II. of the French Republic, 
 one and indivisible. 
 " Citizen President, 
 
 " I inform you that in conformity with the decree of the 
 Convention of to-day's date, I have had Fouquier, the ex-Public 
 Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, placed under arrest, and 
 that he is now detained at the Conciergerie. 
 " Greeting and fraternity, 
 " Major commanding thts Gendarmerie of the Tribunals, 
 
 "B. DUMESNIL." 
 
 ' Joly's evidence at Fouquier-Tinville's trial. 
 
 I 
 
130 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 regard him as the creature of Robespierre and Saint-Just ? 
 Why treat him as a conspirator, as an enemy of the country, 
 he who " prided liimself on being known as having always 
 succoured oppressed innocence, the poor and the patriotic " ? 
 
 The night was passing. From hour to hour the vision of 
 his past work grew clearer before him. His methodical mind, 
 accustomed to the quibbles of legal procedure, began to 
 classify the charges that were to be brought against him, 
 which he had learned that afternoon at the Committee. Was 
 he thinking of his loved ones, of his wife and children who 
 were in their rooms in the Palace of Justice watching in 
 suspense ? Doubtless ; but he seemed to have been neither 
 softened nor dejected. He was coolly preparing for the 
 struggle, just as he cooUy performed the duties of his 
 terrible magistracy. He was going to set to work on his 
 defence. 
 
 As the night drew to an end, he was stiU writing, drawing 
 up his first memorial. This he sent to the Committee of 
 General Security, with a short note to Louis (of the Beis- 
 Rhin). 
 
 " Paris, this i6th of Thermidor of the second year of the 
 Republic, one and indivisible. 
 " Citizen Representative, 
 
 " Deign to obhge me by presenting to the Com- 
 mittee of which you are a member the enclosed memorial 
 which I send you ; I am innocent, I ask for justice. 
 
 " Greeting and fraternity, 
 
 "A. Q. FOUQUIER." 
 
 The entire memorial should be read to show Fouquier's 
 state of mind at the moment following his arrest. The 
 lawyer, the subtle Procurator, aimed at proving that he 
 was not guilty. He wished to appear free from anxiety. 
 He thought it necessary to destroy one by one the prejudices 
 and the imputations against him. He would invoke in his 
 favour humanity and justice. He claimed to be innocent, 
 a victim even, and seemed to beheve that he would soon 
 be free. 
 
HIS DEFENCE 131 
 
 " Memorial for the Defence, to the General Committee of Public 
 Safety of the Convention." 
 
 " On behalf of Antoine Quentin Fouquier, ex-Public Prose- 
 cutor to the Revolutionary Tribunal, who surrendered himself 
 voluntarily at the Conciergerie, and was brought before 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal by a decree of the 14th of 
 Thermidor." 
 
 " I. I am charged with having made out writs of indict- 
 ment against patriots. An examination of the registers 
 refutes that charge ; for by inspecting them one can see that 
 for the most part the indictments have been directed against 
 acknowledged conspirators. It is possible, however, that 
 among the informations lodged by malevolent persons, there 
 may have been some directed against patriots. It was my 
 great anxiety to protect myself from such scheming ; and 
 if such a thing has happened, it is certainly a misfortune 
 that renders me guilty ; for, since informations and charges 
 came into existence, the law imposes on the PubHc Prosecu- 
 tor the duty of ordering the proceedings against the suspects 
 indicated. It is for the jurors to determine in their wisdom 
 the value of the charge ; and the conduct of the Pubhc 
 Prosecutor in such a case is to bring forward the prisoner's 
 defence. Now, it is notorious that at the Tribunal I have 
 never neglected this glorious task. I pride myself on being 
 known as having always succoured oppressed innocence, 
 the poor, and the patriotic. 
 
 " 2. I am charged with having been one of the creatures of 
 Robespierre and Saint-Just. I have never been in the 
 latter's house. I was even ignorant of where he hved. As 
 for Robespierre, I have only been at his house once, the day 
 of the attempt on Citizen Collot d'Herbois, just as I presented 
 myself at the house of the latter. I have never been there 
 since. I defy anybody to prove the contrary. 
 
 " 3. I am suspected of having had knowledge of the 
 conspiracy which broke out on the ninth. On my honour 
 I protest that I had no knowledge of that conspiracy until 
 the moment of its discovery by the Convention ; I protest 
 
132 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 similarly that no overture was made to me by any of the 
 conspirators, and that if one of them had presmned to do so, 
 I should have had the courage to inform against him as 
 I have had the courage to fill the perilous post I occupied 
 since the creation of the Tribunal. If any of these 
 scoundrels had made overtures to me in any way what- 
 ever regarding that horrible conspiracy, should I, on 
 the loth of Thermidor, have asked in court, as I did, for the 
 law to be appUed against the Robespierres, Saint-Just, 
 Fleuriot, Payan, Hanriot, and Dumas, all acknowledged 
 heads of that conspiracy ? Should I not have rendered 
 myself Uable to be pointed out by them, if, in truth, I had 
 been their accomplice ? I have fulfilled my duty towards 
 those monsters, as towards all others, because I have a 
 pure conscience and have never been impUcated in any 
 plot. 
 
 " In support of that conduct, I point out that, when dining 
 about four months ago at the house of Citizen Lecointre, 
 the Deputy, with several others, in particular Citizen MerUn 
 (of Thionville), I had a conversation with him that doubtless 
 he will remember, which will prove how much I detested 
 Robespierre's despotism. 
 
 " A few days before the last reorganization of the Tribimal, 
 being informed that it was desired to reduce the number of 
 jurors from nine to seven, I beUeved it my duty to represent 
 to the Committee of PubUc Safety that the Tribunal having 
 up to that time enjoyed public confidence, this reduction 
 would infallibly cause it to lose that confidence. It would 
 provide an opportunity for saying that the change was only 
 contrived because these responsible for this reduction had 
 not found enough creatures devoted to them. Robespierre, 
 then on the Committee, shut my mouth by saying that it 
 was only aristocrats who could speak in such a way. 
 
 " Several other members of the Committee were present. 
 This remark caused my name, as I have since been told, to be 
 erased several times from the list of those appointed by the 
 decree of the 22nd of Prairial. I do not know to what I 
 owe the misfortune of having been restored to the list, for. 
 
HIS DEFENCE 133 
 
 but for that restoration, I should not to-day be groaning in 
 chains. 
 
 " As for the provisions of the decree of the 22nd of Prairial, 
 I have several times spoken of their rigour to the Committee 
 of General Security ; several members must remember it ; 
 they themselves acknowledged the severity of the provisions. 
 They must have asked daily for their reform ; but, as for me, 
 I could not refuse to execute the decree without being regarded 
 and even treated as a counter-revolutionary. The members 
 of the Committee of General Security must also remember 
 that I have frequently spoken to them of the persistent 
 opposition of Robespierre to the execution of the decree 
 relating to Catherine Th6ot,^ and that it was agreed that 
 Citizen Vadier should make a supplementary report. As a 
 result of this I sent him all the documents, and they are 
 now in his possession. 
 
 " For about a month the increased work of my post has 
 not allowed me to go to the Jacobin Club. I have not, in 
 consequence, heard any of the speeches or denunciations of 
 Robespierre's conspiracy, or the diatribes of the scoundrel 
 Dumas. I have heard them spoken of, and it is known 
 how severely I censured them. Citizen Martel, the Deputy, 
 is also in a position to attest how, in a conversation I had 
 with him about eight days before the conspiracy broke out, 
 I blamed the despotism that Robespierre exercised over 
 the Committee of Pubhc Safety. 
 
 " My conduct on the 9th of Thermidor is easy to estab- 
 lish. I was in court imtil half-past two o'clock. I dined 
 with several colleagues, and returned to my office at the 
 Palace about half-past five in the afternoon. The clerks, 
 attendants, and other persons employed at the Tribunal are 
 in a position to attest this fact. They are also able to prove 
 
 » The visionary whom Vadier had represented, in his speech in 
 -the Convention on the 27th of Prairial in the year II., as keeping, 
 at her dweUing in the Rue Contrescarpe, " a primary school of fanati- 
 cism," and whom he gave out to be an agent of Pitt. She was re- 
 ported to the Revolutionary Tribunal. But Robespierre caused an 
 order to be conveyed to Fouquier-Tinville to postpone her trial. 
 See Vilate's memoirs. The Mysteries of the Mother of God Unveiled. 
 
134 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 that, in spite of the many emissaries sent to me by the 
 Commune to induce the members of the Tribunal and myself 
 to enter its bosom, and to acknowledge it alone, my answer 
 was that I acknowledged only the Convention, that I would 
 remain at my post, as I did until one o'clock in the morning 
 of the loth, and that, accompanied only by Citizens Desgaign^ 
 the usher, Beudelot, and Demay, I went to the assembled 
 Committees of PubUc Safety and General Security, where I 
 was seen by a great part of the members and by Citizens 
 Thuriot and Merhn (of ThionviUe), the Deputies, who 
 went there. I returned to the Palace, where Citizen Leonard 
 Bourdon found me on the loth at haK-past five ; all these 
 facts are notorious and easy to prove. It is difficult to 
 show a purer conduct. 
 
 " Yet I am summoned before the Tribunal, charged with 
 having vexed and persecuted the patriots, although, at 
 the same time, I am called a wretch and, a scoundrel by all 
 the covmter-revolutionaries who are detained at the Concier- 
 gerie. I am forced to stay all day in a room without win- 
 dows in order to keep myself from their rage, notwithstanding 
 all the efforts of the janitor. 
 
 " However, consulting my conscience, I have done nothing 
 to bring me to such a fate. During the sixteen months 
 that I have performed the painful duties of PubUc Prosecutor 
 I have drawn up the writ of indictment against Marie An- 
 toinette, and caused aU the great conspirators to feel the 
 sword of the Law. I, who would not find in any country 
 an inch of ground to lay my head, I, who am the bom enemy 
 of all counter-revolutionaries, who would hew me in pieces 
 if they could, I, who have spent night and day in lasdng the 
 foundations of the Revolution so far as it lay in my power ; 
 I, who have never acted save according to the laws eman- 
 ating from the Convention ; I, who do not fear the severest 
 examination of all my papers even though I should have to 
 remain the longer in chains ! The greater part of the 
 members of the Committees of PubHc Safety and General 
 Security know my principles, my actions, and my thoughts ; 
 it remains therefore for me only to submit myself entirely 
 
THE TRUTH 135 
 
 to their justice. My memorial has been written without 
 pretension and even with a sort of negUgence in style which 
 comes from the sad position in which I find myseLE ; but it 
 expresses the truth. 
 
 " A. Q. FOUQUIER." 1 
 
 " Paris, this i6th of Thermidor. 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 500, ist dossier, p. iii. 
 
PART II 
 THE PRISONER 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE PREPARES HIS PEFENCE 
 
 THOUGH a prisoner at the Conciergerie, the ex-PubUc 
 Prosecutor was not kept in solitary confinement. 
 News from outside reached him. He knew through 
 the vigilant agency of his wife what was happening 
 at the Convention and at the Jacobin Club. She wrote to 
 him and kept him acquainted with what was said and what 
 preparations were being made against him. 
 
 He was neither downcast nor demoraMsed. He was 
 tenacious, shrewd, and apparently calm. His defence 
 engaged all his attention. It may be summed up in this : 
 that during the past sixteen months,, he had provoked 
 (it is his own expression) the trials of more than two thousand 
 four himdred accused persons. He claimed that he had 
 acted only according to the decrees of the Convention, in 
 conformity with the laws " of justice and humanity." He 
 was tireless in furnishing proofs of this with a sort of 
 unconscious obstinacy. 
 
 His first memorial for his defence was dated the i6th of 
 Thermidor. On the 17th, in a second memorial, he proceeded 
 to insist upon certain isolated facts, giving them a special 
 importance, discussing them, refuting complaints. He had 
 just learned that the imputation made against him of having 
 summoned patriots before the Revolutionary Tribunal had 
 taken a more precise form, that those patriots had been 
 named, that they were the inhabitants of Strasburg, who 
 had been tried and guillotined less than two months before, 
 on the 29th of Messidor (July 17). He hastened to reply 
 to the Committee in a " supplement " to his memorial for 
 the defence of the day before. He proceeded to set out the 
 
 139 
 
140 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 facts. " Deprived of all documents," he wrote from 
 memory, yet his memorial was excellent. 
 
 Lebas and Saint- Just, sent on a mission to the Depart- 
 ments of the Upper and Lower Rhine, had caused the arrest 
 of Euloge Schneider, " the executioner of Alsace," who had 
 been convicted of exactions, extortions, violations, crimes 
 of all sorts. Euloge Schneider was none other than the 
 Pubhc Prosecutor of Strasburg, Fouquier's provincial 
 colleague. 
 
 The Strasburg patriots in question, Yung, a shoemaker, 
 Michelot,! a pa57master of the army of the Rhine, Monnet, 
 a teacher, Frederic Edeimann, a musician, and Louis 
 Edelmann, a musical iustrument maker, were, according to 
 Fouquier, Schneider's partisans. They declaimed to such 
 an extent against his arrest and the doings of the represen- 
 tatives of the people, calling them " disorganisers " and 
 '■ cannibals," that Leban and Saint-Just had caused them to 
 be arrested and sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 Fouquier thus exculpates himself : 
 
 " The documents relating to the affair were sent to me 
 by the Conmiittee of Pubhc Safety. I made out the indict- 
 ment from those documents. In the course of the pleadings, 
 I took care to remark that these suspects had given great 
 proofs of patriotism since the Revolution. I laid stress, 
 for this purpose, on all the attestations that they produced 
 for me. But several of those attestations were contra- 
 dicted by later retractations from the regenerated society 
 of Strasburg, all of which are attached to the documents 
 in the registry of the Tribunal. One of the accused has been 
 proved innocent. Where, then, is my crime in this busi- 
 ness ? Could I refuse to make out an indictment or to bring 
 to trial individuals sent to the Tribunal by representa- 
 tives of the people in the course of their mission ? I could 
 no more do that in their case than in the case of those sent by 
 the Convention. The Law imposed that duty on me. . . ," ^ 
 
 What he does not say, what he cannot say, is that when 
 
 1 Michelot was acquitted. 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, ist dossier, p. 110. 
 
ANTOINE QUENTIN FOUQUIER-TINVILLE 
 From a contemjiorary lithograph 
 
THE TWO EDELMANNS , 141 
 
 the representatives of the people on mission to the army of 
 the Rhine had recovered from their prejudices and were 
 convinced of the patriotism and innocence of the accused 
 persons, they had caused them to be set at liberty. The 
 documents of the Revolutionary Tribunal^ contain instruct- 
 tive certificates given to those Republican patriots by the 
 administrative body of Strasburg. Suddenly, on the night 
 between the 12th and 13th of Prairial, they had again 
 been arrested by order of the Committee of Public Safety. 
 It was impossible for them to guess the motives for this 
 arrest. Was it that, under the sway of informers and of 
 terror, " the regenerated society " of Strasburg denied the 
 good certificates which the administrative body had given ? 
 Vainly may one search the documents of the Tribunal for 
 those denials. 
 
 Fouquier says that he took care, " in the course of the 
 pleadings, to remark that the suspects had given great proofs 
 of patriotism since the Revolution." But this observation 
 in favour of the accused persons was made orally, and nothing 
 concerning it exists among the documents in the registry. 
 What did exist and what still exists there are, on the contrary, 
 these lines of the indictment, made out and signed by 
 Fouquier, and copied by one of his secretaries : 
 
 " The two Edelmanns are charged with having been 
 the associates and principal heads of the faction of Schneider 
 whom national justice has struck with its sword. . . . 
 They have become instruments of the counter-revolutionaries 
 and partisans of the suspected persons in custody." Each 
 of the jurors could have read those lines in the copy of the 
 indictment that was provided for him. They clearly 
 marked out the brothers Edehnann for the guillotine. 
 
 In his " supplement " of the 17th of Thermidor, Fouquier 
 also lays stress, for his defence, on the fact that the plead- 
 ings of the Tribuqal, in regard to the Strasburg patriots, 
 " in spite of the rigour of the law of Prairial, lasted nearly 
 three hours." Now on that day, 34 accused persons, 34 
 arraigned persons as Fouquier called them, 34 prisoners 
 * W. 421, dossier 956, 3rd part. 
 
142 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 grouped by him in a single " batch," in one and the same 
 indictment, had appeared at the hearing. The five men of 
 Strasburg sat on the prisoners' benches beside a freeholder 
 of the Charente-Inf6rieiire, a courier of the Committee of 
 PubHc Safety, a wheelwright and locksmith of Vaugirard, 
 a man from the Ardfeche, a S3mdic from the Abbey of Andlau 
 (Bas-Rhin), a secretary of the popular tribimal of Marseilles, 
 a farmer of the Department of the Rhone, a hair-dresser of 
 Bar-le-Duc, a former merchant, the President of the Revolu- 
 tionary Committee of Chchy, accused of having had the 
 impertinence to ask " whether his ass was not in the Com- 
 mune," the wife of the cook of the English ambassador at 
 Paris, a teacher of mathematics of the Rue de la Verrerie, 
 Mulot de la Menardiere, a citizen of Compiegne, and sixteen 
 nuns and Carmehte sisters. Out of 34 accused persons, 30 
 were sent to the scaffold on that 29th of Messidor. 
 
 It is possible that the pleadings in regard to the Strasburg 
 patriots — one of whom, Michelot, was acquitted — lasted 
 nearly three hours. Fouquier affirms that the fact is known. 
 It remains, none the less : ist, that the brothers Edehnann, 
 the shoemaker Yung, and the teacher Monnet were exe- 
 cuted ; 2nd, that those Alsatians were despatched to the 
 Barrier of Vincennes with 26 other male and female com- 
 panions in misfortune who had come to Paris from the four 
 comers of France ; 3rd, that they were treated as con- 
 spirators although they were not even acquainted with 
 one another. It was doubtless to avert the charge of so 
 monstrous an abuse of power that Fouquier took care 
 to end his Supplement with these lines : 
 
 " There is an important reflection, Citizen-Representatives, 
 that I invite you to make in your wisdom. That is that during 
 the sixteen months that I have occupied this rigorous 
 office of Pubhc Prosecutor I have provoked the trials of more 
 than two thousand four hundred coimter-revolutionaries, 
 each more furious than the other. Neither fortune nor 
 consideration could stop me. The execution of the laws, 
 justice and humanity, such has always been my rule of 
 conduct. This firm and invariable course has made me 
 
"I RELY ON YOUR JUSTICE" 143 
 
 an incalculable number of enemies among aristocrats and 
 others. That is the source of the imputations that are made 
 against me. Ought I to expect such a fate, I, who for the 
 last sixteen months have often not slept three hours a night ? 
 Never was a request for pardon made by me to the Com- 
 mittees except on behalf of patriots and unfortunate persons. 
 How, after such conduct, can I be taxed with having insti- 
 tuted proceedings against patriots ? I rely always on your 
 justice. A. Q. Fouquier. This 17th of Thermidor." ^ 
 
 On the same day he wrote to Louis (of the Bas-Rhin), a 
 member of the Committee of General Security and a Deputy 
 of the Convention. He requested him " to give orders " 
 that the gendarme stationed in his room should be with- 
 drawn. He asked for a Uttle air, hoping that the Committee 
 would authorise the gaoler of the Conciergerie to place him 
 in a room adjoining his own apartments.^ He would be 
 better off there. He could devote himself effectively to his 
 work. 
 
 Two days later, on the 19th of Thermidor, he had drawn 
 up a fresh document of considerable length which he entitled. 
 General Memorial for My Defence. He addressed it to the 
 Convention. 
 
 On many points this Memorial is a repetition of its 
 predecessor. But in it Fouquier gives his defence a 
 development aU the more interesting as it is only from 
 these documents that we know to-day how the ex-Pubhc 
 Prosecutor faced his judges. 
 
 Meanwhile, the reorganisation of the Revolutionary Tri- 
 bunal was conducted rapidly, in a new spirit and with new 
 men. The sanguinary law of the 22nd of Prairial was 
 repealed. The question of intention was restored. This 
 was the accession of a new form of jurisprudence. 
 
 Fouquier then adopted another course with the Conven- 
 tion. Towards the end of the session of the 21st of Thermidor 
 (August 8, 1794), presided over by Merhn (of Douai), when 
 Lakanal had just given an account of the state of public 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, ist dossier, p. no. 
 • W. 500, ist dossier, p. 108. 
 
144 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 feeling in Dordogne and the neighbouring departments, a 
 secretary read the following letter : 
 
 " Citizen President, I have matters of importance to the 
 public interest as well as necessary for my own justification 
 to communicate to the Convention. I solicit, in consequence, 
 from the Convention the favour of being admitted to the 
 bar in order to expound them before it. Signed : A. Q. 
 FouQUiER, ex-PubUc Prosecutor to the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal, and under arrest." 
 
 Lecointre (of Versailles) immediately addressed the 
 House. 
 
 " I convert into the form of a motion Fouquier-Tinville's 
 petition, not in order that he may escape the sword of the 
 law, but in order that the Convention may learn from his 
 own mouth what were the levers that moved him." 
 
 There was applause. The Convention resolved that 
 Fouquier-Tinville be brought to the bar and there heard. 
 
 Pocholle 1 : " Fouquier-Tinville can only come to speak of 
 himself or of others. He ought not to speak of himself except 
 before the Revolutionary Tribunal. (Murmurs.) It seems 
 to me that no different measures ought to be taken in regard 
 to him than in regard to other accused persons." 
 
 One of the secretaries then read the decree passed against 
 Fouquier. 
 
 Lefiot 2 : "It does not seem to me possible to grant the 
 request made by Fouquier-Tinville. He is an immoral roan 
 and has been condemned by pubhc opinion. It is clear that 
 he can only come here to throw the firebrand of discord, 
 in continuance of the system which he adopted while fiUing 
 his office. He can come here to kindle hatred. (Mmnnurs. 
 
 * Pierre Pomponne Am6d6e, Deputy for the Seine-Inferieure. 
 He, along with Charlier, caused Commune affranchie to be given back 
 its name of Lyon on the 4th of Fructidor of the yesir II. (August 21, 
 
 1794)- 
 
 ' Jean-Alban, Deputy,for the Ni6vre, distinguished himself by his 
 opposition to the course which the Convention followed after the gth 
 of Thermidor of the year II., and, above all, after the ist of Prairial 
 of the year III. He was arrested on the 21st of Thermidor of the 
 year III. (August 6, 1795) and remained nearly three months in 
 prison. 
 
BEFORE THE CONVENTION 145 
 
 Several voices : " There is no hatred among the members 
 of the Convention.") I say that parties have existed. I 
 say that it is to be feared that this person may come to 
 revive them. (Further murmurs.) I mean that if he were 
 referred back to the Committees it is possible that he would 
 accuse the Committees and that the truth would not be 
 known. Well, then, appoint a Commission from among 
 yourselves. (Murmurs.) I had to say what was in my 
 mind." 
 
 The President : " The observation not finding any support, 
 I put it to the vote that the resolution be carried." 
 
 The resolution was carried. Shortly afterwards, the Presi- 
 dent announced that Fouquier-Tinville had arrived. The 
 Convention ordered him to be admitted. He entered and 
 the President gave him permission to speak. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville : " Having been informed that the 
 warrant of arrest that has ,been issued against me was 
 based chiefly upon presumed conferences with Robespierre, 
 because I went every evening to the Committee of Public 
 Safety, I considered that I ought to ask to be heard by 
 the Convention so as to give it an account of the facts and 
 motives of those proceedings. 
 
 " Until the advent of the Revolutionary Government, the 
 Tribunal and the Pubhc Prosecutor had no intercourse with 
 the Committee of Public Safety, unless when they were 
 summoned to it. Their intercourse was closer with the 
 Committee of General Security, to which is entrusted the 
 supervision of arrests and tUfe revolutionary police of the 
 Republic. However, they did not go even to this Com- 
 mittee, unless they were summoned. Fifteen days after the 
 establishment of the Revolutionary Government, I was sum- 
 moned to the Committee of Public Safety. When I reached 
 the room outside that in which the Committee dehberates, 
 Robespierre came to me and made a violent scene because 
 I did not keep the Committee acquainted with what was 
 taking place at the Tribunal. I told him that it was not 
 usual for me to do this, that I had as yet received no orders 
 to do it, but that I would do so if that was the wish of the 
 
146 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Committee. He answered me, in that despotic tone that is 
 known, that the Committee so desired. After that I went every 
 evening to the Committee and on several days I saw him alone 
 in the same room where I met him the first time, and where 
 he heaped very bitter reproaches on me because I did not 
 cause such-and-such generals and individuals to be brought 
 to trial. 
 
 " Finally, one day I was brought into the Committee, and 
 I gave it an account of aU the doings of the Tribunal. At 
 the period of Hebert's trial, closer relations were established. 
 I acquainted the assembled Committee with the whole 
 of the information which gradually came to the Tribunal 
 connected with that faction. 
 
 " Before the law of the 22nd of Prairial was passed, I was 
 informed there was a project for reducing the number of 
 jurors to seven or nine ; I regarded that project as 
 dangerous. I was at the Committee, and, in the presence 
 of several members, I said that it was impoUtic to reduce 
 the number of jurors in a Tribimal that had hitherto enjoyed 
 public confidence ; it would create a behef that the number 
 was diminished because a sufficient number of subservient 
 creatures could not be found. Robespierre said to me that 
 it was only aristocrats who could reason thus. I have since 
 been told that those remarks caused my name to be erased 
 from the table of members of the Tribunal, and it would 
 have been well if it had been so. I was further told that 
 Robespierre had a project for causing my arrest. It appears 
 that he could not attain either of his ends, for I was retained. 
 
 " When I read the law of the 22nd of Prairial, I found it 
 frightful. I did not speak of it at the Committee, because 
 Robespierre was always there to close my mouth. I only 
 testified my regret to some members of the Committee of 
 General Security, and Citizens Amar, VouUand and Vadier 
 told me that they were engaged in getting some of its articles 
 reformed. Robespierre's despotism rendered it impossible 
 to execute this project, for he extorted all the decrees he 
 wished. 
 
 "At Danton's trial I wrote to the Committee to know 
 
AN INTERROGATION 147 
 
 whether I ought to grant the demand of the accused that 
 the witnesses whom they summoned should be heard. 
 For answer I received a decree which closed my mouth, 
 and I obeyed the law. 
 
 " After examining an affair in which Citizen Gayvernon, 
 a brother of the Deputy, and an adjutant called BartWlemy 
 were implicated, I saw that there was nothing against 
 them, and proposed to ask that they should be set free. 
 Robespierre said to me : ' / have learned that you have a 
 project for liberating those two individuals. I order you in 
 the name of the Committee to bring forward the documents.' I 
 answered him that it was for the Tribunal to inquire into 
 the matter, and to pronounce their liberation, if there was 
 ground for it. Citizen Gayvernon came and asked me why 
 I did not cause his brother, who was not guilty, to be set 
 free. I answered that my hands were tied, that he could 
 inform the Convention of the fact, and that I would support 
 him. This was also at the Committee, for I never saw him 
 in private, either at his house or elsewhere. 
 
 " He wished to know the names of the Deputies who had 
 given evidence for KeUerman's defence. I said that I did 
 not remember them. He insisted and asked me : ' Was it 
 not Dubois Crance and Gauthier ? ' I excused myself, 
 alleging my defective memory. He asked me the same 
 thing about General Hoche. It was always in the name of 
 the Committee that he spoke to me. If I had followed 
 the orders that he gave me, the trial of those citizens would 
 have ended long ago. 
 
 " It has been said that I furnished Robespierre with lists 
 of the persons who were to be tried. I should have been 
 very gunty if I had done so, and I declare that I have had 
 nothing to do with it. But Robespierre had spies and 
 agents in the Tribunal, and President Dumas was his 
 accomplice. 
 
 "He made the Committee of PubHc Safety pass a resolu- 
 tion, which is still in my drawer, and of which I was given 
 notice lest I should forget it. This resolution ordered 
 that I should be bound to furnish to the Committee each 
 
148 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 decade^ a statement of the persons who were to be placed 
 on trial during the following decade. Every evening, in 
 order to conform to another resolution of which I was also 
 given notice, I furnished the Ust of persons who had been 
 condemned or acquitted during the day, and it was then 
 that Robespierre indulged in angry observations to the 
 bearer of that list. 
 
 " Never have I had any secret conference with Robespierre. 
 Never have I received any order from him when alone. 
 Citizen Merhn (of ThionviUe) can also tell you that, at a 
 meal where Citizen Lecointre was also present, I spoke of 
 Robespierre in a manner far from flattering. That caused 
 me to be denounced to Robespierre's secret cabal as conspir- 
 ing with the Deputies against him. I have never had any 
 communication with him. I groaned under his despotism. 
 I acted only in accordance with the laws and the decrees. 
 I would not have taken a step beyond them." 
 
 Merlin (of ThionviUe) : "I demand that Fouquier 
 explain his conduct in regard to the conspiracy of the 
 foreigner and that of the Luxembourg." 
 
 Breard^ : "I demand that he explain his conduct in 
 regard to Catherine Theot." 
 
 Several voices : " No discussion." 
 
 TaUien : " The Convention ought not to subject Fouquier 
 to a cross-examination. He has asked to be heard on very 
 important matters, and, up to the present, I have heard 
 nothing worth listening to. Robespierre's conspiracy con- 
 tained an infinite number of threads which are still hidden, 
 and which will soon be disclosed. But it is not for the 
 Convention to question Fouquier on particular facts. If 
 he has declarations to make for the safety of the country, 
 let him make them spontaneously. A man such as he, who 
 has been initiated into the mysteries of iniquity, ought to 
 have valuable information. I also could bring facts against 
 him. But it is useless to accuse him, since, for a long time, 
 
 » Cf. note p. 66. 
 
 ' Jean-Jacques, Deputy for the Charente-Inferieure, had spoken 
 against Robespierre, and, on the 3rd of Thermidor, had opposed the 
 printing of his speech. 
 
DUMAS' MONSTROUS DEMAND 149 
 
 France has been accusing him. I demand that he be not 
 cross-examined at the bar." 
 
 Merlin " I demand that he be heard." 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville : " I am going to relate the facts as 
 they occurred. It was Lanne, Robespierre's agent, who was 
 sent to the Luxembourg to discover if there were a conspiracy 
 there. It was upon his report that I received from the 
 Committee the Ust of persons inphcated in that conspiracy. 
 
 " Dumas wanted 160 prisoners to be put on trial at once. 
 He said that the Committee had ordered it. I did not 
 beheve him, and wrote to the Committee. I learned that 
 my letter had been opened by Robespierre, who did not 
 want to make any reply. I was at the Committee that 
 evening. I found it assembled, and remember that I saw 
 there Citizens Collot, BDlaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, and 
 another of whose name I am not certain, but whom I beheve 
 to be Citizen Camot. And it was decided that the 160 
 persons would be put on trial in three lots. 
 
 " As for Catherine Theot, I received an order to bring 
 the documents to the Committee in accordance with the 
 resolution ordering her trial. I went there. In the first 
 room I found Dumas, to whom Robespierre had doubtless 
 given instructions. The Committee were assembled. I 
 placed the documents on the desk. Robespierre took 
 possession of them. And when he began to read them, 
 every one went out, so that I was left alone with him and 
 Dumas. He ordered me to leave the bundle. I obeyed and 
 reported the matter to the Committee of General Security, 
 which was especially entrusted with the supervision of 
 the Tribunal." 
 
 After this declaration, Fouquier was, by order of the Presi- 
 dent, taken back to the Conciergerie. Merlin (of Douai) 
 submitted for discussion a project for a decree on the 
 organisation of the new Revolutionary Tribunal. At three 
 o'clock the session was adjourned.^ 
 
 On the i2th of Fructidor (August 29), the ex-Pubhc 
 Prosecutor's case was before the Convention. Lecointre 
 1 Moniteur, session of the 21st of Thermidor. 
 
150 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 (of Versailles) had, on that day, undertaken to attack seven 
 of his colleagues and to prove that Billaud-Varenne, Collot 
 d'Herbois, and Barere, members of the Committee of Public 
 Safety, and Vadier, Amar, Voulland, and David, members 
 of the Committee of General Security, were guilty of and 
 responsible for the crimes of the Terror, and for the excesses 
 committed by the Revolutionary Tribimal. Before the 
 Assembly, at first astonished and then hostile, he had read 
 twenty-six charges which he had formulated. These 
 complaints seemed to be based on certain articles in 
 Fouquier's memorials for his defence. 
 
 A Deputy, Goujon, exclaimed : " What credit does 
 Fouquier-Tinville deserve, that man whose interest it is 
 to plunge a sword into the bosom of the Convention in order 
 to save himself ? " 
 
 Billaud, " the rectilinear patriot," raging at Lecointre's 
 accusation, asked : " Who does not see that this is an 
 infernal intrigue contrived by Fouquier-Tinville to divert 
 upon us all the odium of his conduct ? " 
 
 This session of the 12th and that of the 13th ended in 
 the confusion of Lecointre, who could not prove his charges, 
 and whose speech was continually interrupted by the cry : 
 " Proofs ! Proofs ! " whilst he could not furnish any serious 
 evidence. When he ceased reading, there was, in the 
 Assembly, an outburst of murmurs, invectives, and hootings. 
 
 There were shouts of, " Send him to the Petites Maisons ! " 
 
 It must be admitted that he had no evidence. Fouquier- 
 Tinville's Memorials alone had furnished him with argu- 
 ments.^ Elie Lacoste demanded that a warrant be issued 
 for Lecointre's arrest, and Cambon concluded thus : 
 
 " To-day when everything is made clear, when no evi- 
 dence worthy of credit has been presented to you, and when 
 you are convinced of the falseness of the accusation brought 
 against severalmembersofthe'.NationalConvention,youought, 
 by a solemn resolution, to declare that it is a calumny." 
 
 * Lecointre, to whom Fouquier had not sent his Memorials, could 
 have become acquainted with them through their having been com- 
 municated to him by Merlin (of Douai), Moyse Bayle, or Louis (of 
 the Bas-Rhin). 
 
IN PRISON 151 
 
 This crushing proposition was voted unanimously in the 
 midst of the most eager applause. A bad omen for Fouquier ! 
 
 In the course of these debates, Billaud-Varenne and 
 Legendre had made two mistakes, the one in affirming 
 that, to reward Fouquier for the documents he had furnished, 
 he had been transferred to Sainte-P61agie, without an order 
 from the Committees ; the other in stating that the precaution 
 had been taken of placing him in soUtary confinement there. 
 
 Now, Fouquier had been transferred by an order of the 
 Committee of General Security, as we have seen. He was 
 not in solitary confinement, since, on the 14th of Fructidor, 
 he wrote the following letter to Moyse Bayle and to Louis 
 (of the Bas-Rhin) " from the depths of the prison into which 
 he ought never to have been thrown " : 
 
 " Not reading any newspapers, for they are not brought 
 into the houses of detention for some not very obvious 
 reason, I have just been informed that Citizen Lecointre, 
 at the session of the 12th, has formulated twenty-seven 
 {sic) charges against several Deputies, in particular Citizens 
 Amar, Vadier, and VouUand : ist, that Amar and Voulland 
 had said to the Pubhc Prosecutor when handing over 
 to him the decree concerning the affair of Danton and the 
 others : ' You ought to be easy now. This is something 
 to bring them to reason,' and Amar, Voulland, and Vadier, 
 when there was a rumour in the Tribunal that the majority 
 of the jurors were voting for the innocence of the prisoners, 
 had passed through the refreshment-room and had induced 
 President Herman to employ all possible means to get a 
 sentence of death passed and that this was done by Herman, 
 who spoke against the accused, and who urged the jurors 
 who had voted for death to threaten the others with the 
 vengeance of the Committees, and that these two charges 
 were signed by me. 
 
 " I am ignorant whether those facts have been set forth 
 at the Convention by Citizen Lecointre. But what is 
 certain is that it is impossible to have based those two 
 charges on my memorial or on any writing that has emanated 
 from me. For, were I to perish a thousand times, independ- 
 
152 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 ently of the improbability of those two charges, they are 
 absolutely strange to me, and have not been communicated 
 by me either verbally or in writing to Citizen Lecointre. I do not 
 even remember that Citizens Amar and VouUand handed 
 me the decree in question. As for Citizen Vadier, I only 
 knew long afterwards that he came to the Tribunal. He 
 did not come into my office, nor did I see him at the hearing 
 of the case. 
 
 " Yet, by an error of journalists or others, here am I 
 brought before the pubhc as an informer against Deputies 
 whose testimony I invoke in my memorials to justify myself. 
 Is there a sadder or more unfortunate position than mine, 
 after having spent days and nights in the pubUc interest ? 
 
 ' ' I cannot explain my conduct in regard to accusations that 
 have reached me only in a very imperfect form. Perhaps if 
 the Committee would inform me of the charges, I might have 
 another answer to make to them. But it would be necessary 
 for me to be heard. I shall never depart from the truth, 
 even were I to suffer what I do not deserve. I therefore 
 expect everj^hing from its justice." 
 
 The pubUcity given a little later to the crimes of Joseph 
 Lebon at Arras, and of Carrier at Nantes, must have warned 
 Fouquier that his hour was near, and that his turn to be tried 
 was coming. On the 28th of Fructidor, he wrote to Claude- 
 Emmanuel Dobsen, a former judge of the Tribunal of the 
 Terror,^ and now the President of the new Revolutionary 
 Tribunal : 
 
 " To Citizen Dobsen, President of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal. At the Palace of Justice. 
 
 " P61agie, this 28th of Fructidor of the second year of the 
 Repubhc, one and indivisible. 
 
 " Citizen President, 
 
 " Informed that I am to be brought to trial on one 
 
 of the sans culottides,^ I have not too much time to collect 
 
 all the documents necessary for my defence, the greater 
 
 • Dobsen had been cashiered on the 22nd of Prairial. 
 
 " Complementary days in the Republican Calendar. — Tr. 
 
AN INSTANCE OF HUMANITY 153 
 
 part of which are in the hands of the Deputies who have 
 proceeded to the examination of the papers at the Popular 
 Commission. As all the documents can only be collected by 
 the defender whom I shall choose, I inform you that yesterday 
 I invited Citizen Lafleutrie to the Tribunal to undertake 
 my defence, which he has promised to do. 
 
 " But it is necessary for him to have permission to consult 
 with me. I request you to give him this permission, unless 
 indeed you consider that the cross-examination should take 
 place first ; in that case I pray you to let it take place at 
 P61agie, as was the case with the men of Nantes and others 
 who were here, if you do not judge it suitable to transfer me 
 to the Conciergerie there to await the day of my trial. I 
 have received none of the papers that it had been agreed 
 should be given me in order that I might know of what I am 
 accused. „ . ^ ^ 
 
 " A. Q. FOUQUIER." 1 
 
 On that 28th of Fructidor, the ninety-four inhabitants of 
 Nantes had just been acquitted by the Tribunal after a 
 hearing lasting seven days. They had waited ten months 
 for their trial.* 
 
 When Fouquier-Tinville heard of the verdict in his prison, 
 he must have congratulated himself on it. It was through 
 him that the piteous victims of Carrier, of Chaux. and of 
 Gouillin, were still alive. When Public Prosecutor, he had 
 protracted their trial, not wishing to plead against them, 
 considering that the evidence sent to his office by the 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, and dossier, p. 39. 
 
 ' They were charged with " federalism, conspiracy against the 
 Repubhc, having communication with the rebels in La Vendee and 
 monopohsmg merchandise." They left Nantes on the -A of 
 Frimaire m the year II. (November 27, 1793), to the number of 1^2, 
 escorted by a detachment of the nth Paris battalion. Their journ^ 
 from Nantes lasted forty days. Thirty-five of them periihed S 
 had to remain on the road. Three died in prison at Par^ DminR 
 the journey they had suffered tenibly, led from ceU to cell, from 
 
 t^^.t^r^ ^?.^°'?*y *'^<*' from stable to stable, sleep^r^ 
 innumerable paUets of rotten straw, eaten by vermin, worn out Idth 
 
154 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Revolutionary Committee of Nantes was insufficient. Five 
 times he had written to that Committee to demand proofs 
 and official documents. The answer to his last letter only 
 reached him on the 5th of Thermidor, nine days before his 
 arrest, four days before Robespierre's fall. 
 
 It is true that, on that 5th of Thermidor, the order had 
 been given to transfer the ninety-four inhabitants of Nantes 
 in a body to the Plessis prison, a gaol of sinister reputation 
 which the populace called " Fouquier's store-house." Dur- 
 ing the blood-stained opening of Thermidor, the Revolu- 
 tionary axe struck with such fury that it may be asked what 
 would have happened to these men of Nantes if Robespierre, 
 Dumas, and Coffinhal had not succumbed. When we re- 
 flect on the 342 sentences of death that were passed at 
 Paris between the ist and the 9th of Thermidor ; when we 
 know how, during those nine days, the prisons of Cannes, of 
 Bicfetre, of Saint-Lazare were emptied by the guillotine's 
 agency, it is permissible to ask whether the inhabitants of 
 Nantes who were detained at the Plessis would not have 
 ended by being also placed on trial and executed as were so 
 many others. 
 
 But the 9th of Thermidor came. They still lived. They 
 were saved, and without any doubt they owed their lives 
 to Fouquier-Tinville, who, in this affair, had known how 
 to show himself just and humane. Himiane, because, 
 knowing that since their arrival in Paris the men of Nantes 
 had been attacked by a sort of epidemic disease of which 
 several of them died, he had caused them to be distributed 
 among three hospitals, that of Petit-Bercy, the Hospice de 
 la FoUe-R^gnault in the Rue des Amandiers-Popincourt, 
 and Doctor BeUiomme's house, No. 70, Rue de Charonne. 
 Just, because he had withstood the monstrous demands of 
 the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes ; had refused, 
 on the authority of simple notes and without any evidence or 
 official documents, to treat these wretches as " brigands of 
 La Vendee " or as " the head-quarters staff of the Catholic 
 army," as a section of pubhc opinion at Paris called them. 
 
 Ready to appear before his judges, the ex-PubUc Prosecutor, 
 
THE MEN OF NANTES 135 
 
 learning that the men of Nantes had been acquitted, could 
 congratulate himself thereon. He could remember this 
 verdict, and be able, justly, to confront his accusers 
 with this fact : " Ninety-four French citizens owe their 
 lives to me." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 fouquier-tinville's first trial, the inquiry 
 (vendemiaire and brumaire of the year ii.) 
 
 THE year II. was ending. For Fouquier-Tinville 
 bad news followed on bad news. In his own mind, 
 it was evident that his trial would be that of one 
 of the patriots who had occupied " a place in the 
 Revolution." This harsh and sombre man suffered in his 
 affections as a husband and a father. He meditated ; 
 he reflected, and told himself that his family would die of 
 starvation. 
 
 " Citizen President," he wrote on the 25th of Thermidor 
 to the President of the National Convention, " allow the 
 unhappy father of a niunerous family to remind the Con- 
 vention that the rigorous exercise of the functions of PubUc 
 Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the RepubUc 
 has given him as enemies all the enemies of the Repubhc ; 
 yet, in everything, he has exactly executed the decrees of 
 the Convention and the resolutions of the Committees of 
 Public Safety and of General Security. Firm in his innocence, 
 he dares to claim from the Convention the justice that it 
 alone can render him. 
 
 "A. Q. FOUQUIER." 1 
 
 He corresponded with his wife through the agency 
 of their faithful servant. Citizeness Fouquier-Tinville 
 sent her husband, food, linen, and the books he required. 
 His letters, which are very interesting, have been preserved, 
 but they are not dated. The earher ones were written from 
 the Conciergerie when the ex-Public Prosecutor was drawing 
 up his long memorials for his defence. The others date from 
 '■ Archives Nationales, P 4436, basse T., p. 9. 
 156 
 
FOUQUIER'S LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 157 
 
 after his incarceration in Saint-P61agie. Some of these letters 
 have been copied at the Historical Library of the City of 
 Paris.^ 
 
 First Letter 
 
 " I ask you again, ma bonne amie, to hurry on the 
 printing of my memorials, to correct them as you have 
 seen me do, and, above all, to distribute none to anybody 
 unless I tell you; you ought to guess the reason. I am 
 engaged in making out a list of those among whom I think 
 they ought to be circulated ; I rely enough on your regard 
 to have no doubt that you are fulfiUing my intentions on 
 this point. 
 
 " You remark to me that Citizen Asselin told you that 
 he thought my eldest brother would come for my trial ; I 
 wish he would, but what can he do, except spare you some 
 journeys ? for you must be very tired. My innocence gives 
 me some tranquillity, but the prospect does not console me, 
 especially as I am always abandoned to myself. I give myself 
 up to a crowd of reflections, each more sinister than the 
 other. Who would have thought that by doing my duty 
 as I have done, I should be reduced to this sad position 
 on account of monsters with whom I have never rubbed 
 shoulders ? Time is a great teacher, I know ; so it is on 
 that alone I count. 
 
 "Again, no memorial to anybody, not even to ViefviUe 
 nor to anybody else ; but you can send some through Asselin 
 to my brothers, advising them to keep none of them, and 
 
 ' It was from reading the second series of M. Len6tre's Vielles 
 Maisons, Vieux Papiers, published in 1907 (the article on Madame 
 Fouquier-Tinville), that we learned of the existence of Notes et 
 Documents sur Fouquier-Tinville, published by M. George Lecocq. 
 At that period we had copied out the manuscript letters reproduced 
 here, wluch are preserved in the Historical Library of the City of 
 Paris. " When Madame Fouquier-Tinville died in want and hunger 
 in Paris," says M. Lecocq, " when the family had refused her estate, 
 the State caused everything that composed the fortune of that 
 unhappy woman to be sold. All the furniture, including the manu- 
 scripts referred to, was knocked down for some hundreds of francs. 
 A celebrated amateur, M. Walferdein, bought the autographs and 
 some precious documents for his collection." 
 
158 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 not to give them to anybody to read. We must wait some 
 days before we distribute them. As for the last, let them 
 not be sent to anybody tmtil a decision is come to ; of 
 course your aunt can read it at home. Impress on the printer 
 that he must not give any away ; I am more afraid of that 
 than of an3rthing else. 
 
 " Try and go to the Jacobin Club this evening and send 
 me the result to-morrow with other news. 
 
 " No distribution of copies to the Tribunal either at 
 present. 
 
 " I again embrace you, keep acquainted with the news of 
 the day. 
 
 " Did you receive the ninety copies I sent you this 
 morning ? You tell me nothing about them. I will make 
 out a list of the persons to whom they should be given. 
 
 " P.S. — Yes, I should Uke some eggs." 
 
 Second Letter 
 
 " Good-morning, ma bonne amie, you were not expecting 
 news from me so early ; you have doubtless inserted in 
 my memorial the various additions I sent you, especially 
 that ending with the words, ' the great conspirators, ex- 
 nobles and priests' 
 
 " I should like you to add after the words, ' ex-nobles and 
 priests,' the following : * from actual circumstances, there 
 can remain no doubt as to the true motives of the author of 
 the declamation and denunciation directed against me.' 
 
 " And instead of the words, ' as without pretension in the 
 art of eloquence,' it would be well to substitute, ' without 
 malice as without passion.' This passage is at the end of 
 the last part of my memorial. 
 
 "Those changes are necessary; my request ought to 
 prove to you that my trial occupies my attention more than 
 anything else. 
 
 " In the course of my memorial and towards the end of 
 it there is mention of the Luxembourg conspiracy, especially 
 there should be this phrase, ' which was exactly executed 
 on the 19th, 2ist, and 22nd of Messidor.' 
 
MADAME FOUQUIER'S ACTIVITIES 159 
 
 " I should like, in the margin by that phrase and in the 
 form of further information, these words to be placed, ' there 
 ought to be among the Archives of the Popular Commission 
 sitting at the Louvre a letter I wrote to it on the night between 
 the i8th and the 19th, in which I inform it that in accord- 
 ance with the decision of the Committee of Public Safety, 
 the matter of the Luxembourg conspiracy will be tried in 
 three sessions ; I asked the Popular Commission to send me 
 on the morning of the 19th the notes, documents, and infor- 
 mation it may have had relating to those who are to be placed 
 on trial, and whose names I sent with my letter for this 
 purpose ; I have acted similarly in all other affairs.' 
 
 " This note can be written at the foot of the page if it is 
 obvious that there wovdd not be room enough in the margin, 
 
 " When one composes a memorial in sections, it is only 
 on reflection and with time that one recollects various 
 important facts. 
 
 " P.S. — If you pay the messenger give him 25 centimes and 
 put it down to my account." 
 
 Third Letter. 
 
 " I am pleased with your letter, ma bonne amie. In the 
 hope of being transferred this evening or to-morrow morning, 
 I am sending you back a shirt and the two volumes of 
 Pnidhomme's Revolutions. Find out where is the resolu- 
 tion that authorises me to amalgamate (the prisoners) ; 
 I do not remember ; moreover, my affair is unfortunately 
 embarrassing on this point as on everything else. Send 
 to-morrow at eight o'clock in the morning. If I am trans- 
 ferred, I shall take what I can with me. Be always on the 
 alert, above all prepare Freron's numbers for my defence. 
 
 " Good evening, good night, and good health." 
 
 Fourth Letter. 
 
 " You are right, ma bonne amie. To affix my signature 
 to my memorial is the only method to adopt to avoid for- 
 geries : that is very practical, for what is more necessary 
 for me to do than to avoid the snares that are laid for me ? 
 
i6o THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Thanks for the news you give me ; send a dozen copies of 
 my memorial, and more if you can, to-morrow so that I may 
 sign them, and you will distribute them only among the 
 persons I tell you. I see and know nothing : the officials 
 yesterday gave us reason to hope that we would soon have 
 newspapers, I hope so. Continue to send me what you 
 think best. You know that I am not particular about food, 
 I eat because it is necessary. Send me some salt, and 
 pepper, and uncork the bottle, for I have neither knife, 
 scissors, nor a corkscrew. 
 
 " I am sending you some silk stockings, two dusters, a 
 shirt, a handkerchief, and a bottle. 
 
 " I kiss you, our children, and your aunt. 
 
 " Till to-morrow. 
 
 " I am keeping the oil for the fricassee." 
 
 Fifth Letter. 
 
 " I wish, ma bonne amie, that you could send me some 
 copies of my memorial with my dinner, for I have not one 
 left. I have left you power to dispose of my memorial 
 as you think, so act for the best. Do you know if the 
 memorials you sent to the Convention have been distributed, 
 do you know if they are being sold, of course, for the printer's 
 profit ? I asked you for a copy of Marat's letters ; send 
 with the originals those of Montanet. Brochet lives in the 
 Rue Andree des Arts near the Rue de I'Eperon. I mention 
 this as it is essential to keep my memorials, it is important 
 not to let the stock become exhausted. I have neither 
 spoon nor fork, as we are only provided with wooden spoons 
 and a fork like the broken spoon that I send you. Send me 
 to-morrow two spoons and a fork, for this spoon does not 
 belong to me, and I must return it to the lender. 
 
 " I am terribly wearied by my position, which I could 
 endure with more patience if I had deserved it. Be always 
 attentive to what is said about me, for things must come to 
 an end. Good evening, good health, I kiss you, your aunt, 
 and the children. 
 
 " I have had no brandy since yesterday." 
 
MESSAGES AND REQUESTS i6j 
 
 Sixth Letter. 
 
 " I received your letter, ma bonne amie, and it gives me 
 all the more pleasure as it assures me that you are well ; 
 I have also received my memorial ; I am going to arrange 
 everj^hing so that you can have all this afternoon. 
 
 " Greeting, etc." 
 
 " I kiss you, your aunt, and the children. I should hke 
 a bottle of brandy, for nothing keeps me up but taking a 
 httle." 
 
 Seventh Letter. 
 
 " I send you, ma bonne amie, the Ust of witnesses who 
 I think ought to be called for my defence with the facts 
 that are personal to each of them ; it is important that you 
 should send it to Lafleurie, after having read it and caused 
 it to be read by those persons who are acquainted with what 
 has taken place, and in whom you have confidence. 
 
 " It would be to the purpose to cause some memorials 
 to be given to Martin, a former jurjmian. Rue de Savoye, 
 Section Marat. 
 
 " I see that you are having a great deal of trouble, I wish 
 I could rid you of it ; but we must submit to fate ; we 
 must hope that a happier time will come. It is six o'clock. 
 I have not yet been cross-examined ; it is not certain that 
 I shall be to-day, and I cannot be to-morrow on account 
 of the festival. Good evening, good health, more details 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Eighth Letter. 
 
 " It is eight o'clock, ma bonne amie, and I have not yet 
 had any news from the Tribunal or elsewhere ; so that I 
 cannot tell you if at dinner-time I shall be at Pelagie or 
 elsewhere. » If I go to the Tribunal and remain there, I 
 will have you told ; if I am transferred elsewhere the maid 
 at Pelagie wiU know the place : that is the perplexity in 
 
 » On the 4th of Fructidor in the year II. Fouquier had been trans- 
 ferred from the Conciergerie to Saint-Pelagie. On the gth of Bru- 
 maire in the year III. he was transferred from Sainte-Pelagie to the 
 Plessis. 
 
i62 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 which I find myself ; so I am always waiting as usual. 
 As to the matter of the amalgamation, I have my answer 
 ready : it is a poor resource for my enemies. If you learn 
 an57thing send me word immediately. Be always on the 
 alert either in your own person or through those who still 
 take any interest in me. For instance, you could send 
 to the Tribunal about ten o'clock to know whether I have 
 reached there, or whether they are arranging to have me 
 brought there. Kind messages to Citizen de Vitry and to 
 all others. Good day to everybody." 
 
 Ninth Letter. 
 
 " I pity you, ma bonne amie, for the fatigue you must 
 have experienced during the whole day that you remained 
 at the Convention without having taken anything there. 
 You must indeed have suffered greatly. You are right in 
 thinking that matters are going very badly. What is 
 happening must remind you that I anticipated these events 
 when I remarked to you at the time of the affair of the 
 Revolutionary Committee that an attempt would be made 
 to stir up people's minds against Carrier and afterwards 
 against me. You see that this is the course taken. One 
 can say that there never was a more grievous position than 
 that in which I find myself. The hope of making my 
 innocence triumph alone sustains me, and my sole grief 
 is for you and my unhappy family. Once again I am sure 
 of my innocence ; but in this state of things, what means 
 are there of getting my defence listened to ? That is my 
 uneasiness, lest I be sacrificed and not judged. 
 
 " I send you in my portfolio a letter containing my feelings 
 towards you, and two others which you will deliver, in time, 
 if there is an opportunity. Do not grieve, they are the 
 feelings engraven on my heart that I send you, and that, 
 perhaps, I may not have another opportunity of conveying 
 to you. Shall I, perhaps, be happier ? Shall I display 
 them in person ? I hope so ; but at such a juncture we 
 must expect anything. That is why I have arrived at this 
 decision. Once more, do not be troubled. 
 
REMARKABLE LETTERS 163 
 
 " You must take the greatest care that my creditors do 
 not seize everything from you to the last shirt, in addition 
 to the property; thus the first thing will be for you to 
 disclaim conmiunity of property with me, and to take away 
 as many as possible of the portable articles. The chicken 
 will do me for to-day and to-morrow. 
 
 " I kiss you with all my heart. Keep well. I kiss aunt 
 and the children."^ 
 
 These are singularly moving letters. His part played, 
 the mask has fallen. He is no longer the PubMc Prosecutor, 
 he is a man, a husband, a father. The thought that remains 
 with him is that of the amazing misfortune of the beings 
 for whose existence he has done his work of blood. Now he 
 is hemmed in, put in a cage, like a hunted animal ; he 
 belongs to the men of Thermidor. His Ufe is in their 
 hands. 
 
 During the first days of his detention, he was preparing 
 for the contest. He did everything for his defence. He 
 wrote letters, drew up his Memorials at Sainte-Pelagie, 
 in the midst of the prisoners, ex-jurors of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal or other officials of the Terror, such as Vilain 
 d'Aubigny, Audouin, Guyard (the former janitor of Saint- 
 Lazare), he spoke out, saying that he was having printed 
 a memorial against the Committees. He briefed Lecointre 
 for his sensational denunciation at the Convention.^ 
 
 Now he had nothing more to do but wait until his fate 
 was decided. And what an ordeal ! " That is my uneasiness, 
 lest I be sacrificed and not judged ! " He knew that 
 Carrier* and the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes were 
 to be placed on trial. His txurn was coming to mount the 
 benches of the Tribimal. ^ 
 
 ' These letters have been published by M.rljecocq ["{Notes et 
 Documents sur Fouquier-Tinville. Paris : Jouaust, 1885, 61 pages) 
 with eight other letters of which we do not faiow the originals. 
 
 • So, at least, Riston, an agent of the Committee of General Secur- 
 ity, reports. 
 
 ' Carrier's case was taken on 7th of Frimaire. The trial lasted 
 sixty sessions. Carrier, Pinard and Grandmaison were condemned 
 to death on the 26th. The thirty others who were charged were 
 acquitted. 
 
i64 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 During the preceding month, and part of Brumaire, Judge 
 Forestier, assisted by his registrar, Josse, conducted a 
 prolonged inquiry. He heard a great deal of evidence, almost 
 all in accord, from people who were well acquainted with 
 Fouquier while he exercised his terrible magistracy. Cer- 
 tainly, there were some of those depositions, such as that 
 of Paris, the registrar, and his subordinates, which should 
 be carefully examined, for, as is known, the registry of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal was Dantonist, and it did not forgive 
 the PubHc Prosecutor either Danton's death or the sudden 
 arrest and condemnation of Legris,^ a clerk at the registry. 
 And yet what precision, what clearness there were in the 
 affirmations of Paris, of Wohf , of Tavernier ! 
 
 There were, moreover, other depositions, such as that of 
 Chateau, Fouquier's former secretary, which seem to bear 
 all the marks of frankness and impartiality, and which, 
 though favourable to the accused on many points, none the 
 less established very grave charges against him on other 
 points. 
 
 The writers who have studied the history of the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal have, to this day, chiefly made use of two 
 publications which we can condemn as being often inexact 
 or partial. These are : ist, Fouquier-Tinville' s Printed 
 Trial, pubUshed by Maret, bookseller at Paris, at the Cour 
 des Fontaines, in the Palais-Egalit^, and catalogued in the 
 National Library under the classification Lib. 41, 1798 ; 
 and 2nd, the Histoire Parlementaire of Bouchez and Roux, 
 the 1837 edition. Volumes XXXIV. and XXXV., in which 
 the pleadings in the trial are reproduced. 
 
 Without systematically setting aside those two publica- 
 tions, we think the time has come — since apart from all 
 pohtioal ideas and preconceived notions, the reader requires 
 to form an exact idea of the part that Fouquier played, and 
 the responsibiMty he incurred — to have recourse only to the 
 
 ' The evidence of P§jris is interesting. But, when reading it, we 
 ought to remember that Nicolas Joseph PHris, called Fabricius, 
 Danton's friend, and appointed, thanks to Danton, chief registrar 
 of the Tribunal, had been dismissed and imprisoned six days after 
 Danton's execution, on the 24th of Germinal in the year II. 
 
DAMNING EVIDENCE 165 
 
 original documents, that is to say to the depositions of the 
 witnesses preserved in the portfolios of the National Archives, 
 and to analyse those depositions, a work that has not yet 
 been done. Just as we have felt bound to reproduce in fuU, 
 the original Memorials of Fouquier, written in his own hand, 
 in view of his defence, so we think that only the original 
 depositions, preserved among the Archives, ought to be 
 taken into consideration. 
 
 Let us listen to the witnesses examined by Judge Forestier. 
 We shall hear Fouquier afterwards. 
 
 At noon on the 5th of Vendemiaire in the year III. (Sep- 
 tember 26th, 1794), a month and twenty days after the 
 Public Prosecutor's arrest, the first witness appeared 
 before Pierre Forestier, and Josse, his registrar. Nicolas 
 Tirrart, 33 years of age, an usher of the Tribunal, residing 
 at 281 Rue Saint-Honore, stated : 
 
 " Since the terrible law of the 22nd of Prairial, I have 
 heard Fouquier say : ' In this decade^ there must be three 
 hundred to three hundred and fifty tried.' On certain days 
 when several citizens were acquitted, Fouquier would say 
 with warmth : ' What ? have they acquitted those people ? 
 I must have the names of the jurors.' Sometimes, when he 
 returned in the evening at about ten or eleven o'clock, 
 rather heated, Fouquier used to change the lists of the cases 
 that had been prepared in the course of the day and of the 
 accused who were to be tried the next morning. In the 
 same way, when the day of the hearing came, he sometimes 
 had everything changed, the cases and the accused. Some- 
 times also he would call an usher and say to him : ' You 
 must not simimon the jurors whom I do not tell you.' 
 He would then ask for the Ust and choose, at his own fancy, 
 such a section for such a hall, although it was not the turn of 
 that section to sit. It sometimes happened that he added the 
 names of certain jurors who were not authorised to serve — 
 Desboisseaux, Lumidre, Trinchard, Renaudin, Girard, and 
 VUate. Sometimes, in the morning, before the hearing, I 
 have seen Fouquier go up to the assembled jurors in their 
 • Cf. note, p. 66. 
 
i66 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 hall where they deUberated. I declare that Fouquier has a 
 very hard, violent, and menacing character, with that tone 
 that only belongs to a despot." 
 
 The next witness, Jean Baptiste Benoit Auvray, aged 
 45, an usher of the Tribunal, of No. 37, Rue de Provence, had 
 heard Fouquier say several times, and in particular since 
 the law of the 22nd of Prairial : "In this decade there must 
 be 250, 300, to 350 prisoners tried." When the accused 
 were acquitted, Fouquier would say : " What ? Give me 
 the hst of jurors ! What sort of jurors are these ? " He 
 used to speak with incredible warmth : " Can one not count 
 then on these people ? " The witness had also noticed 
 that sometimes when Fouquier came in, at ten or eleven 
 o'clock in the evening, he was very heated, and caused the 
 list of cases prepared during that day for the day following 
 to be changed, as well as the list of accused persons. 
 
 In regard to the modification of the jurors' tums; the 
 depositions of the usher Auvray, were the same as those 
 of the usher Tirrard. There is also agreement between both 
 the depositions concerning the visits made by Fouquier 
 to the jurors before the trials. 
 
 " I should add," the witness declared, " that Fouquier is 
 a very sharp, very petulant man ; that he often threatened 
 the ushers and fell into frightful rages, above ,all, when it 
 was a matter of answering him about searching for the pris- 
 oners who were designated to us only by their family names. 
 It was on this that he threatened me once, in a moment of 
 fury, telling me that I should remember it. However, it 
 is right to remark that when his anger had passed, he did 
 not bear maUce, and admitted that it was imfortunate for 
 him to be like that, and that he knew well he could not but 
 be disagreeable in the eyes of those to whom he spoke." 
 
 Auguste- Joseph Boucher, aged 51, a clerk to the registrar of 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal, residing at No. 1036 Rue Saint- 
 Dominique, knew that several times, when accused persons 
 had been acquitted, Fouquier said to him iU-humouredly : 
 " Give me the names of those who compose the jury." An- 
 other remark of Fouquier' s, made in the presence of the 
 
TRANSPORTS OF PASSION 167 
 
 witness, who was then an usher, was : " You are not making 
 headway, gentlemen, you are not making headway ! Hence- 
 forth two hundred must pass through it every decade." 
 One day, when commissioned by Fouquier to go to a prison 
 to find the ex-Duchesse de Biron, he pointed out to him 
 that there were two Duchesses de Biron. " Well," replied 
 Fouquier, " bring both. They will both pass through it." 
 They did pass, in truth, and both mounted the scaffold 
 the next day. Another day, when entrusted with a warrant 
 for the arrest of a count or viscount de Castellane, the 
 witness remarked to him that he desired to know which of 
 the two it was for, the count or the viscount. Fouquier 
 answered that he was to arrest all those who bore the name 
 of Castellane.^ 
 
 Robert Wolff, aged 38, clerk to the registrar of the Revo- 
 lutionary Tribunal, residing in the Rue de Buci, declared 
 that he had seen in Fouquier a very violent character, and 
 a despotic, unbearable temper, " showing itself towards 
 subordinate officials such as registrars, ushers, and other 
 clerks." He was continually threatening to have them put 
 in prison. 
 
 "As it seldom happened that he did not take too much 
 wine at dinner, it was in this state that he would come to 
 the ushers' office of tener than anjrwhere else to vent in fury 
 the vapours that during dinner had mounted to his brain. 
 None the less, when fasting, he gave way equally to the 
 same transports. The whole Tribunal, not even excepting 
 the judges, trembled before him, some through fear of 
 prison, others through the credit he had with the Com- 
 mittees." 
 
 This deposition of Robert Wolff was a regular speech for 
 the prosecution, clear, precise, implacable. It was, on most 
 of the important points, in full accord with the evidence we 
 have just read, as well as with that which we are going to 
 read. Let us not forget, however, that this deposition is 
 that of a declared enemy of Fouquier-Tinville. 
 
 "It is not true, as Fouquier advances in his printed 
 ' W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 83. 
 
i68 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 memorial," Wolff goes on, " that he appeared against, and 
 demanded the despatch to the scaffold of Masror Lescot- 
 Fleuriot, notoriously known as his most intimate friend ; 
 but the fact is that he. only appeared against the first seven 
 or eight who were tried on the loth of Thermidor. When it 
 was Fleuriot's turn, he gave place to Liendon, one of his 
 deputies, who finished that hearing, which lasted until 
 six o'clock in the evening, and at which twenty-two con- 
 spirators were condemned to the scaffold. After Fleuriot's 
 condemnation, he reappeared at the hearing, wearing a light- 
 coloured coat, and remained there for part of the time that 
 was spent trying the others. I performed the duties of 
 registrar at that hearing. In consequence, I was a witness 
 of the fact. Fouquier was so far from sending his friend 
 Fleuriot to the scaffold that he violently reprimanded 
 Tavernier, the usher who was present at the execution of the 
 twenty-two on the loth of Thermidor, for having caused his 
 dear Fleuriot to be executed the last ; he added that the 
 usher had only acted thus because he had taken the opinion 
 of his Section, which was also Fleuriot's Section (the Museum 
 Section). 
 
 " On the gth of Thermidor, when Fouquier dined at the 
 house of Verghnes in the He de la Fraternity, although he 
 pretends that he was ignorant of the troubles, as he says 
 in his memorial in order to paUiate his associating with the 
 infamous Coffinhal, it appears from the following fact that 
 he is trying to deceive. About one o'clock on the after- 
 noon of that very day. Citizen Simmonet (one of the clerks 
 to the ushers of the Tribunal) came to announce that there 
 was trouble in the neighbourhood and in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Antoine, that the drum had beaten to arms there, and that 
 Hanriot had at the point of the sword rescued the pretended 
 patriots from the hands of the gendarmes. An hour before, 
 Dumas had been arrested while actually sitting in the Tribu- 
 nal, and at two o'clock the whole Tribunal knew of the troubles 
 which Robespierre's accomphces were beginning to arouse. 
 About half-past three, Fouquier, with his hat on his head, 
 went out to attend that famous dinner. He was then oppo- 
 
^ FOUQUIER'S HUMANITY 169 
 
 site the prisoners' room, a few steps from the door out of the 
 Hall of Columns. Sanson, the executioner of criminal 
 judgments, in the presence of Desmorest (or another 
 restive who helped him to carry out the executions), of the 
 usher (who was to be present at them), and of myself, re- 
 marked that there was trouble in the Saint-Antoine quarter, 
 through which he must pass, and in the suburb where the 
 execution was to take place. He asked Fouquier whether 
 he did not think it prudent to postpone the execution. 
 Fouquier answered with a httle emotion : ' Proceed in any 
 case. Nothing ought to stop the execution of judgments nor 
 the course of justice. And, moreover, there is a force to pro- 
 tect the execution.' Fouquier then proceeded on his way to 
 dine with his companions. It is correct to say that a 
 batch of six carts was waiting only for this order to set out 
 for the Barrier of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. This was 
 immediately done. 
 
 " In regard to the humanity which Fouquier affects, and 
 the bitterness he feels about the sanguinary law of the 22nd 
 of Prairial, his conduct is not found to be in accord with the 
 sentiments of humanity which he parades, since it is notor- 
 ious that in my presence and in the presence of several others 
 attached to the Tribunal, Fouquier, being at luncheon with 
 several jurors, worthy executors of that law of blood, coldly 
 calculated, as he picked his teeth, the number of victims 
 who were to be despatched. ' Things must move,' said he. 
 ' There must be 400 or 450 this decade ; for the next one, so 
 many are always to be had.' And the cannibal jurors, 
 before whbm he made such barbarous calculations, applauded. 
 The fact is so notorious that there are few among those 
 attached to the Tribunal who did not share those atrocious 
 sentiments who are not in a position to affirm it ; more- 
 over, his later conduct had only too well verified his 
 calculations. It is, for the honour of humanity, only too 
 notorious that he put on trial as many as seventy persons 
 at once, and charged them with taking part in the alleged 
 conspiracies in the prisons, especially in the first batch from 
 the Luxembourg when a scaffolding was erected which 
 
170 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 reached to the top of the hall. Sixty-nine persons were tried 
 before three o'clock, and executed the same day. That was 
 in the case of the girl Renaud, her family, and Admiral. 
 All the people of Paris have seen or learned from public 
 conversation in what manner, in less than four hours, sixty- 
 nine persons were tried and condemned to death as accom- 
 plices of Renaud and Admiral. Things were hurried so 
 much that, in order to avoid the time that would have been 
 occupied by asking the names and descriptions of so great 
 a number of persons and having them written down by the 
 registrar, the judges' and the jurors' hsts were made in the 
 registry the evening before. This is how the proceedings 
 enhghtened the consciences of the jurors. An accused 
 person would be asked : ' Are you acquainted with the 
 conspiracy that existed, etc. ? ' The accused would answer 
 in the negative. Then he was asked this other question 
 which would seem to have been answered by the preceding 
 one : ' Have you taken part in that conspiracy ? ' The same 
 negative answer. If the accused wanted to enter into any 
 details to demonstrate that he could not have taken part 
 in that conspiracy, as soon as he opened his mouth the 
 pitiless Dumas would say to him : ' You can be heard no 
 longer. Gendarmes, do your duty.' And if the accused 
 still wanted to speak, he was not allowed to take part in 
 the proceedings. When the questions had been I'epeated 
 sixty-nine times and the laconic answer, ' No,' had been 
 returned sixty-nine times, the Prosecutor summed up for 
 a quarter of an hour, the President read out the questions 
 which the jury were to answer, and the legion of accused 
 persons had to retire. The jurors retired as a matter of form 
 to their room, where they remained for half-an-hour, then 
 came back, and handed in their declarations. The PubUc 
 Prosecutor made a final speech. Judgment was pronounced, 
 and the registrar was sent to tell the victims that within 
 half-an-hour, that is to say within the time it took to cut 
 off their hair and bind their hands, they would start for the 
 scaffold. This first trial is a type of those that followed it. 
 And it was on that occasion that the custom began of thus 
 
"THINGS MUST MOVE" 171 
 
 playing with justice, and transforming into a legal butchery 
 a Tribunal which, from the very severity of its functions, 
 ought to have been most scrupulously subject to forms. It 
 was Fouquier who, either in person or by deputy, presided 
 over the indictments and judgments. He used to say : 
 ' Things must move.' 
 
 " Fouquier pretends that he only acted by order of the 
 Committees. Here are two facts which prove that, if this 
 is so, he must have given a very great extension to his 
 orders. 
 
 " Boucher, an usher at the Tribunal, an honest and a 
 feeling man, told me, in the bitterness of his heart, that 
 Fouquier having given orders to the ushers to go to a prison 
 to fetch a woman named Biron who was to be put on trial 
 next day and to form part of a batch. He remarked to him 
 that there were two women of the name of Biron, one the 
 widow of the Duke who had been condemned to death, 
 and the other the widow of the Marshal.^ Fouquier said : 
 ' Bring them both. They will pass through it.' In fact, 
 they both passed through it next day, and both were sent 
 to the scaffold. 
 
 " The same incident was repeated and also through the 
 agency of the same Boucher, who told it to me. Fouquier 
 gave this usher a warrant to arresta person named CasteUane. 
 The usher remarked to him that he knew several persons of 
 the same name. ' Arrest all who bear that name,' repUed 
 Fouquier. Only one was arrested because no others called 
 CasteUane were found. 
 
 " Finally, Fouquier said to Tavemier, a clerk in the registry 
 of the Tribunal, when speaking of Fabricius, the chief 
 registrar, who had been imprisoned for four months and put 
 into sohtary confinement by Robespierre, and who, since 
 the restoration of the Tribunal, had again been appointed 
 to his old post by the National Convention, that Fabricius 
 was wrong to bear him ill-will, seeing that he, Fouquier, 
 had prevented Fabricius from being placed on trial and Taver- 
 
 > They were Ain61ie de Boufaers, Biron's widow, and Fran9oise 
 Pauline de Roye, Marshal Biron's wife. 
 
173 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 nier also, and that he had prevented the witness, another 
 friend of Fabricius, from being charged along with him, 
 whilst there was neither accusation nor denunciation against 
 Fabricius any more than against Tavernier or the witness ; 
 these two last have never been arrested, and, on the con- 
 trary, have always continued to perform their functions at 
 the Tribunal, to which they were re-appointed on its 
 restoration. 
 
 "It is within my knowledge that for more than six 
 months no registrar was ever summoned to be present 
 when lots were drawn to select the judges and jurors ; 
 the Public Prosecutor sent to the registry the list which 
 was afterwards furnished to the ushers in order that 
 they might summon them ; moreover, the ushers were 
 not present at the dehberations in the Council Chamber 
 and they were only provided with a memorandum of 
 the proceedings so as to make out and sign the minutes ; 
 several times when persons who had been acquitted presented 
 themselves at the registry to obtain the documents neces- 
 sary in order to get the help that was granted them by the 
 law, Fouquier forbade those documents to be given without 
 consulting him, because he did not wish everybody to have 
 that help, although the law made no exceptions. He would 
 say, in order to empower himself to prevent the delivery of 
 those documents : ' What ! these beggars are too lucky to 
 be acquitted. It 'is incredible. What sort of jurors could 
 acquit them ? Give them nothing.' " ^ 
 
 Charles Nicolas Tavernier, aged 38, a clerk to the registrar 
 of the Tribunal, residing in the Rue de la Monnaie, heard 
 Fouquier say in the ushers' office : "I must get through 
 with 250 to 300 accused persons in the decade." When 
 any one was acquitted, Fouquier used to ask for the names 
 of the jurors who were sitting. Several times he gave 
 orders for certain jurors to be summoned on the pretext that 
 one section was weaker than another. The indictments were 
 delivered to those concerned on the day before the trial at 
 seven or eight o'clock in the evening. 
 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 77. 
 
THE DANTON AFFAIR 173 
 
 Gabriel Nicolas Monet, aged 38, an usher at the Tribunal, 
 residing in the Rue du Contrat-Social in the Section of the 
 same name, declared that Fouquier selected the jurors who 
 were to be summoned. Those whom he chose oftenest were 
 Renaudin, Nicolas, Desboisseaux, Lumi^re, Vilate, and 
 Gravier. This choice only began after the operation of the 
 law of the 22nd of Prairial. 
 
 Monet heard Fouquier say : " Next decade there must be 
 300 or 350 tried. Things are not moving. We must act 
 in revolutionary fashion." 
 
 Citizeness Goureau, aged 36, of No. 18, Faubourg Saint- 
 Martin, and her sister-in-law, nee Alexandre Rosalie Pigeon, 
 having been commissioned to bring to the Tribunal a letter 
 to Fouquier-TinviUe from Bourdon (of the Oise), saw three 
 jurors entering the Council Chamber where Fouquier was. 
 " Now we are free ! " said they. Fouquier asked them if the 
 prisoners had been tried. " Yes," answered the three 
 jurors. " We do not know of what they were accused. 
 To know that, you have only to rim after them." At this 
 remark Fouquier burst into laughter. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Topino-Lebrun, aged yi, bom at Marseilles, 
 a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, residing in the Louvre, 
 had always regarded as a problem Fouquier's activity in his 
 duties combined with the negligence with which he fol- 
 lowed up " the business of the great conspiracies, either to 
 reach their real heads or to extirpate their roots." To take 
 an instance. " In the project for rescuing the Queen from 
 the Conciergerie, and afterwards when she was led to execu- 
 tion, the police administration, influenced by Hubert and 
 Chaumette, ought to have been differently examined (sic)." 
 There was the same negUgence in the Ronsin affair and in 
 that of Westermann " who was placed on trial for having 
 violated all the forms relative to La Vendee." 
 
 " Fouquier did not seem to me to be without party 
 spirit in the Danton affair. If he did not write to the Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety about the alleged rebeUion of the 
 accused persons, why, when he demanded the reading of the 
 law which took away their right to plead, did he begin by 
 
174 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 saying : ' On account of the rebellion of the accused per- 
 sons ' ? Why, on the fourth day, did he and Herman go 
 to the jurors' room to induce them to declare that they were 
 sufficiently informed ? After that trial, did he, at the very 
 least, act on these words of Danton, so important to our 
 liberty : ' I demand commissioners from the Convention 
 in order that they may receive my denunciation of the sys- 
 tem of dictatorship ' ? It was the Convention that 
 should have been writen to and not the Committee of 
 Public Safety. 
 
 " It was Fouquier who caused the red shirts to be put on 
 the 52 prisoners in the affair of Admiral and the girl Renaud. 
 They were by no means accused of assassination. 
 
 " The writs of indictment seemed to me to strain and 
 exaggerate the charges which could be made against 
 prisoners. Sometimes terrible facts were in no way borne 
 out at the trial by the documents or by the statements 
 of the witnesses."^ 
 
 Jean Baptiste Sambat, aged 35, a juror of the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal, residing at No. 36 Rue Taitbout, had 
 no acquaintance with the facts alleged against the prisoner 
 Fouquier. However, he noticed, a Uttle before the period 
 of the law of Prairial, that grave accusations were often 
 found to be void through the lack of documents and 
 witnesses.* 
 
 Jean Nicolas Thierriet-Grandpr6, aged 41, chief clerk 
 of the Commission for the Administration of Civil Affairs, 
 PoUce, and Tribunals, residing at No. 38, Rue de Thion- 
 viUe, declared that on the day following that on which 
 Freteau was acquitted, he went to Fouquier to consider with 
 him what measures were to be taken for the security of the 
 Hospice de I'EvSch^. Fouquier said to him : " You do not 
 know that yesterday they acquitted Fr6teau at the Tribunal, 
 though the man is known to me as having been a royaUst 
 and a definite counter-revolutionary under the Constituent 
 Assembly. But I swear that before long he will be taken 
 again and then he will not escape." 
 
 > W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 145. " Ibid. 
 
CURIOUS METHODS 175 
 
 Another day Fouquier told him with " a mixture of 
 pleasure and irony " how he had received in his office an 
 individual who came to give him information about some 
 case. For several hours Fouquier had " wheedled " him, 
 then had suddenly handed him over to the Tribunal, " which 
 condemned him in a quarter of an hour." 
 
 Louis Charles Hally, aged 42, janitor of the house of deten- 
 tion of Plessis-Egalitd, only became acquainted with the 
 famous conspiracy in the prisons through the report of 
 Viart and Courlet-Beaulop. He immediately communicated 
 this report to Fouquier, who said to him : " I shall put them 
 on trial to-morrow or the day after, and I shall smnmon 
 you as a witness." He asked for time to inform himself 
 about the matter. Fouquier refused it. On the following 
 day the prisoners were placed on trial. Hally, summoned as 
 a witness, could not make a declaration as he did not know a 
 single fact about the case, which was adjourned. Fouquier 
 reprimanded him, and showed ill-hxunour towards him 
 " because the business could not be ended as he wished."^ 
 
 Louis Pierre Dufoumy, aged 55, an architect in the House 
 of Explosives at the Arsenal in Paris, ^ in a very long, pre- 
 tentious, circumstantial, and rather obscure deposition, in 
 which it appears that he liked pushing himself forward and 
 distributing praise and blame to the Thermidor conquerors — 
 Dufoumy charged Fouquier with having been secretly favour- 
 able to Rorisin, " Robespierre's man, and with having con- 
 tributed to suppress the clues that might have made known 
 the causes of La Vendue, the methods employed to keep that 
 ulcer open, and the participation in it of Robespierre and of 
 Ronsin as well as their actual accomplices." 
 
 Summoned as a witness at Danton's trial, Dufoumy said 
 that he was systematically set aside. In vain did he write 
 about the matter to Fouquier. He was kept in the witnesses' 
 room for the three days that the proceedings lasted. He 
 there observed all that was taking place around him. He 
 
 " W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 61. 
 
 ' Dufoumy succeeded Lavoisier as Director of Explosives at the 
 Arsenal. 
 
176 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 saw several members of the Committee of General Security 
 " sitting at the Tribunal," among others, David, Amar, 
 Voulland and Vadier. " They were imrecognisable from 
 anger, pallor, and fright, so much did they seem to fear that 
 they would see the victims escape death." They kept com- 
 ing in and going out, and were agitated by an activity which 
 displayed all their passions. They communicated with 
 Fouquier in his office as weU as in the passages and even in 
 the entrance to the witnesses' room."^ 
 
 Jean Pierre Victor Feral, aged 39, judge of the district of 
 Pont-Chaher,* residing in Paris at No. 3, Rue de la Femme- 
 sans-T6te declared that, being present at the last session of 
 Hdbert's trial and finding himself in the Council Chamber, 
 he heard Fouquier propose to the judges and some jurors to 
 have Lieutenant-Colonel Quetineau's widow and a man called 
 Armand' withdrawn from the proceedings "seeing that 
 there were no proofs against them, and to send them back 
 to the house of detention because proofs might be found in 
 other cases." He added that he was going to make this pro- 
 posal to the Tribunal when the session opened. Several 
 judges and jurors opposed this initiative of Fouquier. The 
 witness believed that, disarmed by this opposition, Fouquier 
 remained silent at the session.* 
 
 ' W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 41. 
 
 » Pont-l'Evdque. Calvados. 
 
 » Jean Antoine Florent Armand, a medical student, implicated 
 in Hebert's trial and condemned to death on the 4th of Germinal 
 in the year II. 
 
 * W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 85. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S first trial : COiJTINUATION AND 
 END OF THE INQUIRY. (VENDEMIAIRE AND BRUMAIRE 
 OF THE YEAR III.) 
 
 JEAN BAPTISTE TAVERNIER. registrar's clerk of 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal, was commissioned to pay 
 50 livres to the prisoners each decade. He received 
 their claims, and presented them to Fouquier. A 
 great number of them " overwhelmed him with claims in 
 regard to sums deposited with the Public Prosecutor 
 instead of being placed in the registry." 
 
 Tavemier related these facts to Judge Forestier at hi^ 
 examination on the 12th of Vendemiaire in the year III., 
 and he gave details. A prisoner claimed " his decades out 
 of about 1,800 livres in paper-money, 1,392 livres in gold." 
 Another claimed them out of 2,282 livres. On a certain day 
 when Tavemier " presented to Fouquier their just claims 
 and pointed out to him that he lacked everything," the 
 PubHc Prosecutor answered him sharply (" for," said the 
 witness, " he is violent ") : " Give me the list of these beggars. 
 I will make them pass through it to-morrow." 
 
 Tavemier knew what that meant. He pointed out to 
 the complainants the extreme danger of their demands. 
 They became silent. It was only after Fouquier's arrest 
 that the deposits of certain prisoners " who had not yet been 
 guillotined" were sent to the registry. 
 
 Tavernier remembered the calculations made by Fouquier 
 to cause a certain number of heads to fall each decade. 
 One day he heard him say : " Last decade furnished so 
 many ; this one the number must go to 450 or even 500. 
 Come ! Call an usher ! " The usher came. " Come, you 
 fellows," said Fouquier, " things must move. Last decade 
 things did not tum out badly. But this decade they must 
 reach 450 at least." 
 
 M 177 
 
178 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Since Fouquier's arrest the witness had met him at the 
 Conciergerie. Fouquier approached him and said to him : 
 
 " Are you a friend of Fabricius ? " 
 
 " Yes, you know it." 
 
 " I am told that he has a grudge against me." 
 
 " I know nothing about it." 
 
 " He could do me a great service. He knows Barras, 
 Freron, and other Deputies. He could serve me with them. 
 He is wrong to have a grudge against me. For it was I 
 who caused the postponement of his trial. It was even 
 intended to join you with him, as weU as Wolff." 
 
 The witness ended by sajdng that his astonishment was 
 so great that he withdrew without any further explanation. 
 
 Louis Francois Ferriere-Sauvebceuf, aged 32, living on 
 his private income and detained at La Force, declared that 
 on the 28th of Prairial he was summoned at one o'clock in 
 the morning before the Committee of General Security. 
 Fouquier-Tinville came there, about two o'clock, to complain 
 of having been iU-treated in a guard-room. He heard Fou- 
 quier-Tinville say, in the presence of the assembled Com- 
 mittee " which contradicted him in no way " : " I have thirty- 
 nine of them to-day who went to the Barrier du Trone 
 Renvers6 for the Bictoe plots. To-morrow I shall send 
 sixty of them." And the witness heard cries of " Bravo ! " 
 
 He also heard it said to Deschamps, the registrar's secre- 
 tary of Bicfetre, that Fouquier-Tinville came with gendarmes 
 to fetch the second batch from BicStre, and that he refused 
 to listen to Osselin'^ who was commenting on this 
 transference." 
 
 • Charles Nicolas Osselin, a member of the Convention, had voted 
 for Lonis XVI. 's death. He was a member of the Committee of General 
 Security and President of the Tribunal which was established on 
 August 17. He proposed the law against the_emigrants. Informed 
 against for having gone security for an emigrant, Charlotte de 
 Lupp6, Countesse de Charry, he was put on trial, condemned to be 
 deported, and transferred to Bicitre, where he was implicated in the 
 conspiracy in the prisons. He was brought before the Tribunal, 
 condemned to death, and executed on June 26, 1794. He had tried 
 to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the breast with a nail. 
 
 " W. 501, and dossier, p. 72. 
 
AN UNUSUAL HUMANITY 179 
 
 In a second deposition, three days later, Ferri^re-Sauve- 
 bcEuf repeated the words of Joly, an usher at the Criminal 
 Tribiinal of the Department. On the 8th of Thermidor, 
 this usher met Fouquier, who said to him : " Your Tribunal 
 is not keeping up. It only makes two or three mount (the 
 scaffold), and I, / shall make fifty mount it the day after next 
 decade begins." 
 
 Ferri^re-Sauvebceuf observed that when he was at the 
 Committee of General Security he heard Fouquier say : 
 " I have made thirty-nine of them mount (the scaffold) 
 to-day, and to-morrow / will make sixty of them mount it." 
 Fouquier could not carry out his intention for, having 
 been beaten in a police-station, he was ill on that day. 
 The next day " was that of the ' batch ' of people from 
 BicStre, and the 29th of Prairial was that of the sixty which 
 he had predicted."^ 
 
 The following deposition is in part favourable to Fouquier : 
 Urbain Didier Chateau, Fouquier's ex-secretary, afterwards 
 an usher in the Revolutionary Tribunal, aged 34, noticed, 
 when he was the Public Prosecutor's secretary, that almost 
 all the letters he wrote to the Committee of General Security 
 bore the address of Vadier only. 
 
 He knew also that several citizens came, on several 
 occasions, to ask Fouquier to bring about the trials of their 
 children who had been prisoners for a long time, saying that 
 if they were guilty their heads ought to fall, but if innocent 
 they ought to be given back to the service of the country. 
 Fouquier, reminding them of the causes of their children's 
 imprisonment, remarked that " he did not wish to cause 
 defenders of the country who were only guilty of foolish 
 actions to be put to death ; that if he put them on trial 
 it would ruin them, and that he preferred to leave them 
 longer in prison in the hope that when the great operations 
 were ended there would come a gentler law which would 
 set them free." 
 
 Chateau also knew that Fouquier several times said : 
 "It is a tyranny and a very great annoyance that the 
 • W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 79 
 
i8o THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 inhabitants of Nantes should be brought before this Tribunal 
 without any evidence against them." 
 
 Since he became^ an usher at the Tribunal, Chateau, 
 being one day in the Council Chamber, heard Fouquier 
 and Dumas say to five or six jurors that it was astonishing 
 they had not convicted an accused ex-noble (whose name 
 he had forgotten). According to them, he was a man who 
 ought not to escape the punishment of death ; but they held 
 him, and they would know how to take him again without 
 it being possible for him to escape. 
 
 At the beginning of Thermidor, Chateau heard Fouquier 
 say to two jurors, as he was leaving the session in the HaU of 
 Liberty, with papers under his arm, and was at the bottom 
 of the staircase that led to his room : " It is astonishing 
 that you have condemned that prisoner. I hope he will 
 be set free." 
 
 At the same period there had been a nvraiber of persons 
 tried, among whom were three who had been acquitted, 
 and who ought to have been set at Uberty twenty-four hours 
 after the verdict. Chateau went to find Fouquier the next 
 day, at eleven o'clock in the evening, at the refreshment- 
 room of the Tribunal. He asked him for an order to set 
 these three persons free. Fouquier read the three names, 
 said that among them there was an ex-noble who had been 
 badly tried, and that he would see about getting hold of 
 him again. For this reason it was necessary to leave them 
 in prison until there was a fresh order.^ 
 
 Armand Benoit Joseph Guffroy, Deputy for the Pas-de- 
 Calais at the Convention, residing at No. 35 Rue Saint- 
 Honore, was not well acquainted with Fouquier-Tinville. 
 He had heard, either in the offices of the Committee of 
 General Security, or from the members of the Convention, 
 that at the beginning or at the end of each decade, when 
 Fouquier brought long lists of prisoners to the prosecutor's 
 office, he used to say in a gay tone, rubbing his hands : 
 "Ah! we shall unbreech (diculotterons) a good quantity 
 of them this decade." 
 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 74. 
 
CHARLOTTE CORDAY 
 
A SYSTEM OF DESPOTISM i8i 
 
 He also heard his colleague, Lecointre, say that, when 
 Fouquier was dining with him, some one (perhaps Lecointre 
 himself) said to Fouquier: " How is it possible that you, 
 who were at first believed to be a just man, can lend yourself 
 to committing or helping to commit so many cruelties ? " 
 
 Fouquier answered : " When one has one foot in crime, 
 it is necessary to plunge right in." 
 
 The witness several times saw Fouquier coming to the 
 Committee of General Security and asking for papers relating 
 to various prisoners. He would then have secret conferences 
 with Vadier, Amar, and some others of whose names he 
 could not be certain.^ 
 
 Next came Jacques Bernard Marie Montane, the former 
 President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, aged 43.^ He 
 declared that at the period of the creation of the Revolution- 
 ary Tribunal he had been appointed President, not on the 
 nomination of a Committee, but by the Convention itself, 
 by a majority of votes given in secret baUot. It was at the 
 time of the installation of the Tribunal that he saw Fouquier 
 for the first time. For two months he lived on fairly good 
 terms with him. He had then no suspicion of him. It was 
 otherwise during the following two months, when these two 
 magistrates were at open war " either on accoimt of the 
 absolute despotism which Fouquier-Tinville publicly exer- 
 cised over the whole Tribunal or on account of the criminal 
 operations with which Montane publicly reproached him, 
 or on accoimt of the generals, the commissioners for war, 
 the ex-nobles, the ex-captains of cavalry, the ex-marquises, 
 whom he exempted from the sword of the law, clandestinely 
 
 '■ W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 65. 
 
 " Fouquier had denounced him for having erased from the sen- 
 tence on Leonard Bourdon's assailants the clause confiscating their 
 goods, and for having at Charlotte Corday's trial modified the ques- 
 tions propounded to the jury, giving them a sense which made her 
 case one that could be tried by a common-law tribunal. In his de- 
 nunciation, Fouquier had asked that the President " should not be 
 delivered over to the rigours of justice." When Montane was 
 arrested, he had been humanely forgotten in prison by Fouquier, 
 and thus saved in spite of letters in which he demanded to be placed 
 on trial (W. 500, 3rd dossier, pp. 89, 90, 91). 
 
i82 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 and without the knowledge of the Tribunal, although they 
 had been sent forward by the constituted authorities, by 
 representatives of the people, and by decrees of the National 
 Convention, and for crimes which came only within the 
 purview of the Revolutionary Tribunal." 
 
 This latter part of Montane's deposition gives cause for 
 astonishment. We have not been able to find out on what 
 written proofs he based the charge of having exempted 
 any counter-revolutionary ex-nobles from punishment.* 
 
 Nicolas Gastrez, aged 25, employed at the office of Pubhc 
 Instruction, residing at No. 1342 Rue de Seine, begged 
 Dumas, who lived in the same house, to bring him with 
 Gobertidre, one of his friends, into the Hall of the 
 Tribunal on the day of Admiral's trial. The hearing had 
 not begun. Dumas took him into his office " where he was 
 brought a letter, folded in a fancy shape, coming from the 
 Luxembourg prison, and which he told them was signed 
 by the ci-devant Comte de Fleury." This letter, which he 
 read aloud after reading it to himself, contained expressions 
 which Gastrez did not remember, " but which did not seem 
 to him becoming to apply to a patriot." As soon as 
 the letter was read, Fouquier came in and Dumas told 
 him about it, asking him : " Does it not seem to you that 
 this fine fellow is in a hurry ? " Fouquier answered : " Yes, 
 he appears to me to be in a hurry, and I am going to send for 
 him." This was done, the ci-devant Comte de Fleury 
 was joined with the alleged accompHces in the plot against 
 Robespierre, and underwent their fate. When he appeared 
 at the Tribunal, the letter he had written to Dumas was not 
 even mentioned to him. 
 
 Jean Placide Gobertiere, employed in the Commission 
 of Commerce, aged 26, appeared next, and declared that 
 on the day of Admiral's trial he went with Gastrez to the 
 Tribunal. He confirmed Gastrez's deposition in all details. 
 He added that the Comte de Fleury was taken to the scaffold 
 on the same day in a red shirt. 
 
 Jean Louis Joly, aged 40, usher in the Criminal Tribunal 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 65. 
 
A LAGGARD TRIBUNAL 183 
 
 of the Department of Paris, deposed that some nine months 
 before, about eleven o'clock at night, as he was on duty at 
 the Criminal Tribunal during the hearing of a case, there 
 arose a tumult. He left the court in order to silence the 
 public. " The first persons whom he perceived, exciting 
 the trouble, were Fouquier and Coffinhal." He urged them 
 
 to be silent. They answered " that he could go to , 
 
 that the Criminal Tribunal was composed only of aristocrats, 
 and that they would find out the secret of putting them 
 on their best behaviour." A Uttle later, Fouquier threat- 
 ened him again, and repeated the same remarks to him. 
 
 On the 8th of Thermidor last, about seven or eight 
 o'clock in the evening, as the witness was leaving his Tribunal, 
 he met Fouquier on the Pont au Change. Having accosted 
 him, the Public Prosecutor said to him : " Well, your 
 Tribimal hardly keeps pace." Joly answered that the 
 judges could not compound with the law, and that the 
 manner in which proceedings were conducted was different 
 from that of the Revolutionary Tribunal ; that, however, 
 on the i6th of the same month, they were to have an affair 
 in which there were fourteen prisoners, all charged with the 
 printing and circulating false paper-money. Fouquier 
 answered him : "Ah ! that is something ! As for me, I 
 shall make fifty of them pass through it on the first day 
 of the next decade."^ 
 
 The witness Didier Thirion, Deputy for the Moselle, 
 thought that at Danton's trial it was the Public Prosecutor's 
 duty to have the prisoners judged on the facts of which they 
 were accused by the Convention, and not himself to have 
 become their accuser by imputing to them absolutely 
 false and calumnious facts in order to get a decree depriving 
 them of the right to plead, and thus shorten their trial by 
 preventing them from being heard. The National Con- 
 vention would not have passed the decree depriving them 
 of the right to plead if it had not been deceived by the report, 
 based, as was said, on a letter from Fouquier-Tinville, 
 stating that the prisoners were in revolt. If then, this last 
 ' W. 501, 2nd dossier, pp. 65 and 67. 
 
i84 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 fact was demonstrated to be false, as it would be easy to 
 determine from the depositions of those who were present 
 at that session, it will be admitted that the Pubhc Prosecutor 
 had betrayed his trust. Nor was it less a betrayal when, 
 in a single trial and at a single sitting, he brought to trial 
 at one time as many as fifty or sixty persons, taken from all 
 corners of the RepubUc, the greater number of whom had 
 never seen each other and had not the least connection or 
 correspondence with one another. The law could never 
 have authorised the Public Prosecutor to make such a 
 grouping {amalgame), and the Pubhc Prosecutor should 
 be guided, in his whole conduct, only by the Law and his 
 own heart, which, if it had been animated by any feelings 
 of humanity, would have indignantly repelled such measures. 
 
 " The passive instrument of t5n:anny," Didier Thirion 
 concluded, " is sometimes as guilty as the t5n:ant himself. 
 T3n:ants could do hardly anything without the cowardly 
 and criminal complaisance of their slaves. Fouquier- 
 Tinville should have abandoned or abdicated his functions, 
 or have performed them with honour and probity."^ 
 
 Jean Lauchet, aged 34, general secretary of the Committee 
 of General Security, residing at No. 22 Rue Nicaise, Paris, 
 knew that Fouquier came very often to the Committee. 
 His conferences with the members of this Committee were 
 secret. However, on a certain night, as Fouquier was 
 leaving very late, the witness spoke to him, and the con- 
 versation turned on the great number of prisoners brought 
 before the Tribunal every day. Fouquier answered that 
 it was the only way to empty the prisons, and that things 
 would never go well so long as they did not guillotine a 
 hundred a day.^ 
 
 Gilbert Liendon, aged 37, one of Fouquier-Tinville's 
 ex-deputies, judge of the Tribunal of the Second Arrondisse- 
 ment, residing at No. 68, Rue Beaubourg, had no knowledge 
 of the fact that Fouquier, with whom rested the entire 
 direction of the prosecutor's office, had been false to his 
 trust. 
 
 'W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 78. ' W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 64. 
 
^^, Z^^B^Js* 
 
 Bertonmcr, dcU. 
 
 DANTON 
 BORN AT ARCIS-SUR-AUBE, 1759, GUILLOTINED IN PARIS, 1796 
 
A DISLIKE OF WITNESSES 185 
 
 Gr6beauval, aged 41, another of Fouquier-Tinville's 
 ex-deputies, at present without employment, gave evidence 
 to the same effect. 
 
 Pierre Dusser, a commissioner of police, residing at No. 5, 
 in the Rotonde du Temple, declared that he was present 
 at the hearing on the day when the ex-Marshal de Noailles- 
 Mouchy, his wife, and others were tried, and that Fouquier 
 was sitting. " The woman Mouchy," said Dusser, " was 
 at the end of the first bench, and Mouchy, her husband, 
 at the beginning of the second. The President and Fouquier, 
 as was usual, examined each of the prisoners, and the woman 
 Mouchy, having been overlooked, made a demand whilst 
 her husband was being examined, saying : ' But, citizens, 
 you have asked me nothing.' Fouquier turned towards 
 the prisoner, and then said in a low voice to the President : 
 ' Mouchy's wife has a right to speak now ? ' ' It is all 
 the same,' said the President to the prisoners, " you are 
 together.' The proceedings went on, and I left only when 
 the jury went out to consider their verdict. This woman 
 was condemned to death without having been heard." 
 
 Pierre Goubaux, aged 29, secretary in the prosecutor's 
 office of the Criminal Tribunal of the Department of Paris, 
 residing at No. 20, Rue Hauteville, had heard from Laplace, 
 another secretary in the prosecutor's office, the story of 
 a rather strange scene between Fouquier and one of the 
 secretaries in his office. It had to do with a list of witnesses 
 that Fouquier thought far too long. Swearing at intervals, 
 he said to the man who seemed to have made out the list : 
 " Do you not know then what I want to come to ? I want 
 to induce the Tribunal to do without witnesses," and other 
 similar expressions. In fact, a few days later, Goubaux 
 saw " with some astonishment " the decree of the 22nd of 
 Prairial. 
 
 Personally, he had no other information to give in regard to 
 Fouquier, except that he knew him to be a very violent man. 
 
 Citizen Claude Nicolas La Place appeared, and confirmed 
 Citizen Goubaux's evidence.^ 
 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, pp. 52-54. 
 
i86 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Jean Frederic Martin, aged 36, a lawyer, residing at No. 2, 
 Quai de la M^gisserie, had been inaprisoned in the Luxem- 
 bourg. He heard it said that Fouquier had gone to the 
 janitor's room in that house of detention ia accordance with 
 a decree of the 15th or the i6th of Messidor^ ; and that there 
 he had had an interview with one or several of the persons 
 who made out the hsts. Moreover, knowledge of this fact 
 could be obtained either from Dubois, his secretary, or 
 from Vemey, the turnkey. 
 
 When transferred, with a himdred and fifty-five others, 
 from the Luxembourg house of detention to the Concier- 
 gerie, the witness heard Fouquier give orders, through the 
 window of the registry, that two of the hundred and fifty-five 
 prisoners should be placed in the dark cell for having shown 
 too much feehng in regard to the fate of fifty of their com- 
 panions who were going down to the Tribunal to stand their 
 trial ; a feehng all the more pardonable in those two 
 prisoners as they knew that a similar fate awaited them the 
 next day. In fact, on that very day, they were guillotined. 
 The proof of those facts could be furnished by the turnkey 
 of the Conciergerie and others. ^ 
 
 The Richards, husband and wife, aged 48 and 49, janitors 
 of the Conciergerie, had no knowledge of the facts imputed 
 to Fouquier. The husband had "always known him to be 
 a very violent man, whom he feared to approach." 
 
 Anne Ducray, aged 35, a clerk in the registry of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, residing at No. 87, Rue Saint- 
 Jacques, declared that he remembered none of the acts 
 imputed to Fouquier. He had always recognised him to be 
 " of a naturally violent character, which rendered him, so 
 to speak, unapproachable." Several times he had seen 
 him stamping his feet and showing all the signs of anger 
 in regard to a case which he thought to be 0/ importance, 
 because an accused person had been acquitted. He heard him 
 complaining of the verdicts of certain jurors and saying that 
 
 » Three or four days before the great batches from the Luxem- 
 bourg. 
 
 " W. 501, 2nd dossier, p, 43. 
 
WHOLESALE CONDEMNATIONS 187 
 
 they would not delay ridding themselves of them. Fouquier 
 always took " the precaution of choosing the moment when 
 there were capital executions in the Place de la Revolution 
 to have exposed there to the gaze of the people those who 
 were condemned to chains or to imprisonment so as to make 
 them enjoy the disgusting spectacle of the executions." 
 
 Jean Robert Deschamps, aged 26^, registrar of Bic^tre, 
 knew that Fouquier came to Bicfetre with Lanne, Herman's 
 assistant. They sent for Valagnos and seven of his room- 
 mates, put them in a row, and made the prisoners who were 
 condemned to chains and the others pass before them in order 
 that Valagnos might point out those who were guilty of con- 
 spiracy. As he pointed them out, Fouquier asked them 
 their names. On that day, the Public Prosecutor made 
 out a warrant against thirty-seven individuals whom he 
 immediately brought before the Tribunal. They were 
 tried and condemned the next day. On the 7th of Messidor 
 Fouquier came again to Bic^tre. " He made a further 
 choice of thirty-seven individuals in the same manner." 
 He issued a warrant against these thirty-seven, then a 
 special warrant against OsseUn, whom he caused to be taken 
 away. They were condemned the next day. BicStre was, 
 moreover, perfectly tranquil. Deschamps never perceived 
 " the least germ of a conspiracy there." 
 
 Citizeness BanvUle, aged 41, the divorced wife of Bourdon, 
 a gold-beater, deposed that on the day of Hubert's execution, 
 she went out of curiosity to see him pass. In the Rue du 
 Roule 1 she was invited to go into a house whose owner she 
 did not know. She there found Fouquier, whom she saw 
 for the first time. When the condemned persons passed, 
 Fouquier wanted to go to the window to see them. It 
 was pointed out to him that he ought not to show himself, 
 that the condemned persons should not be insulted. He 
 immediately withdrew.* 
 
 Louis Francis Debusne, aged 48, a lieutenant of the 
 
 1 This street began at the Rue des Fossfe-Saint-Germain-rAuxer- 
 rois and ended at the Rue Saint-Honor6. 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, pp. 57 and 44. 
 
i88 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 national police serving at the Tribunals, residing at 360 
 Cul-de-Sac de la Fosse aux Chiens, Rue des Bourdonnais, 
 noticed one day when he was on duty at a session of the 
 Tribunal and when thirty prisoners were tried, that 
 " Fouquier showed much iU-humour and impatience " 
 because they had all been condemned. 
 
 On the i8th of Messidor, when those charged with the 
 Luxembourg conspiracy were transferred, Debusne was 
 in command of the detachment. When he reached the 
 comer of the Rue de Harlay, Fouquier came and said to 
 him that he had succeeded in having only half of them 
 placed on trial ; that their names would be taken there, 
 and that they were to ahght at the Conciergerie, and he told 
 him to prevent them from communicating with one another, 
 
 Leonard Petit-Tressein, aged 36, a juror of the Tribunal, 
 residing at No. 360 Rue Nicaise, on the morning of i8th of 
 Messidor, before the trial, heard Fouquier asking Coffinhal 
 in the Council Chamber if he wished to act as President 
 at the hearing next day, " seeing that it was an important 
 affair." Coffinhal asked what affair it was. Fouquier 
 explained that " it was half of those from the Luxembourg, 
 to the number of seventy or eighty." 
 
 Jean Frangois Esprit Canaple, aged 26, residing at Paris, 
 in the Rue Neuve Denis, a seller of walking-sticks, on the 
 19th of Messidor, the day on which the trial of " the Luxem- 
 bourg conspirators " began, saw and heard Fouquier, at 
 the window of the refreshment-room of the Palace, shouting 
 to the guardians immediately to place in a cell two prisoners 
 who had shown " feehng " towards the condemned. These 
 two prisoners were condemned two days later " for the same 
 conspiracy."^ 
 
 Germain Andr6 Goureau, aged 36, an official defender, of 
 No. 7 Faubourg Poissonniere, gave details of what he 
 knew about the conspiracy in the prisons. He was im- 
 prisoned at the Plessis. He sought " to discover the 
 creatures whom Fouquier employed with the object of 
 multiplying the number of victims." 
 
 »W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 84. 
 
"A STERN, UNAPPROACHABLE MAN" 189 
 
 Jean Baptiste Darmaing, aged 23, secretary of the 
 Convention, gave proofs, in his deposition, of the manner 
 in which Fouquier allowed himself to be influenced by 
 Vadier, who had sworn to ruin the Darmaings, his com- 
 patriots of the Ariege. When giving testimony to these 
 facts, the witness declared that Fouquier had sought to 
 debase the National Convention, and to perpetuate the reign 
 of tyranny, and that he had conspired against Liberty and 
 the Rights of Man. 
 
 The five Sansons — Pierre Charles, aged 40, a sub-lieutenant 
 of artillery in the Parisian army ; Charles Henri, aged 55 ; 
 Nicolas Charles Gabriel, aged 73 ; his son, aged 49 ; and 
 Henri Sanson, aged 27. a captain of artillery — had nothing 
 to state in regard to Fouquier-Tinville. Sanson's assistant, 
 Pierre Fran9ois Etienne Desmorest, who, as public execu- 
 tioner, resided at No. 11 Faubourg Saint-Denis, declared 
 that " every morning, before judgment was pronouneedi* 
 Fouquier gave him verbal orders to set up the guillotine 
 at a certain time, and to have ready the number of convey- 
 ances he directed, and, in order to avoid irritating the 
 public, he recommended him to keep them in different places 
 but adjoining one another."^ 
 
 Antoine S^zille, an official defender, aged 51, residing 
 in the Enclos de la Raison, Section de la Cite, had known 
 Fouquier only during the year that he had frequented 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal. He regarded him as " a stern, 
 violent, almost unapproachable man." Having to defend 
 Citizen Thomassin, a priest imprisoned in the Conciergerie, 
 Sezille went to the prosecutor's office and asked Fouquier 
 for the dociunents relating to the affair. Fouquier became 
 angry and refused to hand them over. Some days later 
 Sezille defended Thomassin, without documents and without 
 a memorandum, " after having only had an interview for a 
 quarter of an hour with him in the prisoners' room." 
 Thomassin was acquitted. In the course of the preceding 
 month of Floreal, Sezille was charged with the defence of 
 Freteau, the ex-member of the Constituent Assembly who 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, pp. 63 and 58. 
 
190 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 was acquitted, but was to be kept in prison as a suspect 
 until the general peace. For eight days the advocate 
 begged Fouquier to deliver to him a copy of Freteau's 
 sentence of acquittal, without being able to obtain it. 
 Fouquier refused to send the documents to the registry. 
 At each ineffectual step taken by the advocate, Fouquier 
 would answer harshly : " You think you have got your 
 Fr6teau, but you shall not have him." As a matter of fact, 
 some days after the law of the 22nd of Prairial, which sup- 
 pressed the defenders, Freteau was again placed on trial. 
 " Thus in his case the maxim non bis in idetfiwa.s violated 
 by sending him again to trial for a crime of which he had 
 been acquitted." He suffered the punishment of death.^ 
 
 Francois Marie Paris, aged 28, a lawyer, residing at 37 
 Rue Grenata, gave evidence as follows : "A prisoner in 
 the Luxembourg since the 29th of Brumaire of the year II., 
 I was to have been numbered among the victims of the 
 Terror, for, on the loth of Thermidor, four prisoners from 
 my Section and myself were transferred from the Luxem- 
 bourg to the Conciergerie. The municipality of Paris was 
 in its entirety guillotined on that day and we were saved. 
 During the twenty days I still remained at the Conciergerie, 
 I met Fouquier* there. I spoke to him in these terms : 
 ' You know me. You know who I am. You are not ignor- 
 ant that my principles have always been for the Revolu- 
 tion.' Fouquier answered me : ' What would you, my 
 friend ? The order was precise. Sent forward, as you were, 
 by a popular commission to the Committees of PubUc Safety 
 and of General Security, and those two Committees having 
 sent you on to the Revolutionary Tribunal with injunctions 
 to the PubUc Prosecutor to place you on trial, I had not 
 the power to determine your freedom.' 
 
 " At that moment I regarded Fouquier rather as the kindly 
 executant of barbarous and sanguinary orders that were 
 given him rather than as a genuine Pubhc Prosecutor. 
 I ceased to speak to him. However, since I left prison, 
 
 » W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 53. 
 
 ' Imprisoned, as we have seen, on the 14th of Thermidor. 
 
AN IMPORTANT WITNESS 191 
 
 I have learned that he had in no way deceived me, that 
 in very reality I was to be one of his victims, for on the side 
 of the papers relating to me, he had written in large letters, 
 ' Ready for delivery.' "^ 
 
 Finally, on the i2th of Brumaire, at noon, an important 
 witness appeared before Judge Forestier. This was Pierre 
 Noel Subleyras, an ex-registrar of the Tribunal of the District 
 of Uzes, who, during the Terror, had become President 
 of the Popular Commission of the Museum (the Louvre). 
 The sinister reputation of the Popular Commissions of Paris 
 is well known, that of having been commissioned " to empty 
 the prisons." Subleyras had formerly performed for a time 
 the functions of judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 functions to which he had been appointed on September 
 26th, 1793.^ 
 
 Subleyras declared that "about the middle of the preceding 
 decade, Fouquier-Tinville's wife brought him a letter from 
 her husband,* in which he asked him to give him collated 
 
 ' W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 60. 
 
 ■• It was he who at the trial of Hebert, Ronsin, and others, col- 
 lected notes along with Naulin and Coffinhal, judges like himself, 
 during the proceedings. Every evening these three men met to 
 collect these notes and to make them into a work which it was intended 
 to print, a fantastic work which suppressed the proofs against 
 Padie and Hanriot in order to place them to Danton's account, but so 
 clumsily that it is impossible not to recognise Pache in the matter. 
 
 • This is Fouquier's letter : — 
 
 " To Citizen Subleyras, President of the Popular Commission 
 established at the former Louvre. 
 
 (In Subleyras's hand — " Ne varietur the 13th of Brumaire of the 
 year III. of the RepubUc one and indivisible. Subleyras.") 
 
 " I need, citizen, a copy certified by the Commission of the different 
 letters that I have written relative to the persons who were to be 
 placed on trial, either those who were sent forward (for that purpose) 
 or those who were found to be implicated in conspiracies in the prisons • 
 I particularly need the letter written by me on the night between the 
 18th and the 19th of Messidor : these letters are indispensable to me 
 to repel the attacks of my enemies in that direction ; I hope, citizen, 
 that you will hasten to procure this deliverance for my wife/who for 
 this purpose, wiU send you tMs present. Trenchard groans in the same 
 pnsoB. 
 
 " Greeting and fraternity, a n t? 
 
 This ist of Brumaire of the year III. of the Republic one and 
 indivisible. P61agie." (W. 500, and dossier, p. 32.) 
 
192 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 copies of the letters written by him (Fouquier) to the former 
 Popular Commissions, and relating to the accused persons 
 whom he had to place on trial. 
 
 When he was PubUc Prosecutor, Fouquier had sent to 
 the Commission of the Museum some Usts of " individuals " 
 whom he was to place on trial for the conspiracy in the 
 prisons. He invited the Commission to send him any 
 documents and information it had respecting them. On 
 this invitation, Subleyras affirmed, the Commission sent to 
 Fouquier the documents it had and the reports that had been 
 made out in the Paris Sections concerning some of the 
 prisoners on the hsts. Those documents remained at the 
 Tribunal. This was all, according to Subleyras's account, 
 that the Popular Commission knew of the conspiracy of the 
 prisons ! 
 
 He added that, on the 7th of Thermidor, two days before 
 Robespierre's fall, Fouquier had told the Commission that 
 some of those reports had reached him, and that he had 
 asked it for such documents as it might have.^ 
 
 Madame Fouquier-Tinville continued to take measure 
 after measure, step after step, in the interests of her hus- 
 band's defence. Three times, during the first ten days of 
 this month of Brumaire, she went to Subleyras. Not being 
 able to see him, she had written the following letter : — 
 
 " This 8th of Brumaire, year IH. of the Republic. 
 
 No. 242 Rue de la Harpe. 
 " I pray you, citizen, to be good enough to give me an 
 answer relating to what I have asked you for my husband, 
 the copy of those letters which are indispensable to him in 
 the present circumstances ; for three days in succession I 
 have gone to your house without being able to see you. As 
 I am a long distance off, I pray you to let me know if you 
 have found these papers, and if you can give me a copy of 
 them ; you will obUge your fellow-citizen. 
 
 " Fouquier's Wife." ^ 
 
 (To Citizen Subleyras, No. 108 Rue des Petits-Champs.) 
 ' W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 144. ' W. 500, 2nd dossier, p. 31. 
 
INDISPENSABLE DOCUMENTS 193 
 
 It is easy to understand the importance which Fouquier 
 attached to the possession of those copies. They were 
 indispensable to him. In his defence he had to prove that 
 he had acted only in virtue of the orders of the Committee 
 of PubUc Safety. The Committee had sent him a list of 
 names, teUing him that these prisoners had conspired in 
 the Luxembourg house of detention. The Committee had 
 sent him a resolution of the 17th of Messidor, ordering him 
 to bring to trial within twenty-four hours all those charged 
 with conspiracy in the prisons. According to the expression 
 he used in the course of his examination on the ist of 
 Frimaire, "when the Law speaks, the public official must act." 
 He could not therefore avoid (it is still his own argument 
 that we reproduce) prosecuting and bringing to trial all the 
 individuals named on that list. He had not desired to know 
 either how that list and others were sent to the Committee, 
 or by whom they were made out. He had received no 
 revelation in regard to this ; he had only " performed the 
 imperious duty prescribed by the Law." Then he wrote 
 to the Popular Commission of the Museum to ask it for the 
 documents which it might have for the prosecution or for 
 the defence. The Committee of PubUc Safety having 
 decided, on the i8th of Messidor, that the 158 persons 
 suspected of conspiracy in the Luxembourg should be tried 
 in three sections, on the same evening, when he returned 
 home, he immediately informed the Popular Commission. 
 It was this letter and some others sent by him to Suble57ras 
 that he needed to clear himself. They would testify in his 
 favour, would establish that he was only an agent of the 
 Committees, and prove that he only carried out their orders 
 strictly. 
 
 But this written evidence of his obedience which he 
 claimed, and which no one would dream of refusing 
 him, would also prove that, a servile magistrate, entirely 
 subject, through fear or interest, to the Committees, he had 
 been the diligent workman of a work of blood. The principal 
 artisans in that work perished on the scaffold on the loth of 
 Thermidor. Those who remained were denounced and 
 
194 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 hunted down. It was the zealous, indefatigable official of 
 the Terror that the Themidorian purification aimed at and 
 pursued in his person. 
 
 As Public Prosecutor Leblois said in his speech against 
 Fouquier : " Invested for nearly eighteen months with the 
 painful obligation of searching out and prosecuting crime, 
 but honoured during the same period also with the holy 
 and consohng mission of supporting innocence, of defending 
 it, and of protecting it, it might be said that Fouquier- 
 TinviUe made it his sport to overthrow these two objects 
 and to take them in an inverse sense." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE AFFIRMS HIS INNOCENCE AND HIS 
 HUMANITY. PUBLIC PROSECUTOR LEBLOIS ARGUES 
 AGAINST HIM. 
 
 THE days passed. Fouquier was waiting to be exam- 
 ined. On the 9th of Brumaire he was transferred 
 from Sainte-P^lagie to the Plessis-EgaUte, to 
 that house of detention which the Parisians, at the 
 time he was Pubhc Prosecutor, had named " Fouquier's 
 storehouse." " The horror that he inspired was such that 
 the prisoners nearly killed him. The janitor confined him to 
 his room. He wanted one day to open his window to 
 take the air ; horrible imprecations forced him to shut it 
 immediately." ^ 
 
 He lived then apart, walled in, enclosed, alone with his 
 thoughts, thoughts that absolved him. His heart was free 
 from crime. It was in his opinion the heart of a good citizen. 
 But hatred pursued him without an intermission. He was 
 a victim of that feeling of duty which led him to per- 
 form public functions " with diligence and vigour." He 
 did not ask himself whether the lives of all those men and 
 women whom he had sent to execution were worth nothing. 
 In his eyes they were the enemies of the Republic and 
 traitors. They were conspiring against liberty and virtue. 
 As Public Prosecutor his duty was towards the Revolutioti 
 and its heads. He had fulfilled the law. 
 
 Finally, on the 1st of Frimaire in the year III. (November 
 21, 1794), he was taken from the Plessis house of detention 
 to the Tribunal and examined by Judge Forestier, assisted 
 
 ' Campardon : Le Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris, II., p. 138. 
 Details furnished by the journal entitled La Vedette. 
 
 195 
 
196 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 by Raymond Josse, his registrar, and Jean Jacques Granger, 
 his deputy. Here is his examination : 
 
 The Judge : " Did you not, while you held your office, and 
 especially in the last months of it, give orders every morning 
 to the public executioner to set up the guillotine, and to pre- 
 pare a more or less considerable number of conveyances ? " 
 
 A. — " As regards the guillotine, there was for a time 
 a question of leaving it up permanently. Afterwards, 
 because the materials were kept in the Rue du Pont-aux- 
 Choux and as it took five hours and more to erect, it has 
 happened two or three times that the order to set it up was 
 given, but only to execute the persons condemned on the 
 previous day in accordance with the sentence of the 
 court. In order to avoid the unpleasantness of seeing 
 those materials transported from the Pont-aux-Choux, 
 the Department was asked for premises in which to 
 place the materials and the wood. Those premises 
 were granted near the Place de la Revolution. At no 
 time was an order given by me to set up the guillotine, 
 except for the purpose of executing sentences that had been 
 passed. As regards the other part of the question, having 
 seen the scandal (I mean this fact had been reported to 
 me) of allowing as many as twelve or fourteen condemned 
 persons to be piled up on the same cart, and the Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety having blamed me for it, notifying to 
 me its desire that each cart should contain only seven 
 individuals, next day I summoned the public executioner 
 and notified to him the order to place only seven individuals 
 at most in the same cart, and to arrange in such a way that 
 the executions should never be postponed until the following 
 day. When the executioner remarked that it was often 
 very difficult to find carts in sufficient number for the same 
 day (for he only received the order at about half -past three), 
 and also on account of the known scarcity of horses, I 
 advised him to have some always ready, preferring and 
 desiring that they should be useless rather than that con- 
 demned persons should be crowded on a single cart as 
 had happened before. 
 
THE GUILLOTINE 
 
THE CHOICE OF JURORS 197 
 
 " In spite of my advice in this respect, it sometimes 
 happened that condemned persons in excess of the number 
 seven were placed in the carts. But in all this I only acted 
 from a motive of humanity and to alleviate the sufferings of 
 the condemned persons in so far as it lay in my power. 
 I have never known and could not know whether any of 
 the persons placed on trial would be condemned, nor what 
 their number would be. The proof is that very frequently 
 the carts were useless." 
 
 Q. — " Who raised the question of leaving the guillotine 
 up permanently ? " 
 
 A. — " It was discussed at the Committee of Public 
 Safety." 
 
 Q. — " Have you always conformed to the exact selection of 
 the jurors who were to sit in any given case ? Did you not 
 intend to exclude some who might be more humane ? Have 
 you not, on the contrary, made choice of those whose char- 
 acter appeared to you fitter for doing what was called firing 
 an uninterrupted volley ? " 
 
 A. — " I never made any choice of jurors through preference 
 in any given case ; if I have made a choice of them, it was 
 not purposely or consciously ; I have never known any 
 of the jurors very intimately. I point out that the ushers 
 sometimes made mistakes in summoning the jurors ; but I 
 never believed that those mistakes were the fruit of crime, 
 but rather that of error. I have never made use of the 
 expression ' firing an uninterrupted volley ' ; I have never 
 known anything but the execution of the laws. Since the 
 terrible law of the 22nd of Prairial, the reformation of which 
 I have perpetually but vainly solicited from the Committees 
 of Public Safety and of General Security, every time I have 
 sat I have never made a single opening or closing speech 
 calculated to influence the opinion of the jurors in any way 
 against accused persons who were already so unfortunate 
 as to be deprived of defenders. I may evert add that I have 
 never forgotten to point out to the jurors and to outline the 
 documentary evidence for the defence provided by the 
 accused persons as well as that for the prosecution." 
 
igS THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Q. — " Have you not held conferences about the com- 
 position of the juries with various persons who came either 
 to the hearings or to the prosecutor's office or to your own 
 room ? Have not those persons influenced you ? Have 
 you not combined with them beforehand to secure the 
 acquittal or the conviction of certain persons ? " 
 
 A. — " I have never done anything so monstrous. Nobody 
 has ever presiuned to make proposals of such a nature to me. 
 I should have treated as they deserved any persons what- 
 soever who would have done so. I point out that when the 
 Committee of Public Safety proposed to me, and even pressed 
 me to have General Kellermann and other individuals tried, 
 I always refused, and for this reason alone, that the order 
 was given me without the attendance of certain witnesses 
 whom I regarded as indispensable." 
 
 Q. — " Who are the members of the Committee of Pubhc 
 Safety who gave you such orders ? " 
 
 A. — " Robespierre and Couthon summoned me to the 
 Committee and in the name of the Committee for that 
 purpose in the early days of Messidor, some time before 
 Robespierre ceased going to the Committee. Immediately 
 Couthon had been carried^ to the bottom of the staircase, 
 he caused me to be summoned to the Committee of PubUc 
 Safety where he had remained for something else, and 
 said to me : ' Above all, do not fail to have Kellermann 
 tried before Dubois de Cranc^'s arrival.' This injunction, 
 joined with the quarrel that had taken place between Cou- 
 thon and Dubois de Crance, was sufficient to convince me 
 that Couthon bore ill-will to Kellermann as well as to 
 Dubois de Crance. It was at two o'clock in the afternoon 
 that I was summoned to the Committee, as Couthon never 
 went there after dinner." 
 
 Q. — " Have you not had intimate relations or a special 
 understanding with Robespierre, Saint- Just, Lebas, Dumas, 
 Coffinhal, Fleuriot, and other conspirators, the enemies 
 of the people and of liberty ? Have you not known, 
 shared, and supported their counter-revolutionary opinions 
 ' Couthon was paralysed. — Tr. 
 
THE CAPTURE OF COFFINHAL 199 
 
 and arrangements ? Were you not associated with 
 them ? " 
 
 A. — " I could limit myself to remarking that it was I, in 
 my capacity of PubUc Prosecutor, who on the loth of 
 Thermidor, demanded that the law should be enforced 
 against all those afore-mentioned conspirators, who were 
 outlawed by a decree of the Convention, with the exception 
 of Cofiinhal, who was only captured on the i8th,^ an enforce- 
 ment of the law that I certainly would never have demanded 
 if I had been initiated into or engaged in any way in the 
 counter-revolutionary projects of the various conspirators. 
 But I believe I ought to give a little fuller scope to my answer. 
 
 • On the night between the 9th and loth of Thermidor, Coffinhal, 
 seeing the Commune conquered and Robespierre and his friends in the 
 hands of the Conventionals, hurled himself on Hanriot, whose drunk- 
 enness had ruined everything, and flung him out of one of the win- 
 dows of the H6tel de ViUe on to a dung-heap. Then he disappeared 
 into the night. He was vainly sought for during several days. 
 
 He had fled towards the Seine, and, disguised as a boatman, had 
 gone down with the stream to the He des Cygnes, where he had hidden 
 himself. He remained there two days and two nights, staying his 
 hunger with the bark of trees, and drenched by the torrential rain 
 that fell continuously. 
 
 At last, being able to hold out no longer, the outlaw left the island 
 and went to a friend to whom he had rendered some services. He 
 asked him for food, clothes, and money. This man brought him 
 into his house, and then, locking the door, went to inform against 
 him. 
 
 Coffinhal was arrested on the night between the 17th and 1 8th of 
 Thermidor and taken to the Conciergerie. " Nothing can paint 
 the tortures I have endured," he said to the turnkey. " The death 
 that is preparing for me is a benefit and a kindness compared with 
 what I have sufiered." 
 
 As the Revolutionary Tribunal no longer existed, a decree of 
 the Convention decided that the Criminal Tribunal should verify 
 the outlaw's identity and send him to execution. It was on the 
 1 8th of Thermidor that he appeared before Oudart. Four witnesses 
 identified him. Public Prosecutor Leblois demanded the applica- 
 tion of the law. Coffinhal was then led to the Place de la Revolution, 
 in a heavy rain, in the midst of hooting. The people crowded against 
 the cart, and tried to stab or strike him with their umbrellas, saying, 
 " Well, Cofl&nhal, guard against that thrust, if you can I " This was 
 an allusion to a saying of the ex- Vice-President of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal to a fencing-master who had just been condemned to death, 
 " Well, old fellow, guard against that thrust if you can." 
 
 Coffinhal died courageously. 
 
200 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 In consequence, I declare that I have never had any intimate 
 connection with the Robespierres, Saint-Just, Couthon, 
 and Lebas, that I have never seen them except at the Com- 
 mittees of Public Safety and of General Security, and then 
 as members of those Committees ; that I have never been 
 to the houses of any of them, except once to that of the elder 
 Robespierre, on the day of the attempt on CoUot d'Herbois, 
 just as I had been to that of CoUot whom I did not find at 
 home ; the despotic tone with which Robespierre received 
 me would have estranged me for ever, even if I had been 
 anxious to go there ; never have I been in any of the houses 
 to which I have learned since my arrest that the conspirators 
 repaired. I have never had any private correspondence 
 with them. As for Dumas, I only knew him as President ; 
 moreover, Dumas was notoriously known to be my enemy, 
 so much so that he tried at different times to have me 
 replaced. 
 
 " As for Fleuriot and Coffinhal, I knew them only sub- 
 , sequent to their becoming members of the Tribunal. I have 
 sometimes had meals with them, as is customary among 
 members of the same tribunal. But I never perceived 
 that they were engaged in a conspiracy. They never made 
 any overtures to me in this respect. Finally, I had no 
 knowledge of this conspiracy, except on the gth of Thermidor 
 in common with all other citizens. The proof of my denial 
 follows from my conduct on the evening of the gth of Thermi- 
 dor. I remained at my post up to the moment when I 
 went to the assembled Committees of Public Safety and of 
 General Security. It is notorious that I did not go to the 
 rebel Commune, in spite of the repeated invitations of emis- 
 saries who were sent to me for that purpose. It also 
 follows from the declarations made by Coffinhal, in the 
 presence of several gendarmes, that I counted for nothing 
 in this conspiracy ; that Coffinhal, and Dumas, were 
 the only members of the Tribunal who were initiated into 
 it. This declaration has been drawn up in the form of a 
 report by the officers of gendarmerie who despatched it to 
 Deputy Freron." 
 
THE EXECUTION OF THE TRIUMVIRATE 201 
 
 Q. — " Who were the emissaries and by whom were 
 they sent ? " 
 
 A. — " I did not know them. But they announced them- 
 selves as coming from the Commune, to which all the 
 authorities of Paris were invited to repair, according to 
 what was said." 
 
 Q. — "Have you not shown that you were affected by 
 the condemnation of those conspirators, and in particular 
 that of Fleuriot ? Were you not full of reproaches at the 
 fact that this conspirator, as it happened, was executed last 
 of those who were condemned with him ?^ What were 
 the reasons for this special interest that you took in the said 
 Fleuriot ? " 
 
 A. — " It was usual for the ushers to give me an account 
 of the executions and to tell me if any incident took place. 
 On the day of the execution of Robespierre, Saint- Just, 
 Fleuriot, and others, my usher, Tavernier, came to tell me 
 that the execution was over. I then remarked to him : 
 ' Of course, you have -taken the precaution of having the 
 triumvirate of Couthon, Robespierre, and Saint- Just 
 executed last ? ' On Tavernier's answer that the Mayor of 
 Paris had been executed last, I said to him : ' You are a 
 good feUow ; but you are always doing something foohsh. 
 Did you not feel that chiefs such as those I have mentioned 
 ought to be executed last, and not the Mayor and others 
 who were only accessories ? ' And I added : ' Your 
 blunder will cause me many reproaches.' In fact, the public 
 thought it very extraordinary that those three individuals 
 were not executed last. But it was not out of any interest 
 towards Fleuriot that I made those remarks to Tavernier." 
 
 Q- — " Did you not, in the exercise of your functions, 
 perform many harsh and arbitrary acts ? Have you not 
 threatened those who came to speak to you on behalf of 
 various prisoners, various condemned persons ? Have you 
 
 ' We have seen in Chapter V. that, on the loth of Thermidor. 
 Fouqmer-Tinville, who had pleaded against Robespierre, Couthon' 
 Samt-Just, etc., rose and left the Tribunal at the moment for pleading 
 against his friend, Lescot-Fleuriot, Mayor of Paris. It was his deputy 
 Liendon, who then pleaded. ■ r j' 
 
202 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 been exact in reading or laying due stress at the hearings 
 upon the memorials, documents, or evidence for the defence 
 that were sent to you in favour of those who were placed 
 on trial ? Has it not happened that you placed several 
 accused persons on trial before you opened the packets 
 containing the documents for the defence ? Have not 
 several of those persons been condemned, and do you 
 not think that you are responsible for those condemna- 
 tions ? " 
 
 A. — " I have never performed any arbitrary act either 
 out of hatred, or out of resentment, or for any other reason. 
 I have never used harshness towards anybody whatsoever. 
 If my quick and petulant temper has caused me to be con- 
 sidered a harsh man by anybody, most of the upright men 
 who know me will not fail to do me the justice that I was as 
 gentle as I was humane towards those who presented them- 
 selves to me for any reason whatsoever, above all towards 
 the unfortunate. I have never used any threat of the 
 class mentioned in the question. I have always busied 
 myself, and I have enjoined the same upon my secretaries, 
 in joining together all the documents relating to each 
 accused person. I carefully opened my mails every day, 
 and even several times a day. Every time documents 
 reached me from the Committee of General Security or 
 from other constituted authorities, I made haste to send 
 them to my deputies who were in Court. It is not within 
 my knowledge that any documents for the defence relating 
 to accused persons were not produced ; and when accused 
 persons who were on trial claimed documents in Court, 
 they were always searched for. Moreover, as I have 
 remarked above, I have always taken care to hand over 
 to the jurors the documents for the defence put in either 
 by the accused persons or by those who interested me in 
 their fate, together with a ticket indicating the names of 
 each of the accused persons." 
 
 Q. — " Did you not, in league with the conspirators (and 
 in order to bring about the deaths of those whom you had 
 designated or who had been indicated to you), resolve to 
 
"DUMAS' FRIGHTFUL CELERITY" 203 
 
 place on trial a considerable number of accused persons ? 
 Did you not cause them to be tried with such haste that 
 it became impossible for them to be heard or for there to be 
 even sufficient time to ask them their names and the formal 
 questions it is usual to put in such circumstances ? " 
 
 A. — " I have already remarked that I have had no 
 connection or acquaintance with any conspirator. I have, 
 not ceased to prosecute conspirators without any regard 
 to person or rank, and this is one of the secret motives for 
 my arrest and the persecutions I am experiencing. This 
 question shows well enough that it is desired to make me 
 responsible for the rapidity with which Dumas exercised 
 his functions. However, nobody can be ignorant that the 
 President, then as well as to-day, was the master to decide 
 whether the accused persons should be accorded or refused 
 the right to speak. Further, I never made any arrangement 
 with him as to the prompt or slow manner of trying accused 
 persons. As often as I sat (which was very seldom), I have 
 moderated, in so far as it depended on me, Dumas' frightful 
 celerity, and granted accused persons the right to speak. 
 In regard to the number of those accused persons, no law 
 then prescribed the maximum or minimum number that 
 were to be placed on trial for the different offences with 
 which they were charged. Besides, in this respect I have 
 exactly followed the orders of the Committee of Public 
 Safety, which at that period had plenary powers. It is 
 quite true that, in my capacity as Public Prosecutor, I have 
 placed on trial several persons charged with different 
 offences. But that is only on account of the reproach 
 made against the Tribunal in a report of the Committee of 
 PubUc Safety to the Convention on the 9th of Ventose. 
 In a word, it has never happened, whatever may have been 
 the number of those placed on trial, that they have been 
 tried without being questioned, all of them, at the hearing. 
 This fact is notorious. But it was not the result of a criminal 
 arrangement." 
 
 Q— " How could you, at the same hearing, have included 
 on the same list and for the same offence, fifty, sixty, or 
 
204 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 more individuals of all ranks and conditions, who had never 
 either spoken to one another or known one another, and, 
 until then, had been separated from one another by great 
 distances ? " 
 
 A. — " The placing on trial of fifty or sixty individuals 
 or more has been very rare. I believe even that this has 
 not occurred in such great numbers except for different 
 crimes, and that the indictments including few or more 
 individuals characterise and specify each of the offences 
 that were personal to them. This fact is easy to verify 
 by an inspection of the indictments. Thus it is of little 
 importance whether they were from the same place or 
 from distances very remote from one another and for diverse 
 offences. Moreover, I have only adopted this measure 
 in accordance with the orders and the very pronounced 
 wish of the Committees of Public Safety and of General 
 Security, to whom I exactly deUvered every evening the 
 list of verdicts passed by the Tribunal, whether of condemna- 
 tion or acquittal. In regard to individuals of different 
 professions, I only determined to group the unhappy 
 prisoners of different professions after tjje difficulty arose 
 from the law of the 22nd of Prairial, which provided among 
 other things (Article 18) that the judgments passed by the 
 Council Chamber could not be executed without having 
 been approved by the Committees of Public Safety and of 
 General Security. Important occupations rendered this 
 measure impossible and void. The motive which determined 
 the grouping was the desire more effectively to bring about 
 the release of a crowd of individuals who would have remained 
 in prison if this grouping had not been employed, and it took 
 place, moreover, only in accordance with the orders of the 
 members of the Committees of Public Safety and of General 
 Security. Those Committees have approved of this measure, 
 insomuch that, in a report made to the Convention on the 
 9th of Thermidor, they note the fact that, in spite 
 of the measures and means employed by the Tribunal 
 for accelerating the trials of the conspirators, the two 
 Committees, on the previous day, resolved on new measures 
 
THE FUNCTIONS OF THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR 205 
 
 intended to bring to trial without delay all conspirators 
 throughout the Republic. 
 
 " Finally, so far as concerns myself, I have never desig- 
 nated anybody as deserving, by preference, to be struck 
 by the sword of the law, but I have placed individuals on 
 trial according as the law enjoined me." 
 
 Q. — " Have you not exceeded the punishments pro- 
 nounced against various accused persons ? Are you sure 
 that, out of the great number of persons tried or condemned, 
 there was such an identification of their persons that it is 
 impossible that condemned persons were set free, whilst 
 individuals who had not been placed on trial and against 
 whom there was no indictment were none the less sent to 
 death ? " 
 
 A. — " Far from having exceeded any of the condemnations 
 pronounced, I have, on the contrary, given the most precise 
 orders to execute exactly and strictly the condemnations 
 pronounced against them. In regard to the rest of the 
 question, I very rarely sat in Court. When I did so, if 
 I was obliged to bring a verbal indictment against the 
 prisoners not included in the written indictment and against 
 whom charges were brought forward in the course of the 
 proceedings, I have always demanded, at the end of my 
 verbal indictment, that an official report of it should be 
 drawn up by the registrar. The same must have been done 
 by my deputies. My functions were limited to that. 
 The drawing up and signing concerned the President, the 
 judges, and the registrar. I cannot be responsible for 
 omissions or errors that may have been made in this respect, 
 though I do not think they have been made. As regards 
 the identity of individuals who were condemned, their 
 names were exactly inscribed on the printed paper intended' 
 to be sent to the executioner by the registrar on duty. 
 It is not within my knowledge that one person has ever been 
 sent to death for another. Further, I beg the Tribunal 
 in its justice to point out to me an instance of this. I 
 undertake to answer it." 
 
 Q. — " Have you always faithfully secured to the accused 
 
2o6 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 persons or to the nation the return of the sums of money 
 lodged with you ? Have you taken care exactly out 
 of these sums to provide for the needs of those for whom 
 they were intended, and who asked for assistance ? " 
 
 A. — " I have never personally received or handled any 
 monies. These sums were received in my name by the 
 secretaries and clerks delegated according to the court 
 registrar for that purpose. 
 
 " Each object bore an identifying number. But those 
 which I received in my own letters, sent for different prison- 
 ers, I always sent Fran9ois to the post to cash. On my 
 orders, Fran9ois delivered them to the registrar entrusted 
 with that duty. This employee has, through his negligence, 
 given ground for many complaints, in particular for not 
 having distributed, each week, the sums due to the prisoners. 
 I have never retained any sum belonging to the condemned 
 or to the prisoners. The woman Richard, the janitor 
 of the Conciergerie, had orders to deposit them in the registry 
 so that the proof ought to exist in a register. Towards the 
 end of Messidor, the treasurer of the Hospice gave me a bill 
 of exchange for four thousand and some hundreds of livres, 
 belonging to a man named, Leborgne, then detained in the 
 said hospital. This Leborgne, arrested by order of the 
 Committee of General Security, was charged with very 
 grave counter-revolutionary offences ; I believed I could 
 see, from an inspection of this bill, that he might have 
 considerable deposits at Paris. That is why I believed 
 that I ought to keep this bill of exchange, which I placed 
 in my desk, in a drawer intended for objects of this sort, 
 and with this inscription on it : ' This bill of exchange 
 belongs to Leborgne, detained at the Hospice. To be attached 
 to the documents pertaining to the said Leborgne and veri- 
 fied.' This bill of exchange was found in that drawer 
 (at the time of the examination of the said room made by 
 the Deputies commissioned by the Convention to do so), 
 by one of them whose name I do not remember, but who is 
 five feet two inches high, with a dark face and dark hair. 
 This commissioner declared, in the presence of Citizens 
 
DEPRIVED OF DEFENCE 207 
 
 Dobsen and Petit, that he had held the said bill of exchange 
 and had put it back among the papers." 
 
 Q. — " Have you not, in a fashion, boasted of the great 
 number of prisoners whom you have brought to trial, and 
 have you not addressed threats to those who begged you for 
 the justice which you owed them and for the pity to be 
 expected from you on account of their misfortune ? Have 
 you not prosecuted and even punished the sensibility that 
 some prisoners showed at the sight of the great number of 
 those who were going away to h6 executed ? " 
 
 A. — " These statements are as atrocious as they are new 
 to me. My character for humanity assures me that I shall 
 be avenged by posterity for such insults." 
 
 Q. — " At the trial of Danton and others did you not pre- 
 tend that you suspected a rebellion and a lack of respect 
 towards the Tribunal and at the hearing, in order to derive 
 from this an opportunity to solicit a decree which took from 
 them the right to plead and thus deprived them of the means 
 of being heard and defending themselves ? Did you not 
 announce beforehand that you would obtain this decree ? " 
 
 A. — " The minute of the letter written by me, on the 15th 
 of Germinal, to the Committee of Public Safety, relative to 
 that affair was found at the time my papers were examined. 
 It forms part of the quota taken away by the Deputies 
 commissioned to make the search. This letter answers the 
 question in a manner that destroys all imputations. As for 
 the last part of the question, I declare that, on the contrary, 
 I announced to the accused that I hoped to be able to bring 
 about the appearance of the deputies they desired." 
 
 Q. — " Have you not imagined projects of insurrection in 
 the prisons in order to derive from this an opportunity for 
 placing on trial a greater number of accused persons, and 
 precisely those whose deaths had been promised ? " 
 
 A. — " Without the law of the 23rd Ventose, which expressly 
 provides that whoever shall attempt to open the prisons shall 
 be declared a traitor to the country and punished as such, a 
 law which imposed on me the rigorous duty of prosecuting 
 and placing on trial all individuals charged with these 
 
208 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 offences, I should have had a difficulty in believing in the con- 
 spiracies on which the Committee of Public Safety lodged 
 informations with me. But when the Law speaks, the pubhc 
 official must act. Now I state that the Committee of Public 
 Safety furnished me with a list of names, declaring to me that 
 these individuals had formed part of a conspiracy in the 
 Luxembourg house of detention, together with a resolution of 
 the 17th of Messidor providing that I should be bound to bring 
 to trial within twenty-foiar hours, all those charged with 
 conspiracy in the houses of detention. That is why, in 
 virtue of the law cited above, I could not avoid prosecuting 
 and placing on trial all the individuals named on that hst. 
 
 " I did the same, afterwards, in regard to two other lists 
 that were delivered to me in succession by the same Com- 
 mittee and on which were placed the names of a certain 
 number of prisoners from the house of the Carmehtes and 
 from that of Lazare. I am entirely ignorant in what way 
 those lists were delivered to the Committee and by whom 
 they were made out. No member of the Committee made 
 me the least revelation in this respect. I am equally ignorant 
 if this measure was imagined because there were not sufficient 
 offences to reach the persons named on those lists. 
 
 " As for me, I have performed the imperious duty which 
 was enjoined on me by law by writing to the Popular Com- 
 mission and inviting it to send me without delay all the 
 documents for conviction or acquittal concerning the prison- 
 ers that it might have. And, for this purpose, I sent it, as 
 fast as they reached me, the hsts of prisoners who were to be 
 placed on trial. Moreover, as a proof that I acted only in 
 virtue of the orders and wishes of the Committee of Pubhc 
 Safety, I may say that the Committee having decided on my 
 representations on the evening of the i8th of Messidor that 
 the 158 prisoners charged with conspiracy in the Luxem- 
 bourg should be tried at three sessions, namely those of the 
 19th, the 2ist, and the 22nd, when I got back I immediately 
 informed the Commission of this. Finally, I would add 
 that I knew so little about this conspiracy and the alleged 
 motives for which it was imagined, that there ought to be. 
 
THE LISTS OF WITNESSES 209 
 
 among the documents of the trial, a letter from Citizen 
 Lanne, deputy-commissioner of the Administration of 
 Civil Affairs, PoHce, and Tribunals, dated the i8th of Messi- 
 dor, in answer to mine, giving the names of the witnesses 
 to be heard in this affair, and that I had never seen or 
 known the witnesses indicated in that letter, with the excep- 
 tion of Benoit who had appearedintheaffairof Grammont and 
 others. I have never had correspondence with this Benott, 
 and I have never even been wiUing to allow him into my 
 room in spite of the repeated requests to do so made in his 
 letters. They can be found among the letters I threw 
 aside." 
 
 Q. — " Have you not caused all those makers of the lists 
 to be heard as witnesses ? Did you not concert with them 
 as to the nature of the depositions they were to make ? Has 
 it not happened that you caused them to be arrested and 
 even punished because in some circumstances they had 
 given evidence for the defence ? Was there not an under- 
 standing with them that they would be guided in their 
 depositions by signs that you had agreed to make to 
 them ? " 
 
 A. — " I could not, knowingly, have caused the makers of 
 Usts to be heard, for the authors were unknown to me, and 
 the Usts, as I have already remarked, were handed to me 
 by the Committee of Public Safety, except for one informa- 
 tion written in my own hand, an information which was 
 lodged with me after the Luxembourg conspiracy by a man 
 named Vemey, then a turnkey in that house of detention. 
 This declaration is attached to the documents.^ What is 
 gratuitously imputed to me is monstrous. Moreover, 
 those signs are clearly demonstrated to be false, for the 
 witness's back is turned to the Public Prosecutor, and, 
 besides, a man does not come to commit such a monstrous 
 offence unless he has committed others before it, which 
 cannot be proved against me. It is false that I ever sought 
 to intimidate any witness in this case, or in any other. It is 
 true only that, on account of the ambiguities and evasions of 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 500, 2nd dossier, p. 28. 
 
210 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 a turnkey whose name I have forgotten,^ the Tribunal 
 ordered this latter's arrest as a provisional measure of 
 security." 
 
 Q. — " Have you not allowed yourself to be dominated by 
 ill-humour and violence in cases when accused persons were 
 acquitted, where you had presumed condemnation ? Have 
 you not claimed to retain them by your own sole authority, 
 and threatened to seize them again and have them tried 
 anew ? Were not some condemned in this way ? " 
 
 A. — " I remember none of those cases. Further, I ask 
 for the cases to be pointed out to me in which it is stated 
 that I behaved in this way. Then I will answer in a manner 
 that will leave no doubt. I remember only that Fr^teau, 
 having been acquitted for a first offence, the Tribunal decided 
 that he should be detained until the general peace. Fresh 
 charges, not foreseen and not indicated on his first indict- 
 ment, having been laid against him, he was again placed on 
 trial and condemned on a fresh indictment." 
 
 Q. — " Have you ever acceded to proposals that may have 
 been made to you to aHow yourself to be bribed by more or 
 less considerable sums ? " 
 
 A. — " I have always been faithful to my duty. Far from 
 allowing myself to be bribed, I would not even have allowed 
 such a proposal to be made to me. To ask me such a ques- 
 tion is to crown the persecutions that I am made to suffer. 
 My conduct has been always frank and loyal. I ask, further, 
 that the names of the individuals be made known to me." 
 
 Q. — " Do you intend to justify yourself, and from what do 
 you claim that your justification will result ? " 
 
 A. — ' ' For that purpose I make use of the answers contained 
 in the present examination and of the printed memorial which 
 ought to have been dehvered to each of the members of the 
 Tribunal, together with the documents found at the time of 
 the examination of my papers and taken away by the Com- 
 mission, and other papers ; finally, of means of which I 
 reserve to myself the time and place for turning to account." 
 
 » This was Lesenne, turnkey at the Luxembourg, who was arrested 
 on the 19th of Messidor. He gave evidence at Fouquier's trial. 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE TRIBUNAL 21 r 
 
 Q. — " Have you made choice of one or of several 
 defenders ? " 
 
 A. — " I choose Citizen Lafleuterie." 
 
 Here Fouquier remarked that it ought not to escape the 
 notice of the Tribunal that, as he had exercised the rigorous 
 ofi&ce of PubUc Prosecutor for seventeen months, individuals 
 might come forward, moved by hatred and vengeance to- 
 wards him, or on account of their own detention, or on 
 account of the condemnation of their relatives or friends, 
 to give evidence against him. For this reason he asked the 
 justice of the Tribunal " to give all the attention of which 
 it was capable to persons of this class, leaving it also to the 
 loyalty of the Tribunal that the present examination should 
 not be seen by any of the witnesses who were to be heard." 
 
 The examination ended. The accused declared that he 
 persisted in all his answers. He signed the official report 
 together with Granges, the judge's deputy. Judge Forestier 
 and Josse, the registrar, then signed.^ 
 
 On the 4th of Frimaire (November 24) Fouquier was 
 transferred from the Plessis prisOn to the Hospice de rEv6ch6. * 
 This fact seems to indicate that he was ill, exhausted by the 
 struggle, by the emotions which his vigorous temperament 
 had hitherto withstood, worn out by an extremely severe 
 winter ^ and by the prison regimen. Witnesses at his trial 
 declared that he was recognisable though very changed and 
 grown thinner. He remained at the Hospice de TEvSche 
 
 ^ Archives Nationales, W. 501, and dossier, p. 39. 
 
 * L'Eveche was at the same time a prison and a hospital. As a 
 prison it came under the Public Prosecutor's jurisdiction and had 
 been under Fouquier's orders. " The man whom the patients must 
 have least expected to see appearing among them was assuredly 
 Fouquier-Tinville, who, after having taken part in organising the 
 Hospice, after having presided over it for a long time, was now in his 
 turn imprisoned within it and remained there until the suppression of 
 the establishment." We take this quotation from a very interesting 
 monograph by M. Lton Legrand which appeared in the Revue des 
 Questions Historiques, July, 1890, under the title of L' Hospice 
 Naiionale du Tribunal RivoluUonnaire. 
 
 » A gendarme's report says, on the loth of Niv6se, that seven per- 
 sons crossing the Seine by the ice were engulfed. Aulard : Paris sous 
 le Directoire, I., p. 351. 
 
212 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 until the 26th of Frimaire (December 16), on which date he 
 was transferred to the Conciergerie in order to appear, two 
 days later, before the Tribunal. 
 
 Carrier and the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes came 
 up for trial on the 7th of Frimaire. On the 24th, at half- 
 past ten, the pleadings in the Carrier trial closed. On the 
 26th, at midnight, Carrier began his speech. He spoke 
 from midnight until half-past four in the morning. He was 
 condemned to death along with Pinard and Grandmaison.^ 
 The other thirty accused persons were acquitted. The 
 Carrier trial lasted sixty sittings. 
 
 On the same day, the Tribunal, presided over by Dobsen, 
 delivered to Public Prosecutor Leblois an official certificate 
 of the pleas for the prosecution which he had just drawn up 
 against Fouquier-Tinville. 
 
 This document comprised three propositions : ist, 
 Fouquier-Tinville's crimes ; 2nd, Fouquier-Tinville's com- 
 binations and objects ; 3rd, Fouquier-Tinville's character 
 and moral behaviour. 
 
 " Whether we endeavour to penetrate into his connections, 
 his views, his object ; or whether we go further, and seek 
 to know what were his manners, his habits, his moral 
 behaviour, we see, and we could say it is already proved, 
 that, in all these different aspects, Fouquier is criminal, 
 mischievous, and merits punishment." 
 
 In short, Leblois laid hold of and directed against Fouquier 
 the charges of grouping together the accused persons and of 
 placing them on trial in a mass after the law of the 22nd of 
 Prairial. He accused him of being the criminal author of 
 those hasty trials, thanks to which " accused persons have 
 been condemned in appearance and really executed without 
 there ever being against them either a vaUd verdict or sen- 
 tence." He affirmed that he was responsible for the substi- 
 tution of one accused person for another, and of having had 
 
 » Carrier died with courage. " He offered his hand with good 
 grace to the executioner and mounted to the theatre of death with 
 vivacity," says the Courier RSpublicain of the 27th of Frimaire. 
 " Pinard was dying at the foot of the scaffold ; Grandmaison was 
 weeping but did not appear to lack courage." (Ibid.) 
 
THE INDICTMENT AGAINST FOUQUIER 213 
 
 the guillotine prepared and set up ahd the carts got ready in 
 advance. He rebuked him for the blank sentence forms, and 
 the eagerness, which Fouquier could have prevented, for 
 depriving certain accused persons of the right to plead and 
 thus leaving them without witnesses or defenders. He 
 rebuked him for the Comte de Fleury's death. He insisted 
 on the accusation that FouqUier had changed the jurors, 
 and made a selection from them, that he had spoken to 
 them and made them speak to him, that he had penetrated 
 " furtively " into the room where they were deliberating, 
 that he had jested in an atrocious fashion by calling them 
 " firers of uninterrupted volleys." He influenced witnesses. 
 He received them in his office ; he taught them what they 
 were to say. He " exercised the most pronounced despotism 
 over all the agents of the Tribunal, and especially over the 
 secretaries of the prosecutor's office." He kept back docu- 
 ments for the defence, and refused to deliver them to the 
 defenders. He abstained from opening packets of docu- 
 ments for the defence. He lied by implying and trjnng to 
 make it believed that some accused persons when placed on 
 trial had rebelled against the Tribunal and shown a lack of 
 respect towards it.^ He lied by implying and trying to make 
 it believed that there existed conspiracies in the prisons. 
 " He acted thus in order to snatch the terrible law of the 
 22nd of Prairial, which he boasted of obtaining, and of which, 
 perhaps, he alone could have given the dangerous idea." He 
 himself went to the prisons and the houses of detention. 
 *' He made it his task to have intercourse with those cowardly 
 men whom one is always sure of finding inclined to injure 
 others and to degrade themselves. , He flattered them, 
 caressed them, and influenced them to charge themselves 
 with the very doubtful employment of common informers. 
 . . . He established, between himself §nd them, a furtive, 
 inquisitorial, sanguinary intercourse, based upon the hsts of 
 proscribed persons." 
 
 " Inexorable and pitiless, the verdict which accidentally 
 acquitted an accused person was to Fouquier-Tinville the 
 * Danton and the Dantonists. 
 
214 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 object of a further display of rage and fury ; he almost 
 always opposed, and that on his own authority alone, the 
 execution of verdicts of acquittal, and if he were nevertheless 
 forced to abstain from resisting them, he protested and 
 threatened to recapture and sacrifice the victim ; this was 
 especially the f eehng he experienced towards, and the 
 threat he made against, and the fate he reserved for, one of 
 the former Parhamentarians whose ruin he had swom."^ 
 
 Leblois charged Fouquier with having " strangely and in 
 all ways proved false to every part and function of his office," 
 with having been as greedy for blood as for money, with 
 having kept the sums sent to the prisoners through him, 
 with having illegally taken over various deposits, chattels, 
 and sums of money, " since there was legally no other 
 depository than the registrar of the Tribunal," and, either 
 from f orgetfulness or from fraudulent intention, with making 
 no note or register of those objects, some of which have 
 been cut up or lost, and which it is impossible to trace here. 
 
 He charged him with having supported those " monsters," 
 Robespierre, Saint- Just, Couthon, and others, " who had 
 promised themselves to depopulate France and to cause 
 to disappear all its genius, talents, honour, and industry." 
 It will be demonstrated, said Leblois, " that Fouquier paid 
 them visits in the dead of night."^ It will be demonstrated, 
 he said also, " that they held orgies in private houses at the 
 period when the conspiracy was discovered." 
 
 In brief, "it is proved that Fouquier-TinviUe made 
 amusement and a sort of enjoyment out of the great numbers 
 of those whom he placed oil trial and who were condemned." 
 
 Leblois accordingly charged his predecessor with having 
 betrayed his office, with having conspired, as author or 
 accomphce, against the internal security of the State and 
 of the French people ; with having consequently and in 
 
 > Frfteau (Emmanuel Marie Michel Philippe), a councillor of the 
 Parlement of Paris, at first acquitted (27th of Flor6al in the year II.), 
 then placed again on trial and guillotined (26th of Prairial in the 
 year II.). 
 
 » These were the visits that Fouquier made to the Committee 
 of Public Safety to which he went to give an account of his work. 
 
THE HEARING POSTPONED 215 
 
 this manner provoked the dissolution of the national 
 representation, the overthrow of the RepubUcan system, 
 the re-establishment of royalty, and with having sought 
 to provoke, by murder and terror, the arming of citizens 
 one against another, and with exciting civil war.^ 
 
 Two days later, on the 28th of Frimaire (December 18), 
 Lecointre (of Versailles) proposed in the Convention that 
 those who were acquitted in the Carrier trial should be sent 
 before a criminal Tribunal on a charge of ordinary crimes. 
 A sharp discussion took place. Some representatives of the 
 people declared that Revolutionary justice had been too 
 long in the same hands. Bourdon (of the Oise) proposed 
 that the Tribunal sitting at Paris should be renewed. The 
 Convention decreed that this should be done. 
 
 The usher of the Convention dehvered this decree to 
 President Dobsen at the moment when Fouquier-TinviUe 
 was in the chair answering the questions of the judges and 
 jurors. The President immediately prorogued the hearing. 
 And Fouquier was led back to prison. Everything had to 
 be begun again. During more than three months that 
 he was imprisoned, " he was frightfully bored."^ He was 
 still to be incarcerated for four months and a half longer 
 before " he mounted to the theatre of death."* 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 499, dossier 550, p. 7. 
 
 ' Fouquier's expression in one of his letters to his wife. 
 
 ' An expression of the time, used of Carrier. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S second trial : THE INQUIRY BY THE 
 TRIBUNAL ESTABLISHED ON THE 8tH OF NIVOSE IN THE 
 YEAR III 
 
 ON the 8th of Nivose in the year HI. (December 28, 
 1794), the National Convention voted the re- 
 organisation of the Revolutionary Tribimal, pro- 
 posed by Merlin (of Douai). This law was put 
 into effect a month later. The magistrates who composed 
 the new Tribunal came from the provinces. Their duties 
 at Paris were not to last more than three months.^ 
 
 The first session was held in the Hall of Liberty on the 
 8th of Pluviose in the year III. Aumont* dehvered a speech 
 of the historic type, in which he called to mind Brutus pro- 
 claiming the hberty of Rome over the ruins of the overturned 
 throne of the Tarquins, but avoiding the shedding of innocent 
 blood on the scaffold. He also evoked Sulla and Octavius, 
 and of Rome placed in chains. He hailed the dawn of a happy 
 time of justice. The new Tribunal would be revolutionary 
 and Repubhcan but just. 
 
 " When the sight of crime and the sad necessity of letting 
 the sword of the law fall upon guilty heads wiU come to 
 sadden our hearts, keep in sight the assurance of a not far 
 distant future. . . . Behold France more powerful 
 and more respected than Rome and Sparta, more intellectual 
 than Athens, more opulent than Carthage ; above all, 
 happier than those famous republics, because she will have 
 
 » Campardon : Le Tribunal RivoltUionnaire, II., p. 132. 
 
 " Aiunont, a commissioner for the Administration of Civil Affairs, 
 Police, and Tribunals, became head of the legal and consulting office 
 in the general police department, and afterwards until the year VII. 
 was head of the detective department. We find no indication of him 
 in the year IX. 
 
 216 
 
FOUQUIER'S SECOND TRIAL 217 
 
 more virtue, and will gaze upon the spectacle of her happiness 
 in preparing the hberty and welfare of the world."^ 
 
 President Agier" then said that he and his colleagues 
 " ascended with fright into a tribunal of blood which 
 recently, whilst striking as by chance at some guilty heads, 
 had sent thousands of innocent victims to death." 
 
 " Priests of justice," he went on, " we have sacrificed 
 ourselves to the public good ; before being the sacrificers, 
 we become so to speak the victims ; let us obey, since we 
 must, and not being able to have the merit of refusing, 
 let us at least possess that of resignation. If we have to 
 pass rigorous judgments, it is not to us that they can be 
 imputed, but solely to the Law, of which we shall be, in all 
 the severity of the term, interpreters by compulsion ; 
 we are really responsible only for our zeal ; and conscience 
 tells us that it could not be purer." 
 
 The prisoners to be tried by this Tribunal, established 
 on the 8th of Nivose in the year III., did not employ language 
 different from that of their accusers. They also declared 
 that they had obeyed. They also said that they could not 
 refuse. They also entrenched themselves within the formula 
 of the Law. They also maintained that they had only 
 interpreted it. They also afl&rmed that they had behaved 
 with exactitude, with rigorous zeal, that they had been 
 bound to act thus, and were the victims of duty. 
 
 Only, it ought to be noticed how the times had changed. 
 The duties of the members of the Tribimal which was re- 
 fashioned on the 8th of Nivose could be performed without 
 danger and without risk. They were even not without profit. 
 The other duties, those of the members of the Tribtmal 
 established on March 10, 1793, and on the 22nd of Prairial, 
 1794, brought them to the scaffold. But the judges of the 
 Terror had sent to death, between April 6, 1793, and the 
 22nd of Prairial, 1794, one thousand two hundred and 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 532, reg. 5. 
 
 ' Agier, formerly an advocate in the Parlement of Paris and a 
 substitute Deputy for Paris in the States-General. A judge in the 
 Tribunal for the Second Arrondissement, he resigned after August 
 10 and only entered upon his functions after the 9th of Thermidor. 
 
2i8 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 fifty-nine accused persons, and, between the 22nd of Prairial 
 and the 9th of Thermidor, one thousand three hundred and 
 sixty-six, or altogether two thousand six hundred and 
 twenty-five victims in the space of sixteen months ; while 
 the judges of the Tribunal established in Niv6se of the year 
 in. pronounced only seventeen death sentences — those of 
 Fouquier-Tinville, fifteen of those charged along with him, 
 and a woman, Marie Th6r^se Marchal Jacquet, found guilty 
 of corresponding with the enemies of the Repubhc. 
 
 On the 12th of Ventdse in the year III. (March 2, 
 1795), the preUminaries of Fouquier's trial began again on 
 a wider basis and with new sources of information. A larger 
 number of witnesses was heard — registrars and clerks of the 
 Tribunal established on March 10, 1793, employees in the 
 prosecutor's office, ushers, Fouquier's secretaries, coachmen 
 of the Tribunal, gendarmes, lawyers, official defenders, 
 attendants in the refreshment-room, police officials, wine- 
 sellers, employees in the prisons, turnkeys, the executioner, 
 the executioner's assistants, ex-prison spies, persons who 
 had been accused but had escaped the penalties of the 
 Tribunal, all those, in a word, who had lived the fife of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal during sixteen months, and some 
 persons who, in spite of the Tribunal, were still ahve. 
 
 We have analysed these depositions from the originals, 
 preserved among the Archives, made before Charles Fran9ois 
 Joseph Pissis, Judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a com- 
 missioner appointed by an order issued on the 12th of 
 VentSse in the year III., and signed by Vice-President 
 Liger. 
 
 In these long depositions, so curious and so interestmg, 
 in these examinations signed by the investigating judge 
 and by each of the witnesses, the Uving history of the trial 
 is revealed. It is the Ufe of the Tribunal of the Terror, 
 Fouquier's existence during sixteen months, which Uyes 
 again in those large pages covered with the close handwriting 
 of the registrars who alternately held the pen. To reproduce 
 in extenso these testimonies would be impossible; their 
 prolixity and repetitions would exhaust the reader's atten- 
 
FIRST WITNESSES 219 
 
 tion. We have accordingly summarised them without 
 omitting anything essential. We hope that the reading 
 of this summary (in which the details, collected and noted 
 from life, are specified and particularised) will give the 
 reader all the interest we ourselves have derived from reading 
 the depositions in the original documents, and from trans- 
 scribing and summarising them. 
 
 The first witness whom Judge Pissis examined on that 
 12th of Ventose in the year III. was a young woman of 
 twenty-two years of age who had escaped from the guillotine 
 by a miracle — AmeUe Laurence Marie Celeste Saint-Pern, 
 the widow of Comulier,^ bom at Rennes in the Ile-et-Vilaine, 
 and residing in Paris, at the Rue du Sentier, Brutus Section. 
 
 She declared that on the ist of Thermidor in the year II. 
 she appeared before the Revolutionary Tribimal along with 
 her husband, brother, grandfather, mother, and her two 
 uncles. She and her husband were condemned to death. 
 There was, to her knowledge, no writ of indictment against 
 them, and no legal documents. They had been handed a writ 
 of indictment at the door of the audience-chamber. She 
 escaped death only by declaring herself pregnant. During 
 the hearing of the case, she was only asked her name, her 
 age, rank, and residence. No witness was called either for 
 the prosecution or for the defence. She wanted to speak 
 on her own behalf. The President ordered two gendarmes 
 to separate her from her husband and to take her to the end 
 of the bench on which the prisoners sat, so that she could not 
 speak to him. 
 
 Before the hearing, when the names of the accused were 
 called over at the Conciergerie, neither she nor her husband 
 had been called, for they were not on the list, and had 
 received no writ of indictment. The bearer of the hst, 
 so Madame Comulier deposed, immediately came back 
 and said : " It is required that they appear at the hearing 
 to-day, and they are not included in the hst nor in the writ 
 of indictment." He sent for one. M. Cornulier refused 
 to take his place on the benches until he was shown a writ 
 ^She signs herself thus. 
 
220 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 of indictment in which his name was included. One was 
 brought to them immediately. Their names were included 
 in it. It was handed to them at the entrance to the audience- 
 chamber. Her brother, Bertrand Jean Marie Saint-Pern, 
 aged seventeen, was condemned the same day on a writ of 
 indictment made out against his father aged fifty-three. 
 
 " They were named in it," says the witness, " under this 
 form, Saint-Pern and his wife, son-in-law and daughter 
 of Magon de la Balue," a description that only fitted her 
 father and his wife, and could not be adapted to her young 
 brother.^ 
 
 The pubhc executioner's assistant, Pierre Frangois 
 Etienne Desmorest, who had already given evidence at the 
 first inquiry, that held in Brumaire, repeated what he knew 
 concerning Fouquier. He had had " no special connection 
 with him." One day Fouquier complained to him that the 
 executions took place too late. He told him to come to 
 him for orders. Desmorest went every morning. As a 
 rule, Fouquier would say to him at eleven or twelve o'clock : 
 " The guillotine must be set up for two o'clock or half-past 
 two. So many vehicles must be procured." 
 
 One day he told him that ten or eleven were needed. 
 He never thought there were enough vehicles because he 
 wished there to be only seven or eight condemned persons 
 in each of them.^ Still, one day it was necessary to put as 
 many as ten in each vehicle. When the sentences were 
 passed, Desmorest would go and find the usher who was to 
 be present at the execution, and who had the list of con- 
 demned persons with Fouquier's order. Desmorest used to 
 go with this usher to the Conciergerie, where the janitor 
 " would deHver over to them the condemned persons, whom 
 it was not necessary to summon because they were usually 
 enclosed in an apartment separated from the other prisoners 
 and guarded by gendarmes." He would count them, with 
 the list in his hand. The condemned persons were deprived 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 64s, folio 1. 
 
 • We have seen tiiat he had received formal orders from the Com- 
 mittees on this matter. 
 
CONVICTIONS ANTICIPATED 221 
 
 of their property before being handed over to the executioner. 
 By a resolution of the Convention, their clothing was taken 
 to the Hospital of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He did 
 not know what became of it. 
 
 At the end of his evidence, Desmorest remembered that 
 the day when Fouquier asked for ten or eleven vehicles 
 was the loth of Thermidor, and it was for the execution of 
 the seventy-one members of the Commune of Paris who had 
 been outlawed. " He received this order in Fouquier's own 
 house." 
 
 Etienne Simonnet, usher of the Tribunal, aged 66, declared 
 that he was too much occupied with the discharge of his 
 duties to notice Fouquier's threats and outbursts in the 
 registrar's office. He only knew two or three facts. One 
 day Fouquier had changed several of the jurors on the Ust 
 of those who were summoned. Several times Simonnet 
 received " imperfect " writs of indictment from the prose- 
 cutor's office ; in some of those writs the names of the 
 accused persons did not appear, " so that the names were only 
 given as they were asked for at the prosecutor's office." 
 On another day, about the 22nd of Prairial, Simonnet heard 
 him say " that he would have all those scoundrels of con- 
 spirators exterminated, that he had orders to that effect from 
 the Committees." One morning, he saw in the courtyard of 
 the Sainte-ChapeUe, before the trial, a certain number of carts 
 which seemed " intended to carry those who were to be 
 condemned."^ 
 
 Gabriel Jerome Senar, aged 35, a lawyer, residing at Tours, 
 but at the time detained in the Hospice de rEv6ch6, declared 
 that he had " much knowledge useful for the decision of the 
 case of Fouquier-TinviUe through his connection, interviews 
 and correspondence with him." 
 
 But it must be confessed that Senar's evidence is highly 
 suspicious. Senar had been an agent of the Committee of 
 General Security. He had been president of a mihtary 
 revolutionary committee established at Tours ; he had been 
 national agent of the Commune of Tours. He was at once a 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 his, folios 2 and 3. 
 
222 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 gendarme and an informer by profession. He knew well 
 that his evidence could be stamped as inadmissible, since, 
 on the first occasion when questioned, he had asked whether 
 " a man covered with suspicion could be heard as a witness, 
 and his depositions brought forward when his name was 
 dishonoured in public opinion." He took advantage of this 
 to sohcit the new Tribunal to be good enough " to indict 
 or to judge him, as, for eight months, he could obtain no 
 decision nor even a statement of the charges against him." 
 
 Senar said that, having come from Tours to Paris by 
 order of the Committee, " he made the unlucky acquaintance 
 of H6ron, the principal agent of the Committee of General 
 Security, who got hold of him." H6ron took him to Fou- 
 quier-TinviUe, " who appeared to be very closely associated 
 with him." Fququier received H6ron in these terms : 
 " Our business is going well. Heads are falling hke slates." 
 They afterwards spoke of Santerre, who had been arrested. 
 S6nar was a commissioner in that affair. After a discus- 
 sion of the oii&cial report regarding Santerre, Fouquier- 
 TinviUe answered : — " What does it matter to me whether 
 you are a patriot or not ? When the Committee of Public 
 Safety tells me to have any one guillotined, I do it. . . 
 Once more, I am only a passive being, obliged to make those 
 persons perish whom Robespierre names. In this case I 
 obey the Committee of Public Safety, I agree. It is dis- 
 pleasing to me, on your account, if, through the rivalry of the 
 two Committees, Santerre has been kept in prison too long. 
 I shall make him take his place on my little bench, and you 
 will dance the Carmagnole there." 
 
 S6nar : " Ought the Revolution to assassinate, and ought 
 we not to have justice ? " 
 
 Fouquier : "It is only counter-revolutionaries and knaves 
 who ask for justice. Ask Heron how we work the heads. 
 In Revolution you must not stop at these trifles." 
 
 Some moments afterwards S6nar heard H6ron say to 
 Fouquier : " Good, good, my friend. Cut off their heads. 
 That is the way to enrich the Repubhc." After this they 
 separated. 
 
THE INDULGENT FACTION 223 
 
 One day, having business at Fouquier's ofi&ce, to deliver 
 to him documents by order of the Committee of General 
 Security, he spoke to the PubUc Prosecutor in favour of the 
 Revolutionary Committee of Bourgueil, and begged him not 
 to put them on trial immediately, although they were at 
 the Conciergerie. Fouquier answered him : " This is how 
 it is. When one wants to carry terror into the country dis- 
 tricts, to maintain the Revolution by fear, one finds these 
 gentlemen of the Indulgent Faction who cry out, and our 
 measure would fail if we Ustened to them. This is good 
 business. There are rich people in it, for when they entered 
 the Conciergerie plenty of money was taken from them." 
 
 At another time, in regard to the trial of this case, Fouquier 
 said to him : " I have so much to do that I forget what I am 
 sa57ing or what is suggested to me." 
 
 The members of the Bourgueil Committee were given their 
 liberty, thanks to a reprieve. 
 
 S6nar, having notified to Fouquier a resolution passed 
 by the Committee of General Security giving them hberty, 
 the PubUc Prosecutor exclaimed : " It is always the same ! 
 Another case of hberty given by the Committee of General 
 Security ! But I cannot accede to it because, according to 
 the law of the 22nd of Prairial, the Tribunal cannot set at 
 liberty without the consent of the Committee of PubUc 
 Safety." In spite of Senar's observations, he persisted in his 
 refusal. Senar then withdrew. As he was leaving, he met 
 Amar, the Deputy, who told him to wait for him, so that they 
 might go away together in the carriage belonging to the 
 Committee of General Security. 
 
 Fouqmer reappeared and was stopped by a citizen, who 
 said to him : " How many vehicles will be wanted to- 
 day ? " 
 
 Fouquier counted on his fingers : " Eight, twelve, eighteen, 
 thirty. Count on thirty." 
 
 The other, who was " attached to the pubhc executioner," 
 withdrew. Fouquier perceived Senar, and said to him : 
 " What are you waiting here for ? " 
 
 " I am waiting for Amar, the Representative of the people. 
 
224 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 with whom I am to go away in the carriage ; I am tired, and 
 all the more so on account of the fright your answer has just 
 caused me. You know the number of the condemned and 
 their case is not yet heard ! They have not and cannot be 
 tried by this time, for it is too early in the day." 
 
 " Bah ! " answered Fouquier, " I know what to think." 
 
 He left him abruptly with the words : " You are not good 
 revolutionaries, you formaUsts ! " 
 
 Another evening, at the office of the prosecutor's secre- 
 taries, where S6nar was making out an analytical inventory 
 of the documents which he was to deliver, Fouquier came in 
 and said : " You are very much afraid, Mr. FormaUst. You 
 are going as much into detail as if you were drawing up an 
 inventory to be exhibited in court." 
 
 H6ron ^ was there. Fouquier required Senar to be briefer, 
 and pressed him to end his work. He sent the secretary away. 
 It was late. It was necessary to go to the Committee of 
 Pubhc Safety. Fouquier asked for two gendarmes. They 
 went out, the gendarmes following some paces behind. 
 S^nar walked with Heron and Fouquier. As they went. 
 Heron and Fouquier " conversed of the victories won by the 
 guillotine." Fouquier said : " I am pleased with its suc- 
 cesses ; but there are people who, although renowned patriots, 
 have gone through it. Others also will go through it, and 
 I am afraid that it may play a trick on me. I have seen the 
 ghosts of some patriots. For some time it has seemed to me 
 that those ghosts are following me. How will all this end ? 
 I do not know." 
 
 Senar answered : " When a suspected person is charged, 
 the PubUc Prosecutor should himself judge of the charge in 
 his own conscience. By an exact and scrupulous summary, 
 he ought to place the jurors in a position not to be deceived. 
 If he is forced to do the contrary, he ought to resign." 
 
 Senar affirmed that he said this. H6ron silenced him. 
 
 " You are a chatterer. Fouquier ought not to take advice 
 
 » See in the first series of M. Lendtre's Vieilles Maisons, Vieux 
 Papiers, the article entitled Two Police Officials {H6ron and Dosson- 
 viUe). 
 
THE TIMOROUS SENAR 235 
 
 from a greenhorn. A few skulls like yours would be enough 
 to ruin the revolution." 
 
 And Fouquier said : " Yes, I perceive that this fellow is 
 not a revolutionary. We should do fine things if we took 
 precautions." 
 
 They were then going through the door of the Louvre. 
 Three ill-clad men seemed to be hiding there. When 
 they heard the footsteps of the gendarmes, and saw the 
 three others, they went away. Fouquier said to Heron : 
 " My good friend, we shall not profit by our revolutionary 
 labours. We shall be assassinated." 
 
 H6ron repHed : " What matter ? Between now and 
 then we shall make an end of some of them. Do not be 
 uneasy. Whatever impediments I encounter at the Com- 
 mittee of General Security — and they sometimes imsettle 
 my plans — I shall none the less deal with them as we have 
 agreed, and we shall have more heads." 
 
 Fouquier rejoined : " You must be silent in the presence 
 of Indulgents." 
 
 This was intended for S6nar. 
 
 " Good," answered H^ron, " if he commit the least indis- 
 cretion, I shall soon master him." 
 
 At the entrance to the courtyard of the Tuileries, they 
 withdrew a httle from him. S^nar was less able to hear what 
 they said. He only heard Fouquier's voice and these words 
 spoken by him : " We shall always be in agreement, eind 
 shall make them dance the Carmagnole." 
 
 H6ron then rejoined Senar. They went to the Committee 
 of General Security. The timorous S6nar unbosomed himself 
 to Amar, the Deputy. He told him that Heron had a 
 grudge against him and why. Amar reassured him : " Be 
 calm, the Committee knows you. I wiU see that nothing is 
 done to you. If you were arrested again, you would not be 
 brought before the Tribunal without being heard. A 
 resolution will be passed that will send you back home."^ 
 Senar breathed again. 
 
 Charles Louis Perdry, aged 37, of No. 492 Rue Neuve-des- 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, p. 45 bis, folios 4 to 7. 
 
226 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Petits-Champs, judge of the Tribunal of the Second Arron- 
 dissement of Paris, a compatriot of Fouquier, knew him before 
 the Revolution. " Their families had intermarried." He 
 had been a director with him of the jury of the Tribunal 
 estabUshed on August 17, 1792. He had seen him less often 
 since he was appointed deputy and then Public Prosecutor. 
 He was present at certain sessions of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal. " They filled him with sorrow." 
 
 He was not able to remain for long, as he was " moved 
 at seeing on the benches for the accused and perhaps in the 
 midst of those who were guilty, men clothed with public 
 confidence." He had been a prisoner in the Plessis prison. 
 Terror ruled there. The prisoners were afraid to speak 
 to one another. He had never been able to conceive " how 
 any one had the effrontery to maintain that there were 
 conspiracies in the prisons." 
 
 Anne Marguerite Devilliers, the wife of Morisan, aged 50, 
 residing in the Palace, at the Cai6 des Subsistances, kept the 
 refreshment-room of the Tribunal. Fouquier frequently 
 came there to eat. He often waited there in the evening 
 until the Committees of PubUc Safety and of General Security 
 were open for him to go to them. She several times heard 
 Fouquier complain that he carried on a cruel trade, saying 
 that he would prefer to be a labourer. He used to ask : 
 " Were there many people present at the executions ? " 
 
 When they told him that there had been a crowd, Fouquier 
 would answer with a shrug of his shoulders : " It is fright- 
 ful ! " Sometimes he dined alone ; on other occasions with 
 certain jurors and certain judges. 
 
 She was sometimes present at the hearings, before the 
 22nd of Prairial. She saw Fouquier cross-examining the 
 accused. They could answer him freely. She heard Fou- 
 quier say to the President : " Put such and such a question 
 to the accused, and let them answer." 
 
 After the law of the 22nd of Prairial, she heard Fouquier, 
 who was dining in the refreshment-room, say: " The times 
 are very cruel. It cannot last." 
 
 He complained bitterly of President Dumas. On the 
 
A WRETCHED TRADE 227 
 
 9th of Thermidor he did not dine with her. He returned 
 to the Tribunal about six o'clock in the evening. He came 
 down to the refreshment-room about eight or nine o'clock, 
 and said : " I do not know what is taking place or what 
 it means." 
 
 He sent Malarme, one of the secretaries of the prosecutor's 
 office, to get information. Citizen Botot-Dumesnil, an officer 
 of poHce, sent out some men. Fouquier said : "As for 
 me, I remain at my post, were I to perish there. I fear 
 nothing." 
 
 He remained there, in fact, until one o'clock in the 
 morning. He then went out, saying : " I am going to the 
 Committee." 
 
 Madeline Nicole Sophie Morisan, aged 20, residing with 
 her father, a restaurant keeper, at the Cafe des Subsistances, 
 in the Palace, had seen Fouquier-Tinville several times 
 at her father's, as he came to eat there at five o'clock in 
 the evening. He often sat alone, but sometimes with 
 judges and jurors of the Tribimal. People came to give 
 him an account of the executions that had taken place. 
 He would ask the usher if there had been many people 
 there. On the usher's affirmative, he would shrug his 
 shoulders, saying : " When will this end ? What a wretched 
 trade ! I would prefer to go and labour in the fields." 
 
 She sometimes went to the sessions of the Tribunal. 
 She saw Dumas preventing the accused from defending 
 themselves. Fouquier said to the President : " Let the 
 accused persons speak." 
 
 On the gth of Thermidor, Fouquier did not dine in the 
 refreshment-room. She saw him in his own rooms, about 
 six o'clock in the evening, with his wife. About half-past 
 eight or nine, Fouquier came to the refreshment-room to 
 drink a bottle of beer, " as he usually did in the evening." 
 He asked Botot-Dumesnil what was happening. He 
 remained until eleven o'clock at night and returned to the 
 refreshment-room at two o'clock in the morning. He then 
 went to bed. She heard " no conversation of Fouquier's 
 at that time because she herself was asleep." 
 
228 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Of Dumas, he used to say : " He is a beggar who cannot 
 last long." She never heard Fouquier speak in her presence 
 of the conspiracies in the prisons. 
 
 Charles Gombert Bertrand, aged 41, a former janitor at 
 the Luxembourg/ had had no intercourse with Fouquier- 
 Tinville. He saw him at the Tribunal. After the law of the 
 22nd of Prairial, he heard Fouquier, in his capacity of 
 Pubhc Prosecutor, cross-examining the accused. He let 
 them answer freely. 
 
 Armand Martial Joseph Herman, aged about 36, residing 
 at No. 19, Place des Piques, the ex-President of the Revo- 
 lutionary Tribunal, who had presided over the trial of Marie 
 Antoinette and at the Danton case, declared that " all the 
 deeds with which Fouquier was charged being subsequent 
 to his own departure from the Tribunal, he could give no 
 information in regard to them." While he was President 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal, no complaint or no informa- 
 tion against Fouquier reached him. " He would have been 
 very pleased if there had been a little more order in his 
 work," but he knew no fact which could be imputed to him 
 as a crime, no betrayal of his functions. 
 
 As to the conspiracy in the prisons, he only knew it as 
 Commissioner for the Administration of CivU Affairs, 
 Police, and Tribunals.^ He had had to make inquiries 
 on the subject of that conspiracy. He beUeved that 
 Fouquier accompanied Citizen Lanne * once or twice on his 
 visits of inquiry to the prisons. He could not say in what 
 manner those inquiries were made. " He liked to think 
 that those two functionaries carried out their duty in this 
 respect." He, Herman, said that he had never been in the 
 prisons. 
 
 Joseph Verney, aged 28, residing at No. 311, Rue Geoffroy- 
 r Angevin, Section de la Reunion, had been a basketmaker in 
 1790, 1791, and 1792. After August 3rd, 1793, he became a 
 
 » He had not been janitor since the i8th of Thermidor. 
 " A post to which he was appointed after the condemnation of the 
 Dantonists. 
 
 ' Herman's assistant. 
 
THE PRISONERS OF BICETRE 229 
 
 turnkey at the Luxembourg. Since then he had performed 
 the duties of janitor at Saint-Lazare until the 28th of 
 Thermidor. He said that he had no intercourse with 
 Fouquier-Tinville.i When he was at the Luxembourg, 
 he saw only once, on the night between the i8th and 19th 
 of Messidor, a Ust brought by an usher. This Ust contained 
 the names of more than a hundred " individuals " who were 
 transferred to the Conciergerie. It was signed ' ' Fouquier, ' ' 
 and bore the seal of the Tribunal. Those who were on the 
 list did not appear again at the Luxembourg, with the 
 exception of nine or ten who were acquitted. 
 
 Joseph Honore Vonschriltz," aged 28, residing at Paris, 
 in the Place and Section des Droits de I'Homme, a police 
 inspector for the past year, and a carpenter before the 
 Revolution, saw Fouquier-Tinville only once when he came 
 to BicStre accompanied by a detachment of gendarmes on 
 foot, and several vehicles to take away the prisoners who 
 were summoned to the Conciergerie and executed the day 
 following, " with the exception of four or six who assisted 
 as Avitnesses," * and were brought back to BicStre. The 
 others were executed as accomphces in, or authors of, a 
 conspiracy hatched at Bicgtre. However, Vonschriltz 
 had noticed " no trace of conspiracy " in that house. He 
 saw nothing but submission among the prisoners. Dupont, 
 the police official whose rigour made the prisoners groan, 
 had, along with Fouquier, caused a table to be placed in the 
 courtyard. They had a list of those whom they wanted to 
 enter their vehicles. Fouquier took them away.* 
 
 Pierre Nicolas Vergne, aged 36, secretary and justice of 
 the peace of the Lepelletier Section, and afterwards member 
 of the Revolutionary Committee of that section, residing at 
 
 1 This is contradicted by the facts. A document exists (Archives 
 Nationales, W. 500, 2nd dossier, p. 28) which is nothing else than the 
 information laid by Vemey against twenty prisoners in the Luxem- 
 bourg, written in Fouquier's hand, and approved of and signed--by 
 Vemey. 
 
 « This is how he signed himself. 
 
 ' Police spies. See Chapter III. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 bis, folios 7 to 12. 
 
230 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 No. 7, Rue Favart, never had anything in particular to do 
 with Fouquier-Tinville. 
 
 He knew him as Public Prosecutor. He had sometimes 
 been present at the hearings of the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 He never saw Fouquier sitting at them. He used to bring 
 him, as member of the Revolutionary Committee, documents 
 for the prosecution or for the defence of indicted persons. 
 Fouquier handed them over to a clerk who counted them. 
 Vergne made him give a receipt for them. On a single 
 occasion he dined with Fouquier, whom he did not yet 
 know. It was about the month of June, 1793, on a Sunday 
 when all the constituted authorities of Paris had gone 
 to the Convention. There were seven or eight persons at 
 that dinner, " among others Montane, then President of 
 the Tribunal ; Paris, the registrar ; and Chretien, a juror." 
 There was no reference made to an5^hing in particular. 
 
 The judge asked Vergne if he had no private conversation 
 with Fouquier at the time of the attempt on Collot d'Herbois 
 by Admiral. 
 
 " What idea had you of that affair, and what idea had 
 Fouquier of it ? " 
 
 " On that day, about six or seven o'clock in the morning. 
 Admiral was examined. Accompanied by Chr6tien, the 
 juror, and another member of the Revolutionary Committee 
 of the Section, I went to take Fouquier the declarations of 
 those who were present at the moment of Admiral's attempt, 
 as well as Admiral's replies. We found Fouquier in bed. 
 We handed him the documents. Fouquier asked us if we 
 did not beUeve this attempt was ' the result of a more 
 extensive plot.' We answered that we did not think so." 
 Vergne, although summoned, was not heard as a witness 
 in that case. 
 
 Pierre Joseph Boyaval,^ aged 26, detained in the Hospice 
 National, a tailor, and before his arrest a lieutenant of Ught 
 infantry, detained since the 20th of Brumaire in the year II., 
 first in the Luxembourg, then in Sainte-P^lagie and the 
 Plessis, and lastly in the Hospice, was an old habitue of the 
 » He signs thus. 
 
A PRISON SPY 231 
 
 prisons of the Terror. But he had not suffered much from 
 this. We have seen that he served as a prison spy. 
 
 He declared that on the 19th of Messidor, Fouquier, as 
 Public Prosecutor, sent him to the Luxembourg to make 
 inquiries together with Beausire, Armance, Vauchelet, 
 Julien, Meimier, Lenain, Boispereuse, and Benoit.^ Fouquier 
 asked him his name, and said to him : " You are going to 
 appear at the Revolutionary Tribunal. You must speak 
 in the way you know." 
 
 Then he was sent back. On the 21st of the same month, 
 Fouquier sent for the witnesses. He went to the Public 
 Prosecutor's room, accompanied by a gendarme. He 
 handed him the letter which a prisoner in the Luxembourg 
 had entrusted to him. He had no conversation with him. 
 On the same day, a httle later, he asked to speak again with 
 Fouquier. A gendarme accompanied him. Fouquier made 
 him wait for an hour in a corridor. When the Prosecutor, 
 who had been conversing with Coffinhal, was free, Boyaval 
 asked permission to go and dine with his relatives, under 
 the guard of a gendarme. Fouquier refused. 
 
 On the 22nd of Messidor, Fouquier sent him again to 
 inquire, always with the same witnesses. But he did not 
 speak to him. Boyaval had since written many letters to 
 Fouquier " to denounce " to him facts relating to a con- 
 spiracy of 300 prisoners, "on the first floor of the Luxem- 
 bourg." He never received a reply. ^ 
 
 Antoine Vauchelet, aged 32, a merchant in Paris, at No. 2, 
 Rue du Gros-Chenet, Section Brutus, had never known 
 Fouquier. But Vauchelet, like Boyaval, was an habitue 
 of the prisons. Like Boyaval ^e had rendered services. 
 He, too, was a pohce spy. During his detention in the 
 Luxembourg, which lasted from September 9th, 1793, to the 
 27th of Thermidor following, he " thought he noticed that 
 Verney, turnkey in the house of detention, had intercourse 
 with Fouquier." He boasted of going to see him. Boyaval 
 had said to him, Vauchelet, that there were still many 
 
 ' Other police spies. 
 
 » Archives Natiouales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 bis. folios 12 to 16. 
 
232 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 conspirators, a list of whom Fouquier had asked of 
 him. 
 
 On the 19th of Messidor, when summoned as a witness 
 to the Tribunal, he had seen Boyaval going into Fouquier's 
 room. On the same day he saw, " with astonishment," 
 among the accused persons, a certain Morin,^ who had 
 reached the Conciergerie two days before and been brought 
 before the Tribunal as the result of an error in the names. 
 This Morin made a remark about it to Fouquier, who 
 answered ' ' that in truth Morin was not the man he sought, but 
 that he held him and would keep him." At that moment 
 " the true Morin," he whom they sought, made his appear- 
 ance. Fouquier had him placed among the accused per- 
 sons, "entered verbal pleading against him at the hearing, 
 without any other writ of indictment being delivered to the 
 accused man, who was condemned with the rest." The 
 first Morin withdrew from the Court, but was again placed 
 on trial the next day, and condemned hke his namesaJke. 
 
 Vauchelet was anxious to place on Verney and Boyaval 
 all responsibiUty for the " denunciations " made to Fouquier, 
 and instigated by the PubUc Prosecutor. He said that 
 Fouquier " used to keep Boyaval back " and remain in 
 secret conversation with him. But Boyaval denied that he 
 had private conversations with Fouquier. 
 
 Which of these two wretches are we to believe, both of 
 them ready for an5M:hing, and seeking by accusing others 
 to extricate themselves from a difficult position ? 
 
 Vauchelet affirmed that, being summoned a second time 
 as a witness, on a day when Fouquier was not at the hearing 
 of the case, all the witnesses were heard. " Six of the 
 witnesses," he says, " of whom I was one, spoke in favour 
 of fourteen or fifteen accused persons, and defended them 
 with heat." Eleven were acquitted out of forty-five. 
 A jmror (whom he did not know) remarked to him that he 
 ought to recapitulate and point out the accomplices in the 
 Grammont Conspiracy. 
 
 Pierre Marie Bligny, Fouquier's successor as procurator at 
 » See Chapter III., p. 86. 
 
A CRUEL CHANGE 233 
 
 the Chatelet, residing at No. 297 Rue Neuve-Egalite, Section 
 Bonne-Nouvelle, declared that he knew Citizen Fouquier 
 in September, 1783, " a period when he negotiated the sale 
 of a procurator's office and practice in the fonner Chatelet, 
 which Fouquier held ; that motives of interest placed 
 him in a position not to see Fouquier for more than ten years ; 
 that the position of Pubhc Prosecutor at the Tribunal of 
 the Department necessitated the witness seeing Fou- 
 quier in regard to a matter in which he was counsel." 
 He saw him several times in his capacity as defender when 
 Fouquier was Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary 
 Tribuntd. He spoke to him only about the cases 
 with which he was entrusted, and about nothing else. 
 He declared that he had no knowledge of the conspiracies 
 in the prisons, nor of " what was called firing an uninter- 
 rupted volley," as he had no cases at the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal for about a year. 
 
 Pierre Athanase P6pin Degrouhette,^ aged 43, a lawyer, 
 an official defender. President of the Tribunal estabhshed 
 on August 17th, 1792, residing in Paris at No. 25 Rue du 
 Sentier, Section Brutus, knew Fouquier in September, 1792, 
 as director of the jury d' accusation, of which he, Pepin, was 
 one of the presidents. He lost sight of him and found him 
 again at the Revolutionary Tribunal. Pepin-Degrouhette 
 used to defend accused persons. 
 
 During the first six or seven months of the existence 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal, he found Fouquier " very 
 accessible to the complaints of imfortunate persons, very 
 easy in granting the delays necessary for preparing the 
 defence of the accused, for fetching documents and witnesses 
 for the defence." But towards the end of 1793 and in the 
 first months of the year II., " things changed cruelly." 
 Fouquier " became unapproachable." The days when the 
 accused were to appear in court were concealed from the 
 defenders. The indictments were served on the evening 
 before the trial, and sometimes late at night. The unhappy 
 prisoners often went into the dock without their defenders 
 • He signs thus. 
 
234 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 and without their evidence. Pepin-Degrouhette complained 
 vehemently of this to Fouquier. The latter burst out 
 angrily and said on different occasions : " I can do nothing 
 about it. My hand is forced." 
 
 On the 2nd of Flor6al in the year II., Pepin was arrested 
 and taken to Saint-Lazare. His wife went the next day 
 to find Fouquier and beg him not to bring to trial the accused 
 persons whom her husband was commissioned to defend. 
 Fouquier received her very brutally, and said " that he would 
 not stop the course of justice for her husband." Several 
 citizens were, in fact, tried and condemned whilst the evi- 
 dence was under seals af&xed at Pepin-Degrouhette's house. 
 
 In the case of the Saint-Lazare conspiracy, which occupied 
 the court for three days, Fouquier only sat on the first day. 
 He appeared to be less unmerciful than Liendon who sat 
 on the other two days.^ 
 
 Jean Henry VouUand, aged 43, Representative of the 
 people residing at No. 108, Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, 
 had no association with Fouquier except such as he might 
 have in his capacity as member of the Committee of General 
 Security. He could give no evidence for the prosecution 
 or the defence. ^ 
 
 Another Deputy, Andre Amar, aged 38, representing the 
 Department of the Isfere, and a member of the Committee 
 of General Security, could not say whether Fouquier held 
 private intercourse with Robespierre. He strongly sus- 
 pected that Maximihen had a good deal of influence over 
 Fouquier, Coffinhal, emd Dumas, and more particularly 
 over the last two than over Fouquier. He remembered 
 seeing at the Committee of General Security an information 
 in which Fouquier was accused of having dined on the 9th 
 of Thermidor with Cofiinhal and Diunas. ' This information 
 was sent to the Tribunal with all the documents for 
 Fouquier's prosecution. He knew nothing more. 
 
 Claude Emmanuel Dobsen, aged 53, twice President 
 
 ■ Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 bis, folios 16 to 18. 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 ter, folio i. 
 » This is true as regards CoflEnhal, but false concerning Dumas, 
 as he had just been arrested on that day. {See Chapter IV.) 
 
A MOCKERY 235 
 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal, residing at No. 7A Rue du 
 Cloitre-Notre-Dame, Section de la Cite, had been Fouquier's 
 colleague as director of the jury d'accusation. Appointed 
 President of the Revolutionary Tribunal in place of Mon- 
 tane, " he had the most intimate intercourse with Fouquier." 
 He never " noticed anything in him contrary to the princi- 
 ples of the strictest justice." Dobsen only left the Tribunal 
 in virtue of the decree of the 22nd of Prairial which did not 
 re-elect him. 
 
 When Herman, the President, was appointed Minister 
 of the Interior, Dumas " President in Chief," and Scellier 
 and Coffinhal Vice-Presidents, from that moment the form 
 of the proceedings changed. It seemed to Dobsen that 
 Dumas directed all the operations. He heard him complain 
 several times of Fouquier-Tinville and of the fact that he 
 did not " place a greater niraiber of people on trial at once." 
 Since the 22nd of Prairial he sometimes frequented the 
 Tribunal. He saw with horror almost all the accused 
 persons tried without having any facilities for bringing 
 forward their defence. He even saw a large number tried, 
 in regard to whom this was confined to asking them their 
 names and conditions. The pleadings were then closed, 
 the questions put to the jury, and condemnation pronoimced. 
 Several times, when he came to the Palace, before the 
 hearing had even begun, he saw, collected in the courtyard, 
 vehicles intended to take the condemned to the scaffold.^ 
 
 Denis Michel Jullien, aged 30, merchant, residing at 
 No. 12, Quai de Chaillot, Section des Champs-Elysees, 
 gave evidence similar to that of Vauchelet. It was the story 
 of the conspiracy in the prisons. Like Vauchelet, like 
 Amans, hke Beausire, like Boyaval, etc., he was summoned 
 from the Luxembourg, where he was detained, as a witness 
 before the Tribunal. He, too, acted the part of a pohce 
 spy. Like the others, he boasted of having saved accused 
 persons by his evidence. He gave evidence against Dumas, 
 but said nothing about Fouquier-Tinville. ^ 
 
 * Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 ter, folio i. 
 
 " Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 ier, folios i and 2. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S second trial : CONTINUATION 
 OF THE INQUIRY 
 
 AS the inquiry advanced, the judge shortened the 
 examinations of the witnesses. 
 From the evidence we have analysed in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, there result rather contradictory 
 opinions. Many witnesses are crushing, in their answers, in 
 regard to the moral conduct of the PubUc Prosecutor. 
 Others, on the contrary, such as Chateau and ex-President 
 Dobsen, are clearly favourable to him. " Never," Dobsen 
 had said, " did I notice anything in him that could be 
 contrary to the principles of the strictest justice."^ 
 
 On the 19th of Ventose there came forward a witness 
 who owed it to his father's wonderful devotion that he was 
 still living. This is young Loizerolles (Francois Simon), 
 aged 24, in the 29th division of police. We know his 
 story. ^ He stated, very simply, that he had never seen 
 Fouquier-Tinville. But he knew and was sure that his 
 father was tried and condemned by the Tribunal on the 8th 
 of Thermidor in the year II. (a day before Robespierre's 
 fall), on a writ of indictment issued against himself, the son. 
 Loizerolles, the father, an ex-Lieutenant-General of the 
 bailiwick of the Arsenal, did not protest and went to death 
 to save his son. " By an error as extraordinary as in- 
 exphcable," said young Loizerolles, " it was my father 
 
 ' Dobsen, the President of the Section de la Cit6, had presided 
 on May 30, 1793, over the insurrectional assembly of the commis- 
 sioners of the majority of the sections, who met at the Hotel de Ville 
 and declared the people in a state of insurrection. He was a H6ber- 
 tist in his opinions. Perhaps his evidence, so favourable to Fouquier, 
 came in part from the animosity he felt against the new Tribunal 
 because he had not been re-appointed to it. 
 
 » See Chapter III., p. 99, and Note p. 98. 
 
 236 
 
AN ACT OF MERCY 237 
 
 whom the jury condemned, a mistake all the more ridiculous 
 (sic) as my father was sixty years old and I was only twenty- 
 two. The PubUc Prosecutor, the judges, and the jurors 
 could easily have noticed this blunder if they had only 
 looked at my father."^ 
 
 Fran9ois Urbain Meunier, aged 50, captain on half-pay 
 in the 104th regiment, of No. 5, Quai d'Ecole, Section du 
 Museum, was imprisoned in the Luxembourg for nine 
 months. He was summoned to the Tribunal as a witness 
 in the conspiracy case. He was one of the four poUce spies 
 who were heard against a large number of accused persons. 
 He affirmed that he knew nothing and said nothing. He 
 thought that at the hearing Fouquier performed the duties 
 of Pubhc Prosecutor. He was not sure of this. 
 
 An official defender, Bernard Jean Louis Malarme,* 
 aged 44, residing at No. 531, Rue des Prouvaires, Section 
 du Contrat-Social, spoke of the release of prisoners due to 
 Fouquier (Sarce, an ex-captain, and Bayard La Vingtrie, 
 heutenant of the bailiwick). Fouquier, on a letter from 
 Guffroy, the Representative of the people, placed on one 
 side the papers relating to Citizen Dupuy, an employee in 
 the Committee of General Security, "whilst waiting for 
 a more favourable opportunity." This saved Dupuy. 
 
 When Malarme recognised that his position as official 
 defender at the Revolutionary Tribunal had become useless, 
 he had himself appointed secretary in the prosecutor's 
 office, " to take charge of the correspondence there." He 
 could thus observe Fouquier's activity and his constant 
 obedient attention to the orders he received from the 
 governing committees. He could also observe, as did the 
 whole staff in the office, " with what repugnance Fouquier 
 saw artisans and labourers placed on trial." 
 
 He saw Vadier, Amar, and others in Fouquier's private 
 room, but was never present at their conversations. He 
 affirmed that he placed aside " in his possession " the 
 documents relating to the ninety-four inhabitants of Nantes. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 100, 3rd dossier, p. 45 ter, folio 2. 
 * He signs thus. 
 
238 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Fouquier had always given heed to the representations 
 which he made in their favour. 
 
 He thought he noticed that Dumas was Fouquier's enemy. 
 Twice on the night between the gth and loth of Thermidor, 
 the ex-PubUc Prosecutor sent him to the Committee of 
 Public Safety to tell that Committee that he was at his post 
 at the Tribunal. When he came back, he found Fouquier 
 having supper with the attendant in the refreshment-room, 
 Morisan, his family, and GilUer, one of his secretaries and 
 Morisan's son-in-law. 
 
 Next there came to give evidence, Pierre Francois Morisan, 
 aged 54, wine-seller and attendant in the refreshment-room. 
 He kept the Cafe des Subsistances in the hall of the Palace. 
 He formerly kept the refreshment-room " in one of the 
 towers, near the Revolutionary Tribunal." 
 
 Morisan repeated what his wife and daughter said. Fou- 
 quier often took his meals at their place. He believed he 
 saw in him " much zeal and activity." He heard him 
 complain that he performed " painful functions," and even 
 showed " some fears on his own account." 
 
 He had not been present at sessions of the Tribunal 
 " since the period when a great number of accused persons 
 began to be tried there at once, because this multitude of 
 prisoners or witnesses caused a great crowd at his place, 
 and this obUged him to remain and serve them." On 
 several occasions he furnished the accused with refresh- 
 ments and food, by order of Fouquier, Dumas, or others. 
 
 Fouquier would say to him : " There have been so many 
 of them to-day. There will be thirty more of them to-morrow. 
 I understand nothing of all this." 
 
 Morisan remarked " that so great a quantity of the 
 accused must tire him out." He asked him how he was able 
 to hold out. Fouquier answered : " What would you have 
 me do ? I have orders from the Committee of Public 
 Safety." 
 
 On the evening of the 9th of Thermidor, Fouquier said 
 to him : " For my part, I remain at my post." 
 
 Next there came forward a sinister figure of a prisoner. 
 
THE BICETRE CONSPIRACY 239 
 
 In order to get better treatment, to give himself importance, 
 or from fear, or to obtain his liberty, he had become a 
 police spy. 
 
 He was Joseph Manini, aged 47 ; he called himself a man 
 of letters. He had been imprisoned for more than sixteen 
 months. Just now, he was at La Bourbe or Port-Libre. He 
 mentioned the prisons in which he had been incarcerated — 
 the Madelonettes (four months), Saint-Lazare (five to six 
 months), the Plessis (from the 2nd of Thermidor until about 
 the 22nd of Frimaire), the Luxembourg, and then Port- 
 Libre where he was at present confined. He related what 
 he knew of the conspiracies, his relations with Coquery, 
 another police spy, the conversations he had overheard and 
 reported. He thought that at one of the hearings to which 
 he came as a witness, Fouquier performed the duties of 
 Public Prosecutor. " The accused persons spoke for as long 
 as they wished without being interrupted, except one, 
 who defended himself with sarcasms and insults directed 
 against the Tribunal." 
 
 Francois Dupaumi^,^ aged thirty-five and a half, jeweller, 
 of No. 124, Rue de la Verrerie, imprisoned in the Plessis 
 since the 24th of Brumaire, saw Fouquier come one day, 
 about the end of Prairial or the beginning of Messidor, 
 with a detachment of police and three vehicles, to Bicfetre, 
 of which Dupaumie was governor. There Fouquier had a 
 table placed in one of the courtyards. He drew out a hst, 
 and summoned thirty-six or thirty-seven persons who had 
 been informed against by prisoners who were sentenced to 
 chains. This was the Bic^tre conspiracy.^ 
 
 Dupaumie took care to exonerate himself from any share 
 in this act of Fouquier. He affirmed that, so long as he was 
 governor of Bicgtre, the house was " perfectly quiet " ; 
 that he noticed no conspiracy. Fouquier said to him : 
 " I have been present at the hearing when thirty-six or 
 thirty-seven individuals were condemned. I knew that the 
 witnesses were scamps. The prisoners would not have been 
 condemned if they themselves had not confessed they had 
 ' He signs thus. > See Chapter III. 
 
240 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 conspired against the Convention, and had not thrown the 
 responsibility for this fact on one another.^ 
 
 Jean Advenier, aged forty-nine, an assistant in the 
 depository of military provisions and forage at Orleans, had 
 been secretary in the prosecutor's office from October in the 
 year II. (sic) until after the gth of Thermidor. " In the 
 early days," he forwarded writs of indictment. After the 
 22nd of Prairial, he heard Dumas and Cofl&nhal say to accused 
 persons who tried to defend themselves : — " You have no 
 right to speak." 
 
 He never saw Fouquier demanding this right for them. 
 
 He saw VouUand, Vadier and Amar coming fairly often to 
 Fouquier's room, and shutting themselves up " carefully " 
 with him. He often saw members of the Revolutionary Com- 
 mittees come and ask Fouquier for warrants to arrest per- 
 sons. Fouquier would answer them : "Bring me the reports 
 and documents which state the offences and I will deliver 
 them to you. But I do not want to deliver them to you 
 officially.' He sometimes saw Fouquier " lamenting the 
 fate of some condemned person." 
 
 Jean Baptiste Toussaint Beausire, aged thirty-three and 
 a half, Uving on his income at Choisy-sur-Seine, had been im- 
 prisoned in the Luxembourg, in Sainte-P^lagie, in the Plessis, 
 and in the Hospice de I'EvSch^.^ He gave evidence at 
 length on what he knew about the conspiracies, and he 
 ended thus : " On the 19th of Messidor I heard the man who 
 performed the duties of Public Prosecutor at that hearing 
 say, ' The Morin who is here is not the man who was to be 
 placed on trial. But as I have been looking for him for a 
 long time I do not want to let him escape.' This Morin was 
 placed on trial. No witness spoke against him. He was, 
 nevertheless, condemned with the rest."^ 
 
 Jean Baptiste Vergnhes, aged 67, Uving on his income in 
 Paris, at No. i, Quai d'Egaht6, He de la Fraternity, gave an 
 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 45 ter, folio 3 and 46, 
 folios I and 2. 
 
 , > Beausire is the husband of the woman d'Oliva (of the Diamond 
 Necklace affair). In prison he played the part of a police spy. 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46, folios 2 to 6. 
 
FAVOURABLE TESTIMONY 241 
 
 account of the dinner that took place at his house on the 9th 
 of Thermidor.^ 
 
 Jacques Marie Botot-Dumesnil, aged 36, commander 
 of police of the Tribunal, residing at No. 4, Cloitre Notre- 
 Dame, Section de la Cite, had no intercourse with Fouquier 
 except in so far as related to the maintenance of order within 
 the precincts of the Palace of Justice. Fouquier never spoke 
 to him except a few chance words. Every evening one or two 
 gendarmes accompanied him to the Committee of PubUc 
 Safety, waited for him until very late at night, and came 
 back with him. 
 
 On the 9th of Thermidor, about four o'clock in the evening, 
 Botot-Dumesnil, was arrested in the middle of his troop, 
 by order of Hanriot, Fleuriot and Payan. Set at liberty 
 the same evening by order of the Committee of General 
 Security, he returned about eight or nine o'clock ; he was 
 then sent for by Fouquier, whom he found in the refresh- 
 ment-room, seemingly ignorant of what was taking place. 
 He heard him say several times : — " Whatever they do, I 
 remain at my post." 
 
 Guillaume Alexandre Tronson-Ducoudray, aged 44, a 
 lawyer, of No. 17, Rue des Victoires Nationales, Section 
 Guillaume-Tell, thought he remembered that in the Leonard 
 Bourdon case,* Fouquier-Tinville was not so violent in his 
 speech for the prosecution as he was in other cases later on. 
 " He seemed to him in those cases to exceed the bounds of 
 moderation and impartiaJity becoming to his office every 
 time that the accused persons appeared to him to have been 
 designated by the Government." Moreover, Fouquier often 
 urged him not to press for the trial of accused persons whom 
 he had to defend. He remarked " that the moment was not 
 favourable, and that by waiting some time they might 
 perhaps be saved." 
 
 Mathurin Denys Lainville, aged 47, an official defender at 
 the Tribimal, residing at No. 354, Rue de Chartres, Section 
 
 > We have given an acconnt of it, from his evidence, in Chapter IV. 
 • In this case Tronson-Ducondray defended some of the citizens 
 of Orleans who were accused (July 12, 1793). 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 des Tviileries, knew Fouquier as a fellow-student. He had 
 observed him in his career as procurator at the Chitelet, 
 as director of the jury d' accusation of the Tribunal estabhshed 
 on August 17, 1792, and, finally, as PubUc Prosecutor of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 
 He constantly attended the sessions of the Tribunal down 
 to Hubert's trial. During that period the official defenders 
 had every latitude for giving effect to the means of defence of 
 accused persons. From that moment (the date of the begin- 
 ning of what was called " the Tribunal's batches") he saw 
 that he no longer had the same latitude in pleading his 
 cases. He decided to tell people who claimed his services 
 that he no longer defended cases before that Tribunal. He 
 was desirous of pointing out that he ceased to plead because 
 of the remarks made to him by Coffinhal and Fouquier. 
 Those two magistrates warned him " that henceforth official 
 defenders must be very circumspect in their defences ; the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal was not so much a tribunal of 
 morality and justice as a tribunal established to judge in 
 accordance with pronounced pubhc opinion (sic)."^ 
 
 Louis Claude Adnet,^ aged 57, captain of the poUce of the 
 tribunals, residing at No. 120, Rue de la Harpe, Section des 
 Thermes, had no intercourse with Fouquier-Tinville except 
 in so far as related to the daily service of the Tribunal. He 
 sometimes saw Fouquier getting angry with the ushers when 
 he did not find those whom he had asked them for. He 
 was often present at hearings. From the 22nd of Prairial 
 to the gth of Thermidor " persons were no longer tried, they 
 were condemned." Accused persons were barely asked their 
 names, their ages, and conditions. Several times he com- 
 plained to Fouquier " of the rigours and horrors of the assist- 
 ant executioner towards the condemned women." Fouquier 
 answered him : " What would you have me do ? " 
 
 However, Fouquier caused one of the executioner's assist- 
 ants to be imprisoned for twenty-four hours. 
 
 Fouquier said to him, on the evening of the gth of Ther- 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46, folios 7 to 13! 
 " He signs thus. 
 
"STRANGLING THE PROCEEDINGS" 243 
 
 midor, after having acquainted himself with the events of 
 the day : " I remain at my post." 
 
 He refused to go to the Commune in spite of the solicita- 
 tions of certain persons. He asked several times if " those 
 scamps, Dumas and Cofiinhal, had been arrested." That 
 same day Adnet remarked to the Pubhc Prosecutor that to 
 secure the execution of the condemned persons would 
 endanger the poUce. Fouquier answered him : "I cannot 
 stop the course of justice." 
 
 Jean Baptiste Christophe Jullienne, aged 27, a lawyer, 
 of the Quai Conti, near the Mint, frequented the Tribunal a 
 great deal in his capacity as official defender. He was sure 
 that, in a great number of cases, particularly those of the 
 Farmers-General and the Members of the Parlements, the 
 haste was such that well-intentioned jurors were scarcely 
 able to fit the name of the accused to the person they had 
 before them. Several times he saw the jurors declare them- 
 selves sufficiently informed when the proceedings had hardly 
 begun. 
 
 " It was what was called ' strangling the proceedings.' " 
 
 Fouquier often prevented cases from coming to trial. He 
 would say that the moment was not favourable. Several 
 persons thus owed him their existence. 
 
 Louis Charles Hally, aged 42, janitor of the Plessis house 
 of detention, Rue Saint-Jacques, knew that Fouquier went 
 there sometimes to make visits. Hally went to the prose- 
 cutor's office to give Fouquier an account of the state of 
 affairs in the house of detention. The Public Prosecutor 
 did not give him a good reception. Manini and Coquery, 
 summoned to the Tribunal to give evidence concerning the 
 alleged conspiracy in the prisons, came back enchanted with 
 the welcome that Fouquier had given them, so they said. 
 
 Gabriel Nicolas Monet, aged 38, an usher of the Tribunal, 
 frequently saw Fouquier giving orders in his office " with 
 great violence." He very often erased names from the lists 
 of the accused who were to be placed on trial next day, and 
 added others. He used to say he had received orders from 
 the Committee. The ushers, owing to those charges, were 
 
244 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 compelled to spend nights copying out indictments. They 
 were often compelled to take in " extra writers to work night 
 and day." 
 
 Sometimes when the indictments were very long " and 
 many copies were required for which they had only from the 
 evening until the next day," there came to them from the 
 prosecutor's office the first folio of the memorandum, then 
 the second, then in succession all the others until the indict- 
 ment was completed. 
 
 Jean Louis Marie Villain d'Aubigny, aged 42, ex-assistant 
 to the Minister of War and General Agent for MiUtary Trans- 
 ports at Paris, of No. 60, Rue Montpensier, at the time de- 
 tained at La Bourbe, had the following story from Senar, 
 who told it to him in the presence of several persons at the 
 Luxembourg. 
 
 S6nar was one day with Fouquier. They had a discus- 
 sion, and Fouquier said to him : "Do you know that I will 
 place you in the dock ? " 
 
 " How .could you do that ? You know that I am a patriot, 
 and that I have served my country as well as I could." 
 
 " Bah ! " answered Fouquier, " what does that matter ? 
 Do you not know that when the Committee of Public Safety 
 has decided on the death of any one — patriot or aristocrat — 
 he has to go through it ? "^ 
 
 Philippe Marie Tampon, aged 30, judge of the Tribunal 
 of the Third Arrondissement, at present in the service 
 of the Criminal Tribunal of the Department of Paris, heard 
 Fouquier say, at the dinner on the gth of Thermidor, in 
 the house of Vergnhes, when he learnt of Robespierre's 
 arrest : " My post is in the prosecutor's office, where I may 
 receive orders at any moment, and I am going there."^ 
 
 Next, a man who owed his life to an error in the writ of 
 indictment came forward to give evidence of this. His father 
 had been guillotined in his place.^ 
 
 Guy Marie SaUier, aged 31, a former Councillor in the 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46, folios 13 to 14. 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64. 
 ' See Chapter II., p. 60. 
 
MISTAKEN IDENTITY 245 
 
 Parlement of Paris, a lawyer, residing at No. 7, Rue du 
 Grand-Chantier,^ Section de I'Honime-Arme, declared that 
 Henry Guy Sallier, ex-President of the Cour des Aides, his 
 father, was included by mistake in the arrest, made by the 
 Committee of General Security on the gth of Germinal in 
 the year II., of the ex-Presidents and Councillors of the 
 Parlement of Paris, who were charged with having signed or 
 adhered to the protests made by the Vacation Chamber of 
 that Parlement. On the 29th of the same month his father 
 was examined before a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 Fouquier was present. 
 
 His father declared that his name was Henry Guy Sallier, 
 a former President of the Cour des Aides, and said that there 
 was an error regarding his person, as he did not belong to the 
 former Parlement of Paris. 
 
 This made no difference. A letter was produced against 
 him, signed " Salher," and couched in general terms, from 
 which an alleged adhesion to the protests of the members of 
 the Parlement was inferred. He answered that he did not 
 admit that letter to be his, but his son's (the witness's). 
 
 Nothing more was said to him about it. He was con- 
 ducted to the Conciergerie. Fouquier, without taking any 
 other information, hastened to make out a writ of indict- 
 ment, in which he stated that, by resolution of the Committee 
 of General Security, Henry Guy Sallier, ex-President of the 
 Cour des Aides, would be charged before the Revolutionary 
 Tribimal with having taken part in the protests of the Vaca- 
 tion Chamber of the Parlement of Paris. This was false, 
 for the resolution of the Committee of General Security 
 had mentioned Salher, ex-President or Councillor of the 
 Parlement. 
 
 "Forgetting his first statement," Fouquier attributed 
 the son's letter to the father. He had the father brought 
 to trial. The father was condemned to death on the day 
 following (the twenty-fifth prisoner) in spite of the evidence 
 and notwithstanding his protests.* 
 
 » Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes et des Quatre-Fils. 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64. 
 
246 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Louis Severin Guyard, aged 29, a fanner from Mandres, 
 near Brunoy, had been imprisoned at the Plessis. He saw 
 Fouquier-Tinville there for the first time. " He had just 
 loaded the vehicles with victims for his Tribunal." Guyard 
 tried to speak to him to beg him to have him tried. 
 Fouquier answered roughly : " You will come in your turn. 
 You are all scoundrels." 
 
 Fouquier seemed to be very famiUar with HaUy, the 
 janitor. 
 
 " They consulted together on the surest and quickest 
 method of being able to take a greater number of victims 
 from the houses of detention, in order that the lists might 
 always be provided complete." 
 
 In order " to satisfy Fouquier's impatience, Hally — 
 according to the witness's account — answered him one day 
 that he had to satisfy himself with sending him the surnames 
 without the Christian names, that this method would be 
 quicker. "1 
 
 After the 25th of Ventose, Judge Pissis gave place in 
 the inquiry to Judge Jean Fran9ois Godart. It was before 
 him that the younger Sallier and Guyard, the farmer, 
 appeared. It was also before him that, on the 27th of 
 Ventose, there appeared Pierre Urbain Deguaign^, aged 48, 
 an ex-usher of the Tribunal, now living on his income in 
 Paris, at No. 4, Quai de la RepubUque. 
 
 He was acquainted with Fouquier. " His principal 
 characteristic was irascibility. He frequently gave way to 
 violent outbursts. He often drank wine in the evening, 
 and came and made a horrible racket in the offices, breaking 
 and damaging the portf ohos, and using the hardest language 
 to the employees." 
 
 But " at bottom, he never saw him cruel or ferocious." 
 
 He frequently saw him with jurors — Chretien, Auvray, 
 Topino-Lebrun, Prieur, Trinchard and others — eating in the 
 refreshment-room, " together or separately." 
 
 The witness was particularly charged " to attend to the 
 death sentences." The only question that Fouquier used to 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64. 
 
VIOLENT OUTBURSTS 247 
 
 ask when he came back from the executions was : — " Were 
 there many people there ? "^ 
 
 Marie Pierre Joseph Fonteines-Bire,^ aged 27, hving on his 
 income at No. 113 Quai Malaquai, Section de i'Unite, had 
 been imprisoned for a long time in various houses of detention 
 during the Terror. At the Plessis, he noticed that Fouquier 
 often came there, and consulted with the janitor. It was 
 said that he had dined several times with him. But that 
 was merely " a report." 
 
 Andre Contat, aged 50, formerly a clerk in the ushers' 
 office of the Tribunal, residing in Paris at No. i. Rue des 
 Rats, Section du Pantheon, declared that he only knew 
 Fouquier-TinviUe when he was employed in the ushers' 
 office. He often saw the PubUc Prosecutor come, swearing 
 and shouting " either at the ushers or at the clerks." He 
 used to complain that the work was not done fast enough. 
 He broke the portfolios by the way he struck them with his 
 hand. He made everybody tremble. He went so far as to 
 say : " If you do not hurry, I will lock you up. I will have 
 you locked up." 
 
 It was more particularly after dinner that he gave way to 
 those " violent and frightful " outbursts. 
 
 The amount of work was such that the " trembling " 
 clerks would tell him that they would never have time 
 between the evening and the following morning to copy and 
 serve all the writs of indictment which he ordered them to 
 prepare. He would answer them : " Do as you hke ! 
 There will always be enough of them. Hurry ! Things 
 must move ! " 
 
 They were often brought indictments to copy which were 
 signed by him but not by the judges. They pointed this 
 out to him. He answered : " Go on with your work. 
 They will be signed." 
 
 It was Contat who, meeting Fouquier on the 9th of Ther- 
 midor " in the archway adjoining the ushers' office," re- 
 marked to him that " something was taking place in Paris," 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64. 
 " He signs thus. 
 
248 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 and that perhaps it would be prudent to put off the execution 
 of the condemned persons until the morning, so as not to 
 " expose " the police. To which Fouquier answered, speak- 
 ing to the executioner's assistant : " The course of justice 
 must not be stopped." 
 
 Fouquier afterwards went out to dinner. Contat had since 
 learnt that that dinner took place in the He Saint-Louis. 
 
 Twice the witness noticed that writs of indictment were 
 signed by Fouquier although the names of the accused were 
 not written in them. For this purpose he left a long space 
 of blank paper on which to write them. 
 
 Next came a deposition that was terrible for Fouquier. It 
 was that of Nicolas Joseph Paris, called Fabricius, chief 
 registrar of the Revolutionary Tribunal, residing in Paris 
 in the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Prds. He was 
 appointed registrar of the Tribunal by Danton. He did not 
 hide his indignation after Danton's trial. Four days after 
 Danton's death, he was imprisoned in the Luxembourg and 
 placed in sohtary confinement. Set at liberty after Robe- 
 spierre's fall, he had been re-appointed registrar by a decree 
 of the 22nd of Thermidor in the year II. He hated Fouquier 
 with an implacable hatred. He said : " Towards the end of 
 September in the year II., the Tribunal was almost entirely 
 reorganised. This reorganisation was the work of the Com- 
 mittees of Public Safety and of General Security, along with 
 Fouquier and Fleuriot,^ who presented various members as 
 candidates. Those members were appointed. The cause 
 of this reorganisation was that it was desired to get rid of 
 honest jurors. 
 
 " It was at this period that the Committees of government 
 took possession of the Tribunal, which became an instrument 
 in their hands. There is no case of any unhappy wretch 
 being acquitted, who was sent by those Committees to the 
 Tribunal ; if that happened he was again arrested and 
 guillotined. 
 
 » Lescot-FIenriot, one of the Public Prosecutor's deputies, then 
 Mayor of Paris, was guillotined with Robespierre and liie members 
 of tiie Commune on the loth of Thermidor. 
 
UNINTERRUPTED VOLLEYS 249 
 
 " The Tribunal being composed of four sections, there 
 ought to have been a selection by lot of judges and jurors ; 
 instead of such a selection it was a choice that was made of 
 them ; this was done above all when there were important 
 cases to be tried ; it was done, to my knowledge, in the case 
 of Hubert and Vincent, and in that of Philippeaux, Camille, 
 Danton, and others. This choice was made by Fleuriot and 
 Fouquier in the Council Chamber, in the presence of several 
 judges. The jurors chosen were those whom Fouquier 
 called ' solid ' persons on whom one could count — Trinchard, 
 Renaudin, Brochet, Leroi, called ' Tenth of August,' 
 Prieur, Aubry, Chitelet, Didier, Vilate, Laporte, Gautier, 
 Duplay, Lumi^re, Desboisseaux and Bernard (these last 
 three were guillotined as members of the rebel Commxme), 
 as well as several others known at the Tribunal as firers of 
 uninterrupted volleys. Those jurors, when they were serving, 
 went in the morning to Fouquier's room where the judges on 
 duty often were. There they discussed the case for the day. 
 Instructions what to do were given them. 
 
 " From there they went up to the refreshment-room, 
 through the windows of which they saw with pleasure the 
 victims passing by whom they were about to sacrifice, and 
 against whom they allowed themselves to make insulting 
 remarks. One day I was in Fouquier's room. Some one 
 came to announce that the hearing in the hall, formerly called 
 the Hall of Saint-Louis, had ended, and that several of the 
 persons placed on trial had been acquitted. Fouquier 
 burst out against the jurors, stamping with his foot, and 
 saying : ' Give me the names of those beggars. One can count 
 on nothing with those people. Here are safe cases breaking 
 in our hands ! ' 
 
 " Fouquier repeated similar statements on several occa- 
 sions when accused persons were acquitted. 
 
 " In the course of Ventose in the year II., the case of 
 Hubert, Vincent, Ronsin and others came on. Lengthy 
 informations were lodged. More than two hundred wit- 
 nesses were heard. A large number designated Pache and 
 Hanriot as heads of a faction, the one as the chief judge and 
 
250 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 the other as chief soldier of that faction. One evening, 
 before the trial, the Tribunal assembled in the Council 
 Chamber and deliberated on the charges which were brought 
 against Pache and Hanriot in the various declarations it 
 had received. Dumas, who was drunk, proposed that a 
 warrant for arrest should be issued against Hanriot. Fleuriot 
 opposed this on the pretext that they ought not to arrest the 
 head of the Parisian army without referring the matter to 
 the Committee of Public Safety. His opinion prevailed, 
 and on the same evening Fouquier, Dumas and Herman 
 went to the Committee of Public Safety to inform it of the 
 debate that had just taken place. I knew the next day that 
 they were reprimanded by the Committee, and particularly 
 by Robespierre, for having deliberated about arresting 
 Hanriot. They received orders to get rid of any proofs that 
 might exist against Pache as weU as against Hanriot. Ron- 
 sin, Hebert and others were placed on trial ; the proceedings 
 began, and when certain witnesses wanted to speak of Pache 
 and Hanriot, President Dumas interrupted them, saying it 
 had nothing to do with those persons, that they were not 
 on trial. He uttered a eulogy of them, speaking of the 
 virtue of Pache, who had the confidence of the people, of 
 Hanriot's good citizenship and his courage. The witnesses 
 were reduced to silence. Fouquier was present and per- 
 formed the duties of Public Prosecutor. He took care not 
 to contradict the President. 
 
 " Afterwards came the proceedings entered into against 
 Camille Desmouhns, Philippeaux, Danton and others. It 
 was in this affair that I saw the Committees of Public Safety 
 and of General Security employing the most refined Machia- 
 vehsm, and Fouquier, like Dumas, lending himself basely 
 and wilhngly to the perfidious projects of those two Com- 
 mittees, who wished to sacrifice the most enUghtened citizens 
 and the firmest defenders of our Uberty, in order that they 
 might more surely succeed in estabUshing their own tyranny 
 and the barbarous system which they have since employed. 
 
 " At eleven o'clock the accused were brought into the 
 room where the court sat. After the reading of the indict- 
 
DANTON'S REQUEST 251 
 
 ment, Westermann and Soulier were sent for and joined 
 with Danton, Camille and Philippeaux, just as these last 
 had been joined with d'Eglantine, Chabot and d'Espagnac. 
 In this way there were brought into the case three groups 
 of persons who had never seen or known one another — a 
 refinement of perfidy often made use of by the Committees 
 and still oftener by Fouquier, confounding men of the 
 highest probity, the most intrepid defenders of our liberty, 
 with low scoundrels and the declared enemies of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 " At this session Camille Desmoulins challenged the juror 
 Renaudin, and gave reasons for his challenge. Those 
 reasons seemed to me to be well founded. Fouquier ought 
 to have requested the Tribunal to pronounce upon these. 
 But a juror such as Renaudin was too much needed ; and 
 care was taken not to allow the challenge, which was not 
 even considered. The accused, seeing a marked partiality 
 on the part of the Tribunal, which was surrounded by mem- 
 bers of the Committee of General Security, who were placed 
 behind the judges and the jurors, asked that several Deputies 
 (to the number of sixteen) should be summoned and heard 
 as witnesses. Danton also asked the Tribunal to write to 
 the Convention in order that a commission of its members 
 should be appointed to receive the protest that he, CamiUe, 
 and PhiUppeaux desired to make against the dictatorship 
 exercised by the Committee of Public Safety. These re- 
 quests were in no way acceded to ; they were refused by the 
 President, by Fouquier, and by his worthy friend, Fleuriot, 
 who, with Fouquier, filled jointly the post of Public Prose- 
 cutor. As the Tribunal had no valid reason to offer the 
 accused for not granting a request that could not be refused 
 without injustice, the President closed the session. 
 
 " The next day the hearing began very late. Some 
 questions were put to some of the accused. Danton asked 
 leave to speak in order to answer the charges brought against 
 him. This was at first refused under the pretext that he 
 should speak in his turn. As he insisted, it was impossible 
 to persist in the refusal. He took the indictment, and as 
 
252 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 every count with which he was charged was unsupported 
 by proof or documents, and was even devoid of probabihty, 
 it was not difficult for him to justify himself. A great part 
 of the audience applauded his justification. This was not 
 what the Tribunal wanted. The President withdrew his 
 permission to speak on the pretext that he was tired, and 
 that each prisoner should speak in turn. Danton only 
 ceased speaking when the President had promised that on 
 the next day he could refute the other counts in the indict- 
 ment with which he had not been given time to deal, and, 
 to end the matter, the session was brought to a close. 
 
 " On the following day the hearing again began very late. 
 It was desired to waste time, as it was feared that the 
 truth might come to light before the ending of the three 
 days after which it was proposed to induce the jurors 
 to say they were sufficiently informed of the facts, as 
 actually happened. When the accused came in, Danton 
 asked leave to speak in order to continue his justification. 
 This was refused on the pretext that the other accused 
 persons had to be examined regarding the acts imputed 
 to them. Danton, Camille, and Phillipeaux again requested 
 the appearance of the Deputies, their colleagues. They re- 
 quested the Tribunal to write to the Convention so that a 
 commission might be appointed to receive the informations 
 they wished to lodge. It was then that Fouquier, instead 
 of acceding to the just and well-founded demands of the 
 accused, wrote a letter to the Committee of Public Safety in 
 which he described the accused as being in a state of revolt, 
 and asked for a decree. (It was a decree depriving the 
 accused of the right to plead which Fouquier asked, as will 
 be seen by the sequel.) He had need of it as, on this occasion 
 only, and for a moment, birtue and innocence were seen to 
 make crime turn pale. 
 
 " Atrocious as were Fouquier and his friend Fleuriot, the 
 judges and the jurors were thunderstruck before such 
 men. I believed for a moment that they would not have 
 the audacity to sacrifice the victims. I was then ignorant of 
 the odious means used to accomplish this, and unaware 
 
THE FATAL DECREE 253 
 
 that a conspiracy in the Luxembourg was being fabricated, 
 by the aid of which and of Fouquier-Tinville's letter the 
 scruples of the National Convention were overcome, and a 
 decree wrung from it which deprived the accused of the 
 right to plead. This fatal decree arrived. It was brought 
 by Amar, accompanied by Voulland. I was in the wit- 
 nesses' room when they arrived. I saw them turn pale. 
 Anger and fright were painted on their faces, so much did 
 they seem to fear lest their victims might escape death. 
 They greeted me. And wishing to know what the news 
 was, I accosted them. Voulland said to me : ' We have 
 them, the scoundrels ; they were conspiring in the Luxem- 
 bourg.' They sent for Fouquier, who was in court, and he 
 came at once. When Amar saw him, he said : ' Here is 
 what you are asking for.' (It was the decree depriving the 
 accused of the right to plead.) Voulland said : ' Here is 
 what will put you at ease.' Fouquier repUed, smiling : 
 ' Faith ! we wanted it,' and returned with a satisfied air 
 to the court, where he read the decree and the declaration 
 of the scoundrel, Laflotte. The accused trembled with 
 horror at the recital of such lies. The imhappy Camille, 
 hearing his wife's name mentioned, uttered cries of distress, 
 and said : ' The scoundrels ! Not satisfied with murdering 
 me, they want to murder my wife too.' During this scene, 
 heartrending to honest and feeling men, some members of 
 the Committee of General Security, placed on benches behind 
 Fouquier and the judges, were rejoicing with barbarous 
 glee at the despair of the unhappy beings whom they were 
 sacrificing. Danton perceived them, and pointing them out 
 to his companions in misfortune, said : ' Look at those 
 low murderers ; they will follow us to death.' The accused 
 asked permission to speak in order to show the absurdity 
 and improbability of the conspiracy. They were answered 
 by the session being brought to a close. During the three 
 days that had passed since the beginning of this case, 
 the members of the Committee of General Security, and 
 particularly Amar, Voulland, Vadier, and David, had not 
 left the Tribunal. They came and went, fussed about. 
 
254 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 spoke to the judges, the jurors, and the witnesses, telling 
 all comers that the accused, and especially Danton, were 
 scoundrels and conspirators. 
 
 Dumas, Arthur, and Nicolas did the same. The members 
 of the Committee of General Security kept up a correspond- 
 ence with the Committee of Public Safety. The next day, 
 the fourth of the trial, the members of the Committee of 
 General Security were at the Tribunal before nine o'clock. 
 They went to Fouquier's room. When the jurors assembled, 
 I saw Herman, the President, with Fouquier, going out 
 of the jurors' room. During this time, Amar, Voulland, 
 Vadier, David, and others whom I knew to be members of 
 the Committee of General Security were at the bar in a little 
 chamber adjoining the jurors' room, where they could hear 
 what was taking place in that room. I do not know what 
 passed between Herman, Fouquier, and the jurors. But 
 one of them, Topino-Lebrun, told me that Herman and 
 Fouquier urged them to declare they were sufficiently in- 
 formed, and that, in order to induce them to do so, they 
 had painted the accused as scoundrels and conspirators, 
 and shown them a letter which they said was addressed 
 to Danton, and came from abroad. 
 
 " The hearing opened. The jurors declared they were 
 sufficiently informed. From that moment the accused 
 appeared no more in court. They were shut up separately 
 in prison, and sent to the scaffold on the same day by 
 Fouquier. Nevertheless, several witnesses had been sum- 
 moned at Fouquier's request. Only one was heard on the 
 first day of the proceedings, and that one spoke in favour of 
 the defence. While the jurors were deliberating, I was 
 in the registrar's office, at the back of the room. I heard a 
 noise that came from the staircase leading to the jurors' 
 room, and I went to the entrance of the office. I saw the 
 jurors with Trinchard at their head. With the exception 
 of a few they had the appearance of madmen. Rage and 
 anger were painted on their faces. Trinchard came up to 
 me in a furious manner, and, with a gesture which showed 
 the most violent passion, he said : ' The scoundrels are going 
 
CAMILLE DRSMOULINS 
 
A SINISTER CLASSIFICATION 255 
 
 to perish ! ' Not wishing to be a witness of such horror, 
 I withdrew, groaning over the misfortunes that were over- 
 whelming the Republic and the still greater horrors which 
 such tyranny presaged. The next day I went to the Tri- 
 bunal with the firm resolution that it should be for the last 
 time. I was determined to hand in my resignation. Fou- 
 quier, having asked at the registrar's office for a copy of the 
 list of jurors, I wanted to know what use he intended to 
 make of it. I brought it to him to the refreshment-room 
 where he was. Fouquier took his pencil, and, on the margin, 
 at the side of several names, he wrote /, meaning ' feeble' I 
 noticed that he marked with an / some of those who had been 
 in the previous day's case, and I pointed this out to him. 
 He answered me : ' He is a bit of a reaso.ner. We do not 
 want people who reason. We want things* to move.' 
 
 " I could not prevent myself from making a movement of 
 disapprobation. He perceived it, and looking at me 
 fixedly said : ' Besides, it is what the Committee of Public 
 Safety wants.' 
 
 " Two days later, on the 20th of Gerrtiinal, at eleven 
 o'clock at night, as I was returning home, I was arrested by 
 order of the Committee of Pubhc Safety and taken to the 
 Luxembourg, where I was placed in solitary confinement, 
 whence I was released only after the revolution of the 9th of 
 Thermidor. 
 
 " On the 2ist, the Committee of General Security sent its 
 worthy agent. Heron, to my house. He wanted by every 
 means to find and arrest me. I was already arrested. Dis- 
 satisfied at not having had that pleasure. Heron annoyed 
 my wife, treated her in the most insulting manner, erased 
 the seals which had already been affixed, and quartered a 
 /gendarme in my dweUing. He remained there for the four 
 months that my imprisonment lasted. 
 
 " By the decree of the 22nd of Thermidor I went back to 
 the Tribunal to perform my duties as registrar. My first 
 care, when I went back to that place, was to acquaint myself 
 of what had happened during my imprisonment. First I 
 was handed two lists containing the names of fifty-five 
 
256 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 citizens who were to have been tried on the nth of Thermidor. 
 These were citizens sent on to the Tribunal by the Popular 
 Commission. I noticed that on the margins of these lists, 
 which had been delivered to the ushers by Fouquier, there 
 were written as witnesses the names of two members of the 
 Revolutionary Committee of the Section to which each 
 prisoner belonged, so that those who caused them to be 
 arrested were to give evidence against them. Those lists 
 were sent by me to the Committee of General Security. I 
 have also sent several other documents to the Commission 
 of Twenty-One, so as to supply information to the members 
 who compose it. Two thousand and fifty-eight citizens 
 have been sent to death by the Tribunal, and against the 
 greater number of them neither documents nor witnesses 
 were produced ; and above all, since the 22nd of Prairial, 
 nearly three hundred citizens have been executed in whose 
 case there were only drafts of sentences, signed but not 
 filled in. 
 
 " I affirm that I have sent to Citizen Cambon, the 
 Public Prosecutor's deputy who is entrusted with pre- 
 paring Fouquier's trial, twenty-seven bundles of papers 
 which contain material offences committed by him, his 
 deputies, and the presidents and judges of the Tribimal. 
 It is impossible to enumerate them on accoimt of their 
 nxunber. 
 
 " Fouquier hcis kept in his possession all the resolutions 
 of the Committees of government which sent prisoners to 
 the Tribunal to be tried, as well as the warrants for arrest 
 which he issued. He has kept in like manner the documents 
 and reports of a great number of cases tried, and especi- 
 ally the important cases. Fouquier received various sums 
 of money, jewels, plate, and notes which ought to have been 
 deposited in the registry. As far as I know he did not keep 
 a register of those deposits." ^ 
 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FOUQUIER-TINVILLE'S second trial : END OF THE INQUIRY 
 — INDICTMENT FORMULATED BY JUDICIS 
 
 IN succession to his colleague Godart, Judge Pissis 
 resumed the preliminary examination on the ist of 
 Germinal. The inquiry was coming to an end. It 
 brought out increasingly serious charges against 
 Fouquier. The further it advanced, the more the ex-Public 
 Prosecutor's brutality and violence were confirmed. There 
 is reason to believe that, as several witnesses said, he was 
 often overcome by drink. The criminal haste with which 
 he drew out indictments and caused them to be copied was 
 both evident and abominable. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Nicolas Leclere, aged 32, an usher in the 
 Tribunal, several times saw Fouquier come to the ushers' 
 room and burst out into anger " because the business was 
 not done quickly enough." 
 
 Another usher, Louis Joseph Georges Trippier, declared : 
 " When I was in the Conciergerie, engaged in compiling the 
 prison registers or making investigations, I saw Citizen 
 Malarme, secretary in the prosecutor's office, arrive and ask 
 the registrar for a statement of all priests detained there, 
 in order that the statement might be given to the Public 
 Prosecutor, who had demanded it." 
 
 Trippier was on one occasion commissioned to go immedi- 
 ately to Chatou (although it was midnight), to assemble 
 the Revolutionary Committee of the Place, and to break the 
 seals affixed in the house of the ex-Marquise de Feuqui^res 
 in order to obtain a letter written by her to the municipality ; 
 to bring back that letter or a certified copy of it to the 
 PubUc Prosecutor at once so that Madame de Feuquieres 
 might be placed on trial. He was also to summon three 
 ^ . 257 
 
258 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 witnesses for the prosecution from that district. But not 
 having been able to procure the letter in question until late 
 on the next day, and having found none of the witnesses 
 whom he was commissioned to summon, he returned to 
 Paris with the answer of a municipal officer and the copy of 
 the letter. 
 
 What was his surprise, when he reached the Place de la 
 Revolution, towards evening, to learn that the ex-Marquise 
 de Feuquieres had been tried and condemned without the 
 letter and without witnesses ! 
 
 He was present at several hearings after the 22nd of 
 Prairial. The proceedings " were extraordinarily short." 
 The accused were hardly asked their names and conditions. 
 He once heard Fouquier forbidding a prisoner to speak when 
 he wished to defend himself. Fouquier said to the gen- 
 darme : " Do your duty." The accused was then deprived 
 of the right to plead, taken back to the Conciergerie, and 
 condemned. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the witness, while he was at the 
 Conciergerie, one day heard somebody come and give 
 orders from the Public Prosecutor to Citizeness Richard, 
 " that she should take great care of the prisoners who had 
 just arrived, above all that the children should want for 
 nothing. The prisoners seemed to be from Lorraine or 
 Courtois."' 
 
 Antoine Marie Berthaut, secretary to the registrar of 
 the Tribunal of the Peace of the Theatre-Frangais Section, 
 aged 32, declared that at the Session of the Tribunal when 
 the case of the conspiracy in the Carmehte Prison was 
 tried, " when there were forty-nine accused persons," 
 Fouquier performed the duties of Pubhc Prosecutor. 
 
 He asked a witness if he had anything to say against 
 any of the accused. He named one of them. The witness 
 answered : "I know him to be an honest man. I have not 
 seen him do anything in prison contrary to order, and I am 
 confined in the same house of detention." 
 
 Fouquier repHed : " Are you not of the same Section ? " 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folios 1 and 2. 
 
A SLAUGHTER HOUSE 259 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Then Fouquier said sharply : " I have something against 
 you. You are of the same Section. You support one 
 another." 
 
 He did not wish to hear more from him. 
 
 We have heard the evidence of Paris, the registrar.^ Here 
 is that of Robert Wolff, the registrar, who had already given 
 evidence at the previous inquiry on the 6th of Vendemiaire.* 
 
 He " saw, after the law of the 22nd of Prairial the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal transformed into a slaughter-house." 
 In the space of three hours, " by a form that insulted 
 justice," thirty, forty, or fifty persons were placed on trial 
 and sent to execution without being allowed the right of 
 having themselves defended, and they were even deprived 
 of the power of defending themselves. These persons were 
 as imknown to one another as were the offences for which 
 they were placed on trial by Fouquier's indictments." 
 
 " Twenty and thirty bundles of papers were submitted 
 to this sort of a jury in a single one of those cases ; more than 
 eight days would have been needed to examine those docu- 
 ments." There were no Avitnesses heard, or almost none. 
 The jurors remained only half-an-hour deliberating ; they 
 then returned and said that their " so-called consciences " 
 were satisfied. If the first portfolio in the registry were 
 opened, the truth of those declarations would be found.* 
 
 Lucien Frangois Dupre, aged 33, usher in the tribunals 
 of the Department of Paris, of No. 37 Rue Denis, Section 
 des Amis de la Patrie, was several times in the private room 
 of Fouquier, ex-Public Prosecutor of the Tribimal. " Fou- 
 quier," he said, " often burst forth against the secretaries 
 and clerks because the work was not done quickly enough, 
 and because there were not a greater number of victims 
 either for that day or for the next day." He noticed in 
 him " such an imcommon eagerness to place people on trial, 
 that if it had depended on him, he would have sent all the 
 prisoners to the scaffold on a single day." 
 
 » See the preceding chapter, pp. 248-256. " See Chapter VII., pp. 
 167-172. » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folio 6, 
 
26o THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 One day Dupre saw and read an indictment made out 
 against a certain Dietrich/ Mayor of Strasburg ; and not 
 having found offences deserving condemnation, he pointed 
 this out to Chateau, a clerk in the prosecutor's office, who 
 answered him : " You are right. You think that is nothing. 
 But the 300,000 livres of income that are not put down 
 there are something." 
 
 By this observation, and by the tone in which it was 
 uttered, Chateau seemed to the witness to reflect the state 
 of mind of the prosecutor's office. 
 
 Dupre was present at several sessions of the Tribunal. 
 He noticed " great vehemence against the accused on the 
 part of Fouquier." He scarcely left them " time to collect 
 themselves," especially in the case of Magon la Balue, in 
 which the grand-daughter of the last-mentioned and her 
 husband were condemned on the sole ground that they 
 belonged to the family. There was no document, no witness, 
 against them. Dupre could not, however, assert positively 
 that it was Fouquier who performed the duties of Public 
 Prosecutor in that case.^ 
 
 For a month the two investigating judges, Pissis and 
 Godart, endeavoured to estabUsh the PubUc Prosecutor's 
 responsibiMty for the criminal haste with which indictments 
 were made out, his attitude at the sessions of the Tribunal 
 when he sat, the part he played in Danton's case, in that of 
 Leonard Bourdon, and in the Prison Conspiracy, and his 
 relations with the jurors. 
 
 We have made a lengthy examination of the indictments 
 preserved among the Archives. We have demonstrated 
 that they were made out with precipitation and negligence, 
 and we have heard many depositions relative to Fouquier's 
 attitude in the course of the proceedings. 
 
 We know the terrible evidence of the registrar Paris 
 in regard to Danton's case. When Paris was confronted 
 with Fouquier at the trial, Fouquier exclaimed against this 
 
 ' Fr6d4ric Dietrich, Mayor of Strasburg, was guillotined on the 
 8th of Niv6se in the year II. 
 
 " Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folio 7. 
 
BLUFFING THE COMMITTEE 261 
 
 deposition, sajdng : " It is Danton's death that they would 
 revenge here." 
 
 But he was unable to deny the facts of this clear, precise, 
 and circumstantial statement. 
 
 Another witness, Villain d'Aubigny, a prisoner at Sainte- 
 Pelagie, met Fouquier in that house of detention, in Fructi- 
 dor. He said that he reproached the ex-Public Prosecutor 
 vehemently for his conduct in Danton's case. Fouquier 
 answered that he had no cause for self-reproach as he had 
 gone to the Committee of Public Safety and transmitted 
 the request of the accused, who desired to have sixteen 
 Deputies heard as witnesses. He beheved that the Com- 
 mittee would offer no opposition to this. The Committee 
 refused. 
 
 " I insisted," said Fouquier to Villain d'Aubigny. 
 
 " It was therefore," answered the witness, " a crime for 
 you to have deceived the accused and made them lose precious 
 time which they might have spent in taking other measures 
 for their defence. I tell you that your letter of the 15th, 
 written to the Committee, is a crime, for from what had been 
 told you on the previous evening, you should have known 
 beforehand what would be the answer of the Committee 
 to your letter." 
 
 " I wrote it," Fouquier affirmed, " because the people 
 who were present at that case demanded, together with the 
 accused, that the witnesses they claimed should be heard. 
 But I did not foresee the atrocious use that the official 
 reporter of that Committee would make of that letter, 
 by bluffing the Convention and wringing from it a decree 
 depriving the accused of the right to plead. That decree 
 was gained by not allowing the Convention time for reflec- 
 tion. A rebellion against Law and Justice on the part of 
 the accused was spoken of. That rebellion never existed." 
 
 " It is very strange," rejoined Villain d'Aubigny, " that 
 at the moment when this decree reached the Tribunal, 
 at the moment when the Tribunal was informed by its con- 
 tents of the horrible manner in which the good faith of the 
 Convention had been imposed upon, you did not ask all 
 
262 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 the members of the Tribunal, all the judges and aU the 
 jurors, to go with you, that very moment, to the Convention, 
 and enhghten it concerning the frightful perfidy by means 
 of which it had been surprised into passing a decree that 
 sent the accused to the scaffold without hearing them." 
 
 " Restrained myself by the threats that were made to me 
 each day, I was unable, in this case as weU as in many others, 
 to obey the inclinations of my heart," answered Fouquier.^ 
 
 In regard to the Leonard Bourdon case, Frangois Basse- 
 ville, a tiler from Orleans, declared that he found Leonard 
 Bourdon, his witnesses, and Fouquier-TinviUe assembled 
 in the same room.* Those witnesses, belonging to " the 
 chque that devastated the Orleans district," threw them- 
 selves on Leonard Bourdon's neck, and he gave them 
 imequivocal evidence of his friendship for them. 
 
 In the course of the prehminary investigations and of the 
 trial, Basseville saw Fouquier several times lunching in the 
 refreshment-room with those witnesses. When the muni- 
 cipal officers of the Orleans district, who had been summoned 
 to give evidence, presented themselves in court, Fouquier- 
 Tinville silenced them, and said to the President : " Take 
 notice, President, that it is a municipal officer who is 
 speaking, and that he will never tell you the truth." 
 
 Another witness, Charles Cornu, aged 37, a farmer of 
 Orleans, declared that Fouquier and those of the judges 
 who had examined the Orleans witnesses in the Leonard 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64, folio i. 
 
 ' Leonard Bourdon, a teacher and the founder of the Society of 
 Young Frenchmen, a boarding-school at which lectures in morals 
 were to be given by Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varenne, 
 etc., had been elected to ihe Convention by the Department of the 
 Loiret. Sent on a mission to Orleans, as he was passing the City Hall 
 on March 15, 1793, he had been surrounded by a crowd, dragged 
 into the ante-room of the Hall, struck by a bayonet and slightly 
 wounded in the left arm and in the head. Was it a premeditated 
 assault, or was it a brawl ? The incident happened after a fraternal 
 dinner. Had the sentinel of the City Hall been attacked and pro- 
 voked by one of the citizens who accompanied the Representative 
 of the people 7 The Convention, indignant at the attempt against 
 one of its members, ordered that the instigators of the attack should 
 be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 
FEASTING WITNESSES AND JURYMEN 263 
 
 Bourdon case " appeared to be astonished at the importance 
 which the Representative sought to give to that case, and 
 did not seem to find in it any serious offence." Leonard 
 Bourdon held frequent conferences, morning and evening, 
 with Fouquier, down to the moment when the indictment 
 was made out and signed. It was at this time that Leonard 
 Bourdon had printed what he called Details Concerning the 
 Attempt against a Representative of the People, Committed 
 at Orleans. This statement was, in part, copied out in the 
 indictment. Fouquier, meeting the witness in the registry 
 of the Tribunal when he had just left there some documents 
 for the defence, told him that he was sorry he had consented 
 to his provisional release, that he was guilty, and that he 
 had been deceived regarding him. 
 
 " You cannot have been deceived," Comu answered 
 him, " since you haye<ih your possession all the charges 
 relative to this case." 
 
 The witnesses who had been sumrtioned were daily at 
 Bourdon's with Fouquier-Tinville. Young girls from Orleans, 
 who were summoned to give evidence, had, on the evening 
 before the hearing, related that Bourdon had feasted them, 
 had paid for bouquets for them, and promised them dresses. 
 The witnesses had lunched several times in the refreshment- 
 room of the Tribunal with Fouquier and some jurors. 
 Comu caused this to be told at the trial, by Julienne, one 
 of the defenders. Fouquier showed a good deal of ill-humour 
 at this, and said to JuUenne " that he would not be the hap- 
 pier for it." He asked the Tribunal for the arrest of several 
 witnesses for the defence.^ 
 
 As regards Fouquier's complicity in that famous phantom 
 conspiracy which has been called the Conspiracy in the 
 Prisons, here follows a certain number of depositions which 
 seem to estabUsh it. 
 
 On the 15th of Ventose in the year III., a police oflftcer, 
 Charles Mercereau, who had been imprisoned in the Luxem- 
 bourg for two months, gave evidence before Judge Pissis that 
 he saw ' ' lists of proscribed persons ' ' being made. Some police 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier p. 64, folios 6 and 7. 
 
264 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 administrators proposed to him that he should share in the 
 work. They told him that Fouquier-TinviUe and the Com- 
 mittees had people in the Luxembourg " to discover the 
 conspiracies." On the night between the 8th and 9th of 
 Thermidor people came from Fouquier to fetch twenty-five 
 of those alleged conspirators, among whom was an old man 
 of about 70 years of age, so infirm that he could only move 
 with great difficulty, blind, and in his second childhood. 
 He was condemned like the others " for having conspired 
 in the prisons."^ 
 
 It is noticeable that the greater number of the witnesses 
 declared that the conspiracies were imaginary. One 
 " had heard them spoken of " but that was all. Another 
 said : " A conspiracy which they said was being hatched." 
 Many affirmed that " far from having noticed a conspiracy 
 they, on the contrary, had noticed the greatest tranquiUity 
 and the greatest submission on the part of the prisoners 
 who had been terrorised." Another, confined in Saint- 
 Lazare, could attest that there was no conspiracy there. 
 " He shuddered at seeing ninety persons carried off in three 
 days on informations lodged by Manini." Brunet, a wine- 
 seller of the Rue de Buci, formerly employed as a wine-seller 
 at the Carmelites, " was acquainted with no trace of a con- 
 spiracy." The sole care of the prisoners was to amuse them- 
 selves and to soften the rigour of imprisonment. Several 
 times, when some new-comer or other allowed a rather bitter 
 expression, provoked by despair, to escape his lips, he even 
 saw them " recalling him to gentleness and hope." Dufau, 
 a colonial, imprisoned at the Carmelites, said " that in his 
 opinion the alleged conspiracy in the Carmehtes was a m5d:h 
 invented by men greedy for blood. It had for its object 
 only a plan of escape contrived by five or six prisoners who 
 planned to escape during the night with the help of a bell- 
 rope." 
 
 Chavard declared that this conspiracy was " absolutely 
 imaginary." The plan of escape of five or six prisoners who 
 had found a rope in the bell-tower alone gave birth to the 
 
 " This was M. Durand Puy de Verine. See Chapter IV., p. 105. 
 
FOUQUIER AND THE PRISON CONSPIRACIES 265 
 
 idea. " The basis of the indictment which Fouquier drew 
 up was as atrocious as it was slanderous, for it related to a 
 conspiracy that had no existence except in the brains of the 
 Public Prosecutor and his accomplices." Millet, a com- 
 missioner from San Domingo, a Deputy in the Convention, 
 had been imprisoned in the Carmelites. He noticed no 
 conspiracy, what he was witness of was the " heroic patience" 
 of the prisoners, " the harshness and rascality " of the janitor, 
 Roblatre, the turnkeys, and the poUce officials. Joly, 
 an artist of the Theatre des Arts, " imprisoned for a long time 
 by his Revolutionary Committee," never " noticed any 
 suggestion of a conspiracy or even of a plan of escape." 
 Nevertheless, " in order that that house might be emptied 
 more quickly there existed makers of lists of proscribed 
 persons." Guyard, the janitor of the Luxembourg, " heard 
 a conspiracy spoken of." Nevertheless, within the building, 
 he observed no proceedings and heard no remarks that 
 pointed to a conspiracy, or it was a very secret one. He had 
 no reproach to make against the prisoners.^ 
 
 There are similar declarations regarding the other houses 
 of detention. Those who imagined the conspiracies, those 
 who used that monstrous imagination to escape the galleys 
 and to enjoy a relative hberty since they used to leave the 
 prison and go to the Tribunal to give evidence against the 
 unfortunate beings about whom they lodged informations, 
 they alone knew what the conspiracies were. They gave 
 details about them. But their evidence was suspect and 
 tainted beforehand, for they were branded with an igno- 
 minious name. They were pohce spies — Benoit, Boyaval, 
 Beausire, Manini, Coquery, and Jobert (the Belgian). 
 
 Now follows what the inquiry says about the jurors of the 
 former Tribunal, with whom, in a few days, Fouquier was 
 to stand his trial. They were his " solid persons," ready to 
 condemn for eighteen livres a day. 
 
 Citizen Didier, the juror, had been a locksmith at Choisy- 
 sur-Seine. " He could hardly live by his work. He had 
 even been obUged to toil at carrying loads in the port. Since 
 » Archives NationaJes, W. 509, 3rd dossier, p. 64 and p. 58. 
 
266 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 the Revolution, and especially under Robespierre's reign, 
 he had been in very easy circumstances and very familiar 
 with MaximiUen. As a juror of the Tribimal he acquired 
 great prestige at Choisy, where he was the leader of the 
 Popular Society, and where he made the citizens of the 
 district tremble."^ 
 
 Causeret, a building contractor from Choisy, declared that 
 Didier, " a journeyman locksmith, really became one of the 
 destroying scourges of the district," that he was " an insepar- 
 able companion of Hanriot, and an accomplice in all the 
 arbitrary acts and arrests that took place in the Choisy 
 district." On one occasion " he pushed his temerity so far 
 as to have burned, in his presence, in the middle of the 
 Popular Society, a letter from the receiver of taxes who 
 asked him to advise its members to pay their taxes." Didier 
 said that it " was only aristocrats who paid ; that he was the 
 friend of Robespierre and Duplay."^ 
 
 It was Didier who, at a hearing of the Tribunal, asked for 
 permission to speak, and said to one of the accused : "Is 
 it not enough to prove you an aristocrat that you waited 
 on a noble ? Bah ! that is enough of it." 
 
 On which they passed to the next accused person.^ 
 
 The juror Brochet, another " solid man," twice caused the 
 arrest of his tenant, Mury, a soap-manufacturer of Paris. 
 Brochet was an intimate friend of Momoro. Together they 
 had created a Popular Society " in which they only received 
 people of their own party or those who wished to belong to 
 it." He held at the same time the positions of Captain in 
 the National Guard, President of the Revolutionary Com- 
 mittee, and juror of the Tribunal. "This man, by the 
 arrests and condemnations with which he stained himself 
 in the exercise of the offices which he accumulated, had 
 made himself the opprobrium and execration of his whole 
 Section." One day the witness went to Brochet's to pay his 
 rent (two or three days before the trial of the woman du 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64, folio 3. 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64, folio 5. 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio 1. 
 
cftRETIEN'S CAFE 267 
 
 Barry). The juror put him off to another day, saying : 
 " They are waiting for me at the Tribunal. I have forty 
 rascals to try." 
 
 The witness spent nearly ten months in prison " owing to 
 Brochet's attentions."^ 
 
 The juror Chretien, a member of the Revolutionary Com- 
 mittee of the Lepelletier Section, " was the scourge of his 
 Section." He kept a cafe in the Rue Favart off the Place de 
 la Com^die ItaUenne. " It was from the infernal divan that 
 he kept at his house that there issued forth all the sabred 
 and moustached gentry who wandered either into the thea- 
 tres to make disturbances, or on the boulevards to drive 
 away the respectable women who were taking the air." 
 He always had " the word guillotine in his mouth, and 
 threatened with Fouquier-Tinville those whom he desired 
 to frighten." He boasted of the influence he had with the 
 Pubhc Prosecutor. He had been several times on missions 
 in his own Department, with powers and warrants which he 
 said he held from Fouquier-Tinville. He spread forth 
 Terror on these missions. 
 
 When he came back from the Tribunal and was asked by 
 the habitues of his " divan " about the judgments passed 
 during the day, he used to smile, and " with an insulting and 
 barbarous joy " he would answer : " There will be twenty or 
 twenty-three to-day." 
 
 " He would then picture, with barbarous gestures, the 
 attitude which the condemned persons were to adopt at the 
 moment of their execution."^ 
 
 Another witness said that Chretien often associated with 
 Collot d'Herbois, and that he was the terror of all the 
 respectable people in his Section. He described how he 
 guided the Committee of his Section with cunning and 
 ferocity.* 
 
 Another gave a picture of his " divan," which was fre- 
 quented by " a society of buUies and cut-throats." People 
 
 1 Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio 4. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 64. 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio i. 
 
268 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 were only admitted to this den if they could prove that they 
 had taken part in the September massacres. " Every time 
 that Chretien mounted the tribune, it was to display his 
 thirst for human blood."^ 
 
 Another declared that Chretien never showed himself in 
 his Section " except armed with a sabre, pistols or a cudgel " ; 
 that he often threatened people with those weapons ; that 
 he never exercised power except to oppress his fellow- 
 citizens ; that he regarded as aristocrats every rich or noble 
 person and even those who held just and virtuous principles. 
 " He made this clear on one occasion when he was compli- 
 mented on a moral speech which he had dehvered in the 
 Temple of Reason of his Section, by replying that he had 
 only delivered that speech in order that by their applause he 
 might recognise the aristocrats and moderates, two classes 
 of men whom he persecuted." His conduct on the 9th of 
 Thermidor was very suspicious. He did not go to his 
 Section. He remained at his " divan," where he held a 
 council. His sole aim was " to join the winning side." He 
 had Fouquier-Tinville's name continually in his mouth, and 
 called him his friend. It seemed that Fouquier had given 
 him blank warrants to arrest people, and that he had 
 employed them at Luzarches in the case of an officer whose 
 horses he wanted to take. Dubois-Cranc6 was the possessor 
 of a document which proved this. 
 
 Chretien had a great deal of influence with his friend, 
 Fouquier-Tinville, and lodged informations with him against 
 all those of whom he wished to rid himself. He used to 
 speak of Fouquier as the best patriot in the RepubUc, and, 
 when the Revolutionary Tribunal was re-organised after the 
 9th of Thermidor, he said " that there was a heap of in- 
 triguers such as Tallien and others who wanted to oppose 
 Fouquier's nomination, but that the latter could not fail to 
 win."^ 
 
 Citizen Beudon, keeper of the furnished " sailors' house " in 
 the Rue Gaillon, Lepelletier Section, " knew the man called 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio 9. 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58. 
 
A PATRIOT 269 
 
 Chretien, the ex- juror of the Tribunal, as one of the greatest 
 drinkers of blood it was possible to see." As an agent on 
 mission he used to go into the Departments with " blank 
 credentials which it was said he held from Fouquier.''^ 
 
 Similar evidence about Chretien was given by Renault, 
 a mason and building-contractor of Paris, residing at No. 810 
 in " the unfinished street " in the Lepelletier Section. He 
 had been his comrade in arms in the artillery company of the 
 Section. At first he appeared to him to be " rather quiet 
 and gentle, not doing much duty, and employing his waiters 
 as deputies for him." On the day when the question of 
 Marat and Robespierre was discussed and when Louvet 
 denounced them in the Convention, Chretien, who was on 
 duty that day, displayed his dissatisfaction with the 
 Convention in a far from respectful manner, saying : — 
 
 " Let these beggars go away ! They waste our time." 
 
 Since then " he had taken a more imperious tone, and 
 began to make himself more feared than liked by his com- 
 rades." He brought into the company men Uke Maillard, 
 September massacrers, so-called conquerors of the Bastille, 
 who belonged with him to a so-called Popular Society. 
 
 In proportion as the Republican Government became 
 estabUshed, he gained greater " preponderance," and he 
 tyrannised over his Section. He had always been a friend 
 of Fouquier, Ronsin, Vincent and Hanriot.^ 
 
 Another witness, Lanchon, a wine-seller of the Rue Neuve- 
 Saint-Marc in the Lepelletier Section, one day when he 
 went into Chretien's house to drink "a small glass of 
 brandy," and expressed astonishment that so many sentences 
 of condemnation had been pronounced at the Tribunal in 
 such a short time, was answered by Chretien with the words : 
 
 " Bah ! are you surprised at that ? You are not up to 
 date. We are almost useless for our part ; but with 
 Fouquier-Tinville, who is a patriot, things are done at 
 once. The gaol-registers are read and the thing is ended."* 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, p. 58, folio 10. 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio ii. 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folio 4. 
 
270 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Pierre Armand Le Petit, formerly a distiller, of the Rue 
 Marivaux, saw Chretien " dominating over his Section 
 for three years." He gave details which confirmed the 
 preceding depositions.^ 
 
 The ex-juror Aubry, a tailor, of the Section de I'Unit^, 
 " could neither read nor write." He was an " evil man of 
 sanguinary instincts." A witness at Fouqmer's trial heard 
 him say, at the time of the reorganisation of the Tribunal, 
 after the 9th of Thermidor, that " the choice of Fouquier- 
 Tinville as PubMc Prosecutor was the best that could be 
 made, that only aristocrats could oppose his appointment, 
 and that another hke him would never be found." It 
 appeared that Aubry, in his capacity as a juror, never 
 voted except for death. " Two classes were to him food for 
 the guillotine — priests and nobles." It was useless to 
 examine the documents relating to them.^ 
 
 Another witness, Langlois, a haberdasher of Paris, of the 
 same Section as the ex-juror Aubry, knew him " to be an 
 ignorant tailor, unable to read or write, and an evil man 
 whom he had often heard proposing revolting and san- 
 guinary motions. He saw him take some citizens by the 
 collar, and threaten others." 
 
 " He congratulated himself on the victims whom he had 
 helped to send to the scaffold. He pubhcly boasted that 
 he had never voted except for death at the trials of priests 
 and nobles, who, to him, were all food for the guillotine." * 
 
 Citizen Porcher, a cabinet-maker, of the Rue Mazarine 
 in the Section de I'Unite, knew Fouquier-TinviUe only by 
 repute and from sometimes seeing him at the Tribimal. 
 But he knew Aubry, the ex-juror, who threatened to 
 denounce him to the Jacobin Club, because one day, when 
 on guard with him, he had expressed indignation at the 
 condemnation of four or five prisoners who had not been 
 allowed to speak and whose accusations had not even received 
 the final sanction of the Public Minister. Out of this there 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folio 5. 
 ^ Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio i. 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio 2. 
 
PARTIALITY OF JUDGES AND JURORS 271 
 
 arose a quarrel, and the officer of the guard intervened. 
 " He had always known Aubry to be a man of blood." 
 He had seen him at several trials. He was either asleep, 
 or scarcely Ustening. 
 
 In the affair of Ferrand and Laruelle ^ who were charged 
 with comphcity in an alleged conspiracy at Montauban, 
 on May 10, 1790, the witness pointed out to Fouquier that 
 the accused were in no way accompUces, seeing that one of 
 them had been at Brest and the other at Gondrecourt in 
 the Meuse. His evidence might have been of value. Fouquier 
 did not think it fitting to have it heard. 
 
 Nevertheless he had followed the course of this trial, which 
 took place in one of the halls and was presided over by 
 Dumas. He had been revolted by the partiality of the judges 
 and jurors. Aubry slept. The accused were cut short in their 
 speeches. The witnesses for the prosecution were Ustened 
 to " complacently " ; the witnesses for the defence " in a 
 body." They made a hubbub. Aubry woke up. When 
 the jurors returned after a short deliberation, Aubry, like 
 the rest, was convinced of the facts and of the culpabiUty of 
 the accused.' 
 
 " Aubry could neither read nor write," declared Robert 
 Wohf, the registrar's clerk. " He belonged to my Section. 
 He could only write five letters in print, and these were 
 enough to bring him in, every month, five hundred and forty 
 -hvres as the price of his assassinations." He used to boast, 
 besides, in the caf6 at the comer of the Rue de Buci and in 
 that of Rue de la Chaumifire, where he went daily, that he 
 had always earned his money well, and that he had no cause 
 to reproach himself, for he had never acquitted anybody. ^ 
 
 Andre Barraly, aged 39, hairdresser, .of No. 34 Rue 
 Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, facing the Rue Neuve-des- 
 Bons-Enfants, Section GuiUamne-Tell, had never known 
 Fouquier-Tinville except by reputation. He never had 
 
 ' Captain Ferrand and Captain Laruelle were guillotined on gth 
 of Ventdse in the year II. 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 58, folio 10, 
 " Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folio 7. 
 
272 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 any relation, direct or indirect, with him. " In his capacity 
 as hairdresser, either he himself or his assistant, Lingault, 
 had dressed Robespierre's hair for twelve or thirteen 
 months at the house of Duplay, an ex-juror of the 
 Tribunal, in the Rue Saint-Honore, opposite the Rue Floren- 
 tin. He had dressed Duplay's hair two or three times by 
 chance when he went to Robespierre, because Duplay hap- 
 pened to be in a hurry. The said Duplay, who was very 
 reserved and haughty, would not lower himself to speak to 
 a hairdresser." * 
 
 There was further evidence of what the other jurors were 
 Hke — Renaudin, the maker of musical instruments and 
 the keeper of the ball-room at the LumiSre Barrier ; Lohier, 
 the grocer ; and Trinchard, the carpenter. ^ Trinchard said : 
 " It does not take me much time to try an accused person. 
 The mere inspection of his appearance discloses to me the 
 morality or immorahty of a prisoner. It is enough for me 
 to see people in order to settle on my verdict." 
 
 It was also Trinchard, after the 22nd of Prairial and when 
 he was no longer a juror of the Tribimal but had been 
 appointed a member of the Popular Commission of the 
 Museum district, who, as he was lunching one day with 
 several of his former colleagues, said to them : " The Com- 
 mission is going to begin its operations by sending to you 
 at the Tribunal all the priests and nobles in the prisons. 
 I hope they will be sent to the guillotine." 
 
 The others applauded.* 
 
 But the examinations of the witnesses tell us nothing 
 more concerning the relations between those jurors and 
 Fouquier-Tinville. We are, therefore, compelled to stop 
 here. 
 
 On the 4th of Germinal, Judicis, the PubUc Prosecutor 
 of the new Tribunal appointed on the 8th of Niv6se pre- 
 ceding, had drawn up his indictment against Fouquier and 
 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 500, p. 58, folio 12. 
 • For Trinchard, " Nature's man," see A. Dunoyer : Deux Juris du 
 Tribunal Rivolutionnaire, Paris, Perrin, 1909. 
 
 " Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63, folio 6. 
 
THE WRITS OF INDICTMENT 273 
 
 his accomplices. The accused numbered thirty. At their 
 head was Antoine Quentin Fauquier-Tinville, ex-Public 
 Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Then came 
 Delaporte, ex-judge ; Foucault, ex-judge ; Maire, ex-judge ; 
 Scellier, ex-Vice-President ; Harny, ex-judge ; Deh6ge, 
 ex-judge ; Garnier-Launay, ex-judge ; Naulin, ex-Vice- 
 President ; Fehx, ex-judge ; Bravet, ex-judge ; Barbier, 
 ex-judge ; and Liendon, ex-deputy to the Public Prosecu- 
 tor. Finally came seventeen former jurors — Lohier, 
 Trinchard, Leroy, called "Tenth of August," Renaudin, 
 Chretien, Gauthier, Didier, Ganney, Vilate, Duplay, Prieur, 
 Chatelet, Brochet, Girard, Trey, Pigeot, and Aubry. 
 
 Judicis declared that he had made a fresh examination of 
 the documents delivered either to his predecessor or to 
 himself. 
 
 From this it followed that Fouquier " abetted the projects 
 of a Uberticidal faction known under the name of that of 
 Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, and others who fell under 
 the sword of the law after the 9th of Thermidor." The 
 writs of indictment which he presented were full of erasures, 
 commitments, and interlineal insertions that were without 
 authority. He signed these. He presented others that 
 were not filled in, others in which the names of the accused 
 were inserted after the indictments had been made out, or at 
 the moment when the case was being heard, by a different 
 hand and in different ink from that in the body of the docu- 
 ments, others in which several names written in small char- 
 acters were sometimes intercalated, sometimes written on 
 the margin without authority, and from which the names of 
 other accused persons had been erased and effaced. He pre- 
 sented other indictments in which the statements relative to 
 the names of the accused give those of certain persons of 
 whom no mention is made in the remainder of the indictment. 
 He inscribed in one indictment the name of a person already 
 condemned to death and executed. He pleaded in court 
 that the corpse of a prisoner who had stabbed himself should 
 be taken to the scaffold. He pleaded in court for the 
 execution of women who had declared themselves pregnant, 
 
274 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 and that before the medical officers had pronounced on their 
 condition. 
 
 He knew that Fouquier had protested his humanity, the 
 rectitude of his conduct as a magistrate, and his absolute 
 probity. For his own part, as PubUc Prosecutor, so far 
 from admitting that Fouquier has given proof of his inno- 
 cence, he considered that he was guilty, and that he had 
 been abetted by the ex-judges, his ex-deputies, and the 
 ex-jurors of the Tribunal, men whose bad moral character 
 was known and who were closely allied with the conspirators, 
 those despots and tyrants who murdered instead of judging. 
 
 If Judicis had been unable to make out a detailed list of 
 the documents incriminating Fouquier by their faults of 
 form and the omissions with which they swarmed, the 
 reason was that their nimiber was too great, and he would 
 have risked " causing confusion." 
 
 " Whilst recognising that among those who were con- 
 demned there were guilty persons who deserved to be 
 punished, one cannot, however, distinguish those from the 
 innocent, and the forms even severer than those of martial 
 law that were employed to secure condemnations are 
 enough to prevent us from making the distinction, so that 
 we can legally regard all those acts of condemnation as pure 
 murders." ^ 
 
 ■ Archives Nationales, W. 499, dossier 550, p. 9. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FINAL EXAMINATION OF FOUQUIER-TINVILLE. THE 
 PROCEEDINGS IN COnRT. VERDICT AND DEATH 
 
 THE preliminary inquiry had come to an end. An 
 order of the 4th of Germinal in the year III., signed 
 by Judges Agier, Liger, Debregeas, Favart, Mazerat, 
 Grand, Godeau, GaiUart-Lecart, Godard, Pissis, 
 Devillas, and Bertrand d'Aubagne, granted the demand of 
 Judicis the PubUc Prosecutor, and gave him a writ of 
 indictment against Fouquier. 
 
 The hour was approaching when Fouquier was to appear 
 before his judges ; but, previous to this, he had to undergo 
 a fresh cross-examination. 
 
 On the 6th of Germinal, commissioners went to the Plessis 
 prison whither the prisoner had been taken. These 
 commissioners were Jean Debregeas, Vice-President of the 
 new Tribunal, and Cambon, Judicis' deputy.^ 
 
 From its beginning the examination was directed to the 
 capital point — the indictments. The commissioners had 
 in their hands those terrible docimients, fatal to those 
 whom they had sent to the scaffold, fatal also, by a reaction, 
 to him who had signed, initialled, annotated, or com- 
 piled them. They existed. He was responsible for them. 
 They were filled with erasures, commitments, and unauth- 
 orised insertions. The names of the accused were written 
 after the indictments had been made out, and in a different 
 hand and with different ink from that in the body of the 
 documents. There were family names presented in a sum- 
 
 • At his first examination, on the ist of Frimaire in the year III., 
 he had been questioned by Forestier in the presence of the latter's 
 deputy, Jean Jacques Granger. On that occasion he had been 
 taken from the Plessis prison to the Tribunal. (See Chapter IX., 
 P- I95-) 
 
 275 
 
276 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 mary form without the Christian names, descriptions, ages, 
 or designation of the place of origin. It had not been 
 possible to identify them, from lack of time, between the 
 evening and the following morning. 
 
 Fouquier claimed that all the indictments which he 
 presented were regular ; that these indictments had been 
 written by his secretaries. This was his system — to throw 
 all responsibility on others. But these indictments were 
 signed by him. The judge did not point this out to him. 
 He allowed him to go on speaking. Fouquier declared that 
 if these indictments were shown him, he would explain 
 what " people affected not to know." 
 
 Never, he said, had he presented blank indictments to 
 the judges to sign. But as, after the law of the 22nd of 
 Prairial, private preliminary examinations had been sup- 
 pressed, the Christian names, ages, descriptions, and places 
 of birth could only be filled in after the prisoners had been 
 asked to state them. Family names had always been 
 inserted in the indictment as well as in the text. 
 
 Never, to his knowledge, had he made any additional 
 insertion between the hues of the indictments. 
 
 He did not remember that he had ever made out an 
 indictment against a person who had already been con- 
 demned. 
 
 The judge asked him whether he had not pleaded in court 
 to have carried to the scaffold the corpse of a prisoner 
 who had stabbed himself at the moment he heard his 
 death-sentence (Valaze, the Girondin Deputy). 
 
 " Having regard to the public clamour," answered 
 Fouquier, " and in order to avoid the greater disorders that 
 were threatened at the moment when Valaze stabbed 
 himself, I beheved it prudent to ask that he should be taken 
 to the place intended for the execution. I may have been 
 mistaken. But a mistake cannot be imputed as a crime. 
 I had to execute the judgment of the Tribunal." 
 
 Q. — " Have you demanded the execution of women 
 who were pregi^ant, instead of waiting for the opinion of the 
 doctors ? " 
 
' A JUDICIAL ERROR 277 
 
 A. — "I have respected declarations of pregnancy." 
 
 Q. — " Have you ever gone into the jurors' room at the 
 moment when they were deliberating-? " 
 
 A. — " I have never gone alone into the room. I have 
 never interrupted the deliberations. I have never takeijr 
 part in the jurors' deliberations." 
 
 Q. — " Have you presented an indictment against 155 
 persons charged with conspiracy in the prisons ? Was not 
 the word, twice, placed alongside three names to indicate 
 two persons under a single name, so that the total number 
 of persons was 158 instead of 155 ? " 
 
 A. — " I have in fact made out an indictment against 155 
 persons charged with conspiracy in the Luxembourg, on the 
 i8th of Messidor. According to President Diunas, the 
 intention of the Conmiittee of Pubhc Safety was that they 
 should all be tried at the same time. But I had been to the 
 Committee that evening, and it was decided that there 
 should be three trials. I do not know what is meant by the 
 word, twice, which cannot have been written by my hand 
 or by orders from me. Moreover, the indictments were 
 handed into the registry, after the trial. 
 
 " Now, I have all sorts of reasons for suspecting that 
 omissions and additions were made at the registry. I can 
 be in no way responsible for those that may have been 
 made either in the indictments or in other documents. 
 Moreover, when I am shown the documents, I shall be in a 
 position to give the most precise explanations. But I am 
 persuaded that the number in question never exceeded 155. 
 
 " Besides, I have never meddled with the writing out of 
 the sentences." 
 
 " In the first sentence on a section of the Luxembourg 
 prisoners," asked the judge, " was not a man named Morin 
 included, although he was not mentioned in the indict- 
 ment ? " 
 
 This was an embarrassing question, for here, certainly, 
 there had been a judicial error, and a Morin or Maurin 
 had on that day been guillotined instead of another man. 
 
 Fouquier answered imperturbably : " I am always faced 
 
278 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 with indictments that I have nothing to do with. This 
 Morin, so far as I remember, was not tried on the 19th 
 but on the 22nd. Before him, a man named Morin, Madame 
 du Barry's steward, was tried and condemned. Moreover, 
 a Morin, the ex-Marechale de Biron's steward, had been tried 
 and condemned at a period which I do not precisely remem- 
 ber. The Morin of the Luxembourg Conspiracy had been 
 quartermaster in Capet's guards. When the documents 
 are shown me, I will give the most precise explanations." 
 
 Were the documents shown to Fouquier in the course 
 of the proceedings ? What were his explanations ? In 
 regard to this we know nothing. 
 
 Denys Morin, Madame du Barry's servant, had been 
 guillotined on the 3rd of Nivose in the year II., more than 
 twelve months previously. A Nicolas Morin, a farmer, 
 had been acquitted on the 26th of Germinal in the year II. 
 A Jacques Morin, a farmer and carter, had been set free on 
 the 6th of Fructidor in the year II. A Jean Morin, a trooper 
 in the Revolutionary army, had also been set free on the nth 
 of the same month. A Charles Sosth^ne Morin, grocer, 
 auctioneer and tax-collector, had been guillotined on the 
 13th of Messidor in the year II. But the error in regard 
 to the persons with which Fouquier was charged, concerned 
 Louis Clerc Morin, quartermaster in the King's Guard, 
 guillotined on the 22nd of Messidor in the year II., and Jean 
 Dominique Maurin, the Marechale de Biron's bookkeeper 
 and estate-agent, guillotined, instead of the last mentioned, 
 on the 19th of Messidor in the year II. Fouquier's answer, 
 on this matter, was decidedly evasive. The cross- examina- 
 tion continued. 
 
 " Did not Fouquier demand the punishment of a witness 
 who said that no conspiracy existed in the Luxembourg ? " 
 
 " This witness^ was arrested for the evasions, tergiversa- 
 tions, ambiguities, and vacillations in his statement, which 
 appeared to disclose a dishonest person." 
 
 For his own part, he, Fouquier, took care not to base 
 his speech for the prosecution on the conspiracy. He even 
 ' The turnkey, Lesenne. 
 
A MORTAL ENEMY 279 
 
 had on that day, " a very sharp altercation with Dumas " 
 regarding the latter's refusal to allow some of the accused 
 to defend themselves. 
 
 Before allowing the cross-examination to close, Fouquier 
 was desirous of taking his own precautions, and he made the 
 following declaration regarding Paris, the registrar, and 
 Robert Wolff, the registrar's clerk. He pointed out that 
 " Paris, the present registrar of the Tribimal, had declared 
 himself to be his mortal enemy, both in pubUc and in 
 private." He spoke of the dinners that were held by the 
 registrar's clerks (particularly that of the 27th of Frimaire, 
 the eve of the day on which he was sent for trial). At those 
 dinners, " they occupied themselves with Fouquier's trial 
 and the means they would take to ruin him." 
 
 " Paris," he said, " has even boasted that if he were 
 wanted to hang me, he would pull the cord." 
 
 Fouquier said he employed every means for releasing 
 from prison this very man who was to appear against him 
 in the capacity of accuser and lover of justice. 
 
 " About three weeks ago," Fouquier went on, " Paris 
 went to the Cafe de Chartres, in the Palais Egahte, with 
 several persons. There he published and indicated the day 
 on which I should be placed on trial. He aggravated the 
 alleged crimes that are imputed to me. He went back there 
 again and spoke in a perfidious manner and one likely to 
 rouse pubhc opinion against me." 
 
 Then came a capital charge. 
 
 " In order more certainly to reach his end, Paris had 
 carried off by force, on the 19th of Nivose last, all the 
 extracts from the sentences and the receipts of the Com- 
 mission of National Revenues which were in the prosecutor's 
 office, and which were my guarantee in regard to the trial 
 we are deaUng with to-day, because I had taken the precau- 
 tion of having handed to me each day the extracts from the 
 sentences bearing the names of the condemned persons, 
 both in order to have those sentences proceeded with, and 
 to transmit them to the National Estates and to the Com- 
 mission of National Revenues. The number of these docu- 
 
28o THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 ments has neither been ascertamed nor verified. Thus it 
 has been within the power of Paris to take away those he 
 judged fit. These facts are known to the brothers Toutain,* 
 who have done all they could to stop them. They are 
 known to Citizen Leblois,^ who had then no position there, 
 and to Frangois, one of the attendants in the prosecutor's 
 oifice. 
 
 " Moreover, Paris had previously taken away a hundred 
 notes of papers relating to cases that had been tried, without 
 giving any receipt for them, though I would have given 
 these to the constituted authorities as fast as they had been 
 transmitted to me. 
 
 " I have learnt that, at the time of the departure of 
 Citizen Granger, the Pubhc Prosecutor's deputy who was 
 entrusted with the documents relating to the present trial, 
 that magistrate had handed them over to Paris and to Wolff ; 
 that they had been deposited with them up to the period 
 when the trial had been committed to Citizen Cambon. 
 One cannot doubt for a moment that they did not neglect 
 to read those docimients. It was Paris who presented the 
 first indictment for signature in court. On the 28th of 
 Frimaire, the day when I appeared before the Tribunal, 
 it was also Paris who acted of&ciaUy, for he pubhcly brought 
 into court a bundle of documents which he placed on the 
 Pubhc Prosecutor's table. Lastly, he also acted officially 
 in this same trial by signing the judgment passed by the 
 Tribunal on the 30th of Ventose last, and by writing a letter 
 to the PubUc Prosecutor dated the 2nd or 3rd of the current 
 month." 
 
 In accordance with those facts, and others which he 
 intended to develop later, Fouquier-Tinville declared that 
 he knew no law permitting a witness to act officially, in any 
 manner whatsoever, in a trial at which he was a witness. 
 Here, in this trial, not only had Paris, Wolff, and others 
 acted officially, but they had even displayed, in several 
 
 ' Employees in the prosecutor's office. 
 
 • The Public Prosecutor of the Tribunal established on the 23rd of 
 Thermidor, who drew up the first indictment against Fouquier. 
 
AN ADVOCATE ASSIGNED 281 
 
 public and private places, their excess of hatred against the 
 accused, a fact that ought to cause the Tribunal henceforth 
 to look on them with suspicion.^ 
 
 The judge asked Fouquier if he had chosen a defender. 
 The ex-PubUc Prosecutor answered that Citizen Lafleuterie, 
 whom he had chosen as his counsel, having informed him 
 that he had been summoned as a witness for the defence 
 by Citizen Naulin and other fellow-prisoners, and that he 
 was too scrupulous to accept the position of defender in 
 the case, he knew of nobody else whom he could entrust 
 with his defence. An official advocate. Citizen Gaillard,* 
 was assigned to him. 
 
 The Ust of jurors was then communicated to Fouquier — 
 Lapeyre, Bressand, Husson, Toumier, Taillerat, Lebrun, 
 Mesange, Bouygues, Duprat, Vignalet, and Laporte. 
 
 He was acquainted with none of those jurors, except 
 Duprat. He said that his brothers, the Duprats of Avignon, 
 had been tried and condemned, and that he, Fouquier, had 
 appeared against them ; that Duprat was an intimate friend of 
 Jourdan, who had been condemned and against whom he had 
 appeared, etc. For all these reasons he challenged Duprat. 
 As regards the others he invited the Tribimal to ask them to 
 remember whether they had any relatives or friends or clients 
 condemned between March loth, 1793, and the gth of 
 Thermidor, 1794. In case there should be a fresh selection 
 
 » In the course of his trial, on the 22nd of Germinal, Fouquier 
 sent a note to the Tribunal, " hoping to convince it that, since his 
 imprisonment, documents had been taken away from his room and 
 from the registry by Pelris, a witness whose hate and partiality 
 had been displayed yesterday." Fouquier requested that it might 
 please the Tribunal that in his presence and in the presence of the 
 Public Prosecutor a search should be made in the judges' rooms for 
 papers that might have been hidden in there by Pilxis. 
 
 The Tribunal immediately acceded to this request. (W. 499, 
 dossier 550, p. 3.) 
 
 Paris was heard as a witness at the trial in spite of Fouquier's 
 protests. The President read to the jurors the law relating to the 
 grounds on which a witness could be challenged, and declared that 
 the Tribunal would receive the evidence of PSris. (Archives Na- 
 tionales, W. 499, dossier 550, p. 6.) ' 
 
 ' Gaillard de la Ferridre. 
 
282 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 of jurors, Fouquier challenged in advance Citizen Delorme, 
 with whom he had " a very sharp scene in 1790 at the house 
 of Commissioner Dubois in the Rue de Chabanais," and for 
 further reasons which he enumerated.^ 
 
 On the 8th of Germinal the pubhc proceedings in the trial 
 opened in the old Grand Chamber of the Parlement of Paris, 
 in that vast hall where Fouquier, Dumas, and Coffinhal had 
 sat, with plumed hats on their heads, and their small black 
 cloaks over their shoulders. An enormous crowd had 
 invaded the court, a curious, attentive, and rather quiet 
 crowd. 
 
 Twenty-four prisoners* took their places on the benches. 
 Seated in the front rank, Fouquier had before him a table 
 on which the documents which he was to employ in his 
 defence were arranged. Two large portfoUos served him 
 as a desk. He took notes, writing, rapidly.^ Whilst he 
 wrote, not a single word, either from the President or from a 
 witness, escaped him.* 
 
 Fouquier was very thin, very much worn by his imprison- 
 ment. But he was neither exhausted nor depressed. He 
 had all his faculties about him, that extraordinary gift of 
 memory which never failed him when he needed it. He 
 was there, thrown back on himself, tense, ready for the 
 supreme struggle, for thrust and parry in this judicial duel 
 in which he felt that, in spite of everything, the chances 
 were aU against him. 
 
 The PubUc Prosecutor's seat, his own former seat, was 
 occupied alternately by Judicis and his two deputies, 
 Ardenne and Cambon. 
 
 > Archives Nationales, W. 501, 2nd dossier, p. 38, folio 15. 
 
 » They were Fouquier, DeliSge, Delaporte, Foucault, Maire, Seel- 
 lier, Hamy, Gemier-Launay, and Naulin, ex-judges of the Tribunal 
 of the Terror ; Lohier, Trinchard, Leroy, Renaudin, Pigeot, Aubry, 
 Vilate, Duplay, Prieur, Chatelet, Brochet, Chretien, Girard, Trey, and 
 Ganney, ex-jurors. Faix, Bravet, Barbier, Liendon, Didier, and 
 Gauthier had fled the coimtry. 
 
 » We know from Mercier that he wrote with extreme rapidity. 
 (Vatel : Madame du Barry, III., p. 257.) And see Archives Nationales, 
 W. 180, liasse 26. 
 
 * Mercier : Paris pendant la Revolution, II., pp. 127, 128. 
 
THE TRIAL OF F 
 
OUQUIER-TiiNVILLE 
 
THE JURORS 283 
 
 Liger.i the Vice-President, presided over the proceedings, 
 with Godart, Grand, Gaillard-Lecart, and Bertrand d'Au- 
 bagne as assessors. Fifteen jurors^ were seated facing the 
 accused. Very different from the former jurors of the 
 Terror, from Chretien the lemonade-seller, Renaudin 
 the maker of musical instruments, Vilate the dandy, Duplay 
 the carpenter, Prieur the painter, Trey the tailor, etc., 
 whom they had before them, these Thermidorian jurors 
 were provincials who had come from a distance, strangers 
 to the fevers that had shaken Paris during the sixteen months 
 of the Terror. They were people who clung to order and 
 did not love blood. The violent acts they had witnessed 
 in their Departments during the Terror, the denunciations, 
 depopulation by the guillotine — these they reprobated. 
 They had seen danger and death at close quarters. They 
 were determined to cause those who were responsible for 
 the system that had been overthrown, to expiate the evil 
 they had done. But they would know how to follow the 
 proceedings patiently. They did not declare that they were 
 convinced by the indictments. They would listen atten- 
 tively to the evidence. And at the moment when they gave 
 their verdict, they would show themselves moved by feelings 
 of moderation, for they would admit extenuating circum- 
 stances, and would not condemn in the mass. The advo- 
 cates were, Cressend, Villain, Boutroue, Gobert, Gueneau, 
 and Domanget. Gaillard de la Ferri^re assisted Fouquier. 
 Lafleuterie had had to abandon his defence for reasons 
 which Fouquier explained at the end of his cross-examina- 
 tion on the 6th of Germinal. 
 
 > He had been President of the Criminal Tribunal of the Loiret. 
 In the year VIII., following upon the decrees of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 
 i6th, 17th and i8th of Germinal (April 3 to 8, 1800), Liger-Verdigny 
 was appointed a member of the Court of Cassation. He was re- 
 elected by the nomination of February 15, 1815, and remained a 
 member of the Court of Cassation until 1830. He then appears in the 
 Royal Almanac under the name of Liger de Verdigny. From 1830 to 
 1832 he was an honorary counsel, and he does not appear in the Royal 
 Almanac after this date. He had been a chevalier of the Legion of 
 Honour since 1816. 
 
 » Rouitborel Abadie-Verduisant, Cadet, and Gabriel Saint-Horrent 
 had been elected as supplementary jurors. 
 
284 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 Four hundred and nineteen witnesses were to give evidence 
 in the trial. The case promised to be a long one. What a 
 contrast with those rushed through in a few hours before 
 the 9th of Thermidor ! 
 
 The proceedings in the trial of Fouquier and his " accom- 
 plices " lasted a month and nine days, from the 8th of 
 Germinal until the 17th of Floreal. How are we to relate 
 these proceedings ? So far as we know there remains no 
 written account of them.i We have to-day only two 
 documents bearing upon them — the printed account of 
 the trial, and that in Buchez and Roux's Histoire Parle- 
 mentaire. Both are open to the suspicion of partiality. 
 They are often curtailed, especially towards the end of the 
 proceedings. They are inexact on many points, and full of 
 printer's errors. Proper names are wrongly spelled. They 
 do not give us the answers of the principal prisoner, Fouquier, 
 except in unsatisfactory and colourless condensations. 
 Fouquier, in spite of his fatigue, mtist have defended himself 
 fiercely, and with talent. 
 
 We believe, then, that his real defence consisted of : (i) 
 the memorials he had drawn up and which we have repro- 
 duced in fuU, as they exist among the National Archives, 
 written in his own hand ; (2) his answers at the two cross- 
 examinations which he underwent and which we have also 
 reproduced impartially. 
 
 At the opening of the proceedings, at the hearing on the 
 8th of Germinal, a statement was made of the charges 
 brought against Fouquier and his accomphces. 
 
 " Citizens and jurors," said Cambon, the Public Prosecu- 
 tor's deputy, " I come in the name of the Pubhc Prosecutor 
 to unmask great crimes and to denounce great offenders. 
 
 " These crimes are those of the Uberticidal faction which, 
 by its infamous plots, was able for eighteen months to beat 
 down the courage of all, to repress even the energy of the 
 national representation, to spread terror and consternation 
 on the soil of liberty. 
 
 ' Except the official report of the hearing, which is preserved among 
 the Archives (W. 499, dossier 550, p. 7). 
 
THE SCARCITY OF CARTS 285 
 
 '* Yes, citizens, whilst on the frontier vaUant defenders 
 of our country were cementing young Uberty with their 
 blood, whilst the noise of their victories was resounding on 
 all sides, the most shameful defeats of morality as well as of 
 justice were in this building dishonouring the magistracy 
 and degrading the French name."^ 
 
 At the hearing on the 9th, Fouquier, questioned by the 
 President on the arrest of Lesenne, the turnkey of the 
 Luxembourg, 2 who had declared that he had no acquaintance 
 with the conspiracy in the prisons, answered : " The witness 
 shuffled in his evidence. He contradicted himself. I never 
 asked for more than his provisional arrest. But Dumas, 
 whose ferocity everybody knows (laughter and murmurs), 
 Dumas had the judgment made out in a different sense. 
 Then that is not my fault."^ 
 
 Later, he said : "I received the orders of the two 
 Committees." 
 
 On the subject of the carts which he ordered in the 
 morning without knowing whether any persons would be 
 condemned during the day, he answered : "It was because 
 of the scarcity of carts." 
 
 Then he pointed out that the witness who was accusing 
 him (Senar), " had let shp the words, the Thermidorian 
 faction," an insult to the Government actually in power. 
 
 As regards the sentence on the Comte de Fleury, who was 
 sent to death in a red shirt, Fouquier denied all responsi- 
 bility. Gastrez, an employee in the Commission of Public 
 Instruction, charged him with this, and formally identified 
 him as having said to Dumas : " This gentleman seems to 
 me to be in a hurry. I am going to send for him." 
 
 " You are Fouquier," said Gastrez. " You were a Uttle 
 stouter then, but I recognise you." 
 
 Fouquier : " I do not remember that trial." 
 
 (And he searched for it in his portfohos.) 
 
 > Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 292, and W. 499, dossier 550, 
 p. 7. 
 
 " He was the first witness to give evidence. 
 » Ibid., p. 304. 
 
286 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 In general, to the evidence concerning the conspiracies 
 in the prisons, the Usts, and the amalgamations, he answered 
 that the facts did not concern him, that he had had his orders. 
 He denied the remarks attributed to him, or said he did not 
 remember them. Or he quoted, with precision, the resolu- 
 tions of the Committee of Public Safety, that of the 17th of 
 Messidor, for example, relating to the 155, in order to shelter 
 himself. Or he said : " I was not sitting on that occasion." 
 
 " What answer have you in regard to Morin ? " Carnbon 
 asked him. 
 
 Fouquier : " The witness did not say that it was I who 
 was sitting. Besides, I was the prosecutor. I was neither 
 judge nor juror. Moreover, I deny the remarks. Morin, 
 the quartermaster, is on the hst." 
 
 This was not answering the question. For an examination 
 of the indictments proves to-day that there had been a 
 mistake in the persons, and that that mistake was to be 
 attributed to the negligence or precipitation of Fouquier 
 and his subordinates. 
 
 Moreover, he replied to Baraguay d'HiUiers, ex-General 
 of the Army of the Rhine, who gave evidence against him 
 in regard to the Luxembourg conspiracy : 
 
 ' ' The witness gave his evidence with resentment. He had 
 been placed on trial. And yet he had been acquitted." 
 
 To which Baraguay d'HiUiers rejoined : " Fouquier 
 had relations with Boyaval at the Luxembourg in order to 
 obtain Usts of proscribed persons. It was Boyaval him- 
 self who told me so."* 
 
 Later, Leroy, caUed "Tenth of August," having exclaimed: 
 " You are vilifjdng the institution of the jury ! " Fouquier 
 added. " It wiU be ended aU the sooner. You must 
 condemn us. Condemn us." 
 
 He laid stress on the immoral character of the spy, 
 Benoit, the maker of lists. " I never wished to Usten to 
 him." 
 
 Benoit, who was in court as a witness, declared : "^ 
 have never made a Ust." 
 
 » Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 332. 
 
FOUQUIER UNDER EXAMINATION 287 
 
 Fouquier then, in order " to roast " Benoit, got Cambon 
 to read some compromising and instructive letters written 
 by that witness. 
 
 Other witnesses, one of whom was Vonschriltz, a carpenter 
 and poUce inspector, affirmed that they had seen Fouquier 
 come to BicStre, and that he had a Ust ; that Fouquier 
 caused four or five informers to be sent down to him and 
 had their irons removed.^ 
 
 Fouquier answered : "I have carried out the orders of 
 the superior authorities." 
 
 In the course of the long discussion that took place 
 on the affair of the Luxembourg Conspiracy, the President 
 asked Fouquier : " Why did you not arrange for the court 
 to hear all the witnesses who were summoned to give evi- 
 dence at the time of the first ' batch' ? " 
 
 Fouquier : " I always asked for this to be done. I asked 
 on that occasion for all the witnesses to be heard. I do not 
 know why they were not heard. It sometimes happened 
 that the President closed the case." 
 
 The President : " You ought then to have asked for and 
 demanded the continuation of the hearing of the witnesses." 
 
 Fouquier : "I did so." 
 
 Cambon : "I have in my hand the official report of the 
 hearing ; there is no mention in it of that demand." 
 
 Fouquier : " That is an omission. I was not com- 
 missioned to make out the official report. I did not sign 
 it. Besides, the matter must have reference to the circum- 
 stances and the persons who assisted me."^ 
 
 In regard to the condemnation of Lomenie de Brienne, a 
 witness declared : " I remember the trial of Elisabeth, Louis 
 Capet's sister. The ex-Comte de Lomenie de Brienne was 
 tried with her. Dumas reproached the ex-Comte de Brienne 
 with having been a Minister in 1788, with having caused 
 himself to be invited to be Mayor by forty neighbouring 
 Commimes, and he was guillotined." 
 
 Fouquier : " On that day I returned from the Committee 
 
 » Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., pp. 349-355. 
 » Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 365. 
 
288 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 of Public Safety at five o'clock in the morning. I was 
 unable to appear in court. I recommended that the greatest 
 precaution should be taken regarding several of the 
 accused. I wished to save Brienne. The invitations of 
 the forty Communes were produced. They were handed 
 over by a resolution of the Government. I may add that 
 Brienne was charged with being the accomplice of the 
 woman Canisy, his niece."^ 
 
 At the same day's hearing, a witness, Thierret-Grandpre, 
 said that on the 26th of Prairial Fouquier had gone to 
 Bicfitre along with Lanne to draw up a Hst of thirty-three 
 alleged conspirators, and he read the following letter, written 
 and signed in Fouquier's hand : 
 
 " The Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal to 
 Citizen Lanne, assistant in the Commission of Civil Adminis- 
 tration, PoUce, and Tribunals. 
 
 " Paris, 26th of Prairial of the year II. 
 " Citizen, enclosed is a statement of the suspected persons 
 who were found in our inquiry, made to-day at BicStre. 
 I invite you to send me, to-morrow at latest, all the docu- 
 ments concerning this case, especially the resolutions. 
 
 " Greeting and fraternity, 
 "A. Q. Fouquier." 2 
 
 On the next day Lanne filled in the blank space in the 
 resolution which the Commission had passed the day before, 
 inserted in it the thirty-three names, and sent to Fouquier 
 the resolution of the Committee of Public Safety of the 25th 
 of Prairial, and that which the Commission had just passed. 
 Those thirty-three persons were tried, as we have seen. 
 Fouquier answered " that he had no initiative." 
 
 At the opening of the hearing of the i8th of Germinal, 
 Fouquier explained that he found himself in an awkward 
 
 » Anne Marie Chariotte de Lomenie, the wife of Canisy, was guillo- 
 tined on the 2ist of Flor6al in the year II. Buchez and Roux, 
 XXXIV., p. 421. 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 432. 
 
"THE RED SHIRTS" 289 
 
 position owing to the arrest of Collet d'Herbois, Billaud 
 Varenne, and others.^ He had not foreseen this when he 
 wrote his memorials for his defence. 
 
 Thierriet-Grandpre spokfe of Lomenie de Brienne, and said 
 that he enjoyed an honourable reputation, that he was 
 regarded as the father of the unfortunate. 
 
 Fouquier answered that this was true ; that " imbued 
 with respect and veneration for ex-Minister Lomenie, he had 
 made arrangements to sit at his trial and to lay stress on all 
 that was memorable and advantageous to that worthy 
 ex-Minister ; but that having been prevented in his laudable 
 intentions, Liendon, his deputy, had anticipated him in court 
 and had succeeded in having the case tried before his arrival 
 at the Tribunal, so that he had not been able to carry out 
 his good intentions towards him." 
 
 Then Cambon said : "I have in my hand the indictment 
 presented and signed by you against Lomenie. . . . 
 You have just uttered a pompous and merited eulogy of 
 ex-Minister Lomenie, and yet, in your indictment, you make 
 it out to be only a crime for him that he captured votes in 
 order to become Mayor of his Commune, and that he asked 
 for invitations from neighbouring Communes. Why, then, 
 do you shelter yourself to-day imder his merit in order 
 to excuse a conviction that your eulogies now destroy ? 
 Did your heart formerly deny what your mouth utters 
 to-day ? "2 
 
 We have not Fouquier's answer. 
 
 On the subject of " the red shirts," he answered that the 
 sentence which condemned them had provided that they 
 should be clad in that garment which was reserved for 
 assassins. 
 
 Cambon : " Here is the minute of the sentence which 
 states that, in accordance with the jury's verdict, the sixty- 
 nine {sic) 3 were not convicted of an individual assassination 
 but of having conspired to assassinate the people by 
 
 '■ Condemned to be deported. 
 
 ' Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 441. 
 
 » In reality there were 54. 
 
290 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 famine. The sentence does not contain this provision for 
 red shirts." 
 
 Fouquier : "I claim that this is a mistake of the 
 registrar, because the sentence so provided." 
 
 Harny, one of the accused, who had been one of the 
 judges in that case, said : " The Tribimal did not so provide. 
 I expressed my astonishment at it, but I was told that it did 
 not concern me."^ 
 
 Regarding the charge of having influenced the jurors in 
 the case of Danton and the Dantonists, Fouquier explained 
 his attitude thus : ' ' The j urors were getting impatient in their 
 room because the hearing did not begin. We went up there, 
 I think, on the i6th, to inform them of the reply of the 
 Committee of PubUc Safety." 
 
 It was pointed out to Fouquier and to Herman that they 
 ought to have had the reply of the Committee read publicly 
 in court. They answered that that reply was only verbal, 
 and stated that the Deputies demanded by the accused should 
 not be heard as witnesses.* Fouquier added : " It was Voul- 
 land and Amar who brought the decree. ... I do not 
 remember that Danton was deprived of the right to speak. 
 I made no sxunmary in that case." 
 
 The registrars of the Tribunal, Tavemier, Paris, Wolff, 
 and Neirot, gave evidence that went severely against him. 
 He cried out : "I have learned that Fabricius (Paris) bears 
 me ill-will. I am surprised at it. I did aU I could to get 
 him out of prison. A warrant was issued by the Committee 
 for the arrest of you, Tavernier, and for Wolff's arrest. I 
 had that decision revoked." 
 
 Then he exclaimed : "It is Danton's trial that has 
 brought us here. This is our reward for saving these 
 fellows." (Murmurs).' 
 
 Long and tiring hearings succeeded one another. Some- 
 times a juror would fall ill and be replaced by one of the f cm- 
 supplementary jurors. The jury pointed out to the Tribunal 
 
 > Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 463. 
 " Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 477. 
 » Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 6. 
 
FOUQUIER'S COURAGE 291 
 
 " that a matter of this importance demands attention and, 
 consequently, rest." Some sessions were adjourned to the 
 next day or the day after. 
 
 The Convention having passed a decree that the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal should remain in permanence until the 
 end of the trial, Ardenne, the PubUc Prosecutor's deputy, 
 addressed the court on the ist of Floreal to say that " the 
 painful position of the accused during the hearings neces- 
 sarily demands a rest ; justice, moreover, should give them 
 time to think over their defence. It will, therefore, be 
 perfectly in the spirit of the law if we devote to this trial 
 all the time that our moral and physical strength allows 
 us." 
 
 Fouquier, on the 19th of Germinal, after a long and bitter 
 discussion with the witness, Robert Wolff, became indis- 
 posed, and the proceedings were brought to an end for that 
 day. However, on the morrow, he recovered all his energy 
 to argue with the witness, Paris.^ 
 
 Mercier, in his Paris pendant la Rivolution, has given us 
 some details concerning Fouquier's attitude during the 
 hearing. " He was Uke Argus in the fable, all eyes and ears. 
 His attention did not appear to relax for a moment during 
 this long case. It is true that he pretended to sleep during 
 the Public Prosecutor's siunming up, but this pretended sleep 
 was only to mislead spectators. He wanted to have an 
 appearance of calm when hell was already in his heart. His 
 fixed look made one lower one's eyes in spite of oneself. 
 When he prepared to speak, he frowned with his eyebrows 
 and wrinkled his forehead. His voice was loud, rough, and 
 threatening ; it suddenly passed from shrill tones to deep, 
 and from these to the lowest whisper. He listened to him- 
 self speaking when he asked a question. No one could put 
 more assurance into his denials, or more skill in the distorting 
 of facts, isolating them, and, above all, marshalling them so 
 as to prove an alibi. When a judge showed him a blank 
 sentence signed in his hand, he denied his signature in a firm 
 voice, and did not tremble before that accusing witness. 
 ' Archives Nationales, W. 499, dossier 550, p. 6. 
 
292 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 When the proof was irresistible he filled the whole court 
 with his terrible roars."^ 
 
 The ushers give evidence against him just as the regis- 
 trars did. 
 
 Boucher (an ex-usher, then a registrar's clerk in the 
 Tribunal) said : " Fouquier complained that we did not 
 work fast enough. ' You do not keep up,' he used to say. 
 ' I want two hundred to two hundred and fifty each 
 d&cade.' " ^ 
 
 Tavemier, also an ex-usher and then a registrar's clerk, 
 said that the jurors chosen by Fouqmer were called the solid 
 men. 
 
 Fouquier answered that when jurors were wanted, they 
 were taken from those in the following column ; that he 
 knew neither strong jurors nor weak jurors.* 
 
 In regard to the trial and sentence of the Marquise 
 de Feuquieres, guillotined without witnesses appearing 
 against her, before the documents arrived, without having 
 signed the official report of the preliminary examination, 
 and while Chateau, the usher, was by the Pubhc Prosecutor's 
 orders at Chaton to look for a document and to summon 
 witnesses, Fouquier answered Ardenne : " If from the pro- 
 ceedings that took place, and if from the confession of this 
 woman, the jurors came to a decision, there is no crime." 
 
 Ardenne : " Did you mention to the jurors, during the 
 proceedings, that you were waiting for documents and 
 witnesses concerning the woman Feuqui6res ? " 
 
 Fouquier : "If you are attacking the trials, I can no 
 longer reply." 
 
 Ardenne : " We are not revising the trials here. But 
 I point out that you ought to have procured and presented 
 the documents for the prosecution and the defence, and pro- 
 duced the appointed witnesses. I tell you, therefore, that 
 you have carried out your duties in a dishonest manner by 
 
 1 Mercier : Paris pendant la RSvolution, II., pp. 127, 128. Quoted 
 by Campardon : Le Tribunal RSvoliUionnaire, II., p. 209. 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 12. 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 15. 
 
ARDENNE'S ARRAIGNMENT 293 
 
 not presenting this letter. If crime ought to be punished, 
 ■we ought to endeavour to discover innocence by every 
 possible means. I tell you that your precipitation is a 
 crime." 
 
 Fouquier : " This woman was arraigned before the 
 Tribunal. The proceedings opened. She confessed. There 
 ■were no further proceedings. You are here tr5dng the Tri- 
 bimal as if a Revolutionary Tribunal were an ordinary 
 tribunal ! You ought to refer to the Revolutionary laws." 
 
 Ardenne : " No matter how imperious circumstances 
 then were, and no matter ho^w severe these laws, you ought 
 not to had added cruelty to them. You ought rather to 
 have carried your head to the scaffold." (Loud applause.) 
 
 Fouquier : " You are holding me responsible for the 
 sentences." 
 
 Ardenne : " No. But I charge you with having trans- 
 formed ordinary deeds into counter-revolutionary offences, 
 and with having been at least one of the principal agents 
 of the former Committees of Government. Besides, you 
 were not ignorant of the decree of amnesty passed after 
 these events."* 
 
 At the hearing of the 25th of Germinal, nine other prisoners 
 ■were brought in and associated as accompUces with those 
 -who were being tried, viz. : Boyaval, Beausire, Benoit, 
 Valagnos, Guyard, and Vemey, former poUce spies and 
 notorious informers ; then Lanne, Herman's assistant on 
 the Commission for CivU Affairs, Police, and Tribimals ; 
 lastly, Herman himself, and Dupaumier, a former pohce 
 official. They passed from the position of -witnesses to that 
 of prisoners on trial, and this owing to their answers and the 
 very compromising documents that had been brought to- 
 gether against them. The part they played in the business 
 of the conspiracies in the prisons seems to have been mon- 
 strous. As for Herman, it was evident that he was " pay- 
 ing" for his attitude during the proceedings at Danton's 
 trial. During the sessions that were to follow, these new 
 
 1 Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 18, and Archives Nationales, W. 
 499, dossier 550, p. 6, folio 19. 
 
294 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 prisoners were on trial, and fresh light was thrown on 
 this dark affair. Once more Danton's trial was referred 
 to, and Herman affirmed that " Danton had an oppor- 
 tunity to speak several times." 
 
 Didier-Thirion, a representative of the people, objected 
 that Danton had not answered the third charge in the 
 indictment against him, and that he had not spoken of the 
 Belgian affair before he was deprived of the right to speak. 
 
 Herman : "I knew nothing of Belgium. The accused 
 were not deprived of the right to speak. At the end of the 
 period appointed by law, on the fourth day, I asked the jurors 
 if they were sufficiently informed to give their verdict. 
 They answered in the affirmative." 
 
 Paris : " Danton was deprived of the right to speak. 
 Herman and Fouquier went into the jurors' room and told 
 the jurors to say that they were sufiftciently informed." 
 
 Fouquier : " Pi,ris was Danton's friend ; it is Danton's 
 death they want to avenge." ^ 
 
 There was a certain number of other cases about which 
 the witnesses gave evidence, and this evidence was over- 
 whelmingly against Fouquier. These were the SaUier case 
 (ist of Flor^al year II.), the Fr^teau case (26th of Prairial 
 year II.), the Peres case (i8th of Messidor year II.), the Saint- 
 Pern case (ist of Thermidor year II.), the Maille case (6th 
 of Thermidor year II.), and the Puy de Verine case (9th of 
 Thermidor year II.). 
 
 We have seen in an earlier part of this work how Henry 
 Guy SaUier, an ex-noble and President of the Cour des Aides 
 of Paris, had been guillotined in a " batch " of members of 
 the Paris Parlement condemned for having protested against 
 the decrees of the National Assembly in 1790. It was his 
 son, Guy Marie, who was aimed at. There had been a 
 mistake as to identity. 
 
 Guy Marie SalUer gave evidence at the trial in a letter 
 in which he charged Fouquier with having committed a wrong 
 act in arraigning the President of the Cour des Aides instead 
 of a member of the Parlement. 
 
 ' Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 130. 
 
THE FRETEAU CASE 295 
 
 To this Fouquier answered that they were making him 
 responsible for the proceedings ; that they would finish 
 trjdng him all the sooner ; that he had no more to say — he 
 was ready.^ 
 
 Concerning the case of Fr^teau, the ex-councillor of the 
 Parlement of Paris who was acquitted on the 27th of Flor6al 
 in the year II., but whom Fouquier had nevertheless kept 
 in prison and again brought to trial, and who had been 
 condemned to death on the 22nd of Prairial in the year II., 
 the Tribimal heard the evidence of Sezille, an official de- 
 fender, which has already been quoted.^ Fouquier answered : 
 " The Fr6teau case does not concern me ; on the second 
 occasion he was arraigned for another offence ; I do not 
 remember having refused to send the warrant for Freteau's 
 release." 
 
 But a witness, Didier Jourdeuil, chief registrar of the 
 Tribunal of the Third Arrondissement, formerly a juror 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal until the 23rd of Prairial, 
 revealed that the juror Girard, then on the benches of 
 the accused, said to him : " Do you not know that Freteau 
 has an income of sixty thousand livres.? " 
 
 Thierriet-Grandpre said that one morning Fouquier said 
 to him in a heated tone : "Do you know what they did 
 yesterday ? They acquitted Freteau, that ex-councillor of 
 the Parlement, that Deputy of the Constituent Assembly, 
 that known counter-revolutionary. But I swear on the 
 word of a Public Prosecutor that that scoundrel will be taken 
 again in a few days, and that once in my grip he shaU not 
 escape again ! " 
 
 Fouquier denied this remark, and said that Freteau had 
 been tried for another ofEence.^ 
 
 Regarding the case of Perfe, a former councillor of the 
 Toulouse Parlement, who was guillotined without having been 
 included either in the questions propounded to the jury or 
 m the indictment, and on the authority of a blank sentence 
 Ardenne remarked to Fouquier that in this matter he had 
 
 » Buchez and Roux, XXXV.. p. 101. • Chapter VIII., p. i8g 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, XXXV., pp. 75 and 97. 
 
296 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 deceived the Convention by giving it false information, and 
 he ordered the proofs of Per6s' good citizenship to be 
 read. 
 
 Fouquier threw all responsibility on Liendon, who sat 
 on that day. 
 
 Ardenne thereupon repHed to him, pointing out that, 
 in the papers concerning the members of the Toulouse 
 Parlement, there was no document for the prosecution, 
 whilst there was a crowd of documents for the defence 
 which he had not presented.^ 
 
 In the matter of Saint-Pern, the son, who had been guillo- 
 tined instead of his father on the ist of Thermidor, Madame 
 de Saint-Pern, Comuher's widow, appeared in person at 
 the session of the ist of Flor6al. 
 
 " On the ist of Thermidor I appeared here on trial along 
 with my grandfather, my father, mother, brother, husband, 
 and several other prisoners. My brother, aged seventeen, 
 against whom there was no indictment, was condemned to 
 death instead of my father, aged fifty-five, who regained his 
 freedom after the gth of Thermidor. Neither my husband 
 nor I received indictments. My husband refused to go into 
 court without one. We were brought one in which it was 
 said that we had assassinated the people on August lo." 
 
 Ardenne read the documents relating to this trial. In the 
 indictment, only Saint-Pern and his wife were mentioned. 
 The son was not included in the indictment nor in the hst 
 of charges. The jury's verdict contained, "J. B. Saint- 
 Pern, aged seventeen, unemployed, bom at Rennes." " The 
 Tribunal condemned the son instead of the father." (Mur- 
 murs of horror.) 
 
 Madame de Saint-Pern then addressed Fouquier. 
 
 " Why did you not also place on trial those who were 
 named in the indictment, Boucher, Custine, and Thomas, 
 for instance ? " 
 
 And she named the jurors who sat in that case, Renaudin, 
 Chatelet, and Prieur. " I remember their names because 
 when my husband was going to execution he handed me 
 » Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 141. 
 
BERTRAND EARERE 
 
JUDGES MERELY FIGURE HEADS 297 
 
 some of his hair in a paper which turned out to be the 
 list of the jurors for that day." 
 
 Ardenne : " The judges who sat on the ist of Thermidor 
 are Hamy, Lohier, and Dumas." 
 
 Fouquier : " I did not sit." 
 
 Lohier : " I have nothing to do with the indictment." 
 
 Hamy : " After the 22nd of Prairial the judges here 
 were merely figure-heads." ^ 
 
 In the matter of young de MaUle, who was condemned to 
 death as a conspirator for having thrown a rotten herring 
 at the head of a turnkey in Saint-Lazare, his mother, 
 Madame de Maille appeared, and was asked by Ardenne : 
 " Can you prove that your son was only sixteen years old ? " 
 
 The witness produced a copy of his birth certificate 
 certifjdng that he was bom on August 25, 1777. And he 
 had been condemned to death on the 6th of Thermidor in 
 the year II. 
 
 Fouquier answered : "If yoimg MaiU6 is included in the 
 indictment, the reason is that he was impeached by a 
 resolution of the Committee of PubMc Safety." 
 
 Ardenne : " I submit to Fouquier that no resolution of 
 the Committee of Public Safety is to be found among the 
 documents relating to the case, and that there is no date on 
 this indictment." 
 
 Fouquier : " There ought to be a Ust on which is written, 
 ' To be sent to the Public Prosecutor.' It is signed by three 
 members of the Committee." 
 
 Ardenne : " It is not in existence." 
 
 Fouquier : " Documents have been taken away. That 
 being so, I have nothing more to say." " 
 
 Ardenne read the article in the indictment which con- 
 cerned the case of Loizerolles, the father, who, on the 
 eve of Robespierre's fall, was guillotined instead of his son. 
 We have already discussed this case.* Ardenne added that 
 the warrant bore the words " the girl LoizeroUes." 
 
 * Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 92. 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 57 and following. 
 ' See Chapter III., p. 99 and note p. 98. 
 
298 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 " There was no girl LoizeroUes brought to trial," answered 
 Fouquier. " It was the son. After the law of the 22nd of 
 Prairial, no preUminary examinations were held. Ushers 
 or other persons were sent to the prisons, whose duty it 
 was to take the prisoners' names and bring them to the 
 Tribunal. The person who went to Lazare took the father 
 for the son. My deputy, I think it was Liendon, ought 
 to have stopped the proceedings against the father." ^ 
 
 When, at the evening hearing, on the 2nd of Floreal, 
 a witness* charged Fouquier with having said concerning a 
 paralysed woman, " It is not the tongue, it is the head we 
 want," Fouquier denied the fact. But Cambon imme- 
 diately said : " Fouquier has just told you that he had never 
 placed paralysed persons on trial. I am going to show that 
 he placed on trial not only paralysed persons, but also a 
 man who was deaf, blind, and in his second childhood." 
 
 He then spoke of M. Durand Puy de Verine and read the 
 certificates relating to his case. 
 
 Fouquier answered : " Those certificates ought to have 
 been presented. I cannot be responsible for evers^hing. I 
 do not know, besides, whether I was sitting on that day. 
 They were not charged with conspiracy. They were im- 
 peached by the Committee." 
 
 And (what seems to contradict his statement a moment 
 before that he did not know whether he was sitting on that 
 day) he added : " Besides, that blind man did not seem to 
 be in his second childhood. Moreover, he confessed in court . ' ' 
 
 But Cambon had the official report of the case, and he 
 read the names of the members who composed the court on 
 that day, " Dumas, Maire, Felix, judges. Fouquier, Public 
 Prosecutor." ' 
 
 Among his witnesses for the defence, Fouquier had 
 summoned Camot, one of the members of the Committee of 
 Public Safety whose orders he has executed ; but on the 12th 
 
 '■ Buchez and Roux, XXXIV., p. 439. 
 
 • Retz, a merchant, fonnerly steward of the Hospice de I'EvSche. 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, XXXV., p. 137, and see the of&cial report in 
 W. 433, Nov 973. 
 
FOUQUIER ADDRESSES THE COURT 299 
 
 of Floreal (May i), at the morning hearing, the President 
 read a letter from Carnot, apologising for not being able to 
 come, and enclosing a certificate of illness, 
 
 Fouquier then declared that " he abandoned his 
 witnesses." The hearing of evidence came to an end on 
 that day.^ 
 
 At five o'clock in the evening, Cambon, the Public Prose- 
 cutor's deputy, summed up for the prosecution. Fouquier 
 slept. He was heard in his general defence from eight 
 o'clock until ten o'clock. On the 13th, at nine o'clock in 
 the morning, he continued his defence until half-past eleven. 
 Nauhn, Herman, Leroy, Lanne, Chretien, SceUier, and 
 Vilate spoke afterwards. On the 14th, at half-past nine in 
 the morning, the other prisoners were heard. In the evening 
 Gamier-Launay, Delaporte, Trinchard, and Dupaumier 
 defended themselves. Guyard and Vemey entrusted their 
 defence to their advocates. 
 
 Fouquier-TinviUe addressed the court. He said that part 
 of his defence was lacking. This was the evidence of Bil- 
 laud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois, and BarSre, who had been 
 deported, and that of the members of the former Committees 
 of Government who were then in prison. 
 
 "It is not I who ought to be arraigned here, but the 
 chiefs whose orders I have executed. I have acted only in 
 virtue of the laws of the 14th of Frimaire and of the 23rd of 
 Ventose, laws passed by a Convention invested with full 
 power. Through the absence of those members, I find myself 
 the head of a conspiracy that I have never known. Here I 
 am, a target for the calumny of a people always eager to 
 find persons guilty. (Vehement murmurs.) Only men of 
 ill-will can find what I say to be wrong." 
 
 Afterwards he repUed to several facts that had been 
 alleged against him. 
 
 On the morning of the 15th, GaiUard de la Ferriere, 
 his advocate, spoke on his behalf. The other defenders 
 addressed the court on behalf of their cUents. In the 
 evening, Cressend, Gueneau, and Domanget spoke. 
 
 • Archives Nationales, W. 499, No. 550, pidce 7, p; 47. 
 
300 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 On the i6th, at nine o'clock in the morning, Domanget 
 continued his speech until eleven o'clock. Leroy, Fouquier, 
 Ganney, and Valagnos made some observations, and 
 Fouquier again addressed the court, and presented to the 
 jury some facts in his defence. 
 
 The pleadings closed at eleven o'clock. The Tribunal 
 declared that the jury should not disperse until the verdict 
 were given. The President summed up at the evening ses- 
 sion. The questions were propoimded. The jurors retired 
 to their room to consider their verdict at nine o'clock in the 
 evening, and at noon on the 17th they came back to declare 
 their verdict. This declaration lasted until three o'clock. 
 The Tribunal retired to the Council Chamber to consider 
 it. It came back at five o'clock. The accused were brought 
 into court. Judgment was pronounced.'^ 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville was convicted of machinations and plots 
 tending to favour the liberticidal plots of the enemies of the 
 people and the RepubUc, with provoking the dissolution 
 of the national representation and the overthrow of Republi- 
 can government, with exciting citizens to arm against 
 one another, particularly by causing the deaths, through 
 the disguised form of a trial, of an innumerable crowd of 
 French people of all ages and both sexes ; of inventing, for 
 this purpose, conspiracies in various houses of detention 
 in Paris ; of making out and causing to be made out, in 
 those various houses of detention, Usts of proscribed persons, 
 etc. ; of having acted with evil intentions. He was unani- 
 mously condemned to death by the votes of all the eleven 
 jurors.* 
 
 Foucault, SceUier, Garnier-Launay, Leroy, called " Tenth 
 of August," Renaudin, Vilate, Prieur, Chatelet, Girard, 
 Boyaval, Benoit, Lanne, Vernier, Dupaumier, and Herman 
 were convicted of having been accomphces in Fouquier's 
 machinations and plots, and of having acted with evil 
 intentions. They were condemned to death. 
 
 Maire, Hamy, DeliSge, Nauhn, Delaporte, Lohier, Trin- 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 499, dossier 550, pi^ce 7, p. 57. 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 499, dossier 550, p. 13. 
 
THE CONDEMNED 301 
 
 chard, Brochet, Chretien, Ganney, Trey, Guyard, and 
 Valagnos were not convicted of being principals, but of 
 being accomplices in those machinations and plots. They 
 had not acted with evil intentions. They were acquitted. 
 Duplay and Beausire were also acquitted.^ 
 
 It was six o'clock in the evening. The Courrier Republi- 
 cain tells us that when the verdict was announced Fouquier 
 appeared to be " furious." SceUier hurled a pamphlet 
 which he held in his hand at the President's head. Herman 
 took off his hat " in a moment of rage " and flung it out of 
 the window. Most of the condemned persons called the 
 judges and jurors scoundrels, and predicted for them a 
 death similar to that which they were going to experience. 
 " Yet forty days," they exclaimed, " and Nineveh shall be 
 destroyed ! "^ 
 
 As for the crowd that filled the court, it seemed to have 
 been moved by various feelings. Some police inspectors 
 wrote in their report of the day : " Yesterday (i6th of 
 Floreal in the year III., May 5, 1795), Fouquier-Tinville's 
 case was talked about in several cafes. Opinions on this 
 matter were very much divided. Some citizens held that 
 this scoimdrel and his accompUces were to be sentenced 
 to death. Others maintained that the Convention had 
 provided otherwise, that it had given orders that they 
 should only be condemned to deportation, that this measure 
 was of importance in order not to expose Fouquier to the 
 pubhc gaze, for he would not fail to disclose many horrors 
 that it was the Government's interest to keep secret."* 
 
 The condemned persons asked to be executed that same 
 evening. But it was late. Twilight was coming on, and the 
 executioner was not to be foimd. The execution had to 
 be postponed imtil the following morning. 
 
 Fouquier-TinviUe then wrote these few words which 
 have been preserved for us : 
 
 » Archives Nationales, W. 499, dossier 550, p. 15. 
 • Courrier RSpublicain for the gth of Floreal, quoted by Aulard : 
 Paris sous la Reaction Thermidorienne, I., p. 707. 
 » Ibid:, p. 701. 
 
302 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 " I have nothing to reproach myself with : I have always 
 conformed to the laws ; I have never been the creature 
 of Robespierre or Saint-Just ; on the contrary, I have 
 been four times on the point of being arrested. I die for 
 my country and without reproach : I am satisfied ; my 
 innocence wiU be recognised later. 
 
 " A. Q. FOUQUIER."! 
 
 On the i8th of Floreal (May 7, 1795), early in the morn- 
 ing, the quays and streets adjoining the House of Justice 
 and the Place de Greve were black with people. The immense 
 crowd was waiting for the arrival of the carts. Before the 
 Hotel de Ville, the scaffold reared itself up in the dazzling 
 Hght of day. " The spirit which seemed to animate this 
 multitude was not that ferocious joy which joy {sic) inspired 
 in the cannibals who were the daily spectators of the Revolu- 
 tionary butcheries ; the curiosity which leads us to go and see 
 extraordinary monsters seemed to be the only feeling that 
 reigned in this crowd of individuals of every position, 
 and age, and of both sexes."^ 
 
 Among the groups only one voice was heard : "He has 
 deserved it. He was given plenty of time and every means 
 of defending himself." And many people told how " the 
 monster " had deprived them of a friend, a father, or a 
 relative. Some congratulated themselves on having escaped 
 his carts by a miracle. He was called " a man-eater." 
 
 The windows were filled with curious persons of both 
 sexes, " on whose faces one read that satisfaction which 
 the destruction of crime procures to virtue."^ 
 
 Suddenly, in the midst of the crowd, above their heads, 
 the three carts were seen advancing. Fouquier-TinviUe 
 was in the last. -?A torrent of invectives and insults poured 
 upon him. Desperate voices cried out to him : " Give me 
 back my father, give me back my family, give me back my 
 brother, give me back my friend, my wife, my sister, my 
 
 ' Archives Nattonales, W. 499, dossier 530, p. 41. 
 • Messager du Soir for the 19th of Flor&il, quoted by Aulard : 
 Paris sous la Reaction Thermidorienne, p. 707. 
 ' Messager du Soir for the igth of FIor6al. 
 
THE EXECUTION 303 
 
 husband, my mother, my children ! " Others jeered : " They 
 are going to deprive you of the right to speak ! " "In 
 two minutes the pleadings come to an end ! " "Is your 
 conscience sufficiently enlightened ? " " The people are 
 going to fire an uninterrupted volley in its turn ! " " Go, 
 scoundrel, and join your victims ! "^ 
 
 Shrill cries and cheers of triumph were raised. The 
 multitude rocked in continuous movement. Fouquier was 
 pale and hvid, aU the muscles of his face contracted, his eyes 
 " bloodshot." Doubtless he had wept as he thought of his 
 wife, of his sons, of his children, of the beings whom he was 
 leaving in the most frightful destitution. Some thought 
 -they saw him smile and sneer. A journalist heard him 
 answer the groans with these words : " Vile riff-raif, go 
 and look for bread ! " The people cried out, " Long Uve 
 justice ! " 
 
 The three carts stopped before the scaffold. The con- 
 demned men alighted from them. One after another, they 
 were balanced beneath the bloody triangle of the guillotine. 
 Fouquier-TinviUe was executed last. The people howled 
 and asked his head to be shown to them. " The executioner 
 seized it and displayed it to the eager gaze of the pubhc."^ 
 
 It was eleven o'clock in the morning. The crowd with- 
 drew slowly. It flowed over the Place, along the quays, 
 through the streets, over the bridges, commenting on the 
 events, quiet or noisy, satisfied with the execution, and 
 pleased with the fine day beneath the Floreal sun. 
 
 But, not far off, in a modest lodging in the Rue de la Harpe, 
 a widow was weeping. A life of opprobrium, of terrible 
 poverty, of absolute, irremediable isolation, was beginning 
 for her. She was Madame Fouquier-TinviUe. 
 
 ' Messagev du Soir for the 19th of Flor6al. 
 « Courrier RSpuhlicain for the 19th of Flor6al. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 " T WAS the agent of the Committees of Government. 
 
 I What would you have done in my place ? " Fou- 
 
 I quier-TinviUe said and repeated in his defence 
 
 before the judges. And that, upon the whole, is 
 
 his only defence. 
 
 It is a hundred and eighteen years since the ex-Public 
 Prosecutor of the Terror asked that question. Can we 
 answer it to-day in a clear, straightforward, and precise 
 manner ? 
 
 In order to judge Fouquier-Tinville let us go back to the 
 time when he held his terrible magistracy, to that epoch 
 when, in Revolutionary France, public order was so pro- 
 foimdly troubled, when the judicial body was a body of 
 servile officials, ready to obey in any way the ephemeral 
 chiefs of an unstable Government pledged to the changing 
 humours of the multitude and the infuriated struggles of 
 parties. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville was amazed that he was sacrificed by 
 the Thermidorians, after the fall of Robespierre, Couthon, and 
 Saint-Just, after the exile of BiUaud-Varenne, Collot d'Her- 
 bois, and Barfere. He advocated in court the sending to the 
 scaffold of the victims of the gth of Thermidor. And on the 
 14th of Thermidor he was preparing to be PubMc Prosecutor 
 " under the Thermidorian faction." If he had hved and 
 kept his place, he would have been a dihgent Public Prose- 
 cutor under the Directory and he would willingly have made 
 an Imperial Procurator under Napoleon. 
 
 For his defence, he claimed that he only executed the 
 orders of the Committees of Government. It is true that he 
 executed their orders. But he did more than execute them. 
 
 304 
 
AN APPEAL TO POSTERITY 305 
 
 He outstripped them. In Wolff's words at the trial, Fou- 
 quier transformed into a slaughter-house a Tribunal which, 
 from the very severity of its functions, ought to have been 
 the more scrupulously subject to forms. He alone did not 
 transform that Tribunal into a slaughter-house. But, aided 
 by President Dumas, Vice-President Coffinhal, and others, 
 he contributed to that transformation. 
 
 He defended himself against the charge of having instil 
 gated the deprivation of Danton and the Dantonists of the 
 right to plead. He said that he had nothing to do with the 
 idea of a conspiracy intended to empty the prisons and 
 depopulate France. He affirmed that he had never known 
 the pohce spies, the compilers of lists of proscribed persons. 
 He said that he had always been faithful to his duties. He 
 had shown himself humane, " especially towards the unfor- 
 tunate." The conspiracies in the prisons ? He would 
 not have even thought of such a thing but for the law of the 
 23rd of Ventose and the Committee of Public Safety " which 
 imposed on him the rigorous duty of prosecuting and bringing 
 to trial all individuals suspected of such offences." The 
 mistakes in drawing up the indictments ? They were due 
 to the negUgence of his deputies or to errors committed by 
 secretaries in the prosecutor's office. He had no knowledge 
 that, by his act, one person was ever sent to death instead of 
 another. He only carried out orders, for, he said loudly, 
 " when the law speaks, the public official must act." And 
 he laid informations against Robespierre, Couthon, and 
 President Dumas. 
 
 He himself, on the other hand, had resisted, in certain 
 cases, the wishes of members of the Committee of Public 
 Safety and of the Committee of General Security (this was 
 not the case, however, when Vadier made him bring the 
 Darmaings and de Pamiers to trial), and he had perpetually, 
 courageously, but vainly " demanded the revision of the 
 terrible law of the 22nd of Prairial." He appealed to a 
 posterity which would avenge " the insults he was made to 
 experience " in the course of the proceedings at his trial. 
 
 Certainly these denials are very clear. No prisoner had 
 
3o6 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 more assurance, defended himself more skilfully, knew better 
 how to deny the evidence of facts, to distort them, to present 
 them in a special and favourable light, to isolate and destroy 
 them, to say that he did not sit on a given day, to throw all 
 responsibility on others. None was more stubborn, more 
 imperturbable, less disconcerted. His defence was specious. 
 But the documents remain among the papers relating to the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, and they bear his signature. There 
 are indictments with erasures, filled with commitments, 
 unauthorised insertions between the lines, blank spaces. 
 There are pleadings for the prosecution against accused 
 persons, with no evidence to support them. There are wit- 
 nesses for the prosecution summoned by him who were 
 nothing more than police spies from the prisons or compilers 
 of lists. 
 
 He said that he had never brought to trial any persons 
 except conspirators, and that he had had orders. But what 
 of the paralysed Durand Puy de Verine and his wife ? What 
 of Toupin, the Breton, who could not speak French ? What 
 of Madame de Lavergne ? Were they conspirators ? He 
 did not know that any person had ever been sent to death for 
 another. What of M. de Saint Pern ? What of Madame de 
 Maille? What of P6rds ? What of Maurin ? 
 
 He exonerated himself from the charges that weighed on 
 him by throwing all responsibiUty on the members of the 
 Committee of Public Safety, on his colleagues, on his 
 subordinates. But Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just 
 perished on the scaffold. He made himself out to be innocent 
 by accusing President Dumas. But Dumas perished on 
 the scaffold. It is easy to incriminate dead men. They 
 cannot reply. And there were convenient witnesses whom 
 he should not have feared to face. Why did he not think of 
 incriminating Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois until 
 they had gone into exile and been deported to Sinnamarie. 
 
 And all the negligence, all the errors, all the omissions that 
 were pointed out in the indictments, how easy it was for him 
 to attribute them to Liendon, his deputy, who had fled the 
 country, and who, consequently, could not contradict him ! 
 
THE LAWS OF HUMANITY 307 
 
 He invoked the laws. But above the Revolutionary laws, 
 are there not superior and imperishable laws which enjoin 
 pity, humanity and courage ? If, on the 22nd of Prairial, 
 when he recognised that the task imposed on the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal became henceforth abominable, he had 
 firmly given in his resignation, he would undoubtedly have 
 been immediately brought to trial and sacrificed. But pos- 
 terity would not have to dishonour his memory, as it has 
 hitherto done, and that without any party distinction. 
 
 It is a rare thing in studying the men of the Revolution 
 for us not to find ourselves faced by most interesting moral 
 cases, and it often becomes almost impossible to explain 
 them in the final analysis. 
 
 Fouquier-TinviUe, thorough instrument of the Terror 
 though he was, was accessible to feehngs of humanity and 
 
 pity- 
 He caused the acquittal of Garce, a captain in the Guyenne 
 regiment ; Bayard de la Vingtrie, lieutenant of the bailiwick 
 of Bellesme; Depuis, an employee in the military trans- 
 ports; and Mouchet, the King's architect. He wished to 
 save Angram d'Alleray, a former civil lieutenant of the 
 Chatelet, who had rendered him services as Procurator at the 
 Chatelet. . He told him to deny everything.^ 
 
 He signed a letter in which he declared that, in spite of 
 the decree of the Convention, General Harville was not 
 guilty, " and that it was impossible for him to find groimds 
 for an indictment." Montane, the ex-President of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, owed him his life. And yet they 
 did not care for one another, and had had violent arguments. 
 Many prisoners who were languishing in prison wrote to him 
 asking for a prompt trial ; he systematically ignored them 
 in their prisons. Systematically— and humanely— he laid 
 on one side the papers concerning them, thus taking into 
 consideration the remark of his friend Lavaud, the advocate, 
 Volenti tnori non creditur. (For he loved Latin quotations, 
 having been an excellent student, and he sometimes allowed 
 
 • But Angram d'Alleray did not pay attention to these overtures, 
 and allowed himself to be condemned to death by the Tribunal. 
 
3o8 THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF THE TERROR 
 
 himself to be disarmed by them.) Lastly, he saved the 
 ninety-four men of Nantes. 
 
 How then are we to explain him ? What was there 
 behind that high, firm forehead on which the raised arch of 
 the eyebrows marked a note of interrogation ? What was 
 the real thought that lived in those restless, attentive eyes, 
 in that dark and oblique glance, so fixed that others could 
 not hold out against it ? 
 
 We have freely sought, without prejudice or hatred, 
 to understand him and to make him understood. And this, 
 in the final analysis, is what we think of him. 
 
 There was a conflict in his nature. There was a rupture 
 between what pertained to his middle-class, human character 
 and what pertained to the ofiicial, to the magistrate, to the 
 agent of the Committees of Public Safety and of General 
 Security, to the priest of Revolutionary justice. Between 
 the magistrate and the private man, there had been, in his 
 inmost being, terrible conflicts. We have proof of this in 
 his letters to his wife. He was good to his wife and children. 
 He loved them tenderly. 
 
 But let us endeavour to see into him more clearly still, 
 to peer clearly into his very depths. Fouquier was an 
 arbitrary, violent man, ill at ease within the narrow limits 
 of a tribunal. He was impatient of his colleagues and his 
 official equals, especially Dumas. He had a despotic char- 
 acter. And he had the education, all the education and 
 habits of a lawyer, of a procurator, of a man brought up and 
 trained in legal chicanery and procedure. 
 
 He wanted to win his cases at whatever cost. He confused 
 his part as Public Prosecutor with his old quibbUng habits. 
 He wanted to win his cases, and he won them all with a high 
 hand during the Terror and until the gth of Thermidor. 
 But he lost one case, his own, and that in spite of a vehement 
 defence, full of talent, in which he confronted an entire 
 Government. Public vengeance was waiting for him. He 
 was hooted at. Too much blood had been shed. Paris 
 had had enough of seeing so much blood flowing every day. 
 
 And now must we accept the objection made by Fouquier 
 
TERRIBLE PROOFS 309 
 
 during his trial that P3.ris, the registrar, and Wolff, his mortal 
 enemies, had had the documents for that trial in their hands, 
 and could and did remove some of those that told for his 
 defence ? Must we conclude from this that perhaps 
 Fouquier was not guilty, that the evidence for the prosecution 
 alone remains against him, and that, in this position of the 
 question, all definite judgment ought to be suspended ? 
 
 But, as we have said above, the most terrible of the 
 proofs that exist against the ex-Public Prosecutor are his 
 own indictments. They are to be found among the National 
 Archives. Anyone can consult them and verify the frightful 
 precipitation with which " batches " of unhappy persons 
 were sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and thence we 
 know to what end — women dragged from their husbands, 
 girls from their mothers, old men sent to death. Nothing 
 is so moving and so cruel as the reading of those innumerable 
 indictments, even for the student whose profession has 
 accustomed him to impassiveness. 
 
 As regards the charges brought against Fouquier of having 
 been bribed in his duties by more or less considerable sums, 
 we think they cannot be maintained. No proof of such 
 corruption exists against him, and he died very poor, leaving 
 his wife and children in the most appalling want. 
 
 To conclude, it seems to us just and opportune to borrow 
 a quotation from Ardenne, the Pubhc Prosecutor's deputy, 
 one of the judges belonging to the Thermidorian party 
 it is true, but a man who used language as honest as it is 
 resolute. 
 
 " No matter how imperious the Revolutionary laws were, 
 you ought not to have added to their cruelty. You ought 
 rather to have carried your head to the scaffold. I do 
 not hold you responsible for the sentences, but I charge you 
 with having transformed ordinary deeds into counter- 
 revolutionary offences." 
 
 This seems to us to be the only answer to Fouquier's 
 question which we placed at the beginning of this conclusion. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Admiral, Henry, 68-75, 80, 81, 
 
 170, 174, 182 
 Adnet, Captain Louis Claude, 113, 
 
 115, 128, 242, 243 
 Advenier, Jean, 240 
 Agier, Judge, 217, 275 
 Agier's speech at the Revolutionary 
 
 Tribune, 217 
 Allain, 96 
 Alleray, Denis Frangois Angram d', 
 
 62, 307 and note 
 Amans, 235 
 Amar, Andre, xv., 51, 54, 56, 146, 
 
 150, 151, 176, 181, 223, 225, 234, 
 
 237, 240, 253, 254, 290 
 Amboise, Crussol d', loi 
 Andr6, Thomas, 76 
 Arbeltier, 95 
 
 Ardenne, deputy Public Prosecu- 
 tor, 282, 291, 309 
 Annance, 231 
 Annand, Jean Antoine, 176 and 
 
 note 
 Attack on Collot d' Herbois, 68-75 
 Aubagne, Judge Bertrand d', 275, 
 
 283 
 Aubigny, Jean Louis Marie Villain 
 
 d', 163, 244, 261, 262 
 Aubry, 249, 270, 271, 273, 282 note 
 Aucourt, Henrietta Gerard d', 32, 
 
 125, 126, 139, 156-163, 191, 192, 
 
 303, 308, 309 
 Audouin, 163 
 
 Aumont's speech at the Revolution- 
 ary Tribune, 216 
 Auvray, Jean Baptiste Benoit, 166, 
 
 246 
 
 Banville, Citizeness, 187 
 
 Barbier, Judge, 274, 282 note 
 
 Barfire, 73, 123, 150, 299, 304 
 
 Bamave, xii 
 
 Barraly, Andre, 271, 272 
 
 Barras, 118, 178 
 
 Barry, Madame du, xvi, 41, 267, 
 
 278 
 Barthelemy, 147 
 
 " Batches " of prisoners, 58 and 
 
 note, 59 
 Batz, de, attempted to save Louis 
 
 XVI., 72 
 Bayle, Moyse, xvi, 151 
 Baynard de la Vingtrie, Lieutenant, 
 
 307 
 Beausire, Jean Baptiste, spy, 83, 
 92, 231, 235, 240 and note, 26J, 
 
 293. 301 
 Bellesme, 307 
 Benoit, spy, 83, 87 and note, 88, 92- 
 
 94 and note, 209, 231, 265, 286, 
 
 287, 293, 300 
 Bernard, Jacques Claude, 121, 149 
 Bernard, Lieutenant, 128, 129 
 Berthaut, Antoine Marie, 78 and 
 
 note, 258, 259 
 Bertrand, Charles Gombert, 228 
 Beudon, 268 
 BicStre prison, conspiracy in the, 
 
 82-85, 187, 229, 239, 287, 288 
 Billaud-Varenne, 50, 57, 59, 86, 
 
 149-151, 289, 299, 304, 306 
 Biron, the two women de, 167, 
 
 171 and note 
 Birth of Fonquier-Tinville, the, 30 
 Bligny, Pierre Marie, 32, 232, 233 
 Bohemia, The King of, 41 
 Boisgelin, Madame de, 86 
 Boispereuse, 231 
 Botot-Dumesnil, Jacques Marie, 
 
 115, 116, 227, 241 
 Boucher, Auguste- Joseph, 166, 167, 
 
 171, 292, 296 
 Bougon, Charles Jacques, 122 
 Bourdon, Leonard, 44, 118, 181, 
 
 241, 260, 262 and note, 263 
 Bourdon (of the Oise), 173, 215 
 Bourgeois, 95 
 
 Bourgueil Committee, 223 
 Bourree-Corberon, 59 
 Boutroue, Advocate, 283 
 Boyaval, Pierre Joseph, spy, 83, 87 
 
 and note, 88, 92, 93, 230-232, 235, 
 
 265, 286, 293, 300 
 Boyer-Brun, 74 
 
 3" 
 
312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bravet, Judge, 120, 273, 282 note 
 Brtard, Jean- Jacques, 148 and 
 
 note 
 Brienne, Comte Lojnenie de (see 
 
 Ix>menie de Brienne) 
 BTillon-Buss6, Perronnet, 106 
 Brissot, 59 
 Brival, 53 
 Biocket, 60, 160, 249, 266, 267, 
 
 273, 282 note, 300 
 Blotters of Fouquier-Tinville, the, 
 
 3i> 157 
 Brunet, prison surgeon, 85, 264 
 Budelot, 118, 134 
 Buttin, a juror reported as being in 
 
 two courts at the same time, 104 
 
 and note 
 
 Callon, 53 
 
 Cambon, deputy Public Prosecutor, 
 XV. note, 64, 77, 80, 150, 256, 
 275, 280, 282, 284, 285, 299 
 
 Cambon's opening address at Fou- 
 quier-Tinville' s trial, 284, 285 
 
 Camille Desmoulins, 33, 34 note, 
 50, 57. 249. 250, 252, 253 
 
 Camille Desmoulins, by Edouard 
 Fleury, 33 
 
 Campardon, xvii, 30, 33 
 
 Canaple, Jean Fran9ois Esprit, 
 188 
 
 Conciergerie prison, Fouquier- 
 Tinville in the, 212 
 
 Canisy, Anne Marie Charlotte de 
 Lomenie, 288 and note 
 
 Carmelite prison, conspiracy in the, 
 83. 94. 95, Z08, 258, 264, 265 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville in the, 129- 
 
 135, 139-149 
 
 Camot, 149, 298 
 
 Carra, 59 
 
 Carrier, xviii., 152, 153, 162, 212 
 and note, 215 
 
 Castellanes, the, 167 
 
 Cauchois, 124, 126-128 
 
 Caz^s, Vadier's grudge against, 79 
 
 Cazotte, Elisabeth, 34 
 
 Cazotte, Nicolas, 34 
 
 Chabot, 50, 67, 251 
 
 Champagnier, 95 
 
 Champlfitreux, M0I6 de, 59 
 
 Chandelier, 124-126 
 
 Character of Fouquier-Tinville, the, 
 xii., 33, 166, 167, 186, 189, 202, 
 246, 247, 308 
 
 Charry, Charlotte de Luppfe, 
 Countesse de, 178 note 
 
 Chateau, Urbain Didier, 78, 91, 117, 
 164, 179, 180, 236, 249, 260, 273, 
 282 note, 296, 300 
 
 Chanmette, 47, 57, 58, 173 
 
 Chaumette, Madame, 57 
 
 Chauveau-Lagarde, 64 
 
 Chaux, 153 
 
 Chavard, 264 
 
 Chenier, Andre, poet, xiii, 98 
 
 Chevagne, prisoners from, 107-109 
 
 Children in the Conciergerie prison, 
 258 
 
 Children of Fouquier-Tinville, the, 
 32, 33, 308, 309 
 
 Chimay, Princesse de, 100, loi 
 
 Chimney-sweep indicted as ex- 
 nobles, 106 
 
 Chretien, 230, 246, 267-270, 273, 282 
 note, 299, 301 
 
 ClSre, Catherine, 42, 43 
 
 Clermont-Tounerre, Comte de, 100, 
 
 lOI 
 
 Cloots, 51 
 
 Cochefer, Christophe, 122 
 
 Coffinhal, Judge, xii, xiii, xiv, 30, 
 44. 75, 77, 97-100, 107, 112 
 and note 113, 114, 117, 154, 168, 
 188, 198, 199 and note, 200, 231, 
 234, 235, 240, 242, 243, 245 
 
 CoUot d'Herbois, 68-73, 86, 131, 
 149, 150, 200, 267, 289, 299, 304, 
 306 
 
 Committee of Public Safety, xv, 
 
 53, 55, 85, "8, 145, 147 
 Committees of surveillance, 45 and 
 
 note 
 Conde, the surrender of, 43 
 Conspiracies in prisons, 82-102, 158, 
 
 159, 169, 186, 188, 193, 207-209, 
 
 226, 228, 229, 231-233, 235, 239. 
 
 240, 243, 253, 258, 260, 263-265, 
 
 277, 278, 285-288, 293, 305 
 Contat, Andre, 113, 247, 248 
 Convention, a stormy session of 
 
 the, 150 
 Conviction of Fouquier-Tinville, 
 
 the, 300 
 Coquery, informer, 83, 96, 98, 102, 
 
 239, 243, 265 
 Corday, Charlotte, the trial of, 44, 
 
 181 note 
 Comillier, Jean Louis, 31 
 Comu, Charles, 262, 263 
 Comulier, Francois Joseph, 90, 91, 
 
 219, 220 
 Comulier, Madame, 91 
 Costard, the woman, 74 
 
INDEX 
 
 313 
 
 Conrlet-Beaulop, 175 
 
 Courrier Republicain, the, 301 
 
 Courtier, 128 
 
 Courtois, 53 
 
 Couthon, Georges, 75, 116, 117, 
 120, 123, 198 and note, 200, 201 
 and note, 214, 273, 304-306 
 
 CrancS, Dubois de, 147, 198 
 
 Cressend, Advocate, 283, 299 
 
 Criminal Tribunal, the, 36-38 
 
 Crussol d'Amboise, Marquis de, 100 
 
 Custine, 296 
 
 Custines, General, 43 
 
 Danton, xii, xvi, 36, 37, 48, 50- 
 
 61, 72, 146, 151, 164, 173-175. 
 
 183, 207, 228, 248-250; 252-254, 
 
 260, 261, 290, 293, 294, 305 
 Danton's speech on a Criminal 
 
 Tribunal, 36, 37 
 Darmaing, Francois, 79, 305 
 Darmaing, Jean Baptiste, 189 
 Darmaing, John Pierre Jerdme, 
 
 79. 305 
 David, 150, 176, 253, 254 
 Debreaux, 125, 126 
 Debregeas, Judge Jean, 275 
 Debusne, Lieutenant Louis Francis, 
 
 115, 187, 188 
 Defence of Fouquier-Tinville, the, 
 
 299, 300, 304-306, 308 
 Dfegrouchette, Pierre Athanase 
 
 P6pin, 96, 233 and note, 234 
 Deguaigne, Pierre Urbain, 118, 134, 
 
 246, 247 
 Deisderichen, 50, 5t 
 Delaporte, Judge, 273, 282 note, 
 
 299, 300 
 DeUfige, Judge Gabriel, 104, 109 
 
 note, 120, 273, 282 note, 300 
 Delignon, Gabriel, 74 
 Delorme, 282 
 Demay, n8, 134 
 Depois, 307 
 
 Derbez, Jacques, 99 note, 100 
 Derozifires, 128 
 Desboisseaux, Charles Huant, 113, 
 
 117, 122 noU, 165, 173, 249 
 DescaS6, 1:09 
 Deschamps, Jean Robert, 85, 178, 
 
 187 
 D^sgrouettes, Pepin, 98, 102 
 Desisnards, 96 
 Desmorest, Pierre Fran9ois Etienne, 
 
 122, 169, 189, 220, 221 
 Desmoulins, Madame, 57, 58 
 Devillas, Judge, 275 
 
 Dhazard, Jean Baptiste Mathieu, 122 
 
 " Dictatorship of Justice," the, 39 
 and note 
 
 Didier, xv and note, 249, 265, 266, 
 273, 282 note 
 
 Didier-Thirion, 294 
 
 Dietrich, Fr^d6ric, 260 and note 
 
 Dillon, General Arthur, 57, 58 
 
 Dobsen, Claude-Emmanuel, 152 
 and note, 207, 212, 215, 234-236 
 
 Dodin, 89 
 
 Domanget, Advocate, 283, 299, 300 
 
 Donz6-Verteuil, 38 
 
 Douet, Jean Claude, 65 
 
 Douet, Madame, 65 
 
 Drunkards and madmen, Fouquier- 
 Tinville, pitiless towards, 41, 42 
 
 Dubois, 186 
 
 Dubois-Crance, 268 
 
 Duchesne, 91 
 
 Ducis, letter to Fouquier-Tipville 
 from the poet, 88 note 
 
 Ducray, Anne, 186, 187 
 
 Dufau, 264 
 
 Dufoumy, Louis Pierre, 175 and 
 note, 176 
 
 Dumas, Rene Franfois, xii, xiii, 
 47. 56, 61, 70-72, 75, 78, 81, 83, 
 86, 90, 104, 105, 107, 109-1U, 
 114-116, 120, 123, 124, 132, 133, 
 147, 149, 154, 168, 170, 180, 
 182, 198, 200, 203, 226-228, 234, 
 235, 238, 240, 243, 250, 254, 
 271, 277, 279, 285, 297, 298, 
 305. 306, 308 
 
 Dumas's arrests in court, 109 
 
 Dumesnii, Botot — 129 and note 
 
 Dupaumier, Franfois, spy, 83, 
 239, 240, 293, 299, 300 
 
 Duperron, Anisson, 61 
 
 Duplay, 73, 249, 272, 273, 282 note, 
 283, 301 
 
 Dupont, 109, 229 
 
 Duprat, 281 
 
 Dupre, Lncien Franfois, 259, 260 
 
 Dupuy, saved by Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville, 237 
 
 Dusser, Pierre, 185 
 
 East India Company, 50, 51 
 Edelmann, Fr6d6ric, 140-142 
 Edelmann, Louis, 140-142 
 Education of Fouquier-Tinville, 
 
 the, 30 
 Eglantine, Fabre d', 59, 251 
 Elizabeth, Madame, vii. 63-65, 287 
 '''■'""■ »nac, d', 251 
 
314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Fabre, Jean, 38, 50, 120 
 
 Fabricius (see PSris) 
 
 Faro, 95, 96 
 
 Father of Fouquier-Tinville, the, 
 
 30 and note 
 Favart, Judge, 275 
 F61ix, Jean Baptiste Henry An- 
 
 toine, 104, 109 note, 120, 273, 
 
 282 note, 298 
 F6ral, Jean Pierre Victor, 176 
 Ferrand, Captain, 271 and note 
 Ferrifire-Sauveboeuf, Louis Fran- 
 
 9ois, 178, 179 
 Feuilles, Jean, 124, 126, 128 
 Feuqui^res, the execution of the 
 
 Marquise de, 257, 258, 292, 293 
 Fleuriot (see Lescot-Fleuriot) 
 Fleury, Comte de, the death of, 
 
 213, 285 
 
 letter to Dumas from, 81, 
 
 82, 182 
 
 Fleury, Edouard, 33 
 Fleury, Madame Joly de, 97 
 Fonteines-Bire, Marie Pierre Joseph, 
 
 247 
 Fontenay, Deputy Goupillen de, 
 
 112 
 Forestier, Judge, I64, i6g, 177, 191, 
 
 211, 275 note 
 Forrestier, Jean Etienne, 121 
 Foncault, Judge, 120, 273, 282 note, 
 
 300 
 Fouquier, Eloy, 30 and note, 182 
 Fouquier, Emilie, Fran9ois, 32 
 Fouquier, Genevieve Louise, 32 
 Fouquier, Marie Adelaide, 32, 33 ' 
 Fouquier, Pierre Quentin, 32, 107 
 Fouquier de Forest, Quentin, 31 
 Fouquier d'Herouel, Pierre Eloi, 31 
 Fouquier de VauviU§, Charles 
 
 Francois, 31 
 Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine, Quen- 
 tin, his attitude on the arrest of 
 
 Dumas, no 
 
 his attitude during his trial, 
 
 291 
 
 at the bar of the Convention, 
 
 144-149 
 
 the birth of, 30 
 
 the character of, xii, 33, 166, 
 
 167, 186, 189, 202, 246, 308 
 
 and the children in the Con- 
 
 ciergerie prison, 258 
 
 his conduct on the 9th of 
 
 Thermidor, 114-118 
 
 convicted and condemned, 
 
 300 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville, the defence of, 
 299, 300, 304-306, 308 
 
 denounced by Freron, 123 
 
 the diligence of, 49, 195 
 
 the education of, 30 
 
 his first examination by Judge 
 
 Forestier, 196-211 
 
 his final examination by Judge 
 
 Debregeas, 275-282 
 
 the execution of, 303 
 
 an indictment altered in 
 
 court by, log, 106 
 an indictment granted against, 
 
 275 
 
 Judicis's indictment against, 
 
 272-274 
 
 a director of the jury d'ac- 
 
 cusation, 30, 33, 34, 242 
 
 and the jurors, xiv, xv, 61 
 
 and note, 165, 166, 169, 172-174, 
 180, 186, 197, 198, 221, 246, 
 249. 255. 260, 265-272, 277, 290, 
 292, 294 
 
 his last written words, 302 
 
 Leblois's indictment against, 
 
 212-215 
 
 letter to Camille Desmoulins 
 
 from, 23 
 
 letter to the Committee of 
 
 Public Safety from, 53 
 
 letter to Duinas from, 70 
 
 letter to Hanriot from, 47 
 
 letter to the Popular Com- 
 mission from, 159, 191 and 
 note 
 
 his letters from prison to his 
 
 wife, 156-163 
 
 the marriage of, 32 
 
 and Marie Antoinette's last 
 
 letter, ix 
 
 his memorials for his defence, 
 
 130-135. 139-143 
 
 his extraordinary memory, 
 
 282 
 
 mistook two prisoners for 
 
 one, 62 
 
 — — saved the Nantes prisoners, 
 
 154, 180, 212, 237, 308 
 the physical features of, 33 
 
 in the Conciergerie prison, 
 
 129-135, 212 
 
 in the Hospice de I'EvSche 
 
 prison, 211, 212 
 
 in the Plessis-Egatite prison, 
 
 195 
 
 in the Sainte-Pelagie prison, 
 
 151. 159. 161 
 
INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 Fouquier-TiaviUe, and prison spies, 
 82-102, 158, 159, 169, 186, 188, 
 193. 207. 209, 213. 226, 228-233, 
 235. 239, 240, 243, 246, 253, 
 258, 260, 263-265, 277, 278, 285- 
 288, 293, 305, 306 
 
 Procurator of the Commune 
 
 of Paris, 35 
 
 • — — Public Prosecutor, 38 
 • the public trial of, 282-301 
 
 refused to stop the executions 
 
 on the gth of Thermidor, 113, 169 
 
 Robespierre denounced by, 55 
 
 Fouquier-TinviUe, Madame (see 
 
 Ancourt, Henriette G6rard d") 
 Fouquier-TinviUe' s Printed Trial, 
 
 164 
 " Fouquier's store-house," 154, 195 
 Fournees, 58 note 
 Fran9ois, 206, 280 
 Freron, Deputy, 53, 123, 159, 178, 
 
 200 
 Freteau, Emmanuel Marie Michel 
 
 Philppe, 40, 65, 79, 80, 174, 189, 
 
 igo, 210, 214 note, 294, 295 
 Freys, the bankers, 50, 51 
 
 Gaillard de la Ferri^ee, official 
 advocate for Fouquier-TinviUe, 
 
 281 and note, 283, 299 
 Gaillart-Lecart, Judge, 275, 283 
 Ganney, 273, 282 note, 300, 301 
 Garce, Captain, 307 
 Gamier-Launay, Judge, 120, 273, 
 
 282 note, 299, 300 
 Gastrez, Nicolas, 182, 285 
 Gauthier, 96, 147, 273, 282 note 
 Gautier, 249 
 
 Gayvemon, 147 
 
 Geffroy, 68, 69 
 
 Gency, Antoine, 121 
 
 Giot, 117 
 
 Girard, juror, 165, 273, 282 note, 
 
 295. 300 
 Girard, registrar's clerk, 70 
 Girondins, the, xii, xvi 
 Gobeau, Adrien Nicolas, 121 
 Gobel, 58 
 
 Gobert, Advocate, 283 
 Gobertidre, Jean Placide, 182 
 Godart, Judge Jean Franjois, 246, 
 
 257, 260, 283 
 Godeau, Judge, 275 
 Gossiun, 53 
 Goubaux, Pierre, 185 
 Gouges, Ol3rmpe de, xvi 
 Gouget-Deslandres, 95 
 
 Gouillin, 153 
 
 Goujon, 150 
 
 Goupilleau (of Montaigu), 53 
 
 Goureau, Citizeness, 173 
 
 Goureau, Germain Andr6, 188 
 
 Goursault, 88 
 
 Grammont, 87 note, 88, 93, 209 
 
 Grand, Judge, 275, 283 
 
 Grandmaison, 212 and note 
 
 Granger, Jean Jacques, 196, 275 
 
 note, 280 
 Ganges, 211 
 Gravier, 60 
 Grebeauval, Nicolas, 44, 57, iii, 
 
 112, 115, 185 
 Grimaldi-Monaco, Therdse Fran- 
 
 foise de Stamville, Princesse de, 
 
 and Fouquier-Tinville, x, 100, 
 
 loi, 112 
 Gueneau, Advocate, 283, 299 
 Guenet, Jean Marie, 122 
 Guerin, Nicolas, 121 
 Guffroy, Armand Benoit, 180, 181, 
 
 237 
 Guillot and Valagnos, 83 and note 
 Gusman, 50, 51 
 Guyard, Louis Severin, spy, 83, 163, 
 
 265, 293, 301 
 
 Hall of Equality, scene on the 
 9th of Thennidor in the, 104- 
 H2 
 
 Hally, Louis Charles, 175, 243 
 
 Hanriot, Frangois, 46, 47, 60, 115, 
 117, 120, 132, 168, 199, 241, 249, 
 250, 269 
 
 Harny, Judge, 8i, 120, 273, 282 
 note, 290, 297, 300 
 
 HarviUe, General, 307 
 
 Herbert, xiii., xvi, 47-49, 51, 58, 
 59, 72, 146, 173, 176, 187, 242, 
 249 
 
 Herbert, Madame, 58 
 
 Herman, Judge Armand Martial 
 Joseph, xii, 44, 52-55, 57, 60-62, 
 85, 151, 174, 228, 235, 250, 254, 
 290, 293, 294, 299, 300 
 
 Henry, Barbe, 61 
 
 H§ron, 222, 224 and note, 225 
 
 HUliers, Baraguay d', 286 
 
 Histoire Parlementaire, 164 
 
 Historical Library of the City of 
 Paris, The, 157 
 
 Hoche, General, 147 '' 
 
 Horgne, Nicolas Eloi, 68 
 
 Hospice de I'Evgche, Fouquier- 
 Tinville in the, 211 and note 
 
3i6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Indictment altered in court, an, 
 105, 106, 275 
 
 Indictments drawn by Fouquier- 
 Tinville, 40, 48, 50, 64, 65, 77, 
 loi, 105, 106, 123, 134, 140, 174, 
 273. 275-278, 305, 306, 309 
 
 Indictments against Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville, 212-215, 272-274 
 
 Jacobin Club, the, 49 note, 75, 
 
 89, no, 121, 133, 158,270 
 Jacquet, Marie TMrdse Marchal, 
 
 218 
 JarzoufSet, notary, 74 
 Jeune Captive, 98 
 Jobert (the Belgian), spy, 83, 96, 
 
 109, 265 
 Joly, Jean Louis, usher, 182, 183 
 Joly, of the Theatre des Arts, 265 
 Jesse, Raymond, 164, 196, 211 
 Jourdan, 281 
 Jourdeuil, Didier, 295 
 Judicial assassinations, xii and note 
 Jndicis, Public Prosecutor, 272-275, 
 
 282 
 JuUen, Denis Michel, spy, 231, 235 
 Jullienne, Jean Baptiste, 243, 263 
 Jurors, Fouquier-Tinville and the, 
 
 xiv, XV, 61 and note, 165, 166, 169, 
 
 172-174, 180, t86, 197, 198, 221, 
 
 246, 249, 255, 260. 265-272, 277, 
 
 290, 292, 294 
 Jurors at Fouquier-Tinville's trial, 
 
 the, 281, 283 and note 
 Jury d' accusation, 29 and note, 33, 
 
 34, 242 
 Jury de jugement, 29 and note 
 
 Kellerman, General, 147, 198 
 
 Laboureau acquitted, 49 
 Labrenne, S^bastien Alaroze, 107- 
 
 109 
 Lascoste, Elie, 150 
 Lacroix, 50, 52, 54 
 Lafayette, 29 
 Lafleuterie, 161, 211, 281 
 Laflotte, spy; 54, 57, 58, 253 
 Lafond, Jean Baptiste, 106 
 Laignelot, 53 
 
 Laiaville, Mathurin Denys, 241, 242 
 La Jariette's dinner-party, 112 
 Lakanal, 143 
 Lambert, log 
 Lamporte, Judge, 120 
 Lanchon, 269 
 Laiiglois, 270 
 
 Lanne, Herman's assistant, 84, 1S7, 
 209, 228 and note, 288, 293, 299, 
 300 
 
 Lanne, Robespierre's agent, 149 
 
 Laplace, Claude Nicolas, 185 
 
 Lapparent, Deputy Cochose de, 112 
 
 La Pointe, 96 
 
 Laport, 249 
 
 Laruelle, Captain, 271 and note 
 
 I^uchet, Jean, 184 
 
 Laurent, Denis Etienne, 121 
 
 Lavalatte, Louis Jean Baptiste, 120 
 
 Lavaux, President, 34 
 
 Lavergne-Champlaurier, Colonel 
 Louis Fran9ois de, 56, 57 
 
 Lavergne, Madame de, 56, 57, 306 
 
 Law of the 22nd of Prairial, the, 
 
 75. 76 
 I-ebas, 116, 117, 123, 140, 198, 200 
 Lebois, 194, 199 note, 212-215, 280 
 
 and note 
 Lebon, Joseph, 152 
 Leborgne, 206 
 
 Leclere, Jean Baptiste Nicolas, 257 
 Lecoin, Pierre Vincent Augustin, 
 
 120 
 Lacointre (of Versailles), ix, 53, 
 
 123, 132, 144, 148-152, 163 and 
 
 note, 181, 215 
 Lafiot, Jean-Alban, 144 and note 
 Legendre, 49 note, 53, 151 
 Legot, ix 
 Legrand, 117 
 
 Legris, 91 and note, 92, 124, 164 
 Lenain, 231 
 LenStre, xvii 
 Lepecheux, 96 
 Lepeletier-Rosambo, 59 
 Le Petit, Pierre Armand, 270 
 Lerebours, 117 
 Leroy, " Tenth of August," 249, 
 
 273, 282 note, 286, 299, 300 
 Lescot-Fleuriot, Jean Baptiste Ed- 
 
 mond, xii, xiii, xv, 38, 115, 121, 
 
 132, 168, 198, 200, 201 and note, 
 
 241, 248 and note, 249, 251, 252 
 Lesenne, turn-key of the Luxem- 
 
 bourge, 87, 102, 210 note, 285 
 Letter from Fouquier-Tinville to 
 
 Camille Desmoulins, 33 
 the Committee of Public 
 
 Safety, 53 
 
 Dumas, 70 
 
 Hanriot, 47 
 
 the National Convention, 156 
 
 the Popular Commission, 159. 
 
 191 and note 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 Letters from Fouquier-Tin ville, from 
 prison, to his vme, 156-163 
 
 from prisoners to Fourquier- 
 
 Tinville, 66, 67 
 
 Lhuillier, Jean Antoine, 107-109 
 Liendon, Gilbert, 60, 64, 126, 122, 
 
 168, 1841, 273, 289, 296, 298, 306 
 Liger, Vice-President, 218, 283, 
 
 and note 
 Limage, 124-126 
 Lindet, Robert, 53 
 Lohier, 91, 272, 273, 282 note, 297, 
 
 300 
 Loisillier, Claude Franfois, 63 
 LoizeroUes, Fran9ois Simon, xiii, 
 
 98, 99, 236, 237, 297 
 LoizeroUes, Jean Simon, executed 
 
 in error, xiii, 98, 99, 236, 237, 297 
 I-omenie, Athauase de, 63, 64 
 Lomenie, Charles de, 63 
 Lom^nie, Francois de, 63 
 Lomfeie, Martial de, 63 
 Lomenie de Brienne, Comte, 287- 
 
 289 
 Louis (of the Bas Rbin), xvi, 130, 
 
 143. 151 
 Louis XVI., attempt to save, 72 
 
 Will of, vii. 
 
 Lou vet, 117 
 Lucille, 58 
 Ludot, 53 
 
 Liimiere, 165, 173, 249 
 
 Luttier, 42 and note 
 
 Luxembourg prison, conspiracy in 
 the, 83, 85-88 and note, 92, 102, 
 158, 159, 169, 186, 188, 193, 208, 
 209, 231, 235, 253, 264, 265, 277, 
 278, 285-287 
 
 Lyons in insurrection, 44 
 
 Machet-Velye, Pierre Charles, 87 
 
 note 
 " Magon conspiracy," the, 90, 91, 
 
 220, 260 
 Maillard, 269 
 Maill6, Louis Franjois de, 92, 96, 97, 
 
 294, 297 
 Maille, Vincomtesse de, 97, 306 
 Maire, Judge Antoine Marie, 104, 
 
 109 note. III, 120, 273, 282 note, 
 
 298, 300 
 Malarme, Bernard Jean Louis, 116, 
 
 117, 227, 238, 257 
 Malparti, Simon, 126 
 Manini, Joseph, spy, 83, 96, 102, 
 
 239, 2-513. 264, 265 
 Manuel, 94, 95 
 
 Manzuy, Marquis de, 70 
 
 Marat, 269 
 
 Marche, 109, 112 note 
 
 Marie Antoinette, and de Batz, 72 
 
 the execution of, vii, 173 
 
 the indictment of, 41, 134 
 
 the last letter of, vii-x 
 
 the trial of, xii, xvi, 228 
 
 Martel, 133 
 
 Martin, Jean Frederic, 87, 88, 186 
 
 Massieu, ix 
 
 Masson, Judge, 74 
 
 Maurin, Jean Dominique, executed 
 
 in error, 86, 87, 232, 240, 277, 278, 
 
 286, 306 
 Maurin, Louis Clair, 105, 106 
 Mayence, the capitulation of, 43 
 Mayet, Madame de, executed in 
 
 error, 97 and note 
 Mazerat, Judge, 275 
 Memorials for the defence of Fou- 
 
 quier-Tinville, 131-135, 139-143. 
 
 157-161, 284 
 M6nardi6re, Mulot de la, and the 
 
 Carmelite nuns, 89, 90 
 Mercereau, Charles, 263, 264 
 Merlin (of Pouai), xvi, 44, 45, 33, 
 
 143, 216 
 Merlin (of Thionville), 53, 118, 132, 
 
 134, 148, 149 
 Meunier, spy, 87, 231 
 Meursin, Isabelle Pigret de, 97 
 Meynard-Mellet, Joseph, executed 
 
 in error, 92, 96 
 Michelot, 140 and note, 142 
 Millet, 265 
 Molin, Horace, 96 
 Momoro, 49, 266 
 Monaco, Princesse de {see Grinaldi- 
 
 Monaco) 
 Monet, Gabriel Nicolas, 173, 243, 
 
 244 
 Monnet of Strasburg, 140, 142 
 Montana, Jacques-Bemard-Marie, 
 
 38, 44, 181 and notis, 182, 230, 307 
 Montauban, conspiracy at, 271 
 Montbrazon-Rohan, Louis Armand 
 
 Constantine, 95 
 Montmartre, the Abbess of, 97 
 Montmorency, Louis de Laval, 96 
 Moreau, Pierre Louis, 88 note 
 Morin, Charles Sosthtee, 278 
 Morin, Denys, 278 
 Morin, Jacques, 278 
 Morin, Jean, 278 
 Morin, Louis Clerc, 87, 232, 240, 
 
 277, 278, 286 
 
3i8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Morin, Nicolas, 278 
 
 Morisans, attendants in the Tri- 
 
 bnnal refreshment-room, 115-117, 
 
 226-228 
 Morisson, Deputy, 112 
 Mouohet, the King's architect, 307 
 Mouchy, Madame, 185 
 Mouchy, Marshal de Noailles-, 185 
 Mury, 266 
 
 Nantes, acquittal of prisoners from, 
 153-158, 180, 212, 237, 308 
 
 Narbonne-Pelet, Comtesse de, 100 
 
 Natoire, Charles, painter, vii 
 
 Naulin, Judge, 75, 273, 281, 282 
 note, 299, 300 
 
 Nicolas, 173 
 
 Noailles ladies, the, 92 
 
 Nuns sentenced to death, 89, 90, 
 142 
 
 OUVIBR-DESFALLliiRES, 62 
 
 Orleans, Due d', xii 
 
 Orleans witnesses in the Leonard 
 
 Bourdon case, 241, 262, 263 
 Ormesson, Lefebvre d', 59 
 Osselin, Charles Nicolas, 178 and 
 
 note, 187 
 Oudart, President, 114 
 Outlaws, seventy executed on one 
 
 day, 122 
 
 Pache, Mayor of Paris, xiii, 
 249, 250 
 
 Paniers, the, 305 
 
 Panis, 53 
 
 Pare, xii, 61 
 
 Paris, Fransois Marie, igo, 191 
 
 Paris, Nicolas Joseph (Fabricius), 
 52, 54, 92, 124, 164 and note, 
 171; 172, 178, 230, 248-256, 259, 
 260, 279, 280,-290, 291, 294, 309 
 
 Paris pendant la Revolution, 291 
 
 Paris, the prisons of, 82 and note 
 
 Pasquier, 59 
 
 Payan, Claude Fran9ois; 115, 117, 
 120, 132, 241 
 
 Pelchet, Jean-Claude, 89 
 
 Pirard, Catherine, 74 
 
 Perdry, Charles Louis, 225, 226 
 
 Fire Duchesne, 47, 49 
 
 Perte case, the, 294-296, 306 
 
 Pereyra, 51 
 
 Perron, 76 
 
 Pesme, registrar, log 
 
 Petit, 207 
 
 Petit-Tressein, Leonard, 188 
 
 Philippeaux, 50, 249-252 
 
 Pichard-Dupage, 62 
 
 Pigeon, Alexandre Rosalie, 173 
 
 Pigeot, 273, 282 note 
 
 Pinard, 212 and note 
 
 Pissis, Judge Charles Frangois 
 
 Joseph, 218, 219, 246, 257, 260, 
 
 263, 275 
 Pitt's gold, 73 
 Plessis prison, Fouquier-TinviUe in 
 
 the, 195, 211, 275 
 PochoUe, Pierre Pomponne Amedee, 
 
 144 and note 
 Poincarr^, 124, 126-128 
 Porcher, 270 
 Pouteau, 34 
 PrevOt, Suzanne, 68 
 Prieur, 91, 246, 249, 273, 282 note, 
 
 283, 296, 300 
 Prisoners, Dumas wanted 160 
 
 tried at once, 149 
 Proly, 51 
 Public Prosecutor, the duties and 
 
 powers of the, 39-45, 50, 61, 66 
 Pny de Verine case, the, 294, 298, 
 
 306 
 
 QuiRROHEN, Madame, ioi 
 Qu^tineau, Catherine, 47, 49, 176 
 Qu^tineau, Colonel, 49 
 
 Raymond-Narbonne, Comtesse, iqo 
 
 Real, 96 
 
 " Red Shirts," the, 80, 81, 174, 285, 
 
 289, 290 
 Renaudin, 91, 165, 173, 249, 251, 
 
 272, 273, 282 note, 283, 296, 
 
 300 
 Renault, Cecile, 73, 74, 80, 170, 174 
 Retz, 298 and note 
 Revolutionary Committees, 45 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, the, 39-67, 
 
 75, 76, 104-112, 120, 143, 149, 
 
 150, 216 
 
 the, reorganized, 216 
 
 scene on the 9th of Thennidor 
 
 in the, 104-112 
 Richard, 186 
 
 Richard, Citizeness, 186, 206, 258 
 Rignaud, Honore, letter to his wife 
 
 ftoja, 60 
 Riot on the 9th of Thennidor, the, 
 
 114 
 Robespierre, Augustin Bon Joseph, 
 
 the arrest of, 116, 117, 121, 132, 
 
 200, before the Tribunal, 121, 
 
 132 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Robespierre, Maximilien, ix, xiii, 
 29, 30 and note, 44, 48, 55, 67, 
 69-73. 75. 86, 88, 89, gi, no, 112, 
 114-117, 120, 123, 124, 130-133, 
 145-149, 154, 168, 171, 182, 192, 
 198-201, 214, 234, 244, 248, 250, 
 269, 272, 273, 302, 304-306 
 
 the arrest of, 114-117 
 
 - — ■ before the Tribunal, 120 
 
 Robin, 53 
 
 Robinet, 96 
 
 Robinet, Dr. 51 and note 
 
 Roblatre, 94, 265 
 
 Roland, Madame, xiii 
 
 Ronsin, 47-49, 51. i73. I75. 249> 
 
 269 
 Roucher, Antoine, xiii, 98 
 Royer, 88, 122 
 
 Saint-Aignan, Madame de, 97 
 Saint-Amaranthe, Madame de, 81 
 Saint-Hilaire, Jeremie, 106 
 Saint- Just, Antoine, 39 note, 48, 
 
 50. 53. 55. 58, 86, 116, 117, 121, 
 
 123, 124, 130-132, 140, 149, 198, 
 
 200, 201, 302, 304, 306 
 Saint-Just, tiie arrest of, 116 
 Saint-Lazare prison, conspiracy in 
 
 the, 83, 96-100, 234, 264 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville in the, 151, 
 
 195 
 Saint-Perns, the case of the, 90, 91, 
 
 219, 220, 296, 297, 306 
 Saint-Simon, Simeon de. Bishop of 
 
 Agde, 100 
 Salle, Gabriel Francois, 107-109 
 Sallier, Guy Marie, 60, 244-246, 294 
 Sallier, Henry Guy, executed in 
 
 error, 60, 245, 294 
 Sambat, Jean Baptiste, 174 
 Sanson, the executioner, 62, 169 
 Sanson, Charles Henri, 189 
 Sanson, Captain Henri, 189 
 Sanson, Nicolas Charles Gabriel, 189 
 Sanson, Lieutenant Pierre Charles, 
 
 189 
 Santerre, 222 
 Sarce, Captain, 237 
 Saron, Bochart, de, 59 
 Saugnier, Genevifive Dorothee, 32 
 Scelle, 96 
 Scellier, Judge Gabriel Toussaint, 
 
 44. 75, 83, 88, III, H2, 115, 120, 
 
 235. 273. 282 note, 299-301 
 Schneider, Kuloge, 140, 141 
 Sechelles, H6rault de, 50 
 Seme, 96 
 
 Senar, Gabriel Jer6me, 221-225, 
 244, 285 
 
 Sers, Louis, xiv, 98 
 
 Sezille, Antoine, 189, 190, 295 
 
 Simon, Antoine, 53, 121 
 
 Simond, Deputy Philibert, 57, 58 
 
 Simonnet, Etienne, 113, 168, 221 
 
 Soubise Palace, vii 
 
 Soulier, 251 
 
 Spies, police, 82-102, 158, 159, 169, 
 186, 188, 193, 207, 209, 213, 226, 
 228-233, 235, 239, 240, 243, 246, 
 
 253, 258, 260, 263-265, 277, 278, 
 285-288, 293, 305, 306 
 
 Strahl, Nicolas, 87 
 
 Strasburg patriots, the case of the, 
 
 139-142 
 Subleyras, Pierre Noel, 85, 191, 
 
 and note, 192 
 
 Tabouillot, Claire, 61 
 
 Tallien, 148, 268 
 
 Tampon, Judge Philippe Marie, 
 
 114, 244 
 Tavernier, Charles Nicolas, 164, 
 
 168, 171, 172, 201, 290, 292 
 Tavernier, Jean Baptiste, 177, 178 
 Theot, Catherine, 133 and note 
 Thery, officer of health, 49 
 Thieuret-GrandprS, Jean Nicolas, 
 
 66, 174, 175, 288, 289, 295 
 Thirion, Didier, 183, 184 
 Thomas, 296 
 Thuriot, 118, 120, 134 
 Tirrart, Nicolas, 165, 166 
 Tomassin, 189 
 Topino-Lebrun, Jean Baptiste, 52, 
 
 173, 174, 246, 254 
 Toulon surrendered to the English, 
 
 44 
 Toupin, the Breton, 76, 306 
 Toutain, the brothers, 280 and note 
 Trey, 273, 283, 301 
 Trial of Fouquier-Tinville, the, xii, 
 
 XV note, xvi, xvii, 33, 52, 55, 60, 
 
 62-64, 66, 77. 78. 80, 83, 85, 87, 
 
 91, 92, 98-100, 165-301 
 Trinchard, 54, 60, 165, 191 note, 246, 
 
 254, 272 and note, 273, 282 note, 
 
 299. 301 
 Trippier, Louis Joseph Georges, 
 
 257. 258 
 Tronson - Ducoudray, Guillaume 
 
 Alexandre, 241 and note 
 Trudaines, Charles, Louis, 98 
 Trudaines, Charles Michel, 98 
 Turreau, 123 
 
320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Vadier, XV, 56, 79, 146, 150-152, 
 176, 179, 181, 189, 237, 240, 
 
 251. 254. 305 
 Valagnos, spy, 83, 187, 293, 300, 301 
 Valaze, 276 
 Valenciennes, the capitulation of, 
 
 43 
 
 Vauchelet, Antoine, 87, 231, 232, 
 
 235 
 
 Vergne, Pierre Nicolos, 229, 230 
 
 Vergnhes, Jean Baptiste, Ms din- 
 ner-party on the 9th of Thermi- 
 dor, 112-114, 168, 240, 241, 
 244 
 
 Verine, Durand Puy de, 104, 105 
 
 Vemey, Joseph, spy, 83, 87, 88, 
 96, 186, 209, 228, 229 ^nd note, 
 231. 232, 293 
 
 Vernier, 300 
 
 Viart, 175 
 
 Viefville, 157 
 
 Vilate, 165, 173, 249, 273, 282 note, 
 283, 299, 300 
 
 Villain, Advocate, 283 
 
 Vincent, 47-49, 51. 249, 269 
 
 Vingtrie, Lieutenant Bayard La, 
 
 237 
 ViroUe, surgeon, 95 
 Vitry, de, 162 
 
 Vivier, Nicolas Francois, 121 
 Vonschriltz, Joseph Honore, 229 
 
 and fiote, 287 
 VouUand, Jean Henry, xv, 54, 5^, 
 
 117, 118, 146, 150, 151, 175, 
 
 234, 240, 251, 254, 290 
 
 Wailly, de, 43 
 WaUon, xvii, 82 note 
 Westeimann, General, 51, 173, 251 
 Witnesses at Fouquier-Tinville's 
 
 trial, the, 165-192, 218-273, 285- 
 
 299 
 Wives of Fouquier-TinviUe, the, 32 
 Wolf, Robert, 92, 164, 167-172, 
 
 178. 259, 27r, 279, 290, 29X, 
 
 305. 309 
 Wouam6, Jacques Louis Frederic, 
 121 
 
 Yung, 140, 142