W. O'C. Morris,
The French Revolution,
chapter 6.
"The Prussians had remained wholly inactive for two months
after the fall of Mayence, contenting themselves with watching
the French in their lines at Weissenburg. Wearied at length by
the torpor of his opponents, Moreau assumed the initiative,
and attacked the Prussian corps at Pirmasens. This bold
attempt was repulsed (September 14) with the loss of 4,000
men; but it was not till a month later (October 13) that the
Allies resumed the offensive, when the Weissenburg lines were
stormed by a mixed force of Austrians and Prussians, and the
French fled in confusion almost to Strasburg. But this
important advantage led to no results, though the defeat of
the Republican movement was hailed by a royalist movement in
Alsace.
{1296}
The Austrians, immovable in their plans of conquest, refused
to occupy Strasburg in the name of Louis XVII.; and the
unfortunate royalists, abandoned to Republican vengeance, were
indiscriminately consigned to the guillotine by a decree of
the Convention, while the confederate army was occupied in the
siege of Landau. But the lukewarmness of the Prussians had now
become so evident, that it was only by the most vehement
remonstrances of the Austrian cabinet that they were prevented
from seceding altogether from the league; and the Republicans,
taking advantage of the disunion of their enemies, again
attacked the Allies (December 26), who were routed and driven
over the Rhine [abandoning the siege of Landau]; while the
victors, following up their success, retook Spires, and
advanced to the gates of Mannheim. The operations in the
Pyrenees and on the side of Savoy, during this campaign, led
to no important results. On the western extremity of the
Pyrenees, the Spaniards [had] entered France in the middle of
April, routed their opponents in several encounters, and drove
them into St. Jean Pied-de-Poet. An invasion of Roussillon, at
the same time, was equally successful; and the Spaniards
maintained themselves in the province till the end of the
year, taking the fortresses of Bellegarde and Collioure, and
routing two armies which attempted to dislodge them, at Truellas
(September 22) and Boulon (December 7). An attempt of the
Sardinians to expel the French from their conquests in Savoy
was less fortunate; and, at the close of the campaign, both
parties remained in their former position."
A. Alison,
Epitome of History of Europe,
pages 58-59 (chapter 13,
volume 4 of complete work).
ALSO IN:
H. Von Sybel,
History of the French Revolution,
book 8, chapter 2 (volume 3).
E. Baines,
History of the Wars of the French Revolution,
volume 1, chapters 9-11.
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (August).
Emancipation in San Domingo proclaimed.
See HAYTI: A. D. 1632-1803.
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (September-December).
The "Reign of Terror" becomes the "Order of the Day."
Trial and execution of Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and
the Girondists.
"On the 16th of September, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine
surrounded the Hôtel de Ville, clamoring for 'Bread.' Hébert
and Chaumette appeased the mob by vociferous harangues against
rich men and monopolists, and by promising to raise a
revolutionary army with orders to scour the country, empty the
granaries, and put the grain within reach of the people. 'The
next thing will he a guillotine for the monopolists,' added
Hébert. This had been demanded by memorials from the most
ultra provincial Jacobins. The next day the Convention
witnessed the terrible reaction of this scene. At the opening
of the session Merlin de Douai proposed and carried a vote for
the division of the revolutionary tribunal into four sections,
in order to remedy the dilatoriness complained of by
Robespierre and the Jacobins. The municipality soon arrived,
followed by a great crowd; Chaumette, in a furious harangue,
demanded a revolutionary army with a travelling guillotine.
The ferocious Billaud-Varennes declared that this was not
enough, and that all suspected persons must be arrested
immediately. Danton interposed with the powerful eloquence of
his palmy days; he approved of an immediate decree for the
formation of a revolutionary army, but made no mention of the
guillotine. ... Danton's words were impetuous, but his ideas
were politic and deliberate. His motions were carried, amid
general acclamation. But the violent propositions of
Billaud-Varennes and others were also carried. The decree
forbidding domiciliary visits and night arrests, which had
been due to the Girondists, was revoked. A deputation from the
Jacobins and the sections demanded the indictment of the
'monster' Brissot with his accomplices, Vergniaud, Gensonné,
and other 'miscreants.' 'Lawgivers,' said the spokesman of the
deputation, 'let the Reign of Terror be the order of the day!'
Barère, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety,
obtained the passage of a decree organizing an armed force to
restrain counter-revolutionists and protect supplies. Fear led
him to unite with the most violent, and to adopt the great
motto of the Paris Commune, 'Let the Reign of Terror be the
order of the day!' 'The royalists are conspiring,' he said;
'they want blood. Well they shall have that of the
conspirators, of the Brissots and Marie Antoinettes!' The
association of these two names shows what frenzy prevailed in
the minds of the people. The next day September 6, two of the
most formidable Jacobins, the cold, implacable
Billaud-Varennes and the fiery Collot d'Herbois, were added to
the Committee of Public Safety. Danton persisted in his
refusal to return to it. This proves how mistaken the
Girondists had been in accusing him of aspiring to the
dictatorship. He kept aloof from the Committee chiefly because
he knew that they were lost, and did not wish to contribute to
their fall. Before leaving the ministry Garat had tried to
prevent the Girondists from being brought to trial; upon
making known his wish to Robespierre and Danton, he found
Robespierre implacable, while Danton, with tears coursing down
his rugged cheeks replied, 'I cannot save them!' ... On the 10th
of October Saint-Just, in the name of the Committee of Public
Safety, read to the Assembly an important report upon the
situation of the Republic. It was violent and menacing to
others beside the enemies of the Mountain; Hébert and his gang
might well tremble. He inveighed not only against those who
were plundering the government, but against the whole
administration. ... Saint-Just's report had been preceded on
the 3d of October by a report from the new Committee of Public
Safety, concluding with the indictment of 40 deputies; 39 were
Girondists or friends of the Gironde; the fortieth was the
ex-Duke of Orleans. Twenty-one of these 39 were now in the
hands of their enemies, and of these 21 only 9 belonged to
the first deputies indicted on the 2d of June; the remainder
had left Paris hoping to organize outside resistance, and had
been declared outlawed. The deputies subsequently added to
this number were members of the Right who had signed protests
against the violation of the national representation on that
fatal day. ... It was decided at the same session to bring the
40 deputies, together with Marie Antoinette, to trial. The
Jacobins and the commune had long been demanding the trial of
the unhappy queen, and were raising loud clamors over the
plots for her deliverance.
{1297}
She might perhaps have escaped from the Temple if she would
have consented to leave her children. During July a sorrow
equal to that of the 21st of January had been inflicted on
her; she had been separated from her young son under the
pretence that she treated him like a king, and was bringing
him up to make 'a tyrant of him.' The child was placed in
another part of the Temple, and his education was intrusted to
a vulgar and brutal shoemaker, named Simon. Nevertheless the
fate of Marie Antoinette at this epoch was still doubtful;
neither the Committee of Public Safety nor the ministry
desired her death. While Lebrun, the friend of the Girondists,
was minister of foreign affairs, a project had been formed
which would have saved her life. Danton knew of it and aided
it. ... This plan was a negotiation with Venice, Tuscany, and
Naples, the three Italian States yet neutral, who were to
pledge themselves to maintain their wavering neutrality, in
consideration of a guaranty of the safety of Marie Antoinette
and her family. Two diplomatic agents who afterwards held high
posts in France, Marat and Sémonville, were intrusted with
this affair. As they were crossing from Switzerland into
Italy, they were arrested, in violation of the law of nations,
upon the neutral territory of the Grisons by an Austrian
detachment (July 25). ... At tidings of the arrest of the
French envoys, Marie Antoinette was separated from her
daughter and sister-in-law Elizabeth, and transferred to the
Conciergerie. On the 14th of October she appeared before the
revolutionary tribunal. To the accusation of the public
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, made up of calumnies against
her private life, and for the most part well-founded
imputations against her political conduct, she opposed a
plausible defence, which effaced as far as possible her part
in the late government. ... The following questions were put
to the jurors: 'Has Marie Antoinette aided in movements
designed to assist the foreign enemies of the Republic to open
French territory to them and to facilitate the progress of
their arms? Has she taken part in a conspiracy tending to
incite civil war?' The answer was in the affirmative, and the
sentence of death was passed on her. The decisive portions
which we now possess of the queen's correspondence with
Austria had not then been made public; but enough was known to
leave no doubt of her guilt, which had the same moral excuses
as that of her husband. ... She met death [October 16] with
courage and resignation. The populace who had hated her so
much did not insult her last moments. ... A week after the
queen's death the Girondists were summoned before the
revolutionary tribunal. Brissot and Lasource alone had tried
to escape this bloody ordeal, and to stir up resistance
against it in the South. Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Valazé
remained unshaken in their resolve to await trial. Gensonné,
who had been placed in the keeping of a Swiss whose life he
had saved on the 10th of August, and who had become a
gendarme, might have escaped, but he refused to profit by this
man's gratitude. ... The act of indictment drawn up by the
ex-Feuillant Amar was only a repetition of the monstrous
calumnies which had circulated through the clubs and the
journals. Brissot was accused of having ruined the colonies by
advocating the liberation of slaves, and of having drawn
foreign arms upon France by declaring war on kings. The whole
trial corresponded to this beginning. ... On the 29th the
Jacobins appeared at the bar of the Convention, and called for
a decree giving the jurors of the revolutionary tribunal the
right to bring the proceedings to a close as soon as they
believed themselves sufficiently enlightened. Robespierre and
Barère supported the Jacobin demand. Upon Robespierre's motion
it was decreed that after three days' proceedings, the jurors
might declare themselves ready to render their verdict. The
next day the jurors availed themselves of their privilege, and
declared themselves sufficiently informed, although they had
not heard the evidence for acquittal, neither the accused nor
their counsel having been allowed to plead their cause.
Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Valazé, Bishop Fauchet, Ducos,
Boyer-Fonfrède, Lasource, and their friends were declared
guilty of having conspired against the unity and
indivisibility of the Republic, and against the liberty and
safety of the French people. ... Danton, who had not been an
accomplice in their death, had retired to his mother's home at
Arcis-sur-Aube, that he might not be a witness thereof. The
condemned were brought back to hear their sentence. The
greater part of them rose up with a common impulse, and cried,
'We are innocent! People, they are deceiving you!' The crowd
remained motionless and silent. ... At midnight they partook
of a last repast, passing the rest of the night in converse
about their native land, their remnant of life being cheered
by news of victory and pleasant sallies from young Ducos, who
might have escaped, but preferred to share his friend
Fonfréde's fate. Vergniaud had been given a subtle poison by
Condorcet, but threw it away, choosing to die with his
companions. One of his noble utterances gives us the key to
his life. 'Others sought to consummate the Revolution by
terror; I would accomplish it by love.' Next day, October 31,
at noon, the prisoners were led forth, and as the five carts
containing them left the Conciergerie, they struck up the
national hymn ... and shouts of 'Long live the Republic.' The
sounds died away as their number decreased, but did not cease
until the last of the 21 mounted the fatal platform. ... The
murderers of the Girondists were not likely to spare the
illustrious woman who was at once the inspiration and the
honor of that party, and the very same day Madame Roland who
had been for five months a prisoner at St. Pelagie and the
Abbaye, was transferred to the Conciergerie. Hébert and his
followers had long clamored for her head. During her captivity
she wrote her Memoirs, which unfortunately have not been
preserved complete; no other souvenir of the Revolution equals
this, although it is not always reliable, for Madame Roland
had feminine weaknesses of intellect, despite her masculine
strength of soul; she was prejudiced against all who disagreed
with her, and regarded caution and compromise with a noble but
impolitic scorn. ... The 18th Brumaire (November 10), she was
summoned before the revolutionary tribunal; when she left her
cell, clad in white, her dark hair, floating loosely over her
shoulders, a smile on her lips and her face sparkling with
life and animation. ...
{1298}
She was condemned in advance, not being allowed a word in her
own defence, and was declared guilty of being an author or
accomplice 'of a monstrous conspiracy against the unity and
indivisibility of the Republic.' She heard her sentence
calmly, saying to the judges: 'You deem me worthy the fate of
the great men you have murdered. I will try to display the
same courage on the scaffold.' She was taken directly to the
Place de la Revolution, a man condemned for treason being
placed in the same cart, who was overwhelmed with terror. She
passed the mournful journey in soothing him, and on reaching
the scaffold bid him mount first, that his sufferings might
not be prolonged. As she took her place in turn, her eye fell
on a colossal statue of Liberty, erected August 10, 1793. 'O
Liberty,' she cried, 'what crimes are committed in thy name!'
Some say that she said, 'O Liberty, how they have deceived
thee!' Thus died the noblest woman in history since the
incomparable Joan, who saved France! ... The bloody tribunal
never paused; famous men of every party succeeded each other
at the fatal bar, the ex-Duke of Orleans among them, but four
days earlier than Madame Roland. ... The day after Madame
Roland's trial began that of the venerable Bailli, ex-mayor of
Paris and ex-president of the Constituent Assembly, a man who
played a great part early in the Revolution, but faded out of
sight with the constituent power."
Henry Martin,
Popular History of France, 1789-1877,
volume 1, chapter 16.
ALSO IN
A. de Lamartine,
History of the Girondists,
chapters 46-52 (volume 3).
C. D. Yonge,
Life of Marie Antoinette,
chapter 39.
Madame Campan,
Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette,
volume 2, conclusion.
S. Marceau,
Reminiscences of a Regicide,
chapter 11.
Count Beugnot,
Life,
volume 1, chapter 6.
Lord R. Gower,
Last Days of Marie Antoinette.
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (October).
Life in Paris during the Reign of Terror.
Gaiety in the Prisons.
The Tricoteuses, or knitting women.
Revolutionary costumes and modes of speech.
The guillotine as plaything and ornament.
"By the end of October, 1793, the Committee of General
Security had mastered Paris, and established the Reign of
Terror there by means of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and could
answer to the Great Committee of Public Safety for the
tranquillity of the capital. There were no more riots; men
were afraid even to express their opinions, much less to
quarrel about them; the system of denunciation made Paris into
a hive of unpaid spies, and ordinary crimes, pocket-picking
and the like, vanished as if by magic. Yet it must not be
supposed that Paris was gloomy or dull; on the contrary, the
vast majority of citizens seemed glad to have an excuse to
avoid politics, of which they had had a surfeit during the
last four years, and to turn their thoughts to the literary
side of their favourite journals, to the theatres, and to art.
... The dull places of Paris were the Revolutionary
Committees, the Jacobin Club, the Convention, the Hôtel de
Brienne, where the Committee of General Security sat, and the
Pavillon de l'Egalité, formerly the Pavillon de Flore, in the
Tuileries, where the Great Committee of Public Safety
laboured. ... Elsewhere men were lighthearted and gay,
following their usual avocations, and busy in their pursuit of
pleasure or of gain. It is most essential to grasp the fact
that there was no particular difference, for the vast majority
of the population, in living in Paris during the Reign of
Terror and at other times. The imagination of posterity,
steeped in tales of the tumbrils bearing their burden to the
guillotine, and of similar stories of horror, has conceived a
ghastly picture of life at that extraordinary period, and it
is only after living for months amongst the journals, memoirs,
and letters of the time that one can realize the fact that to
the average Parisian the necessity of getting his dinner or
his evening's amusement remained the paramount thought of his
daily life. ... Strange to say, nowhere was life more happy
and gay than in the prisons of Paris, where the inmates lived
in the constant expectation that the haphazard chance of being
brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and condemned to
death might befall them at any moment. ... A little more must
be said about the market-women, the tricoteuses, or
knitting-women of infamous memory. These market-women had been
treated as heroines ever since their march to Versailles in
October, 1789. ... They formed their societies after the
fashion of the Jacobin Club, presided over by Renée Audu,
Agnès Lefevre, Marie Louise Bouju, and Rose Lacombe, and went
about the streets of Paris insulting respectably dressed
people, and hounding on the sans-culottes to deeds of
atrocity. These Mænads were encouraged by Marat, and played an
important part in the street history of Paris, up to the Reign
of Terror, when their power was suddenly taken from them. On
May 21, 1793, they were excluded by a decree from the
galleries of the Convention; on May 26 they were forbidden to
form part of any political assembly; and when they appealed
from the Convention to the Commune of Paris, Chaumette
abruptly told them 'that the Republic had no need of Joans of
Arc.' Thus deprived of active participation in politics, the
market-women became the tricoteuses, or knitting-women, who
used to take their seats in the Place de la Revolution, and
watch the guillotine as they knitted. Their active power for
good or harm was gone. ... Life during the Terror in Paris ...
differed in little things, in little affectations of liberty
and equality, which are amusing to study. The fashions of
dress everywhere betrayed the new order of things. A few men,
such as Robespierre, might still go about with powdered hair
and in knee-breeches, but the ordinary male costume of the
time was designed to contrast in every way with the costume of
a dandy of the 'ancien régime.' Instead of breeches, the
fashion was to wear trousers; instead of shoes, top-boots; and
instead of shaving, the young Parisian prided himself on letting
his moustache grow. In female costume a different motive was
at work. Only David's art disciples ventured to imitate the
male apparel of ancient Greece and Rome, but such imitation
became the fashion among women. Waists disappeared; and
instead of stiffened skirts and narrow bodices, women wore
short loose robes, which they fancied resembled Greek chitons;
sandals took the place of high-heeled shoes; and the hair,
instead of being worked up into elaborate edifices, was
allowed to flow down freely. For ornaments, gun-metal and
steel took the place of gold, silver and precious stones. ...
The favourite design was the guillotine.
{1299}
Little guillotines were worn as brooches, as earrings and as
clasps, and the women of the time simply followed the fashion
without realizing what it meant. Indeed, the worship of the
guillotine was one of the most curious features of the epoch.
Children had toy guillotines given them; models were made to
cut off imitation heads, when wine or sweet syrup flowed in
place of blood; and hymns were written to La Sainte
Guillotine, and jokes made upon it, as the 'national razor.'
... It is well known that the desire to emphasize the
abolition of titles was followed by the abolition of the terms
'Monsieur' and 'Madame,' and that their places were taken by
'Citizen' and 'Citizeness;' and also how the use of the second
person plural was dropped, and it was considered a sign of a
good republican to tutoyer everyone, that is, to call them
'thou' and 'thee.' ... The Reign of Terror in Paris seems to
us an age of unique experiences, a time unparalleled in the
history of the world; yet to the great majority of
contemporaries it did not appear so; they lived their ordinary
lives, and it was only in exceptional cases that the serenity
of their days was interrupted, or that their minds were
exercised by anything more than the necessity of earning their
daily bread."
H. M. Stephens,
History of the French Revolution,
volume 2, chapter 10.
ALSO IN
J. Michelet,
Women of the French Revolution,
chapters 20-30.
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (October).
The new republican calendar.
"Before the year ended the legislators of Paris voted that
there was no God, and destroyed or altered nearly everything
that had any reference to Christianity. Robespierre, who would
have stopped short at deism, and who would have preserved the
external decencies, was overruled and intimidated by Hébert
and his frowsy crew, who had either crept into the governing
committees or had otherwise made themselves a power in the
state. ... All popular journalists, patriots, and public
bodies, had begun dating 'First Year of Liberty,' or 'First
Year of the Republic;' and the old calendar had come to be
considered as superstitious and slavish, as an abomination in
the highest degree disgraceful to free and enlightened
Frenchmen. Various petitions for a change had been presented;
and at length the Convention had employed the mathematicians
Romme and Monge, and the astronomer Laplace, to make a new
republican calendar for the new era. These three philosophers,
aided by Fabre d'Eglantine, who, as a poet, furnished the
names, soon finished their work, which was sanctioned by the
Convention and decreed into universal use as early as the 5th
of October. It divided the year into four equal seasons, and
twelve equal months of 30 days each. The five odd days which
remained were to be festivals, and to bear the name of
'Sansculottides.' ... One of these five days was to be
consecrated to Genius, one to Industry, the third to Fine
Actions, the fourth to Rewards, the fifth to Opinion. ... In
leap-years, when there would be six days to dispose of, the
last of those days or Sansculottides was to be consecrated to
the Revolution, and to be observed in all times with all
possible solemnity. The months were divided into three
decades, or portions of ten days each, and, instead of the
Christian sabbath, once in seven days, the décadi, or tenth
day, was to be the day of rest. ... The decimal method of
calculation ... was to preside over all divisions: thus,
instead of our twenty-four hours to the day, and sixty minutes
to the hour, the day was divided into ten parts, and the tenth
was to be subdivided by tens and again by tens to the minutest
division of time. New dials were ordered to mark the time in
this new way, but, before they were finished, it was found
that the people were puzzled and perplexed by this last
alteration, and therefore this part of the calendar was
adjourned for a year, and the hours, minutes and seconds were
left as they were. As the republic commenced on the 21st of
September close on the [autumnal] equinox, the republican year
was made to commence at that season. The first month in the
year (Fabre d'Eglantine being god-father to them all) was
called Vendémiaire, or the vintage month, the second Brumaire,
or the foggy month, the third Frimaire, or the frosty month.
These were the three autumn months. Nivôse, Pluviôse, and
Ventôse, or the snowy, rainy and windy, were the three winter
months. Germinal, Floreal, and Prairial, or the bud month, the
flower month, and the meadow month, formed the spring season.
Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor, or reaping month, heat
month, and fruit month, made the summer, and completed the
republican year. In more ways than one all this was calculated
for the meridian of Paris, and could suit no other physical or
moral climate. ... But the strangest thing about this
republican calendar was its duration. It lasted till the 1st
of January, 1806."
C. Mac Farlane,
The French Revolution,
volume 4, volume 3.
The Republican Calendar for the Year Two of the Republic
(September 22, 1793-Sept. 21, 1794) is synchronized with the
Gregorian Calendar as follows:
1 Vendémiaire = September 22;
1 Brumaire = October 22;
1 Frimaire = November 21;
1 Nivôse = December 21;
1 Pluviôse = January 20;
1 Ventôse = February 19;
1 Germinal = March 21;
1 Floreal = April 20;
1 Prairial = May 20;
1 Messidor = June 19;
1 Thermidor = July 19;
1 Fructidor= August 18;
1st to 5th Sansculottides = September 17-21.
H. M. Stephens,
History of the French Revolution,
volume 2, appendix 12.
ALSO IN
A. Thiers,
History of the French Revolution
(American edition), volume 2, pages 364-365.
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (November).
Abandonment of Christianity.
The Worship of Reason instituted.
"The earliest steps towards a public abandonment of
Christianity appear to have been taken by Fouché, the future
minister of Police, and Duke of Otranto. ... He published at
Nevers (October 10, 1793) a decree" ordaining that "no forms
of religious worship be practised except within their
respective temples;" that "ministers of religion are
forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to wear their official
costumes in any other places besides their temples;" and that
the inscription, "Death is an eternal sleep," should be placed
over the entrance to the cemetery. "This decree was reported
to the municipality of Paris by Chaumette, the fanatical
procureur of the Commune, and was warmly applauded. ... The
atheistical cabal of which he was the leader (his chief
associates being the infamous Hébert, the Prussian baron
Anacharsis Clootz, and Chabot, a renegade priest), now judged
that public feeling was ripe for an avowed and combined
onslaught on the profession of Christianity. ... They decreed
that on the 10th of November the 'Worship of Reason' should be
inaugurated at Notre Dame.
{1300}
On that day the venerable cathedral was profaned by a series
of sacrilegious outrages unparalleled in the history of
Christendom. A temple dedicated to 'Philosophy' was erected on
a platform in the middle of the choir. A motley procession of
citizens of both sexes, headed by the constituted authorities,
advanced towards it; on their approach, the Goddess of Reason,
impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well known figurante
of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in front of
the temple; a hymn, composed in her honour by the poet
Chenier, was sung by a body of young girls dressed in white
and bedecked with flowers; and the multitude bowed the knee
before her in profound adoration. It was the 'abomination of
desolation sitting in the holy place.' At the close of this
grotesque ceremony the whole cortège proceeded to the hall of
the Convention, carrying with them their 'goddess,' who was
borne aloft in a chair of state on the shoulders of four men.
Having deposited her in front of the president, Chaumette
harangued the Assembly. ... He proceeded to demand that the
ci-devant metropolitical church should henceforth be the
temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was
immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the
president, and he and other officers of the House saluted her
with the 'fraternal kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After
this, upon the motion of Thuriot, the Convention in a body
joined the mass of the people, and marched in their company to
the temple of Reason, to witness a repetition of the impieties
above described. These demonstrations were zealously imitated
in the other churches of the capital. ... The interior of St.
Eustache was transformed into a 'guinguette,' or place of low
public entertainment. ... At St. Gervais a ball was given in
the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical
spectacles took place. ... Representatives of the people
thought it no shame to quit their curule chairs in order to
dance the 'carmagnole' with abandoned women in the streets
attired in sacerdotal garments. On Sunday, the 17th of
November, all the parish churches of Paris were closed by
authority, with three exceptions. ... Chaumette, at a sitting
of the Commune on the 26th of November, called for further
measures for the extermination of every vestige of Christian
worship;" and the Council of the Commune, on his demand,
ordered the closing of all churches and temples, of every
religious denomination; made priests and ministers of religion
responsible for any troubles that might arise from religious
opinions, and commanded the arrest as a "suspect" of any
person who should ask for the reopening of a church. "The
example set by Paris, at this melancholy period, was
faithfully repeated, if not surpassed in atrocity, throughout
the provinces. Religion was proscribed, churches closed,
Christian ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of
atheistical despotism overspread the land. ... These infamies
were too monstrous to be tolerated for any length of time. ...
Robespierre, who had marked the symptoms of a coming reaction,
boldly seized the opportunity, and denounced without mercy the
hypocritical faction which disputed his own march towards
absolute dictatorship."
W. H. Jervis,
The Gallican Church and the Revolution,
chapter 7.
ALSO IN
A. de Lamartine,
History of the Girondists,
book 52 (volume 3).
T. Carlyle,
The French Revolution,
book 5, chapter 4 (volume 3).
E. de Pressense,
Religion and the Reign of Terror,
book 2, chapter 2.
FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (October-April).
The Terror in the Provinces.
Republican vengeance at Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon,
Bordeaux, Nantes.
Fusillades and Noyades.
"The insurgents of Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, and Bordeaux,
were punished with pitiless severity. Lyons had revolted, and
the convention decreed [October 12] the destruction of the
city, the confiscation of the property of the rich, for the
benefit of the patriots, and the punishment of the insurgents
by martial law. Couthon, a commissioner well tried in cruelty,
hesitated to carry into execution this monstrous decree, and
was superseded by Collot d'Herbois and Fouché. Thousands of
workmen were employed in the work of destruction: whole
streets fell under their pickaxes: the prisons were gorged:
the guillotine was too slow for revolutionary vengeance, and
crowds of prisoners were shot, in murderous 'mitraillades.'
... At Marseilles, 12,000 of the richest citizens fled from
the vengeance of the revolutionists, and their property was
confiscated, and plundered. When Toulon fell before the
strategy of Bonaparte, the savage vengeance and cruelty of the
conquerors were indulged without restraint. ... The dockyard
labourers were put to the sword: gangs of prisoners were
brought out and executed by fusillades: the guillotine also
claimed its victims: the sans-culottes rioted in confiscation
and plunder. At Bordeaux, Tallien threw 15,000 citizens into
prison. Hundreds fell under the guillotine; and the
possessions and property of the rich were offered up to
outrage and robbery. But all these atrocities were far
surpassed in La Vendee. ... The barbarities of warfare were
yet surpassed by the vengeance of the conquerors, when the
insurrection was, at last, overcome. At Nantes, the monster
Carrier outstripped his rivals in cruelty and insatiable
thirst for blood. Not contented with wholesale mitraillades,
he designed that masterpiece of cruelty, the noyades; and
thousands of men, women and children who escaped the muskets
of the rabble soldiery were deliberately drowned in the waters
of the Loire. In four months, his victims reached 15,000. At
Angers, and other towns in La Vendee, these hideous noyades
were added to the terrors of the guillotine and the
fusillades."
Sir T. E. May,
Democracy in Europe,
chapter 14.
"One begins to be sick of 'death vomited in great floods.'
Nevertheless, hearest thou not, O Reader (for the sound
reaches through centuries), in the dead December and January
nights, over Nantes Town,--confused noises, as of musketry and
tumult, as of rage and lamentation; mingling with the
everlasting moan of the Loire waters there? Nantes Town is
sunk in sleep; but Représentant Carrier is not sleeping, the
wool-capped Company of Marat is not sleeping. Why unmoors that
flatbottomed craft, that 'gabarre'; about eleven at night;
with Ninety Priests under hatches? They are going to Belle
Isle? In the middle of the Loire stream, on signal given, the
gabarre is scuttled; she sinks with all her cargo. 'Sentence
of Deportation,' writes Carrier, 'was executed vertically.'
The Ninety Priests, with their gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is
the first of the Noyades [November 16], what we may call
'Drownages' of Carrier; which have become famous forever.
{1301}
Guillotining there was at Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn
out: then fusillading 'in the Plain of Saint-Mauve;' little
children fusilladed, and women with children at the breast;
children and women, by the hundred and twenty; and by the five
hundred, so hot is La Véndee: till the very Jacobins grew
sick, and all but the Company of Marat cried, Hold! Wherefore
now we have got Noyading; and on the 24th night of Frostarious
year 2, which is 14th of December 1793, we have a second
Noyade; consisting of '138 persons.' Or why waste a gabarre,
sinking it with them? Fling them out; fling them out, with
their hands tied: pour a continual hail of lead over all the
space, till the last struggler of them be sunk! Unsound
sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages there-abouts, hear
the musketry amid the night-winds; wonder what the meaning of
it is. And women were in that gabarre; whom the Red Nightcaps
were stripping naked; who begged, in their agony, that their
smocks might not be stript from them. And young children were
thrown in, their mothers vainly pleading: 'Wolflings,'
answered the Company of Marat, 'who would grow to be wolves.'
By degrees, daylight itself witnesses Noyades: women and men
are tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands; and flung
in: this they call Mariage Républicain, Republican Marriage.
Cruel is the panther of the woods, the she-bear bereaved of
her whelps: but there is in man a hatred crueler than that.
Dumb, out of suffering now, as pale swollen corpses, the
victims tumble confusedly seaward along the Loire stream; the
tide rolling them back: clouds of ravens darken the River;
wolves prowl on the shoal-places: Carrier writes, 'Quel
torrent révolutionnaire, What a torrent of Revolution!' For
the man is rabid; and the Time is rabid. These are the Noyades
of Carrier; twenty-five by the tale, for what is done in
darkness comes to be investigated in sunlight: not to be
forgotten for centuries. ... Men are all rabid; as the Time
is. Representative Lebon, at Arras, dashes his sword into the
blood flowing from the Guillotine; exclaims, 'How I like it!'
Mothers, they say, by his orders, have to stand by while the
Guillotine devours their children: a band of music is
stationed near; and, at the fall of every head, strikes up its
'Ça-ira.'"
T. Carlyle,
The French Revolution,
volume 3, book 5, chapter 3.
ALSO IN
H. M. Stephens,
History of the French Revolution,
volume 2, chapter 11.
H. A. Taine,
The French Revolution,
book 5, chapter 1, section 9 (volume 3).
Horrors of the Prison of Arras
("The Reign of Terror: A Collection of Authentic
Narratives," volume 2).
Duchesse de Duras,
Prison Journals during the French Revolution
A. des Echerolles,
Early Life,
volume 1, chapters 7-13, and volume 2, chapter l.
See, also, FRANCE: 1794 (JUNE-JULY).
FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (November-June).
The factions of the Mountain devour one another.
Destruction of the Hebertists.
Danton and his followers brought to the knife.
Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety.
The Feast of the Supreme Being.
"Robespierre was unutterably outraged by the proceedings of
the atheists. They perplexed him as a politician intent upon
order, and they afflicted him sorely as an ardent disciple of
the Savoyard Vicar. Hébert, however, was so strong that it
needed some courage to attack him, nor did Robespierre dare to
withstand him to the face. But he did not flinch from making
an energetic assault upon atheism and the excesses of its
partisans. His admirers usually count his speech of the 21st
of November one of the most admirable of his oratorical
successes. ... 'Atheism [he said] is aristocratic. The idea of
a great being who watches over oppressed innocence and
punishes triumphant crime is essentially the idea of the
people. This is the sentiment of Europe and the Universe; it
is the sentiment of the French nation. That people is attached
neither to priests, nor to superstitions, nor to ceremonies;
it is attached only to worship in itself, or in other words to
the idea of an incomprehensible Power, the terror of
wrong-doers, the stay and comfort of virtue, to which it
delights to render words of homage that are all so many
anathemas against injustice and triumphant crime.' This is
Robespierre's favourite attitude, the priest posing as
statesman. ... Danton followed practically the same line,
though saying much less about it. 'If Greece,' he said in the
Convention, 'had its Olympian games, France too shall
solemnize her sans-culottid days. ... If we have not honoured
the priest of error and fanaticism, neither do we wish to
honour the priest of incredulity: we wish to serve the people.
I demand that there shall be an end of these anti-religious
masquerades in the Convention.' There was an end of the
masquerading, but the Hébertists still kept their ground.
Danton, Robespierre, and the Committee were all equally
impotent against them for some months longer. The
revolutionary force had been too strong to be resisted by any
government since the Paris insurgents had carried both king
and assembly in triumph from Versailles in the October of
1789. It was now too strong for those who had begun to strive
with all their might to build a new government out of the
agencies that had shattered the old to pieces. For some months
the battle which had been opened by Robespierre's remonstrance
against atheistic intolerance, degenerated into a series of
masked skirmishes. ... Collot D'Herbois had come back in hot
haste from Lyons. ... Carrier was recalled from Nantes. ...
The presence of these men of blood gave new courage and
resolution to the Hébertists. Though the alliance was
informal, yet as against Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and the
rest of the Indulgents, as well as against Robespierre, they
made common cause. Camille Desmoulins attacked Hébert in
successive numbers of a journal ['Le Vieux Cordelier'] that is
perhaps the one truly literary monument of this stage of the
revolution. Hébert retaliated by impugning the patriotism of
Desmoulins in the Club, and the unfortunate wit,
notwithstanding the efforts of Robespierre on his behalf, was
for a while turned out of the sacred precincts. ... Even
Danton himself was attacked (December, 1793) and the integrity
of his patriotism brought into question. Robespierre made an
energetic defence of his great rival in the hierarchy of
revolution. ... Robespierre, in whom spasmodical courage and
timidity ruled by rapid turns, began to suspect that he had
been premature; and a convenient illness, which some supposed
to have been feigned, excused his withdrawal for some weeks
from a scene where he felt that he could no longer see clear.
We cannot doubt that both he and Danton were perfectly assured
that the anarchic party must unavoidably roll headlong into the
abyss.
{1302}
But the hour of doom was uncertain. To make a mistake in the
right moment, to hurry the crisis, was instant death.
Robespierre was a more adroit calculator than Danton. ... His
absence during the final crisis of the anarchic party allowed
events to ripen, without committing him to that initiative in
dangerous action which he had dreaded on the 10th of August,
as he dreaded it on every other decisive day of this burning
time. The party of the Commune became more and more daring in
their invectives against the Convention and the Committees. At
length they proclaimed open insurrection. But Paris was cold,
and opinion was divided. In the night of the 13th of March,
Hébert, Chaumette, Clootz, were arrested. The next day
Robespierre recovered sufficiently to appear at the Jacobin
Club. He joined his colleagues of the Committee of Public
Safety in striking the blow. On the 24th of March the
Ultra-Revolutionist leaders were beheaded. The first bloody
breach in the Jacobin ranks was speedily followed by the
second. The Right wing of the opposition to the Committee soon
followed the Left down the ways to dusty death, and the
execution of the Anarchists only preceded by a week the arrest
of the Moderates. When the seizure of Danton had once before
been discussed in the Committee, Robespierre resisted the
proposal violently. We have already seen how he defended
Danton at the Jacobin Club. ... What produced this sudden
tack? ... His acquiescence in the ruin of Danton is
intelligible enough on the grounds of selfish policy. The
Committee [of Public Safety] hated Danton for the good reason
that he had openly attacked them, and his cry for clemency was
an inflammatory and dangerous protest against their system.
Now Robespierre, rightly or wrongly, had made up his mind that
the Committee was the instrument by which, and which only, he
could work out his own vague schemes of power and
reconstruction. And, in any case, how could he resist the
Committee? ... All goes to show that Robespierre was really
moved by nothing more than his invariable dread of being left
behind, of finding himself on the weaker side, of not seeming
practical and political enough. And having made up his mind
that the stronger party was bent on the destruction of the
Dantonists, he became fiercer than Billaud himself. ... Danton
had gone, as he often did, to his native village of
Arcis-sur-Aube, to seek repose and a little clearness of sight
in the night that wrapped him about. He was devoid of personal
ambition; he never had any humour for mere factious struggles.
... It is not clear that he could have done anything. The
balance of force, after the suppression of the Hébertists, was
irretrievably against him, as calculation had already revealed to
Robespierre. ... After the arrest, and on the proceedings to
obtain the assent of the Convention to the trial of Danton and
others of its members, one only of their friends had the
courage to rise and demand that they should be heard at the
bar. Robespierre burst out in cold rage; he asked whether they
had undergone so many heroic sacrifices, counting among them
these acts of 'painful severity,' only to fall under the yoke
of a band of domineering intriguers; and he cried out
impatiently that they would brook no claim of privilege, and
suffer no rotten idol. The word was felicitously chosen, for
the Convention dreaded to have its independence suspected, and
it dreaded this all the more because at this time its
independence did not really exist. The vote against Danton was
unanimous, and the fact that it was so is the deepest stain on
the fame of this assembly. On the afternoon of the 16th
Germinal (April 5, 1794), Paris in amazement and some
stupefaction saw the once dreaded Titan of the Mountain fast
bound in the tumbril, and faring towards the sharp-clanging
knife [with Camille Desmoulins and others]. 'I leave it all in
a frightful welter,' Danton is reported to have said. 'Not a
man of them has an idea of government. Robespierre will follow
me; he is dragged down by me. Ah, better be a poor fisherman
than meddle with the governing of men!' ... After the fall of
the anarchists and the death of Danton, the relations between
Robespierre and the Committees underwent a change. He, who had
hitherto been on the side of government, became in turn an
agency of opposition. He did this in the interest of ultimate
stability, but the difference between the new position and the
old is that he now distinctly associated the idea of a stable
republic with the ascendency of his own religious conceptions.
... The base of Robespierre's scheme of social reconstruction
now came clearly into view; and what a base! An official
Supreme Being and a regulated Terror. ... How can we speak
with decent patience of a man who seriously thought that he
should conciliate the conservative and theological elements of
the society at his feet, by such an odious opera-piece as the
Feast of the Supreme Being. This was designed as a triumphant
ripost to the Feast of Reason, which Chaumette and his friends
had celebrated in the winter. ... Robespierre persuaded the
Convention to decree an official recognition of the Supreme
Being, and to attend a commemorative festival in honour of
their mystic patron. He contrived to be chosen president for
the decade in which the festival would fall. When the day came
(20th Prairial, June 8, 1794), he clothed himself with more
than even his usual care. As he looked out from the windows of
the Tuileries upon the jubilant crowd in the gardens, he was
intoxicated with enthusiasm. 'O Nature,' he cried, 'how
sublime thy power, how full of delight! How tyrants must grow
pale at the idea of such a festival as this!' In pontifical
pride he walked at the head of the procession, with flowers
and wheat-ears in his hand, to the sound of chants and
symphonies and choruses of maidens. On the first of the great
basins in the gardens, David, the artist, had devised an
allegorical structure for which an inauspicious doom was
prepared. Atheism, a statue of life size, was throned in the
midst of an amiable group of human Vices, with Madness by her
side, and Wisdom menacing them with lofty wrath. Great are the
perils of symbolism. Robespierre applied a torch to Atheism, but
alas, the wind was hostile, or else Atheism and Madness were
damp. They obstinately resisted the torch, and it was hapless
Wisdom who took fire. ... The whole mummery was pagan. ... It
stands as the most disgusting and contemptible anachronism in
history."
J. Morley,
Robespierre
(Critical Miscellanies, Second Series).
ALSO IN
T. Carlyle,
The French Revolution,
volume 3, book 6.
G. H. Lewes,
Life of Robespierre,
chapters 19-20.
L. Gronlund,
Ça ira: or Danton in the French Revolution,
chapter 6.
J. Claretie,
Camille Desmoulins and his Wife,
chapters 5-6.
{1303}
FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (March-July).
Withdrawal of Prussia from the European Coalition as an ally,
to become a mercenary.
Successes of the Republic.
Conquest of the Austrian Netherlands.
Advance to the Rhine.
Loss of Corsica.
Naval defeat off Ushant.
"While the alliance of the Great Powers was on the point of
dissolution from selfishness and jealousy, the French, with an
energy and determination, which, considering their
unparalleled difficulties, were truly heroic, had assembled
armies numbering nearly a million of men. The aggregate of the
allied forces did not much exceed 300,000. The campaign on the
Dutch and Flemish frontiers of France was planned at Vienna,
but had nearly been disconcerted at the outset by the refusal
of the Duke of York to serve under General Clairfait. ... The
Emperor settled the difficulty by signifying his intention to
take the command in person. Thus one incompetent prince who
knew little, was to be commanded by another incompetent prince
who knew nothing, about war; and the success of a great
enterprise was made subservient to considerations of punctilio
and etiquette. The main object of the Austrian plan was to
complete the reduction of the frontier fortresses by the
capture of Landrecy on the Sambre, and then to advance through
the plains of Picardy on Paris;--a plan which might have been
feasible the year before. ... The King of Prussia formally
withdrew from the alliance [March 13]; but condescended to
assume the character of a mercenary. In the spring of the
year, by a treaty with the English Government, his Prussian
Majesty undertook to furnish 62,000 men for a year, in
consideration of the sum of £1,800,000, of which Holland, by a
separate convention, engaged to supply somewhat less than a
fourth part. The organisation of the French army was effected
under the direction of Carnot. ... The policy of terror was
nevertheless applied to the administration of the army.
Custine and Houchard, who had commanded the last campaign, ...
were sent to the scaffold, because the arms of the republic
had failed to achieve a complete triumph under their
direction. ... Pichegru, the officer now selected to lead the
hosts of France, went forth to assume his command with the
knife of the executioner suspended over his head. His orders
were to expel the invaders from the soil and strongholds of
the republic, and to reconquer Belgium. The first step towards
the fulfilment of this commission was the recovery of the
three great frontier towns, Condé, Valenciennes, and Quesnoy.
The siege of Quesnoy was immediately formed; and Pichegru,
informed of or anticipating the plans of the Allies, disposed
a large force in front of Cambray, to intercept the operations
of ... the allied army upon Landrecy. ... On the 17th
[of April] a great action was fought in which the allies
obtained a success, sufficient to enable them to press the
siege of Landrecy. ... Pichegru, a few days after [April 26,
at the redoubts of Troisville] sustained a signal repulse from
the British, in an attempt to raise the siege of Landrecy; but
by a rapid and daring movement, he improved his defeat, and
seized the important post of Moucron. The results were, that
Clairfait was forced to fall back on Tournay; Courtray and
Menin surrendered to the French; and thus the right flanks of
the Allies were exposed. Landrecy, which, about the same time,
fell into the hands of the Allies, was but a poor compensation
for the reverses in West Flanders. The Duke of York, at the
urgent instance of the Emperor, marched to the relief of
Clairfait; but, in the meantime, the Austrian general, being
hard pressed, was compelled to fall back upon a position which
would enable him for a time to cover Bruges, Ghent, and
Ostend. The English had also to sustain a vigorous attack near
Tournay; but the enemy were defeated with the loss of 4,000
men. It now became necessary to risk a general action to save
Flanders, by cutting off that division of the French army
which had outflanked the Allies. By bad management and want of
concert this movement, which had been contrived by Colonel
Mack, the chief military adviser of the Emperor, was wholly
defeated [at Tourcoign, May 18]. ... The French took 1,500
prisoners and 60 pieces of cannon. A thousand English soldiers
lay dead on the field, and the Duke [of York] himself escaped
with difficulty. Four days after, Pichegru having collected a
great force, amounting, it has been stated, to 100,000 men,
made a grand attack upon the allied army [at Pont Achin]. ...
The battle raged from five in the morning until nine at night,
and was at length determined by the bayonet. ... In consequence
of this check, Pichegru fell back upon Lisle." It was after
this repulse that "the French executive, on the flimsy
pretence of a supposed attempt to assassinate Robespierre,
instigated by the British Government, procured a decree from
the Convention, that no English or Hanoverian prisoners should
be made. In reply to this atrocious edict, the Duke of York
issued a general order, enjoining forbearance to the troops
under his command. Most of the French generals ... refused to
become assassins. ... The decree was carried into execution in
a few instances only. ... The Allies gained no military
advantage by the action of Pont Achin on the 22nd of May. ...
The Emperor ... abandoned the army and retired to Vienna. He
left some orders and proclamations behind him, to which nobody
thought it worth while to pay any attention. On the 5th of June,
Pichegru invested Ypres, which Clairfait made two attempts to
retain, but without success. The place surrendered on the
17th; Clairfait retreated to Ghent; Walmoden abandoned Bruges;
and the Duke of York, forced to quit his position at Tournay,
encamped near Oudenarde. It was now determined by the Prince
of Coburg, who resumed the chief command after the departure
of the Emperor, to risk the fate of Belgium on a general
action, which was fought at Fleurus on the 26th of June. The
Austrians, after a desperate struggle, were defeated at all
points by the French army of the Sambre under Jourdan.
Charleroi having surrendered to the French ... and the Duke of
York being forced to retreat, any further attempt to save the
Netherlands was hopeless. Ostend and Mons, Ghent, Tournay, and
Oudenarde, were successively evacuated; and the French were