THE CONFESSIONS OF
JAMES BAPTISTE COUTEAU,
CITIZEN OF FRANCE.
VOL. II.
THE CONFESSIONS OF
JAMES BAPTISTE COUTEAU,
CITIZEN OF FRANCE,
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF:
AND TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH,
By ROBERT JEPHSON, Esq.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NINE ENGRAVINGS.
—Usque adeo permiscuit imis
Longus summa dies.
LUCAN.
Falso Libertatis vocabulum obtendi ab iis, qui privatim degeneres, in publicum exitiosi, nihil spei nisi per discordias habeant.
TAC. AN. L. x
.
VOL. II.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. DEBRETT, PICCADILLY. 1794.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. XIV.
I VISIT the Banks of the GARONNE.— Description of my Country House.— Fall in love with CLAUDINE my Farmer's Daughter.—Account of my Amour.—Death of CLAUDINE, and her interment.—Fatal effects of a bad Education.—Reasons for being so particular in the account of my Amours.—I prefer myself to all my Countrymen, I
CHAP. XV.
My return to PARIS.—Summary of Events preparatory to the Revolution. —Patriotism of the DUKE of ORLEANS.—Advantages of numerous Popular Assemblies.—Flourishing Condition of the French Republic, 34
CHAP. XVI.
The DUKE receives me kindly at PARIS.—Taking of the Bastile.— Use made of it by the Patriots.— Real Objections to that Prison.— DELAUNAY.—BERTHIER, FOULON, MARAT, and I, Head Bearers.—Description of Mrs. COUTEAU.—She marches to VERSAILLES at the head of five thousand Fishwomen.—LA FAYETTE.—Royal Family brought Prisoners to PARIS.—MARAT, ROBESPIERRE and I elected Members of the Convention.—Tenth of August, 1792.—Patriotism of my Mother.— My filial Piety, 63
CHAP. XVII.
The Second of September preferable to the Tenth of August—Manner of administering Justice, and of delivering Gaols.—Madame LAMBALLE.—Her fine Hair.—Her posthumous Visits to the Palais Royal and Temple.—Vindication of a Killer.—Tree of Liberty, 91
CHAP. XVIII.
Interesting Materials for French Historians. —How the DUKE OF ORLEANS cheated the Devil, and afterwards had him assassinated.—TOM PAINE'S Apology. —Funeral Honours decreed by the Convention to the Demigod PLATTERBREECH—The DUKE OF ORLEANS Chief Mourner, 123
CHAP. XIX.
Formation of the Select Committee or Cabinet.—Of whom composed.— Manner of administering Justice.— Wisdom of MARAT.—Education not neglected.—Form of Returns made to the Committee.—Private Life of the Cabinet.—The Red Night-Cap preferable to Charity, 154
CHAP. XX.
Authenticity of this Work.—Key to French Policy.—Fraternization.— Eulogy of TUMBLEDUNG.—Ratio of killing our Generals.—Death of MARAT.—His Funeral Honours.— My Mother appears to me twice in a Vision.—I leave FRANCE.—Become a Mahometan and Cadi at SMYRNA. —Conclusion, 186
THE CONFESSIONS OF
JAMES BAPTISTE COUTEAU,
CITIZEN OF FRANCE.
CHAP. XIV.
I VISIT THE BANKS OF THE GARONNE.— DESCRIPTION OF MY COUNTRY HOUSE.— FALL IN LOVE WITH CLAUDINE, MY FARMER's DAUGHTER.—AN ACCOUNT OF MY AMOUR.—DEATH OF CLAUDINE, AND HER INTERMENT.—FATAL EFFECTS OF A BAD EDUCATION.—REASONS FOR BEING SO PARTICULAR IN THE ACCOUNT OF MY AMOUR.—I PREFER MYSELF TO ALL MY COUNTRYMEN.
IN the preceding Chapter I omitted to mention that I made many attempts to see the DUKE OF ORLEANS, without ever being admitted to his presence; but accident throwing me in his way one morning in ST. JAMES'S PARK, I had an opportunity of observing, that great Men, like great Wits, have sometimes short memories, for he either did not know me, or affected to treat me like a stranger. Upon my communicating ROBESPIERRE's message he assumed an air less forbidding, thanked me for my intelligence, and ordered me to return to PARIS immediately.
WITH this command I did not intend to comply, for two sufficient reasons. First, I was just then meditating the design of looking into the contents of my master's strong box, and this attention to my own affairs claimed an indisputable priority. Next, as the Police of PARIS would most probably have speedy notice of the transaction, and they might entertain sentiments different from mine about the partition of effects without the consent of one of the parties, the Capital seemed to me by no means an eligible place for my immediate residence.
I HAD heard much of the beauty of the Banks of the GARONNE, so I resolved to bend my course towards LANGUEDOC. While my carriage was getting ready at CALAIS, I gave the Nephew of DAMIEN, by letter, a short account, which I knew would divert him much, of my manner of dividing with the Marquis, and desiring him to direct a line to me at TOULOUSE, when he was certain I could be of service to my country by my presence at PARIS. As that could not be, till there was no law left, and every thing put upon a right footing, I knew I could then make my appearance without the least danger.
IN the neighbourhood of TOULOUSE I found so many habitations fit for my purpose, which were then unoccupied, that I was for some time perplexed about an option. A circumstance at last determined me, to which I look back at this moment with a recollection so pleasing, that were I to omit a particular account of it, well might I be accused of want of fidelity in my Confessions.
A VERY creditable-looking house, with offices in perfect repair, a good garden, pleasant fields, and from the side of a hill well wooded commanding a noble reach of the river, induced me to make some enquiries about it. After the grounds had been shewn me by the Farmer that took care of them in the absence of the master, who was then at PARIS, he told me his Daughter CLAUDINE was within, had the keys of the apartments, and would have the honour to attend me, if I thought proper to examine them. I never beheld a countenance where openness, and what is called Honesty, seemed to be embellished by such comely features. An air and aspect so uncommon made me, as we walked together, a little inquisitive about his history.
"HE had lived," he said,
chiefly in that Province, where he had long been happy with a wife, as good as she was beautiful, but she was now in a better place, where he humbly hoped, when his days were counted, Heaven would be pleased again to unite him to her.
—
The death of her two sons in the last war in America,
added he, with a big tear falling down his cheek,
was too much for her; she languished and died of it. I have a daughter left, and she now is every thing to me. She is the pride of my heart, and when you see her, Sir, I think you will not wonder at her father's fondness.
ALAS! good BERTRAND (for that was the name of my venerable conductor), the careful Shepherd closes the fold against the wolf, which thou openest. I followed him to the house. From a parlour on the left side of the hall, a female voice (which the door of the room beingbut half shut I could hear distinctly) was just about to close a song in such sweet accents as might have made the chord of sympathy vibrate, even in the breast of a Dutchman. We stood still at the door for a moment.
It is my daughter, says the old man, she is at her wheel; thus always does her song beguile her labour.
Claudine.
Vol:II. pa:9
HER age seemed to be under twenty, and she wore the becoming dress of the girls of the province, except that her little feet were at their ease in slippers, and not compressed by the unyielding texture of the sabots of the country. All the materials too of which her habit was composed were finer. From the delicate whiteness of her ivory tapering fingers, and the beautiful arm above them, it was plain they had never been employed in any coarse or vulgar labour. Such an air of grace and dignity was spread over her whole appearance, that one might have imagined some Lady of the first distinction had chosen that dress for a masquerade, to make loveliness more lovely.
"MY Child," says BERTRAND,
shew this Gentleman the house; he has thoughts of becoming our Landlord
. At hearing this she lifted up her glossy eyes to my tremendous face for an instant, and with a sort of painful expression, which she could not entirely conceal, as quickly cast them down again, as if unable to bear the examination of a visage in every respect so perfectly unlike her own. For the first time in my life I felt a little vexed at my ugliness, and wished in vain for the disguising mask of the Professor of Population in LONDON. I glanced at my legs, in hopes her looks would take the same direction; but no, the ground was preferable.
WITH a respectful inclination of her head she led the way, and I followed. In every chamber I detained her as long as possible, asking numberless questions upon points about which I was utterly indifferent, to protract the infinite gratification which I felt in beholding her. When it would have been suspicious to have loitered longer, I pretended to be satisfied, and we returned to the hall, where we found her father. She passed into the parlour, and left us to conclude our bargain.
To conceal the real purpose for which every fiery particle in my veins was flaming, I pretended little difficulties about small articles of accommodation, which I knew could be removed easily, and at last closed finally with all the terms mentioned by the respectable BERTRAND. That he should take care of the land, and his bewitching daughter continue her government of the house and superintendency of the dairy, were conditions indispensible, I may perhaps be accused of inattention to my finances for not endeavouring to stipulate some abatement of the rent, which was very considerable; but when the Reader hears, that let that have been what it would, I never meant to pay a single livre of it, he will agree with me the point was hardly worth contesting.
MY impatience to be under the same roof with this beautiful creature brought me next day to take poss;ession of my new mansion. I had a hundred questions to ask, which CLAUDINE only could answer. A second inspection of the house was necessary, and she was my conductress. No Engineer, preparing to attack a fortified place, ever studied the plan with more care than I examined the doors and passages which led to her bed-chamber. With infinite mortification I perceived, that tho' she behaved to me with great respect, and invariable good-humour, her aversion to look at me still continued. So anxious was I to remove this disposition in her, so adverse to my purposes, that I tried to soften my voice, naturally more rough than BOREAS, into the gentlest accents: nay, I went so far as to sit down to a glass, endeavouring to model my features into the most engaging expression of which they were capable. I practised a smile, and it made me appear but more ferocious; as to my squint, I found at once it was desperate, so I lost no time in fruitless experiments. Nothing but the Pall Mall Mask could improve me. In a rage I broke the glass to shivers, and contented myself with concluding, that I was born to command, and not to insinuate. Self-love is never without a subterfuge.
As my passion for this lovely girl increased daily, it was time to think of concerting some plan to secure its gratification. Old BERTRAND watched the golden fruit like the Hesperian Dragon. His presence being most unpropitious to the success of my amours, it became necessary to remove him. He had more than once observed to me, that the stock of cattle was by no means sufficient for the quantity of my land, and that I should lose considerably by delaying to increase it. Nothing could be more fortunate. As his skill and probity were unquestionable, I gave him a commission to purchase for me, in person, whatever number of sheep and oxen he thought necessary; and the country under the PYRENEES being the place fixed upon where they could be best procured, his journey thither, and his return, retarded too by the slow march of my cattle, would unavoidably take up sufficient time to allow opporportunities enough for the execution of my amorous operations. Farewell, good BERTRAND! With the innocence of a Patriarch, thou art gone upon a Patriarch's errand, and no Angel will meet thee on the way, and turn thee back to avert the woe which is at home preparing for thee. He embraced his weeping daughter tenderly at parting, but little knew it was his last embrace.
AFTER BERTRAND's departure, pretending I could not bear to be left quite alone in the evening in a place where I was a stranger, I prevailed upon CLAUDINE to bring her guitar and play to me, and I detained her afterwards to a little supper which she always ordered for me. I took care that not a word should escape me to give her delicacy the slightest alarm; nay, I talked with such seeming fervour in praise of Religion, Virtue, and on several moral topics, that she began to listen to me with satisfaction. When a little dissimulation can answer a good purpose, as in the present instance, no Philosopher, no Reformer need be ashamed of it. In this case, the end was to sanctify the means. I talked like what is called a Good Man, that what is also vulgarly called Evil might come of it; and such being the motive, the proudest Patriot in FRANCE need not blush to have conducted himself as I did.
To feel any real respect for Religion or Virtue would be disgraceful to an enlightened understanding, but to affect it may be sometimes meritorious. The name of GOD, or of Heaven, never escaped from the rosebud lips of this innocent creature without being accompanied with such a look of reverence and devotion as proved too plainly how badly she had been educated. An object of distress, or a tale of pity, immediately called up a tear into her eye, and her fair bosom heaved with sympathy. Had I burst upon her at once in all the splendor of impiety, she would probably have sunk under it, like SEMELE under the celestial panoply of JUPITER, and I should have frustrated my own wishes by attempting an injudicious method of accomplishing them. No; my mode of proceeding was right, and the success evinces it.
THREE evenings passed in the harmless manner I have described already; I resolved to dedicate the fourth to the little God of Love, not ill described by HORACE,
as sharpening his burning arrows on an ensanguined anvil: Semper ardentes acuens sagittas Cote cruenta.
On the fourth, after my unsuspecting mistress had played and sung, and talked of her absent father, the time of whose expected return she had exactly calculated, we sat down, as usual, to supper. At Toulouse I had procured a sleeping potion, which the Quack who sold it assured me, would in less than an hour after its absorption consign even the hundred eyes of ARGUS to a state of profound somnolency. I was now to make the experiment, for the draught had been carefully infused into a bottle of small weak wine of the country, of which CLAUDINE commonly drank two or three glasses, mixed however with water, before she retired from the parlour.
O true Apothecary!
cried I, like ROMEO, for her long dark eye-lashes seemed to be almost weighed down as she was rising from her chair to leave me.
THE apartment where she slept was in a wing separated from the body of the house, and communicating by a pretty long passage. The key of her chamber was in my possession, and there being no bolt to the door on the inside, she could not have excluded me, even had she thought any precaution necessary.
LET any of my Readers, who has felt the gentle flame of Love, judge with what impatience I waited near a quarter of an hour till I was certain of her being in a place fit for my reception. With a dark lanthorn, and the torch of CUPID to guide my footsteps, I traversed the passage, and ascended to her chamber. The affected squeamishness of some female Critics must prevent my dwelling on particulars. As the Grecian Artist, despairing to express the fatherly anguish of AGAMEMNON at the sacrifice of his daughter, concealed his countenance in the picture, so will I throw a veil of silence over this most interesting transaction. Let it suffice to say, I was contented; I was blessed even to satiety. All the raptures which beauty, in a state of insensibility, could bestow, I enjoyed in the keenest perfection. Having locked the door at the outside to prevent accidents, I retired to my bed, hoping that the sweet image of CLAUDINE would not fail in dreams to visit me.
NEXT morning, after having conned overa speech full of tenderness and acknowledgments for the favours with which she had never intended to honour me, I mounted to the bower which contained the person of my lovely despoiled LUCRETIA. Her cap was on the ground, her bright auburn hair spread over her shoulders in wild disorder, and a look of the deepest anguish and despair too strongly imprinted on all her expressive features. As I attempted to approach, she started up with an air of frenzy, buried her face in one of the bed-curtains, stamped with her little feet against the floor, and with an impatient motion of her white arm tried to waft me from her presence. The little speech which I had prepared, I thought too good to be lost, so I uttered it, but it only seemed to increase her distraction.
I RESOLVED to give her one trial more before I proceeded to the last extremity. My reception was rather worse than at first, and I could observe she was fast verging to a state of insanity. No time was to be lost. BERTRAND was soon to return;—supposing her to run mad, she might in some lucid interval reveal the cause which had impaired her reason, and there being then some law in FRANCE, the breasts of my Judges, perhaps, might never have felt the tender passion, and they might advert only to the fact, without due allowance for the temptation.
WITH that decision which always marks a manly character, I took my measures immediately. More than three days had passed since my fair captive (at least to my knowledge) had taken any nourishment; for tho' I constantly carried up food to her, and of the nicest kind, it seemed to me to remain untasted. She loved milk, it was her favourite diet. In about a quart of milk I mingled a strong infusion of the finest arsenic, and left it in her sight upon a table. My tenderness for her was still such, that I would give her nothing unpalatable and disgusting. Next day before I unlocked the door, profound silence within, announced to me her catastrophe. Her face, though a good deal distorted by convulsions from the poison, still retained more beauty than she had left perhaps behind her in the province. A book of devotion lay upon the table before the chair she died in, and a letter from her father I found crumpled up in one of her hands, which I suppose proceeded from her expiring spasms; for, poor girl! while she could do it, she was fond of smoothing and folding up things very neatly.
SEEING all right, I waited for darkness to conclude her obsequies. At midnight I put her, with her father's letter undisturbed in her hand, and her praying book, into a large sack which lay empty in the granary for corn; then raising the whole with one arm, and casting it behind me, I trudged towards the bridge at about half a mile's distance. Light as she was, I continued groping about for near ten minutes before I could find a stone to put into the sack weighty enough to sink her. From the centre arch of the bridge I dropped my cold burden into the middle of the river, listening to hear it descend to the bottom; and I will venture boldly to affirm, that earth or water never received the remains of a more beautiful creature.
WHO can reslect upon this whole business without feeling indignation against early prejudices, and a mistaken system! H ad this fie creature's, this paragon's existence been prolonged to the present illuminated hour, how different might have been her condition! Had she but lived to see divorces sanctioned by the Legislature, to see the mothers of a promiscuous offspring presenting at the Bar of the Nation the lisping produce of their unrestrained incontinence, and claiming for it public honours and distinction, how must she have despised the narrow notions which Priests and Parents had instilled into her! Instead of falling a victim to an over-delicate and false sensibility, she would have found herself raised to a higher rank in society; and disdaining the superstitious forms and ceremonies of Monks and Churchmen, and snapping her fingers at the Altar, herself a free citizen, she might have raised up free citizens to her country.
POOR CLAUDINE! I did not wish to destroy her; I loved her, tenderly loved her, and she died an oblation, not to my inhumanity, but to a mistaken faith, and to prejudices imbibed from the nipple. Let the indignant world cry out with me,
These are the effects of superstition;
tantumreligio potuit suadere malorum.
EVERY thing being now finished to my satissaction, I returned to my house, not a little fatigued with my labour, and drenched with rain, which had sallen incessantly. A cold roasted turkey, and above two bottles of the best wine of Bourdeaux soon restored me to my accustomed vigour, and a long sound sleep, unsolicited by an opiate, completed the renovation of all my powers.
I HAVE dwelt more particularly on all the circumstances of the adventure just recited than upon any other to be found in my Confessions, because I can recur to it with the most complete satisfaction. In this atchievement no one can claim a share with me:
nihil cohors, nihil turma decerpit.
The idea, the plan, the execution, were all my own. I studied the characters I had to deal with, and governed them; I watched for every accident, and bent it to my interest; I foresaw every difficulty, and I removed it. The DUKE of ORLEANS boasts that he has spread destruction wider, that he has shed more innocent blood than any Reformer of our country. It may be so, bat how has he done it? By money and the agency of others. DANTON, THURIOU, MADAME TEROIGNE, SANSTERRF MERLIN, ROBESPIERRE, MARAT, cannot count their slain. If that be the first test of public virtue, I feel no inferiority; I wish not to depreciate their merits, but let any of them shew me a period of their lives to be compared with my short residence on the Banks of the GARONNE. To which would a PLUTARCH give the preference? ALEXANDER had his passage of the GRANICUS, POMPEY his victory over the Pirates, CAESAR his taking ALESIA, MARLBOROUGH his HOCKSTET; TURENNE, CONDE, VILLARS, SAXE, CORNWALLIS, every Hero has had his favourite atchievement. Let the Rape and Death of CLAUDINE be engraved on my tombstone. This, however, may be presumption; for, after all, not I, but the world must determine. Self-love is a great deceiver.
CHAP. XV.
MY RETURN TO PARIS.—SUMMARY OF EVENTS PREPARATORY TO THE REVOLUTION. —PATRIOTISM OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS.—ADVANTAGES OF NUMEROUS POPULAR ASSEMBLIES.—FLOURISHING CONDITION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.
EVERY thing for my ease and security seemed to have been arranged in the whole affair with my late mistress, of obstinate memory, by some power propitious to the tender passion. Just as her father might have been expected to return (to whom I should have been perplexed to account in a satisfactory manner for her disappearance), I found a short note from the Nephew of DAMIEN, directed for me at THOULOUSE, in these words:
The States General are assembled at VERSAILLES; every thing wears the most promising aspect; the Duke wishes to see you at PARIS. Lose not a moment.
THIS was in the summer of 1789. In less than half an hour I was in a chaise with the horses heads turned towards the Metropolis, and I could not help laughing heartily, while I figured to myself the wonder and stupefaction of old BERTRAND, when he should return from the mountains with his cattle, and find neither the master nor daughter he had left behind him. The peasants about the place, and two poor drudges kept in the house for the meanest offices, could give him no satisfaction; and I, the only person in the secret, being convinced that nothing I could tell him would make things much better, resolved to leave him to expatiate in the wide region of conjecture, or to look for his consolation to the prospect of being again united to his beloved wife by a second marriage with her in another world.
OBJECTS of so much greater importance then occupied my mind, and have ever since kept possession of it, that this good man, with his herds and flocks, and his beautiful daughter, never once entered my head till I sat down to ransack my memory for the series of my adventures, after I had resolved to gratify the public with their recital.
THE glorious events which since the year 1789 have followed each other in such rapid succession in FRANCE, seem in a degree to have obliterated the recollection of those primary passages which prepared the way for them. It will not therefore be impertinent, in a summary manner, just to touch upon them; and it will appear, that tho', perhaps, all that sublime confusion and anarchy which have filled mankind with such astonishment might not have been expected to result from them, yet that they should be attended with very important consequences was at least inevitable.
THAT twenty-five millions of Slaves should in a few weeks become Freemen, was sufficiently wonderful; but that twenty-five millions of Slaves should be converted into an equal number of Tyrants, the most cruel and sanguinary that any portion of the globe ever groaned under, must appear much more august and tremendous; that one of the most antient and best established monarchies in the world should be subverted almost before it was menaced; that a King, beloved by his people, esteemed for his good qualities, and never convicted of one act of oppression, should lose his head upon a scaffold; that the proudest Nobility in EUROPE should be exiled, beggared, or butchered; that a venerable Religion, and its Hierarchy, should be almost abolished; that prescriptive privileges, rights, laws, customs, and property, should be torn up by the roots and trampled upon; that every thing which was once revered should be treated with ignominy, all which was held sacred should be profaned, all that was beloved should be detested; that the very essence of right and wrong should be so confounded as to be no more distinguishable; and that all this should be done by men without wisdom, experience, fortune, abilities, or character, would appear incredible in a fiction, and yet the reality is confirmed by the most universal and undisputed notoriety. LIMA, LISBON, CALABRIA, overthrown and desolated by earthquakes, present no such stupendous objects for human contemplation.
THE foundation for all this felicity was laid by a Minister of Finance, who certainly neither foresaw nor intended it; by the vain, the elaborate, the ingenious, the polished Mr. NECKER.
FRANCE sinking under an accumulated load of debt, and still further exhausted by efforts beyond her abilities to support the revolt of the American Colonies from the Mother Country ENGLAND, was to be relieved by some great master-stroke of policy. The Minister just mentioned resorted to the happy expedient of assembling the states general. Their collective wisdom was to devise some means at once to lighten the public burden, and to replenish the Royal Exchequer, two points not very easily attainable. No plan having been previously digested with wisdom, Disorder and Democracy began to take the lead from the moment the States were assembled. Had it been duly promulgated before their convention, that the three Estates, the Nobility, the Clergy, and the Commons, were to form separate bodies, each to act as a controul upon the other, and that no measure was to be ratified but by their triple concurrence, the lowest would not have had the ascendancy; but the Ordinance only held out, that they were to meet in the same chamber, and to deliberate all together. There being a vast majority of the
Tiers,
the powers of the other two Orders must be at once over-ruled, and rendered insignificant. Cooped up as it were to be spectators of their own disgrace, nothing was left to them but to be placed like cyphers in the account, to increase the hostile importance of the figures which outnumbered them. This it must be allowed was a promising beginning.
THE King, rather of a lethargick disposition, and sensible that the people had been much oppressed, seemed more anxious that they should be relieved than for the preservation of his own despotism, or for the privileges of his haughty Nobility. The Nobles and the Clergy, though conscious of their danger, and knowing that they must be strengthened by union, did not however unite, nor take any steps to secure their immunities from encroachment, till their very existence was in jeopardy. His Majesty was suffered to go to the States General before their powers were verified; and the military parade with which this ceremony was attended, together with the insults offered to the Representatives, who were excluded from the great chamber, by armed guards, on pretence that it was preparing for the Royal reception, only drove them to find out another place of meeting, the
Jeu de Paume,
where they entered into the most solemn engagements never to be dissolved but by their own consent, and declaring themselves the whole Legislature, to the entire exclusion of all the privileged Orders. Here we saw at once the Long Parliament of ENGLAND, in the reign of the First CHARLES.
A BLESSED dearth of corn (which was felt at this time) helped to set the mass of discontent into quicker fermentation. Upon this scarcity, the Commons invited the Clergy to deliberate with them in the Common Hall upon the means for the relies of the people. Their refusal, which was expected, contributed to their unpopularity, and the question was immediately agitated by the Politicians in the
Caffe dc Foy,
Whether it was not lawful for the Commons to decree the application of ecclesiastical revenues towards the relief of the people? or, in other words, Whether they had not a right to take their property from the lawful owners, and give, or pretend to give it to those who had no right to it! It would be paying an ill compliment to the understandings of my philosophical Readers, to explain to them, that the relief of the poor was not the purpose in contemplation. Heaven forbid! Our Patriots wished to see them perish by thousands; they could be spared: no, to cast an odium upon an opulent and respectable order was the object, and to accustom men to the idea that nothing could be sanctioned against the omnipotence of the multitude. Having often, with a knife or pistol in my hand, practised this method of transferring property for my own advantage, it is hardly necessary to say that I approved of it entirely. From this moment may be dated the downsall of our Clergy.
IN June 1789, our good friend Abbe SYEYES made a motion, which a little amended was asterwards decreed:
That if the privileged Orders continued their refusal to join the Commons, the latter would proceed without them.
DURING these commotions, the Press at PARIS, like the Chimera, vomited out smoke and fire. The most furious and inflammatory publications, to the number of near one hundred weekly, issued reeking from the
Palais Royal
; and their dissemination was suffered, without a single step being taken by the Government to stop the circulation, or to extinguish the combustion. Gesticulating Orators, in every corner, mounted upon benches or barrels, harangued their respective circles of gaping auditors, and by the mere energy of vociferation and action bade defiance to logic, and surpassed all eloquence. The favourite topics of these popular mountebanks were, the nature of civil government, and the incompatibility of law and liberty; the supreme power of the people, and their wisdom; the usurpation of the Nobility and Clergy, not half so well qualified as the populace (virtuous though ignorant) for the business of legislation; the enormous expence of Royal establishments; but above all, the multiplied abuses of Government, which it was impossible to correct but by demolishing entirely the present system, and introducing another on principles diametrically opposite.
MEANTIME the Army, which had sucked in some muddy notions of Republicanism in AMERICA, and happened at his time to be discontented with their Commander, the DUKE DE CHATELET, were seduced from their fidelity to the Crown by the promise of increased pay and relaxed discipline. We knew they might be our masters, so we wisely made them our instruments.
THE undaunted spirit of THE QUEEN, which seemed to be hereditary, was for a time formidable, so the principal popular batteries were directed against her, and her supposed favourite the COUNT D'ARTOIS. Our Demagogues raked into every historical dunghill of female infamy, from JEZEBEL downwards, to find materials for loading her character with an accumulation of follies, crimes, and vices. Impossible as were many of our charges against Her Majesty, and improbable as were most of them, they served our purpose full as well as if they had been true, for the malignant credulity of our good people made their verification unnecessary. As to our illiterate Reformers who could not read, we spoke through their eyes to their passions. We had Prints exhibiting her in every attitude which a polluted imagination could devise, and these were exposed in shop-windows, inviting the inspection of every passenger. We contented ourselves with only representing THE KING under the likeness of a Hog wallowing in a stye of gluttonous sensuality.
LA FAYETTE having some credit with the troops, was suffered to take the lead where military skill and disciplined numbers were necessary; but, he being supposed not to be entirely devoid of what is called Conscience and Humanity, was only to be employed as a tool at the time, and to be afterwards removed (as he, DILLON, DUMOURIER, and so many others have experienced), by proscription, banishment, or assassination, the
ultima ratio
of all Democratical Governments.
THE demolition of all the PARLIAMENTS was also a measure resolved upon.
ALL the expences of hired mobs, of bonfires, and rejoicings to celebrate the triumphs of the rabble, and for the dispersion of the most seditious pamphlets, were defrayed by the DUKE OF ORLEANS. But the zeal of his Most Serene Highness was not confined to VERSAILLES and PARIS; orders were sent into the provinces to set fire to the houses and castles, and to cut the throats of Aristocrates; the perpetrators of such heroic deeds always being assured of a handsome gratuity for their services from the Duke's liberality.
THE annual revenue of his Highness was above 300,000 l. with a reversion of 175,000 l. yearly, after the death of his Father-in-Law the DUKE DE PENTHIEVRE; so we had a fund of near half a million yearly at our command, which we used to call facetiously ANARCHY FUND. And indeed this immense income, and the sums accruing from plunder, we always applied tovery laudable purposes: and what perhaps will not a little surprise, at least, a foreign reader, we always found the charges much more reasonable for assassination than for perjury, owing entirely to our associates being so much more in habits of the former. We paid at last but a Louis sor cutting the throat of an Aristocrat, while I think the price was not less than five for swearing a plot against him. We kept some of these accounts pretty regularly, as we did not know but the JACOBINS might like to look over them. Those who recollect the Duke's conversation in the Ninth Chapter, will not ascribe all this profusion to his generosity. He imagined he was laying out his money to the best interest. On the 25th of June he went over publicly with forty-seven of the Nobility to the Commons; many of the Clergy followed him.
IT has always been acknowledged, that Popular Assemblies too numerous can never deliberate with wisdom and effect; nay, it has been said, that even the Commons of ENGLAND, decorous as they are by the observance of known forms, habituated to debate, and seldom exceeding three or four hundred present, would never be able to come to any determination, if the business was not in some degree prepared by the Minister, or other persons, previous to its introduction among them. We had all the defects and disadvantages of a Popular Assembly, in their most complete imperfection. The Hall of Session contained above two thousand persons; about a hundred Representatives were upon their legs at a time, all talking together, and each bellowing for preaudience; while the Galleries were employed in clapping or hissing, hooting or applauding just as they happened to like or dislike the person or proposition of the Speaker. Thus this FREE ASSEMBLY (as it was pleased to call itself) became, as we wished them to be, and as they have ever since continued to be, the organized Puppets and Sub-delegates of the Rabble. Add to this, that their motions were always complicated: some parts might be eligible, some not; some pleasant, some bitter; some wholesome, others indigestible; but the Representatives were obliged to gulp down the whole, to swallow the stones with the fruit, not knowing how to reject the one, and to retain the other. Ignorant how to separate or simplify their motions, two measures directly repugnant in their tendency were sometimes voted together, and matter so discordant blended or rather huddled up in the same Resolution, that any attempt at an index would but have increased the confusion. Our Assemblies, however, soon became so expert in the business of voting and legislation, that they decreed away the life, liberty, and property of their fellow-subjects with more expedition than a Committee of the ENGLISH or IRISH House of Commons would have ventured in passing half a dozen clauses in a Turnpike Bill. If tardy justice is an evil, tardy injustice is a greater; and if our people had reason to complain, it was not for want of celerity at least in their sufferings. A man left his house, thinking it his own, in the morning; he returned at noon, and found it confiscated. The same might be said of his head; he thought it properly placed on his shoulders, the Nation thought it would look better on a pike, and it was decreed immediately. He knew every thing in FRANCE belonged to the Nation, and his head being national property, and removable at pleasure, he had no right to murmur.
THUS began our Revolution;
et mobilitate vigens,
which may properly be construed,
flourishing by the Mob,
et vires acquirens eundo,
every day exhibiting some new prodigy, stands now unparalleled in the History of the Universe. Who can pronounce decisively, that we have yet ascended to our ultimate point of perfection? A Reformer greater than MARAT may still be reserved for our posterity. We know what we have; perhaps we may yet have more. We have wars abroad, and insurrections at home; we have the certainty of bloodshed, and the probability of famine; we have Clubs in every quarter, Decrees innumerable with Murmurs and Applauses, and a very fine Constitution upon paper. We have the good wishes of Colonel TANDY and the UNITED IRISHMEN, with six small pieces of cannon and a hundred pair of shoes from a FRIENDLY SOCIETY in ENGLAND.
BUT into the account must also be taken our negatives. We have no KING, having murdered him to save charges; but we have a
Democracy
forty-fold more expensive, and in the same proportion more respectable. We have no
Lettres de Cachet
; no
Bastile
with six prisoners, one of whom never knew why he was committed; but more awfully, we have five hundred prisons full of
free Citizens,
who not only know why they are in captivity, but also know, without the torture of uncertainty, that they will be massacred before they get out of it.
WE have no imposts by the old names of
Gabelle, Taille,
or
Corvé
; but we have ampler public revenues from Loans, Benevolences, and Free Gifts, enforced by the Pike, the Poniard, and the Lamp-iron. We have no restraints from Law or from Religion; we have no God, nor no Gentleman. We are without money or breeches; and where is the use of the latter, having nothing to put into them? Shortly, perhaps, we shall be exempt from the incumbrance of Colonies and Manufactures. To conclude all: We have Liberty, such as the world never before saw or heard of; and a Republic, which being above the comprehension of human nature, sets all human nature nobly at defiance.
CHAP. XVI.
THE DUKE OF ORLEANS RECEIVES ME KINDLY AT PARIS.—TAKING OF THE BASTILE.—USE MADE OF IT BY THE PATRIOTS.—REAL OBJECTIONS TO THAT PRISON.—DE LAUNAY—BERTHIER—FCULON—MARAT AND I HEADBEARERS. —DESCRIPTION OF MRS. COUTEAU.—SHE MARCHES TO VERSAILLES AT THE HEAD OF FIVE THOUSAND FISH-WOMEN.—LA FAYETTE.—ROYAL FAMILY BROUGHT PRISONERS TO PARIS.—MARAT, ROBESPIERRE, AND MYSELF ELECTED MEMBERS OF THE CONVENTION.—TENTH OF AUGUST MDCCXCII.—PATRIOTISM OF MY MOTHER.—MY FILIAL PIETY.
ON my arrival at PARIS I found my reception with the DUKE OF ORLEANS very different from what I had experienced in LONDON. He rubbed his hands together with pleasure at seeing me, clapped me on the shoulder, and called me his WELLBELOVED. "The time," says he,
is come;
majus opus moveo:
Let our enemies look to it. Ha, ha, LOUIS CAPET! Ha, ha, MARIE ANTOINETTE! Remember TRIANON.—A stout heart and a sharp dagger shall shew them I have not forgot their kindness.
Thus went he on. In shoit, nothing was too good for me—I was his dearest friend, nor would he hear of my lodging anywhere but in the Palace. This alteration I was not weak enough to ascribe to any revival of his former partiality for me, but to his knowing that he could now employ me more effectually for his service. He was cold to me in LONDON because then he did not want my abilities, and he caressed me at PARIS because there he could make use of them: so much does the consequence of individuals depend upon place and season. I pretended to be the dupe of his insincerity, knowing that a wise man who wishes to make his fortune, should always, like the Cameleon, assume the colour of the object next to him.
THE manner in which the Bastile was taken is so well and so universally known, that it would be unnecessary and impertinent to waste any of my paper in the recital. It was the great event which confirmed the triumph of the Populace at the time, and its consequences, by our able management, has entailed upon them more miseries than they, or any people in EUROPE ever groaned under. This unexpected conquest was attended with advantages much more important to us than the mere demolition of a fortress, which, properly desended, might have baffled all our hostilities, for it served to shelter every enormity which we committed for many months asterwards. When we were accused of injustice, pillage, or massacre, we pointed to the ruins of that prison, though we might as well have referred the susferers, for their consolation, to the burning of TROY or of CARTHAGE. When a mother complained of the wanton murder of her child, or a child lamented the slaughter of its parent, we bade them dry up their tears, and think of the Bastile instead of it. Did the poor cry for the bread we had torn from their hunger, we literally fulfilled the Scripture, and gave them a stone of the Bastile to appease it. This was the balm for every wound, the panacea for every malady. It served as a kind of cross-purposes to the understanding. Like the
sans Dot
of HARPAGON, it stopped the mouth of all cavillers, and supplied the place of honour, wisdom, and probity. It was our unanswerable answer to every objection, the universal spunge which soaked up every iniquity.
WE were indeed much disappointed to find, when its unhallowed jaws were forced open, that it contained but six prisoners. We hoped to have found thousands. It shewed at least the lenity and moderation of the then existing Government. The most violent enemies, however, of our Reformation were too wise to dwell much upon this as an argument against us. A prison is not incompatible with the general freedom of mankind, in some cases it, constitutes their security; but a prison where men might be consined innocent of any crime against Society or the State and who had no means of escaping from it but the permission of the tyrants who enslaved them, can admit of no palliation from eloquence or ingenuity. Abuse long sanctioned by prescription, and long, tho' indignantly, acquiesced under, may be relaxed at particular seasons: yet that makes little difference; its existence, the possibility of suffering by it, is the grievance. It is such, let AUGUSTUS or TIBERIUS, TITUS or DOMITIAN, be the Rulers. Its iron hinges may rust under a mild Prince, they will soon be oiled again under a Tyrant. It is the real Sword of DAMOCLES, suspended by a hair over the head of the subject. He must have indeed a keen appetite and a strong digestion who can glance his eye towards the point, and relish under such circumstances the most delicious banquet.
IT is well known how we cut off DE LAUNAY the Governor's head without any trial, and piked it. BERTHIER and FOULON we served in the same manner. The ceremony of parading the heads was done by suggestion from the DUKE OF ORLEANS. Besides the beauty of the spectacle, it was the opinion of His Most Serene Highness, that the familiarizing the people to such sights must make them much more ferocious and cruel, and fitter of course for our purposes. SYLLA, at ROME, he said, had derived numberless advantages from a similar practice.
MARAT and I were the Follbearers, and infinite were the pleasantries which passed between us, while we staggered along under our ghastly burdens. I never knew the rogue so witty. Borrowing a hint from the story of JACK CADE (a Reformer of ENGLAND in the Reign of the Sixth HENRY), we brought the heads together at the corners of the streets, that they might seem to have a little conference, then chucked the faces against each other by way of a farewell kiss, and taking leave politely on their separation. This little play with the heads always made the Duke laugh prodigiously.
I SHALL pass over without particular notice the various tumults at VERSAILLES in October 1789, the Gardes de Corps firing upon the Mob who attacked the Palace, the Regiment de Flandre clubbing their arms, and the Swiss doing nothing for want of orders. But as about this time the honour of my family was more immediately concerned, I cannot forbear to mention, that my Mother put herself at the head of about five thousand of her own sex, and chiefly of her own respectable calling, Fishwomen, and marchedto VERSAILLES, in order to settle matters as she and her corps of Nereids should find best for the public welfare, No spectacle could be more sublime and awful. The altitude of her stature, the huge length of her strides, the brandishing of her bloody knife in her left hand, her pole, with a spike at the end of it, in her right, the ferocity of her countenance, the shrillness of her cries, the clattering of her wooden shoes in the kennel, the scales and entrails of fish which covered her tattered garments, three or four eels alive twining about her, and the odour issuing from the whole, formed such an assemblage of the disgusting and terrible, as no human fortitude could behold and inhale without shrinking.
Terribilis Stygio facies pallore gravatur, Impexis onerata comis.
She might have sat to FUSELI for the Picture of ERICTHO or MEGARA.
On the evening of the same day, LA FAYETTE, who perhaps might have thought that my mother's way of settling the State would not exactly answer his purpose, marched off for VERSAILLES at the head of twenty thousand of the Paris Militia, and brought up the Royal Family prisoners to the metropolis.
MAMMA, who was a little fatigued by her expedition, first mounted on the roof of the King's coach, attended by three Ladies, her Aids-deCamp; and as her long legs hung down over the window, she had the honour of bespattering his Majesty's visage with the mire of her sabots during the whole passage, which lasted at least for six hours. The vehicle, with the King cooped up a prisoner within, and Mamma with her attendants howling and gesticulating over him, exhibited a very exact emblem of our Governmen.
A KING less humane than LOUIS would certainly never have suffered himself to be subject to such cruel insults, but nothing could induce him to countenance the slaughter of his people.
Two or three attempts, as is well known, conducted by the DUKE OF ORLEANS, were near being successful to assassinate him and the Queen, during their imprisonment in the Thuilleries. It was not at this time called their imprisonment, tho' in fact it was so, for they were constantly watched by our Spies, and attended by Guards we had placed over them, but all was under the pretext of securing them from the rabble. LA FAYETTE, a weak man, infected with some dregs of humanity, never intended them any personal injury; but unable to controul the storm which he contributed to raise, he has suffered for his, half-treason the fate which commonly attends upon all Half-traitors: he has no friends on any side. We should have cut off his head, and our enemies have cast him into a dungeon. It requires great vices, or very superior qualifications, to be a successful Conspirator.
WE kept, in short, this ill-matched, this ill-fated Royal Pair in such a constant state of subjection and terror, that at last they attempted to escape, but, by a few perverse accidents, fell back again into our hands to suffer all the ingenious cruelty of inexorable Republicanism. Then followed their deposition, and imprisonment in the Temple, the King's mock trial, and his murder.
PREVIOUS to this solemn mummery, MARAT, ROBESPIERRE and myself, by the DUKE'S interest, were elected Members of the National Convention His Highnesstold us we were at liberty to turn this new dignity to our own advantage, that is, to get what money we could for our voices, he having but one condition to make with us, that we should vote to find the King guilty. As we heartily wished for his Majesty's condemnation, we made no scruple to enter into this engagement. Plunder, and to shelter ourselves from any after-account for it, were our principal objects.
So great an event as the King's death upon a seaffold, we knew, would throw things, if possible, into a state of more inexplicable confusion, and consequently give us more security; for in complete anarchy, who need fear retribution, and the feeble voice of Justice? Our venality was so notorious, that those who had business depending before the Convention did not, as sometimes happens, pretend to colour over or disguise their motives for offering us money, by saying, perhaps we might want it, and they had plenty, or such half-faced bashful pretences; but like people of plain sense and fair dealing, they came to the point at once, and asked our lowest price for each specific act of injustice. We had a certain sum for keeping away from the Assembly entirely, a certain sum for raising a riot to interrupt the proceedings, still more for voting directly against the evidence; in short, we were well paid for every thing we could do for the advantage of our clients. We very much resembled those great men who were called the Patrons of the Poor in the Roman Senate.
NOR did its being divulged that we had taken money on one side prevent applications to us from the other. Our flexibility was no secret; the notoriety of our being retained by one party was even of considerable service to us, as it greatly increased our demand for the counter-bribe, which every candid person must allow to have been perfectly reasonable. From this sort of fair traffic we derived very considerable profit. Let it not be supposed that this practice was confined to the Triumvirate. Far from it, above half the Convention shewed the same good sense that we did. In the business of the King's trial I was bribed nine times back and forward, but nothing could get the better of my honour; my word to the DUKE was pledged, and I kept it sacred. From the conversation of all those about me, I found most of my Brother-Members had made a very good day's work of it. We expected at least as much when it came to the Queen's turn to appear before us, one reason which always made MARAT in particular so violent for bringing her Majesty to justice.
THE Tenth of August 1792, that glorious day, surpassed only by the Second of September following, would require an abler pen than mine to do justice to its immortal horrors.
OUR Emissaries, with their usual industry and success, had set the common people in a ferment by rumours that the aristocratical party at Paris, not yet crushed by all our persecution, but acting in concert with the Prussian and Austrian Invaders, had formed a conspiracy to deliver the Royal Family from captivity, and to massacre, without distinction, all the harmless, unsuspecting inhabitants. This was more than sufficient. Dry straw, flax, or thread, are not more easily kindled into a flame than the Mob of Paris, and especially since they have been taught that to be in a constant state of insurrection is one unquestionable right of the people.
THEY assembled early. The
Quays,
the
Fauxbourgs,
and the
Marsh
vomited out their desperate thousands; every garret, every cellar was emptied of its ragged Reformers. In numbers without number they rolled on to the Thuilleries, determined to seize the KING and QUEEN, and immolate them to their blind fury. Their Majesties fled for safety to the Convention, who snatched them from the present danger, chusing to reserve for themselves the ceremony of their future murder. While their ammunition lasted, the Swiss who were upon duty kept up an incessant fire, and did great execution; but that being expended, the multitude broke in upon them, and massacred them all to a man with the most unrelenting ferocity. Then followed such a glorious scene as the Gods of HOMER might have looked down upon with complacency. I will not attempt to represent it, nor is it necessary. The great Historian TACITUS, when he described the state of ROME after the death of VITELLIUS, drew the picture of PARIS on the tenth of August.
PLENAE caedibus viae, cruenta sora templaque, passim trucidatis, ut quemque fors obtulerat. Ac mox augescente licentiâ, scrutari ac protrahere abditos: si quem procerum habitu et juventâ conspexerant, obtruncare, nullo militum aut populi discrimine. Quae saevitia recentibus odiis sanguine explebatur dein verterat in avaritiam. Nihil usquam secretum aut clausum sinebant, Vitellianos occultari simulantes. Initium id perfringendarum domuum; vel si resisteretur caus
caedis.—Ubique lamenta, conclamationes, et fortuna captae civitatis. Duces partium accendendo civili bello acres, temperandae victoriae impares. Quippe in turbas et discordias pessimo cuique plurima vis: pax et quies bonis artibus indigent.
THE latter part of the foregoing quotation, I am sensible, does not seem favourable to the principles of our party, but to prove the impartiality of my spirit, I would not suppress it; besides, no great weight should be allowed to the sentiments of a ROMAN, however illustrious, who wrote after his country ceased to be Republican. I quote TACITUS as a Painter, not as a Politician.
AFTER having recorded so many actions of my own and of others in the course of this faithful narration, filial piety will not suffer me to pass over on that memorable day the atchievements of the dear Woman who bore me nine moons in her maternal flank, who fed my infant hunger with stale fish, and moistened my young lip with brandy. Though knowledge be shut out at one entrance, thy eyes—for thou, my honoured Parent, knowest not how to read—the pious labour shall not yet be lost, some friendly tongue shall tell thee thy son has not forgot thee.
How many she might have hurled "to PLUTO'S gloomy reign" I cannot pretend to calculate. No real Hero of Antiquity, no Heroine of Romance MARPHIS or BRADAMANTE, ever dealt out death with such unsparing liberality. To the right and left, before her and behind her, stabbing with her pike, cutting with her knife, tearing with her teeth,
dans stragem late,
all flesh was humbled before her; Friends and Foes, Men and Women, Young and Old, Boys and Girls, the Noble and the Peasant, the Soldier and the Citizen, Prelates, Priests, Patriots, Publicans, Saints and Sinners, all fell without distinction. Sometimes she fought for the Constitution, sometimes for plunder; one while the name of an Aristocrate, at another the sight of his watchchain inflamed her; but whatever was the motive, equally true to her Country's interest, the carnage was equal. The kennels ran nothing but blood, and the
Seine
was choaked with carcasses. Even Madam TERROIGNE
This Lady is an Actress, or Dancer. On the Tenth of August she rode through the streets of Paris on a managed horse, armed with an axe. With this weapon she split the skulls of all she met, friends and foes, without distinction, especially of such as were unarmed, and begged for mercy. She is much respected by the Convention.
"fortis;sima Tyndaridarum,"
turned pale with envy, stopped her horse, and let fall her hatchet. Its edge seemed blunt, the execution tardy, when compared with the exterminating virtue of my dear Parent's weapons. Whoever has chanced to see a kite in a poultry-yard may form some image of my loved Mother's patriotism. Night, the Coward's friend, saved a remnant from her heroic fury. Fatigued, not satiated with slaughter, she laid her down among her dead, and reposed in the Golgotha of her own making. Yes, tender Mother! most respectable, most sanguinary of Viragos! though thou hadst the honour of the Sitting, though thy name was mentioned with applauses in the Convention, disdain not to accept this humble tribute from the pen of thy admiring offspring.
CHAP. XVII.
THE SECOND OF SEPTEMBER PREFER. ABLE TO THE TENTH OF AUGUST.— MANNER OF DISTRIBUTING JUSTICÉ— AND OF DELIVERING GAOLS.—MADAME LAMBALLE.—HER FINE HAIR.—HER POSTHUMOUS VISITS TO THE PALAIS ROYAL AND TEMPLE.—VINDICATION OF A KILLER.—TREE OF LIBERTY.
THE massacre of the Hugonots in FRANCE on the festival of Saint BARTHOLOMEW stood for more than two centuries unrivalled. Many have doubted whether it should not yield the preference to the Tenth of August 1792. My opinion is clearly in favour of the latter. It was little less bloody, more decisive, and looking to its consequences, more important and extraordinary. The first but diminished a Sect, the last overturned a Monarchy. The Sect soon recovered, but the Kingly Crown lies for ever prostrate. Let but the holy flame of Enthusiasm act upon the major part of a nation as a great principle of union, it will naturally fire men to the most extravagant, the wildest excesses. Tempers the most mild, dispositions the most benevolent have been totally perverted by it. It has often metamorphosed the lamb into the tyger. But there was no Religion, no pretence of Religion on the Tenth of August to combine our efforts, and to precipitate our fury. It was pure, unmixed democratic rage, and virtuous cruelty.
LEAVING then the advocates for each of these great days to decide the palm as they please, the Second of September claims over them both an indisputable superiority.
EVERY prison in PARIS was crowded with wretches who had escaped the saughter of August; well would it have been for them, that they had then perished. Most of them were Priests, feeble old men, women or children, and as ignorant of the cause of their commitment as we were indifferent about it. We resolved to have a general gaol delivery, and our manner of performing this ceremony was perhaps the most singular of any upon record in the annals of jurisprudence. The Nephew of DAMIEN, MARAT, and I, took upon ourselves the conduct of this business. Our first care was to hire about a hundred Executioners; these were called the
Tueurs,
or
Killers,
and being men of good principles, friends to their Country, and fond of the People's Government, they agreed for the reasonable gratuity of six livres per day each, to deliver all the gaols, by putting every prisoner in them to death.
THE strict attention to the oeconomical management of the public money, which we manifested in our stipulation with the
Killers,
well deserved the honourable mention made of it in the Convention asterwards; for we not only reduced the demand of these Gentlemen from a Louis d'Or to six Livres, by assuring them, that if they did not agree to the abatement, we would get it done for nothing; but the whole expence was desrayed out of the pockets of the condemned, so the prisoners paid for their own execution.
IT is probable that every Minister at the head of the finances of his country may adopt this mode of saving the public treasure; and among the rest, I should not be surprised to hear that Mr. PITT of ENGLAND (that hereditary scourge of our nation, and whose name my associates never mention without abhorrence) may also condescend to borrow the practice from us, though, perhaps, he will not have candour enough to acknowledge from whence the hint was taken.
IN every room of every prison was erected a little tribunal. A Judge sat with a red night-cap, the emblem of speedy Justice and Liberty, on his head, without breeches, his legs and arms bare, and a bloody sword lying drawn before him. A paper, containing the names of the Criminals, was presented to him. When the Judge could not read, as was commonly the case, the names were told to him by one of the Pike-men, his Guards, who stood on each side of him. These Guards had also their legs and arms bare, and were without breeches, and it greatly encreased the dignity and awfulness of the spectacle. Nothing serves to make Justice so respectable as when its appearance strikes a Prisoner immediately with the conviction that his condemnation is certain, and that his execution will be instantaneous. A man of sense makes up his mind at once to his condition, and is relieved in a moment from the torture of suspense, that most uneasy of all human sensations. When a name was called, two of the
Killers
immediately seized upon the Prisoner next to them, and holding their drawn swords to his throat, dragged him before the Tribunal. His pockets were rifled, and their contents delivered to the Judge, who sometimes, after asking a question or two, but never paying any attention to the answers, gave a nod to the
Killers,
and they dispatched him immediately. The body was then dragged out of the room, and thrown into the street, or into the yard of the prison. Many were condemned for their aristocratical names, and many for the incivism of their faces. Sometimes the Judge would say,
I find this man guilty,
when a woman or a child happened to be before him; but many more had the satisfaction of suffering under names which did not belong to them; so there might have been a revision of the sentence, had the survivors of the family thought proper to sue for it, as it might easily have been proved there had been an error in the proceedings. As to the real substance of the matter, this last circumstance made no great difference; for as we had resolved to destroy them all, the little mistake of a name was of no material consequence.
SUMMARY as was the manner in which our DANIELS administered ustice (for no trial lasted above two minutes) MARAT, that friend to humanity, and I devised a method still more expeditious. We ordered the culprits to be dragged down by dozens into the yard, and there to be run through with pikes, or hewn down with sabres, and so to dispense with the unnecessary delay from any further formality. We had at least five thousand souls to dispose of, and every one must see that no time ought to have been wasted on trifles. Time is one of the modes of existence most precious to those who know how to make a good use of it; but short and transient as it is, the idler is for ever complaining that it hangs like a dead weight upon him, whereas he ought to blame the vacuity of his own mind, and his monotonous indolence.
As we began by delivering the gaols first in the lower apartments, I can well conceive that the victims in those above, who could see between the bars of the windows what was doing in the yard beneath them, must have passed the interval, till it came to their turn, rather unpleasantly. One Citizen indeed, almost the only one who escaped, and almost as by a miracle, has given a short account, though satisfactory enough, of the effect of these executions upon the then surviving spectators. He says (I think), that concluding their death to be inevitable, they tried to observe what manner of receiving it was attended with the least pain, and the greatest celerity; and that those who submitted at once, without attempting any degree of resistance, seemed to expire with perceptibly the smallest sense of anguish.
See translation of the
Thirty-eight Hours Agony of M. JOURNIAC SAINT MEARD,
published in the ASSOCIATION PAPERS, No. XI.
I BELIEVE he is right; and I recommend to my readers, especially those of my own dear country, not to think the observation unworthy of their serious notice; for in a free Government like ours, where Liberty is so well understood, that no man can calculate upon his existence for six hours, it is clearly a matter of some moment to ascertain the manner in which he can be deprived of it with the least embarrassment.
To the immortal honour of the CONVENTION, let it not be forgotten, that tho' they were perfectly well acquainted with all that was transacting in the prisons, such was their deference for the spirit of a free people, that they took not a single step to save the captives, or to impede the course of that justice which was thus flowing in so many crimson streams through different quarters of the metropolis. It was a proud day, a glorious day,
quibus laudibus efferemus?
ONE observation must, I think; in this place, strike even a supersicial reader, that we are the most philosophical people, and most exempt from the weakness of humanity, of any in the universe, consequently the most formidable. Look for any soaring example of ambition in modern times, Where is it to be found? In FRANCE. Look for one of public faith nobly disdained, or ingeniously eluded, FRANCE can furnish it. Look for animated profligacy, luxurious refinement in debauch, for unadulterated impiety and atheism, What nation can compare with us? Our intolerance, our massacres in cold blood are unparalleled. We taught the world the most amiable depravity, the most polite corruption of manners, while we were slaves; let it learn from us more awful lessons, now we are become Tyrants. While we were but libertines and coxcombs, the nations around admired, and tried to imitate us; it would become them to reverence us, and to submit, now we are exalted into Regicides and Reformers. Have we not above twenty millions of people? a delicious climate? the purple grape? the partridge-eyed wine and the white of lousy Champagne in abundance? a soil exuberant in its produce, ingenious artists, light-heeled dancers, magnificent theatres, established manufactures, flourishing colonies, ships, docks, arsenals, canals, and navigable rivers? Have we every blesting, every advantage that Nature and Art can bestow upon reasonable creatures, and shall we sit down tamely contented? Shall we not shew our superiority? Shall not others be the worse for all this? Shall we not invade? Shall we not desolate? Shall we not plant the Tree of Liberty? Shall we not fraternize? Shall we not reform? Shall we not pull down Kings, and elevate the Red Night-Cap? ENGLAND, SPAIN, AUSTRIA, PRUSSIA, RUSSIA, and SAVOY may say, "NO." We care not: Let them but follow our example, or adopt our maxims, they will have the worst of the contest. Being a FRENCHMAN, I may be partial, yet I think we have a fair claim to the pre-eminence I thus modestly contend for.—But this is from my subject.
UNLESS the Reader will take warmly with me a retrospective view to the Second of September, he cannot share my glowing sensibility at the recollection. "How is it," as ROUSSEAU says of Love,
that being so penetrated with the sense, I fail so in the description?
Let it be considered, when the butchery began, the heat and flame of action was over, that it lasted the whole day without intermission, that the Judges and Executioners knew the sufferers were all as innocent as lambs unshorn, and that it made no moreimpression on them than if their hearts had been composed of the same metal as their sword-blades. Here was firmness; here was Roman Fortitude. So should the benches of Democratic Justice be always filled! No voice faultered, no cheek lost its colour. Unmoved they saw their streaming eyes, their piteous looks, their supplicating gestures. They were thanked by their Country for their services, but they found their best retribution in their own reflections, and in the conscious sense of having faithfully discharged their duty to the Republic.
ON this great day fell the DUCHESS OF LAMBALLE, and the proudest Aristocratical Spirit in FRANCE fell with her. Her high birth, her lofty notions, her disdain of the Mob, and her attachment to the Royal Family, had long marked her as a proper sacrifice for the Altar of Liberty. But she had a crime of a deeper die, She was intitled to twelve thousand pounds a-year from the DUKE OF ORLEANS.
Hinc illi prima mali labes.
When we had the honour of confining the Royal Family in the
Temple,
we thrust Madame LAMBALLE into a prisonalso. While justice was administering, as I have before related, some weak friend of this Lady, who wished to save her, flew to the
Palais Royal,
his face pale, and his hair standing erect with horror, to apprise the DUKE OF ORLEANS of her danger. Good soul! he had forgot that His Highness paid her twelve thousand a-year, and only remembered the nearness of their alliance. Not ten minutes before, I had slipped home (knowing what was to happen) to congratulate my Patron on the discontinuance of his future payments to the Duchess.
To speak but truth, the DUKE never displayed more good sense, more politeness, and more composure. He received the stranger with his usual good-breeding, and an air of uncommon festivity. "Pray, Sir," says the merry Duke,
suffer me to put some wine in your glass, you seem discomposed! If I do not mistake, you, mentioned Madame LAMBALLE; a fine woman, young gentleman!—Abumper, COUTEAU!
(looking at me archly)
This is Madame LAMBALLE'S health! You are a happy fellow! you have been in her good graces, I doubt not.
These little pleasantries were not at all in unison with the mood of the stranger; but abashed, astonished, and shocked, he ran sobbing out of the room, his eyes and hands listed up to Heaven, as if he expected the roof would fall to crush our unhallowed Symposium.
THERE were some circumstances attending the execution of this fair Duchess singular and entertaining enough.
Duchess of Lamballe among the Killers on Sept:2;1792.
Vol:II. pa:112.
SEVERAL insinuations at the time were thrown out against the fair fame of this
Killer,
as if he had been under a trepidation, or unwilling to do his duty, but it was the lie of the day, and perfectly unfounded. Had I a friend or an enemy to slay, I know no one to whom I would sooner trust the business. We sometimes sport too lightly with reputation. From the tediousness of the operation the Duchess suffered little, for from the moment she received the blow from the Coal-porter's iron she was in a state of insensibility: there was no personal malice intended by the executioner; had she been his sister or his mother, the thing would have been done just in the same manner.
THIS Lady being a character conspicuously obnoxious, it was resolved to make her conspicuously an example. Her head being off, her entrails were next taken out, and put carefully into a large vessel of wood with a flat bottom. Her head was sent to one of her hair-dressers, with orders to have her cheeks well rouged, and her fine hair dressed in the most becoming manner; for as we intended she should pay some visits, it would have been unpardonable to have suffered her appearance to be entirely neglected.
THE High-Priest of the Toilette, a mere milk-sop, fainted at the sight, and was immediately pierced with twenty Republican swords, as a reward for his despicable pusillanimity and incivism. By another artist of more firmness and better principles the dressing was done very neatly. The head and bowels were then placed upon a board, and paraded round the
Palais Royal,
but first under the DUKE'S windows. His Highness rose from table with a napkin in his hand, and looking out said no more than,
Aye, I see it is the Duchess, I know her by the hair; she is come to take leave, but, thank my stars! not to call for her jointure.
What a pity that a person who can shew such a great mind at times, and be so pleasant as the DUKE, should be subject to any capital weaknesses.
AFTER the head and viscera had paid their compliments at the
Palais Royal,
their next visit was to the
Temple.
OUR friends, who went before, rent the air with the joyful shouts of "Liberty" to bring the Royal Prisoners to the window, and they succeeded. The remains of the Duchess were then held up, so as to be visible from that where the Queen stood. We could observe she turned deadly pale at the fight; and we heard afterwards from our Guards, who were in the chamber, that she shrieked out, "Monsters! Ah poor LAMBALLE!" and fell in a deep swoon into the King's arms.
THROUGH the same channel of intelligence we had also the pleasure to learn that her wonted fortitude appeared to have forsaken her from that hour, a dismal melancholy took possession of her mind, and there was reason to hope it would end in the entire loss of her senses.
WHILE the head and bowels were paying their compliments as I have related, the rest of MADAME's anatomy was diverting our good friends in other parts of the City. Four gallant Demagogues, one stationed at each leg and arm, dragged the beautiful body thro' most of the kennels of Paris. When the parade was over it was tumbled among the other carcases, all forming together a very noble pile of carnage. Upon the whole, I prefer this act of justice, with all its concomitant circumstances, to the mangling of the Admiral COLIGNI, so minutely described by DAVILA and other Historians. We have not degenerated from our Ancestors: if I am not too partial to my Contemporaries, I presume to flatter myself, that we have soared above them.
IN the morning of this glorious day we had set up a Tree of Liberty properly decorated in the
Palais Royal,
and we concluded the night with a concert, a little dance, and a bonfire, the DUKE doing our family the honour to take out my Mother as his first partner.
THE Tree of Liberty is not originally of FRENCH institution. We transplanted it since last war from AMERICA; and as the solemnity at home is exactly the same as in that country, and so generally known, there is no necessity to particularize it here. The improvements in countries we have fraternized deserve to be mentioned. Our Soldiers without breeches, and in red night-caps, form a ring round the Tree. Should there happen to be the least deficiency in the contributions we have ordered to be levied upon our brethren, we seize half-a-dozen of the Magistrates, or principal inhabitants, load them with irons, cast them into a dungeon, and prohibit any intercourse between them and their families. After a little time they are drawn out of prison, and fastened by their chains to the Tree of Liberty. Every now and then our Guards give them a slice with their sabres, a stab with the pike, or roast them a little at a slow fire, all the time our fifers and hautboys playing "
Ca Ira,
" or some other animating harmony; and no scene can be imagined more lively. In the end we all get drunk, and leave our brethren tied to the Tree, either to die of their wounds, or to expire with, hunger.
THESE ceremonies have a wonderful effect on the nerves of the Spectators, and on all Friends of Liberty, according to the real signification of that emphatic term, which is so often pronounced, and so seldom understood by the generality of mankind.
CHAP. XVIII.
INTERESTING MATERIALS FOR FRENCH HISTORIANS.—HOW THE DUKE OF ORLEANS CHEATED THE DEVIL, AND AFTERWARDS HAD HIM ASSASSINATED. —TOM PAINE'S APOLOGY.— FUNERAL HONOURS DECREED BY THE CONVENTION TO THE DEMI-GOD PLATTER-BREECH—THE DUKE OF ORLEANS CHIEF MOURNER.
IN the two preceding Chapters, which contain a short summary of events distinguishing those two bright days the Tenth of August and the Second of September, it was impossible not to present the Public with pictures drawn only in blood: but "
non omnes arbusta juvant
;" however fond we may be of the good things which furnish out our tables, no one would chuse to walk always in the shambles, to which our internal history for near four years bears so striking a resemblance.
SOME perhaps may be so difficult as not to relish any entertainment we can set before them, yet have our Penmen variety in abundance for various appetites. Who can be uninterested to hear of the perpetual defeats of our armies, the slaughter of our bare-breeched ragged Soldiers without any visible diminution of their numbers, the desolation of our Frontier Towns, the reduction of our strongest Fortresses, hostile Nations pouring in upon us from every quarter, and all mankind shrinking from our alliance, while our Democratic Spirit seems to ride nobly buoyant over he calamities which environ us? What can be more extraordinary than to see our Convention decreeing away property which does not belong to their disposal, sending about Commissioners to animate desperation, denouncing each other as traitors at every meeting, and cashiering, disgracing, imprisoning, or beheading in their turn every one of our Generals? The Republic of CARTHAGE, which sometimes crucified unsuccessful leaders, was but our humble precursor in severity; for from the mongrel Royalist LA FAYETTE to the carousing CUSTINE, we have not spared a man of them. We have taught them a new Tactic, to tremble at their friends, and fly for refuge to their enemies. If they conquer, we denounce; if they are vanquished, we behead them. What confidence can be reposed in Officers who could betray their Sovereign? They invested us with the power to be Tyrants, and they must expect to feel it. Thus all denominations, all orders of mankind are taught to respect us.
IF matter like this, with the incessant play of our nimble Guillotine, be not sufficient to interest curiosity, it must resort to fiction and fancy, for our history, our facts are too tame for it.
THE following Anecdote, which is rather of a comic than of a serious nature, does not deserve attention so much for its own importance, as because it may serve, in my hands, to settle the public belief about an affair, which, though it has been often and variously related, has never hitherto been related truly. Almost every person had heard something, yet the information of no two was so much alike, as to make in their accounts any tolerable agreement. It is better to be entirely ignorant of a story than to know it imperfectly. The mind in such a state acquires nothing but misinformation and uncertainty.
IT has always been supposed in FRANCE, that the DUKE OF ORLEANS had sold himself to the Devil. His way of life, and the general tenor of his conduct, made it appear probable. Whatever might be the foundation for such a rumour, it certainly was not the business of His Highness to discountenance it, as it greatly encreased the veneration for his character among his countrymen. His being supposed besides to act by the inspiration, and under the protection of a preternatural being, seemed to imply not only wisdom and success in what he should undertake, but security against any schemes to controul his designs, or plots to endanger his person. To my knowledge it gained him many adherents. Like several others, being in the twilight, and believing neither in God nor Devil, I did not well know what to think, but I resolved not to continue long so. A mark of gunpowder in the Duke's left arm, which I had been desired to observe, and had often seen as he was changing his linen, perplexed me not a little.
THE intimacy subsisting between us banished all ceremony; so one evening as we were sitting together over our wine, I asked him directly if it was true that he had sold himself to the Devil? He answered with a smile, that it was perfectly true, and if I desired it, he would tell me the particulars. With my usual fidelity I shall communicate them, as nearly as I can recollect, in the very words of His Highness, who spoke as follows:
THIS whole business, about which so much has been said, and so little known, was a mere piece of knavery from the beginning to the ending. The Devil wanted to cheat me, and I wanted to cheat the Devil. Some years since as I was in my closet assorting some curious poisons which had been sent me by one of my Agents in ITALY for a few of my particular friends, a gentle tap called me to the door, which was locked. There I found SARPINI, one of the Grooms of my Chamber, a Neapolitan, a domestic at that time much in my confidence. After apologizing for the interruption, he told me he could procure me a visit from the Devil, if I chose to honour him with the commission; a friend of his, who was a Sorcerer, having a magical secret by which he could conjure him up from the regions of darkness. He added, that the Devil, being all-powerful, could appean in any disguise I thought proper, and would come either as a Monk or an Abbé, to avoid giving any scandal in the family; but that the Sorcerer was too poor to bear the expence of the charms and incantations necessary to raise his Master, without assistance from my liberality. Good, good! (answered I) by all means let him come; there is no one I respect more, and I shall be impatient to see him. Desire your friend the Sorcerer to make my humble duty: I shall expect the honour of the Devil's company tomorrow exactly at midnight. At the same time I gave SARPINI an order for a considerable sum upon one of my Bankers at Paris, and bad him take care to have an excellent supper, and all sorts of liquors ready, that his Majesty might have no reason to complain of my hospitality. The Devil (says he), my Lord! I believe, is not nice, but eats and drinks like other people; however, I will take care nothing shall be wanting for his good reception; and away went the Neapolitan. PUNCTUAL to his hour, in stalked my visitor, in the habit of a Franciscan. He was a big tall Devil, above six feet high, with a hoarse voice, and speaking our language with a strong German accent and pronunciation. After the usual compliments, and my enquiring about his health, and his little family, he placed himself in a chair opposite to me, and drank off a large glass of almost every wine on the table, to moisten about three pounds of a cold pasty and sour crout, which he crammed in as fast as if he had not tasted food for a fortnight. I thought the rascal would never have done stuffing. AT last we entered upon business. He promised me mountains; I was to be the head of all the BOURBONS, to ascend the throne, and live to be the oldest man in all my dominions. He was to be always at my command, and though invisible, to obey my orders as much as if he wore my livery and received my wages. In return for all this, I was to sign a paper in my own blood, containing the reversionary grant of my spirit to his disposal for ever. He drew a few drops of blood from my left arm with a lancet, after producing the bond which contained the terms of our agreement. The sides were scrawled over with tails, claws and flames, and the middle was in red characters, which he assured me were traced in the blood of a new-born child, whose throat had been cut expresly for the purpose. I signed my name, leaving out however the last letter,
s,
for I was then CHARTRES. By this omission I concluded the condition could not be exacted, as I supposed the Courts and Lawyers in the dominions beneath decreed and practised much in the same way as ours, who always pay more regard to forms and trifles than to the substance of the cause before them. Thus ended our interview. My Devil stalked off without appearing to discover the trick I had played him, and left me entirely satisfied with the thoughts of having so ingeniously outwitted him. But I got to the bottom of the whole business soon afterwards by means of another servant, who was either really attached to me, or was jealous of my regard for SARPINI. My Devil, it seems, was no other than a rascally German Mountebank, hired by the Neapolitan to trick me out of a good sum of money. The farce ended tragically for them. I had them both assassinated. By my order my Bravos told the Mountebank he had no right to complain, for if he was the Devil, as he pretended, they could do him no injury; if not, he deserved to be punished for attempting to sport with so sacred a character, and to impose upon a Prince of the Blood Royal. The Neapolitan was stabbed, and thrown into the River without any explanation.
THUS ended the DUKE's story.—He closed it with an observation, which as it shews at once his candour, his weakness and his ambition, deserves to be remembered.
You see (says he), my friend, how two worthless varlets wanted to sport with my credulity; yet such is human nature, so unwilling is the mind to relinquish any wish or desire which has taken deep root in the affections, that though I detected the cheat, tho' I know the fellow was an impostor, without power to foresee events, or to influence them, yet I often throw the veil of delusion over my fancy, and half-closing the eyes of my understanding, give myself up to the pleasing reverie, that the spoke from prescience, and that his promises will be all accomplished.
I ENDEAVOURED at the time still more to embody for him this chimera; and I must do myself the justice to declare, that while he had any power, while any thing was left to him to give, no patriot behaved to him with more attachment and fidelity than I did. I partook of his prosperity in the most friendly manner; but to avoid the appearance of singularity, I could not venture to adhere to him in his misfortunes. Alas, poor Prince! in spite of his German Mountebank, his predicted throne is the straw of a dungeon in MARSEILLES, his dominions the extent of his prison, his subjects rats and lizards, and his longevity will terminate when his former partizans have settled in what manner they can deprive him of his existence most conveniently for their own interest. We have stripped him already of what was valuable, his money, and the worthless carcase we consider but as lumber. We have besides the satisfaction to reflect, that he has not what is called one principle or virtue left, which can give him a right to reproach us. If he offers to upbraid us with the sums he has lavishedon us, we answer, they were squandered for his own purposes, and his own ambition. If he presumes to talk of our ingratitude and cruelty, we refer him to his own conduct towards his Royal Kinsman and Benefactor, when he purchased venal suffrages for his condemnation, and took the part of a pioneer in his murder; so when darkness and death come upon him, as he lived unpitying, he will fall unpitied.
THE Conversation I have mentioned passed between us on the eve of the KING's Execution. It was interrupted by the entrance of MARAT and the Nephew of DAMIEN. To the vigilance of the last we are obliged for the legalized murder of the SOVEREIGN. As the criminal law stood on the day before His MAJESTY'S Mock Trial, to condemn capitally, a majority of one third part of the Assembly present was requisite. By the address of my friend we had the law changed on that very morning, and it was enacted, that the majority of a single voice was sufficient. He also exercised with great success his known talent for forgery. Most of the papers produced against the KING, as extracts from his letters and dispatches, were of this great man's fabricating. Without them we should have had nothing which could have served for evidence. The DUKE, MARAT, and I, who were in the secret, distinguished ourselves much by the violence lence with which we insisted on their authenticity.
TOM PAINE assisted a good deal as to ordering the form of the Trial, by recommending to us the precedent of King CHARLES the First of ENGLAND, who was murdered by his subjects much in the same way as we intended to dispose of our unfortunate Sovereign. TOM'S conduct, who has now lost the confidence of his Constituents, by voting not for the King's death, only for his perpetual imprisonment, was for a time inexplicable. When it was objected to him that the tendency of all his writings had been to recommend and sanctify the most daring and violent excesses, and that the perturbators of the world were in fact but his Disciples, yet he had shrunk from his own principles, and like a base Renegade voted for mercy; he assumed to himself, with exultation, all the merit due to his anarchical publications, but tried in vain to reconcile them with his pusillanimous suffrage in the Convention. The substance of his defence was, that in the happy disposition of the Nation, he knew very well nothing he could recommend, under the appearance of lenity, could have much weight, for the people were like tygers, who, once they had tasted blood, must be gorged before they could be satiated. Those, he said, must know him little who could impute to him any sentiment of justice or moderation, from which he was as conscious of being exempt as any Reformer among our millions; but he apprehended the KING'S public execution might be attended with embarrassing consequences not immediately obvious; multitudes already discontented at home would be united by it, and every Nation in EUROPE with a King at its head, would be naturally summoned to take vengeance for an act which set an example so dangerous to every Regal Government. The people of AMERICA, he added, were known to disapprove of the measure for some of the reasons by which he was influenced; it was his business to appear to respect their sentiments, and in them it would be highly impolitic not to seem, at least, to remonstrate against the murder of a King who was absolute when he had assisted them with his fleets and armies; and that, in short, there were many different ways of annihilating a Royal Family, equally, effectual, and much less exceptionable, than a public execution on a scaffold. Thus did TOM attempt to display his wisdom, and to vindicate his consistency. We knew him too well, not to suspect his sincerity. We discovered that he had taken a large bribe for his antiregicidal vote, and out of false modesty was ashamed to acknowledge it.
EUROPE has resounded so loudly with the Trial and Execution of LOUIS, and we ourselves have made the whole so public by details in our Newspapers, that strangers are almost as well acquainted with the particulars as we who assisted at both the solemnities. I had the honour, as my reader may remember, to let fall the edge of the law on the neck of my Sovereign. We had thoughts of placing the Queen and her Children under the scaffold, that the blood of the Husband and Father might fall upon them; but recollecting that this embellishment of Justice had been before introduced at the execution of NEMOURS by LOUIS the Eleventh, a King and a Tyrant, we rejected it; yet, not to leave the public mind unsatisfied, we treated the Royal Captives with every rigour and indignity which human cruelty could devise, after the Murder of His Majesty.
BUT, not with standing all our merit in this heroical and necessary act of Justice, it evidently did not give universal satisfaction to the people in general. It became necessary therefore to divert their thoughts to some other subject, and chance kindly presented it to us. It happened most opportunely, that on the very day of the execution, the Demigod PLATTER-BREECH, spinning himself thro' the streets as usual, was crushed to death by the Cavalry which guarded the King to the scaffold He was mashed as if he had been brayed in a mortar. His last wish, as we heard, was, that his catastrophe might be serviceable to Liberty: most luckily, his I latter received no injury.
I IMMEDIATELY informed the Convention of the misfortune which had deprived us of PLATTER BREECH, with many encomiums on the virtues of the deceased, who, like myself, was a Member of that august Assembly. I moved that his remains should be honoured with a decree for their public interment, in a style the most magnificent. Collecting all my powers of oratory, I spoke in the Senate as follows;
SINCE the People of FRANCR have broke the despotic yoke they groaned under, her revolutionary annals offer no epoch more striking than the present, when we see almost at the same instant the Guardian of Liberty unfortunately crushed by the feet of his friends, and a Tyrant decollated by the Sword of Justice. Uncommon was his death, and let his obsequies be impressed with the same character. Let an inscription trace with energetic simplicity the manner of his catastrophe. Let the Image of Liberty, sole object worthy the regard of Republicans, and the Banner of the Declaration of Rights, the sacred foundation of all Popular Constitutions, be paraded before him. Thus the PLATTERBREECH, accompanied by his virtues, surrounded by his weeping sriends, in the midst of the National Convention, of the Executive Council, the Administrators and the Judges, Depositaries of the Law, shall advance to the Pantheon, where national gratitude has marked the place for his interment. There will we deposit the remains of our estimable Colleague. His Plantter shall be elevated under a general discharge of fire-arms, and fastened to his tomb amidst the lamentations of his weeping Fellow-Citizens. PLATTERBREECH shall hear our solemn engagements from the bottom of his monument: yet whatever honours you may think proper to decree as a requital of his services, the union of all good Citizens will be the most acceptable and noble recompence both of his life and death
Funeral Honours such as these were decreed by the Convention to the remains of PELLFTIER DE ST. FARGEAU, one of the Regicides, assassinated by PARIS, soon after the King's murder.
See C
RONIQUE DE PARIS, Vendredi 25 Janvier, l'an
e de la Republique.
EVERY thing I proposed was agreed to, and decreed unanimously by the Convention. The DUKE OF ORLEANS was appointed Chief Mourner; but to shew extraordinary resp
ct to a great popular character, he insisted also on being more particularly useful, and that he would himsels carry the little cossin under his arm to the place of interment. The Spectators, who were more numerous than at the King's Execution, while the procession moved along, cried out, as with one voice, that the burden was not unworthy of the bearer.
CHAP. XIX.
FORMATION OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE, OR CABINET.—OF WHOM COMPOSED.—MANNER OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE.—WISDOM OF MARAT.—EDUCATION NOT NEGLECTED.—FORM OF RETURNS MADE TO THE COMMITTEE.—PRIVATE LIFE OF THE CABINET.—THE RED NIGHT-CAP PREFERABLE TO CHARITY.
OUR domination was now in appearance pretty well established. The KING murdered; the QUEEN almost bowed to the grave with the weight of her afflictions, and suffering with her Children and Sister-in-Law all the misery which a prison and hard treatment could inflict on the vilest criminals; the Nobility exiled, plundered, or butchered; the Clergy hanged, and the people half starving; our next care was to secure to ourselves the permanency of all this power and felicity which we had thus noly acquired.
FOR this purpose we had many meetings at the
Palais Royal.
All who had distinguished themselves in the massacres, women as well as men, were at first admitted, but little of importance was determined in such mixed and numerous Assemblies. All talked together at the same time, every one boasting of his own exploits, and seeming to think more of what was already performed than of arranging matters for the suture.
I ripped up the entrails of ten Swiss (cried one) who were lying together with their hands tied behind them—
I stabbed two Duchesses, three Bishops, and a fat Baroness (roared another), and here's a piece of her liver,
which he produced from his pocket—
I strangled seven Children in the nursery (says a third) before the face of their parents;—
and thus they went on. Their vanity, in short, was intolerable.
WE got them away as well as we could, and when they were gone, agreed to form a private Committee, which should be the soul and centre of every thing. Citizen EQUALITY was allowed to be Chairman, or President: the Committee consisted of ROBESPIERRE, MARAT, and Myself; EQUALITY was to have two voices, when necessary upon a division, in order to throw in his casting-vote, that nothing might remain undetermined. At times we had some trouble to keep him quiet, for every now and then he gave us hints that the hour was come to proclaim him King, which we knew had been his object from the beginning; but we put him off as often on different pretences. MARAT, I remember, was once obliged to tell him, that if he did not hold his tongue, he would denounce him of incivism, put him into a state of accusation, and give him up to the Revolutionary Tribunal. The terror of this threat always kept him silent.
SANSTERRE, DANTON, THOURIOT, GORSAS, MERLIN, HENRIOT, Madame TEROIGNE, my Mother, and others, were at times admitted to consultations, and their opinions taken upon matters, when we wished to extend responsibility. Not one of the persons I have just mentioned but might have officiated with propriety as High-Priest at the Altar of MOLOCH.
FOR some time, indeed, the Select Committee did not do so much good as might have been expected. Our meetings often ended only in getting drunk and quarrelling. MARAT and I had twice a fierce dispute, each claiming to himself the honour of having slaughtered a family in the
Rue Colombiere
; and the Ruffian finding I had the advantage while we kept to our tongues, whipped out his knife, and struck me twice in the face with it. I retain the mark of his handywork, and had not my good fortune averted the point a little, I might have lost my left eye; so I should have resembled LYCURGUS not only in being a Legislator, but a Monoculist. No man ever had from the womb of his mother a temper more fierce, or a disposition, more sanguinary than my PYLADES: he was born with all those fine propensities which Naturalists ascribe to the Tiger-Cat and the Hyaena; and if his spirit ever transmigrates, it will certainly reside in one of these animals hereafter. His distempers and the evil habit of his body, however, have increased his malignity, and filled his vessels with a more corroding vitriol; for, like NAAMAN, the Syrian,
he is a mighty man, but he is a Leper.
The Nephew of DAMIEN (who always fomented our altercations from the mere hope of bloodshed) is by nature not less cruel, but being like DRANCES,
linguá melior, sedfrigida bello dextra,
he contents himself with recommending slaughter, and in praising the perpetrators, but leaves execution to us. He will indeed stab, or cut a throat when we hold a victim for him, but he never ossers to attack where there appears to be the least danger of resistance.
AFTER many disputes, much discussion, and frequent adjournments, we at last agreed to the following Regulations.
As our Revolution was completely unlike any other ever heard of, we agreed to support it by means as novel. All other Legislators, from the time of MOSES to the present hour, began by founding the State in the establishment of a Religion, and in securing a maintenance for the Ministers of the Altar: we opened by abolishing Religion, and continuing to plunder and hang the Clergy. In all other nations certainacts called crimes, such as parricide, murder, sacrilege, robbery, perjury, maiming, and the rest, were defined, brought under a particular description, prohibited, and a penalty annexed respectively to their commission. The law was made general, without distinction of persons, and promulgated. We made a particular law for every particular case, and leaving all things to the discretion of the Judge, the Court's decision became an example without being a precedent; so that from such capricious authorities no knowledge could be gained, nor no rule established. It could not indeed be well otherwise, as may be seen by the following distinctions.
IF an Aristocrate, in defending his own life against a Sans Culotte, who attacked him pike or poniard in hand, happened to kill the assailant, he was
ipso facto
condemned to death; if, on the contrary, a Sans Culotte, after robbing an Aristocrate, killed him, a Civic Crown was decreed to him, he was admitted to the honour of the Sitting with applauses, and respectable mention made of the transaction in the Minutes of the Covention. It would have been no less difficult in many other instances to make the law general. The exceptions would have been more numerous than the cases coming under the rule. Instead of a general prohibition (as may be seen above) against killing, our code only meant,
Thou shalt not kill a Sans Culotte.
Instead of "Thou shalt not ste
", it meant,
Thou shalt steal from every one except a Sans Culotte;
and so with the rest of the Decalogue.
UPON these points there was no division of opinion. The same unanimity appeared in the Cabinet upen the following: THAT it was for the good of the State to oppress, harrass, destroy, and utterly extirpate by all possible means every person suspected of having the least pretensions to birth, education, property, talents, or integrity, with a saving for Citizen EQUALITY, who was descended from the Royal Family, and had learned to dance, and ride the great horse. Upon the first of these points, his high birth, he always assured us no exemption was necessary, for he was not legitimately a BOURBON, but the son of a Coachman.
IT was also agreed, that all innocent persons should be condemned, and all the guilty acquitted; that the simple accusation of a single Sans Culotte should be considered as sufficient for the conviction of ten Aristocrates; and that the testimony of ten Aristocrates, though taken separately, and all concurring in proof of the crime of a Sans Culotte, should be considered as perjury; and that they should stand three times in the Pillory, with a paper fastened to their breasts, with these words in Capital Letters, "CALUMNY AND PERJURY."
IN order to complete the slavery of the Public, and to secure our own authority, we resolved to have the word LIBERTY for ever in our mouths, and a drawn Dagger in our hands as constantly; to mention MUTIUS SCAEVOLA, BRUTUS, and OLIVER CROMWELL, always with applauses; and never to pronounce the word
King
without accompanying it with some epithet of contempt, or term of opprobrium; in the Convention, to bear down with hissings, hootings, or the cudgel, any of that free Assembly who should dare to differ from us in opinion; but above all, as our lowest people are the most sanguinary, and the greatest poltroons in the world, to amuse and make them happy at proper intervals, by sounding the
tocsin
ordering a massacre, and allowing them the plunder of some houses, after we had taken out what was most valuable for our own use, under the name of a "Fund for Public Exigencies." Here it was that ROBESPIERRE, for the enlargement of natural rights, first threw out his beautiful theory upon the necessity of assassinating, without any previous information, all who were suspected to be guilty of incivism by public clamour. He more largely expatiated upon it afterwards in its proper place, the Convention.
MARAT, with more good sense than I supposed him to be master of, saying that nothing kept the people so much in awe of a Government as a constant state of terror, proposed to have a Guillotine in every street, and to chop off the heads of all who were suspected of discontent, or heard to utter the least murmur against our Administration, without any other formality than our denunciation. This idea we in a great measure adopted, and it proved a very wholesome expedient. Besides the display of our power, it was attended by these two good consequences: Such as we suffered to remain alive were obliged to us for their existence, and we got rid of a number of mouths by destroying such a multitude of people; for who does not know that the dead neither eat nor prattle? In order to keep things quiet, he also suggested the assassination of two hundred and sixty thousand people all together, pledging himself at the same time, to get the business done in the most satisfactory manner. We liked the motion much, and for a time gave into it; but upon mature consideration we were obliged to relinquish it, solely because it did not seem probable that such a multitude would suffer their throats to be cut without a certain degree of troublesome resistance. By this for bearance, when the temptation was so strong, we made a great sacrifice to prudence, for we, should assuredly have acquired great popularity by the massacre; but popularity may sometimes be purchased too dearly.
WE were not inattentive to the education of our youth. By the same Edict which forbad parents to suffer their children to go to Church, tending only to effeminate their minds and to infect their morals, we enjoined a substitutionary exercise much more likely to prepare them to be good Citizens, and useful members of the Democracy. A certain number of unadults in every district, from the age of eight to fourteen, were ordered to attend the waggons which carried off the dead bodies of such as were massacred. These children were to be instructed how to pack the carcases so as to lye most conveniently, and take up least room in the vehicle. This institution not only served to make them handy, but to familiarize them to spectacles from which tender minds are too apt to revolt. Thus we laid a foundation to secure the patriotism and confirm the fortitude of the rising generation. Another advantage is also likely to result from it. The relish for human flesh is beginning to prevail much in our country. Should it ever become an article of exportation (as it probably may be), our infants will thus have learned one branch of a trade which may bring in large sums to the People's Exchequer; our young females may soon be taught to become salters; and we shall then be able to undersell all our neigbours, not only from our greater abundance of the exportable commodity, but from the superior excellence of the manufacture, no nation having taken such wise precautions as we have done to secure a preference in this article of provisions.
IT is a vulgar error to suppose that human flesh is not palatable. I have tasted it often, and never without pleasure. Even a woman of seventy, provided she has not been what is called an Old Maid, eats well with vinegar, mustard, and red pepper. The fair sex in general are preferable to males, and the younger the better, no doubt; but all mouths cannot expect delicacies. An Irish Child which has been fed on milk and potatoes, particularly from the Province of Munster, is a nicer dish with spinach than any house-lamb I ever saw served to table. Savages, whose appetites are unadulterated, prefer a human broil to any viand whatsoever; and this well-known fact must get the better of all speculation, and remove all prejudice.
THESE were the Arcana of our Government. With what awe must not the world be struck when it contemplates the personages who composed our Cabinet, and the great objects which engaged our attention. All that is held dear by mankind was at our disposal; the fate of near twenty millions of persons depended entirely on our supreme will and pleasure. I have taken the remaining population of FRANCE at this amount; for notwithstanding all the boasting of some Patriots, I do not believe, from the hour when BERTHIER and FOULON were murdered, we have, upon the whole, exiled and destroyed five millions. To hear some people talk one would think the number had been considerable. My computation, I am certain, is pretty aceurate. As to what was done at PARIS, I know within a thousand; the whole does not amount to half a million. With regard to the provincial returns I cannot be positive, because we detected concealments of the number in several places, and accounts exaggerated from motives of interest or vanity in others. We have, however, the satisfaction to think that the work is but begun; and if fortune be not unpropitious, and no intervention happens of accidents impossible to be foreseen, we are likely to be blessed with a continuance of these happy convulsions at least for fifty years longer.
To shew that I do not speak at random, I will gratify the Public with the following authentic Document.
COPY of the RETURN from RUE ST.
ANTOINE to the COMMITTEE of MURDER and PILLAGE.
THURSDAY, AUG. 27. FIRST YEAR OF THE REPUBLIC.
HANGED—Thirty Priests for crossing themselves.
DITTO—Nine Aristocrates, convicted of having gold watches.
STABBED—Their Wives and Children for pitying them. (Number of Children uncertain.)
BEHEADED—Two
ci-devant
Bishops for being found at prayers.
DITTO—Nineteen Free Citizens, for saying times were better under the King.
THROWN INTO THE RIVER—Twelve Farmers, for asking money for their corn.
ROASTED AND EATEN—One English Girl, aged Thirteen, and three Children quite in season—of an Aristocrate by name PHILIBERT.
BURNED ALIVE—Two Old Women and an Austrian Corporal.
PLUNDERED AND GUTTED—Seventeen Houses.
THIS paper was not selected, but is presented as the first which came to my hand. Sometimes the numbers were more, sometimes less, the above may serve as a medium.
OUR Reformation might be compared to a blunt razor, which tho' it leaves behind the beard or excrescence which it is employed to remove, yet tears off the skin, and lets the blood out plentifully.
THE good-natured part of the world will no doubt be anxious for our private situation. It will naturally suppose us worn down with fatigue, and insufferably harrassed by the multiplicity of our occupations. But let me remove this anxiety, for in truth we were as much objects of envy in our private, as we were of admiration in our public capacity. Every thing had its proper time and place. The Committee of Murder sat for two hours three times every week; the Committee of Plunder as often; and half an hour on Sundays served for the Committee to propagate Impiety. Nothing could be more easy and expeditious. EQUALITY lived as usual, in all the luxury of his palace; ROBESPIERRE, my PYLADES, and I, possessed ourselves of the three best Hotels at PARIS, after hanging the owners at the door; we found the cellars well stored, the stables full of good horses; and the fund for public exigencies supplied us with every thing we could desire for our private gratification. The plunder of the Royal Jewels and Cabinets at VERSAILLES and PARIS were an inexhaustible mine to us. We lived, in short, in the first style, like the most opulent Noblemen, like the NEMOURS, the ROCHEFOUCAULTS, the LIANCOURTS, the BRISACS, the HARCOURTS, and others, whom we pillaged or murdered. There was no difference in our grandeur or our appearance, except that these Noblemen wore hats, and we wore the Red Night-Cap.
CHARITY (says the Scripture) covereth a multitude of sins.
I say, the Red Night-Cap covers them much better, and in a greater abundance.
THOUGH, perhaps, it may be rather beneath the dignity of a French Reformer to enter into a sort of contestation with a Christian Apostle, yet I will condescend once, for the exemplification of truth, to lay before the Public all the insipid qualities ascribed by St. PAUL to what he calls the virtue of Charity, and let them be compared with the more energetic properties which belong to the Red Night-Cap.
CHARITY (says the Tent-maker of TARSUS) suffereth long, and is kind; Charity envieth not; Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; Charity doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.
THUS much in favour of Charity.
Audi alteram partem!
Hear now the Advocate for the Red Night-Cap.
THE RED NIGHT-CAP never suffers the slightest injury without taking vengeance for it, and is of a noble ferocity. The Red Night-Cap with good sense envies every thing that is worthy of envy, and having proper pride, on every occasion makes the best display of its own merits. The Red Night-Cap despises a finical attention to behaviour or courtesy, and not only seeks and keeps its own, but seizes every thing which belongs to other people. The merest trifles provoke the high spirit of the Red Night-Cap, and it knows mankind too well not to do them justice by having a bad opinion of them. It rejoiceth in acts of heroism which are miscalled iniquity, and has too much ingenuity to pay any regard to truth, a strict adherence to which is infallibly an indication of deficient parts and abundant stupidity. The fiery genius of the Red Night-Cap is not like a horse or an ass made to bear any thing; while so far from believing all things, it does not even believe in God, and cannot endure to be seriously told of such chimeras as Virtue, Religion, and a World to come. As to the never-failing part of Charity, it is not half so infallible as the Red Night-Cap, for even the Pope himself has been obliged to acknowledge its infallibility, and many of the Saints in his calendar, nay, the Virgin MARY have been compelled to wear it. This juxta-position places te matter fairly before the understanding. Let me now ask, Could Charity be converted into a broad-brimmed hat retaining all the properties ascribed to it by the Tent-maker, whether a wise man would not chuse to cover his head with a Red Night-Cap?
CHAP. XX.
AUTHENTICITY OF THIS WORK—KEY TO FRENCH POLICY.—FRATERNIZATION.— OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.—EULOGY OF TUMBLEDUNG.—RATIO OF KILLING OUR GENERALS.—DEATH OF MARAT.— HIS FUNERAL HONOURS.—MY MOTHER APPEARS TO ME TWICE IN A VISION.—I LEAVE FRANCE.—BECOME A MAHOMETAN AND CADI AT SMYRNA.—CONCLUSION.
WHEN I consider the arduous task I have undertaken, not only to lay before the world an account of my life and actions, but the secret history of my heart, interspersed so frequently with the characters and conduct of those eminent men who were my coadjutors, without omitting a summary relation of many extraordinary events which stand prominent in our annals for near four years, I must acknowledge it gives me pleasure to find that my labours are drawing towards a conclusion.
FOR what relates to myself, I have turned my mind inside out to the Public, as fairly as the ingenious Mr. BARRINGTON turned inside out the pockets of the less ingenious Mr. GRAY, with the very instrument the former devised and the latter executed. Authenticity, the true touchstone of historical merit, will be found better here than in any of the numerous publications occasioned by our numerous Revolutions. Others have written but as Spectators, I claim the dignity of an Actor. Much of what I relate I have created, and may therefore, without presumption, assert a superiority over every other Relator of Facts,
quorum pars magna sui.
Although a little partiality for my beloved Countrymen may perhaps be now and then discernible, it has never induced the willing mistatement of any important transaction, or any inference glaringly tinctured with prejudice. The station I now occupy, and the country I reside in, so detached from, and independent of my own, remove from my mind any apprehensions of exposing myself to inconvenience or danger from the resentment of Frenchmen, who may affect to think they have been misrepresented, or their names treated with too little respect in the course of my Confessions.
FROM what has been communicated, a Reader of common sagacity may find a
Clavis
to the true meaning of many transactions which otherwise would remain inexplicable. By taking our words in a sense exactly opposite to their usual acceptation, and our theory as the very reverse of our practice, he will penetrate at once to the bottom of the mystery. He will find the nominal Government of Representatives in the Convention means the real Government of the Mob who elected them; he will find our Courts of Justice, Tribunals for the acquittal of the Guilty, and the condemnation of the Innocent; and our mild Ordinances,
quemlibet occidunt populariter,
like the laws of DRACO, written all in blood: he will find our Equality means pulling down all that is called respectable or sacred in society, to level it with all that is vile and ignominious; and our Liberty the most consummate Despotism. When we recommended peace, we were preparing to wage war; and while we professed to make mankind free, we were forging for them the most intolerable shackles.
BUT our policy at least deserves admiration. By pacific professions we lulled the Nations which were weak enough to believe us into a state of security and torpor, and immediately took advantage of their credulous oscitancy. Add to this, that we could not exist in a state of pacification. Where could we find employment for our turbulent Millions but in war? When agriculture is so much neglected that we are threatened every month with famine, from our Plowmen being converted into Politicians, how could these swarms of idle gaping boobies find subsistence without being dispersed into the countries of our neighbours? With what address did we not cherish discontents, foment sedition, and disseminate our visionary projects of Reformation even in ENGLAND, that best governed, most free, and happy Kingdom in the Universe? With what true Gallic alacrity did we not pledge ourselves to dethrone her King, and send a Citizen General, with our Ragamuffins and her own, to give new laws to GREAT BRITAIN, and riot in the Royal Apartments at St. JAMES'S? With what genuine Democratic audacity did we not hurl the gauntlet at the face of every Sovereign and Regal Government in EUROPE; and with what incomparable hypocrisy did we not afterwards complain that they attacked and invaded us?
THE wretched people of SAVOY first felt the benefit of our kind
Fraternization.
After we had drained her poverty to the last sad penny; after our troops, like a whirlwind, had swept away her cottages, her corn, her cattle, and her inhabitants; we resolved to turn our arms towards the North, and in the same manner to
fraternize
the Brabanters.
As the full meaning of this new term may not perhaps be perfectly understood by all my Readers, let them take the following explanation.
SHOULD any Prince refuse to accept our parchment for money, or to let us new-model his Government, we complain of his insolence, and the ill treatment we have received from him. We denounce him by a decree of the Convention as our enemy, a Tyrant, and a Despot. We declare his subjects to be our brethren, absolved from their bonds of allegiance and fidelity, and free from that moment; and that we are going to make war upon the Despot only, not upon the people, who are always to consider themselves as our brothers. Immediately upon this, fifty or a hundred thousand of our brave
Sans Culottes
invade his dominions, overturn the altars, bury dead horses or pigs under the communion-table of the great church, ravage the country, sack the towns, burn the houses, rob the men, ravish the women, let the Despot escape, and slaughter the people. As the war is made only against the Tyrant, it is not necessary to say that no injury is intended against his subjects.
AFTER these just and unavoidable acts of hostility, we convene the miserable remnant of the natives who have escaped from our heroic fury in some public place. We first make an eloquent harangue of considerable length, which always gives great satisfaction, in praise of our own lenity and moderation; then we give them an embrace, clap a Red Night-Cap on their heads, take away all their arms and money, pronounce them free, and our brothers; so in this manner they are
fraternized.
IT must be allowed, that taking the matter in a certain light, they are our Brothers, that is, as CAIN was the Brother of ABEL, for CAIN murdered his dear Brother ABEL. Were I to attempt an answer to every accusation and invective which has been poured out upon us since the year 1789, I should have no right to congratulate myself upon the prospect of concluding my labours. I might begin, but I know not where would be the termination. Of a few which are easily obviated, I shall condescend to take some slight notice.
WE hear on every side that our first steps were wrong, and that we have advanced in the mire only to flounder deeper. These Speculatists, these cool pen-and-ink Politicians tell us, we should have limited the Regal Power, not have abolished Royalty, and cruelly murdered our benevolent, our public-spirited Sovereign; and that our barbarity to his calumniated Queen, and unoffending Children, is unprovoked, unexampled, and hideously atrocious; that we ought to have removed the oppressive Seigneural Rights of our Nobles, not have exiled or massacred them, and especially those excellent men who of such rights had made a voluntary surrender; that we should have settled a competent provision for our Curates by some new fund, or have waited at least till by the death of the incumbents, Church Revenues too exorbitant reverted to the Community, not have plundered our Bishops without mercy, and hanged them or cut their throats afterwards.
As one short answer may serve to dispatch these three objections at once, I shall give it. When any measure is necessary, the most speedy method of effecting it is best. Could a LACED AEMONIAN, the greatest enemy to prolixity, have devised any more expeditious than that which we adopted, Sudden Death? They tell us besides, that we should have exempted the poor from taxes, and left the rich to supply them, not have quadrupled our public expences, and left none able to pay them. Do they not know, then, that no man in FRANCE pays any thing but as he chooses, which is Liberty, or when compelled by the pike or the bayonet, another species of it; because we call these compulsory contributions, not by the odious name of Taxes, but Loans and Free Gifts, though the Loan is never paid back, and the Free Gift is always extorted; and what can be more satisfactory to a free people, as the French now are?
WE are asked, with a sort of triumphant insolence, Did such furious excesses, such savage licentiousness, such execrable cruelties ever before prevail in any civilized country? Why—Yes. GREECE, where Democracy flourished, was often in a condition almost as distracted. Was ROME much better during the proscriptions of MARIUS and SYLLA? and after the death of CAESAR, under the bloody Triumvirate? or at the irruption of the Scourge of GOD, ATTILA, GENSERIC, and their successors? Was JERUSALEM upon roses when torn within by the factions of JOHN and SIMON, and invested without by the Legions of TITUS? In that City a mother was compelled to eat her own child from hunger; our Ladies eat the children of their enemies to satiate their revenge, or to prove their civism. The cases are widely different. Was ENGLAND a Paradise when YORK and LANCASTER drew forth their battles, or in the Civil Wars of King CHARLES and his Parliament? But to bring things nearer to our own aera, when the Fifty Sons of MULEY ISMAEL desolated their country with fifty civil wars all together, was the condition of MOROCCO much less calamitous? No—We have the pleasure to reflect, and it is the true
solamen miseris,
the soft balm to the afflicted, that other nations have had their periods of adversity, and that they wanted but our numbers and our spirit to be nearly as invelved and ferocious as we are.
BUT human wisdom, human logic, human crimination are not sufficient; the Artillery of Heaven must also be drawn down upon us. Divine vengeance, we are told, has already overtaken us, not only in the multiplied miseries we labour under, but in the particular punishment of the very individuals who were most instrumental in bringing about our barbarous Revolutions. Our Generals and Officers (they say), those double traitors, false to their oaths and their honour, are to a man proscribed, imprisoned, or beheaded. Why, granted— I know nothing about divine vengeance, nor ever will believe in such superstitious folly; but I know the fate of these men does not proceed from any celestial interposition, but from the very nature of Democracy, which has been the same in all ages and countries, and will for ever continue to be the same; for which reason Soldiers who have common sense should be of all men the most averse to it. What said the excellent PHOCION, when dragged on a hurdle to an unjust death by the People of ATHENS?
Hunc exitum plerique clari viri habuerunt Athenienses,"
as NEPOS has translated it,
Such must be the exit of all eminence where there is such a Constitution, and Liberty likeours.
Democracy is a kind of dunghill, which cherishes nothing but weeds to grow to any height in it.
WE are asked tauntingly, Where is ORLEANS? Where is LA FAYETTE? Where is PETION? Where BRISSOT? Where CONDORCET? Where MARAT? Where TOM PAINE? Where a thousand others, once so popular, now so detested? I answer, EQUALITY is in a dungeon; some have fled, some are imprisoned, many are hanged, my PYLADES is assassinated, and TOM PAINE is in a quarry-hole. But I ask, Is it not natural? Was it not expected? Could it be otherwise? Does any human creature wonder at their fate, or pity them?
UPON the whole, then, our adversaries presume to tell us, that we have done nothing but to bring indelible disgrace and durable woe upon ourselves; and to confirm, by our example, the subjects of Governments the most arbitrary to acquiesce under any mode of being governed, rather than expose themselves by rebellion to that wild and capricious state of oppression which always results from anarchy, or the supremacy of the rabble.
Is it then nothing to have deracinated a superstitious faith, and a false system of enervating morality? Is it nothing to have invested with the robes of legislations, and to have placed on the benches of justice, an ignorant and sturdy banditti, who in the dull course of former usage would only have been consigned to the gallies or the executioner? Is it nothing to have demolished in a few months that awful fabric of social concord which the painful researches, the united experience of so much false virtue, learning, and wisdom, had endeavoured to establish for so many centuries? Is novelty nothing? Is a thrice-told tale more interesting than a fresh and lively invention? Is the restoration of Paganism nothing? Nothing to make many Gods of our own, instead of allowing that one God was our Creator? But above all, is it nothing to have rendered the name of FRENCHMAN as tremendous to human nature as hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes? Let these interrogatories be answered, before our antagonists come forward again with new casuistry and fresh assertions.
HAVING shewn how little weight there is in the arguments of our opponents, I will now shew how little truth there is in some of their asseverations,
EVERY writer (they affirm) of candour and information who was an Advocate for our Revolution at first, particularly in ENGLAND, retracts his opinion, and either vindicates his original sentiments by declaring that the abuses of our former slavish Government required Reformation, but that our excesses have gone beyond all imagination; or he asserts, that our nominal Constitution being but a line for us to deviate from, we are actuated by cruel frenzy only, and must be lest to grope our way through Chaos and Anarchy in the dark as we got into it; and so he leaves us. That some Writers, and perhaps of the above description, have acted in this tergiversive manner I deny not; but it is not the case with all.
THE ingenious Traveller Mr. RICHARD TWISS, better known in ENGLAND by the name of TUMBLEDUNG, from his fondness for that Insect of which he has publishe the Natural History, has never receded from his early opinion in our favour. He was too much frightened it is true to leave his garret, and be a spectator of our massacres in August and September, but he had the pleasure, in ease and safety, to view the carnage afterwards. How congenial are his sentiments with our own!
There is (he says) something disgusting, perhaps, in seeing a single dead body, but thousands of carcases in a heap, and tumbled all together, excite rather a pleasurable sensation.
No insidel can speak with more contempt of our Religion, or express more philosophical satisfaction at the despoiling of our Churches. How does he extol the amiable, the patriotic fierceness of the Fair Sex, who not only ripped up the vitals of the SWISS they had murdered, but wore their bloody shirts for turbans, and served up their joints broiled or roasted as a repast for their little innocent, hungry families! He does not proclaim that he was an
Anthropophagos,
but he clearly does not disapprove of Canibalism, and by implication recommends the experiment.
To read his Tour, would not one imagine he was rendering back the reeking steams his effigy had inhaled at the bottom of so many chamber-utensils in Ireland?
IT may be said, that having paid for his passport at the Secretary of State's Office in LONDON, and having got it for nothing at PARIS, the contrast was enough to disgust and incense him against his native country, and to justify his wishing to see it as miserable as FRANCE; but this ought not to impeach his impartiality; for can it be conceived, that the saving of forty shillings could counter-balance all the terrors he smelt under during the delays he experienced before he could procure his permission to depart from us? His sentiments clearly flow from his understanding and his principles. Overlooked, neglected, or derided, as he is at home, I cannot forbear to prosess myself his well-wisher. May he discover new tribes of Beetles, Pis| mires, and Tumbledungs! May the Fungus, the Ragweed, and the Toadstool develop to him all their latent beauties, and flourish in the paths before him! May the Dunghills of FRANCE conceal nothing from his botanical researches; and in the arms of his favourite Madame TERROTGNE may he beget a little race of Naturalists and Homicides to cherish the insect tribes of the earth, and to depopulate the human species!
I HAVE made it a rule in this work to touch but lightly upon events which have been detailed in our own Newspapers, or in the Gazettes of other Nations; for which reason I have not dwelt upon our military operations, or the progress of our arms. What looked most like order and system in our Campaigns was, that we left the slaughter of our private men to the enemy, and took upon ourselves the killing our Generals. For about every thousand destroyed in the field, we cut off the heads of about a dozen Commanders on the scaffold; and this proportion has been all along observed pretty exactly. Fortune has changed her aspect towards us since Citizen DUMOURIER bespoke his supper at AMSTERDAM in January last, and GREAT BRITAIN was to be fraternized the February following. Three strong frontier towns, in the possession of the enemy, put our people so much out of humour, that we were obliged to order a number of executions, to restore the Capital to its usual gaiety. FRANCE is in a constant pleurisy, and the only medicament to keep her healthy, is to let out her blood copiously.
BUT a domestic occurrence about this time entirely diverted the public attention from fleets and armies, and all apprehensions of foreign invasion.
THE death of MARAT, the amiable MARAT that friend to the extirpation of his countrymen, was an event entirely unexpected. His power and popularity were in their meridian when his Country lost him.
ON the 13th of June 1793, he fell,
purpureus veluti cum flos,
by the poniard of CHARLOTTE CORDE, a Female Fanatic, who sufered for it upon a scaffold with all the resolution of a Christian Martyr. Bloodthirsty Woman! O deed for ever to be detested! O name for ever execrable! Smiles were all her repentance, and to meet death with firmness her contrition. She called him Monster too, and having delivered the world from him, resigned her breath with indifference. Mistaken Enthusiast! FRANCE has millions of such Monsters. Thunder may crush, the earth may gape and swallow us, but we laugh to think of human means for our extinction. Thy Fellow-Citizens, my dear, my murdering, and murdered Friend! did not forget thee. More than the Pagan honours of the Pantheon were decreed to thee; thou wast deified, they made thee a God, and gave thee the
pas
to the supposed Saviour of the world. Let not thy spirit complain, my PYLADES! though it should hereafter be consigned to the Devil, for thy confederates on earth exalted thy remains above the Devil's Master. ROBESPIERRE turned pale at thy exit, yet with the usual fervour of his friendship, voted thee a whole hecatomb of human victims to appease thy manes. TOM PAINE skulked, and has ever since hid himsels in a quarryhole, where ravens minister to him. There he trembles at the uplisted visionary dagger which his eloquence has so often pointed against the bosom of Kings and Tyrants.
VIVIT
post funera virtus.
Even the carcase of my PYLADES retained some of his living virtues. These eyes beheld the boy, the little smiling Cherub who sustained the civic wreath over thy deified temples, sink down and expire by the stench which issued from thy leprous anatomy. Thou wast a mankiller and a womankiller when alive, and thou didst kill a child, after the dagger of CHARLOTTE had killed thee. Farewel, Epitome of thy Countrymen! Adieu, most admirable of all Reformers! I can no more; let my tears speak the rest for me.
THE premature end of this great man spread a considerable alarm among us: when one deer is struck, the whole herd begin to prick up their ears, and to look about them. ROBESPIERRE'S terrors, who was known to be a coward, would not have been regarded; he went about muttering,
If MARAT will not satisfy them, where can virtue be secure? Lord! Lord! the Devil preserve me! my turn will be next.
We laughed at this, but DANTON, THURIOT, MERLIN, and others of a different stamp, could not disguise their uneasiness.
ABOUT this time anonymous letters, threatening me with some invisible danger, were left for ever at my door, or scraps of paper were strewed before me in my house; so that I could not avoid seeing them, without my being able to discover how they had been deposited. In a legible hand were written words like these—
Thy hour is come
—
Murderers meet with no pardon
—
Thou hast shed man's blood, by man shall thy blood be shed
—
Despair and death are round thee
—
Remember MARAT;
—and many more admonitions were given me with the same tremendous brevity. Several fell as victims to my suspicions, but the menaces still continued.
WHETHER it proceeded from the disturbance of my waking thoughts, or whether my daemon warned me, I know not, but as I lay one night in bed, neither asleep nor quite awake, the following dreadful vision appeared before me. Methought I was placed between MARAT and the Nephew of DAMIEN in the Revolutionary Tribunal. We sat up to our knees in blood, the walls of the Court were constructed with human skulls, ranged in exact order, and kept together without any cement. From the sockets of the eyes issued red flames in the shape of darts and scorpions, and all pointed towards me and my companions. The ceiling rained down thick showers of different-coloured fire, which fell upon and burned us to the bone, without destroying us. Our ears were then deafened by the most terrible shrieks and incessant claps of thunder, when suddenly a thousand shadows, all in bright raiment, passed before us, and each was followed by the earthly form it had worn, as defaced and mangled by our cruelty; while a youthful Angel, with celestial sorrow in his aspect, held a branch of golden palm suspended over them. The figure of the murdered King was conspicuous. His head seemed to be encircled with crowns and stars of the most dazzling radiance, so that my wretched eyes were quite blinded with the splendor. He pointed to the sky, and vanished.
ROCHEFOUCAULT, CLERMONT DE TONNERRE, LA PORTE, Priests and Bishops without number, and Madame LAMBALLE, followed in the visionary procession. But O! what words can paint, what imagination can conceive my agonies when the glorified shades of old BERTRAND and his beautiful Daughter glided by before me! I looked about for my companions, and found their bodies consumed to a cinder, with a livid flame rising like a small pyramid from the spot they had occupied. Not only the bed I tossed on, but the whole chamber shook with the violence of my agitations; I yelled out loud, and tried in vain, with both my hands before my eyes, to exclude the terrifying phantoms. Such is the power of imagination, the scene seemed to last for fifty years, and my horrors to increase with its continuance.
AT the close of all, the image of my Mother appeared twice before me. The first or second time, methought no fragrance filled the chamber; her countenance was not irradiated; she wore her usual habit; her hair uncombed, her garments tattered, and her
sabots
foul from the Fish-market. She held an oyster half-open in one hand, and in the other the knife with which she opened it. Thrice she shook the honours of her matted tresses, looked mournfully at me, and vanished from my embrace in a sigh strongly impregnated with brandy. The second time her garb was the same, but her aspect different. She frowned upon me, and raising her knife to my throat, cried out in a shrill tone, which still vibrates on my ear,
Fly, rash Boy, or stay and perish!
Human nature could sustain no more. The morning sun at length kindly dispelled my vision, and my terrors; I crawled from bed in a state of feebleness and decrepitude which made me at first imagine my torments had really lasted for half a century.
THERE is grent difference between fortitude and fool-hardiness. It seemed better in my eyes to be alive like a man, than to have my breathless carrion deified like MARAT'S by a vote of the CONVENTION, so I resolved to find immediately some safe asylum.
WITHOUT communicating my intended flight to any living creature, I packed up all my plunder, jewels, and gold, to an incredible value, and in the dead of night set off for MARSEILLES, intending to sail from thence into ASIA MINOR. But even in these last moments I did not forget my duty to my Country. As the good CATO, after he had resolved on suicide, took care to make the best disposition for his friends at UTICA, so I left a letter for the Nephew of DAMIEN to be delivered after my departure, full of advice for the public welfare. I recommended the separation of the Queen from her Children, thus to tear asunder the last heart-string which could attach her to existence, to deliver her over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to confine her in the
Conciergerie,
one of the most loath some of our numerous prisons; and to dig up the bones and ashes of the dead at
St. Denys,
to prove that nothing above or under ground could be sacred from our fury. While I waited
incognito
for a vessel at MARSEILLES, I had the pleasure to hear that all this was carried into execution. Not long afterwards, with a light heart, and a favourable wind, I set sail, and arrived safely at SMYRNA.
EVERY thing in TURKEY, as in FRANCE, is venal. In less than a week I purchased the post of a Cadi which happened to be vacant, and by the virtue of circumcision became a Mahometan. I would willingly have dispensed with that disagreeable rite, but the Turks threatened to impale me, so I submitted.
THE Reader may now view me without my foreskin, and my head overwhelmed in a turban. My office secures to me the gratification of two predominant appetites, the love of money, and the love of women. Exalted on my tribunal, I dispense injustice to the world around me, and am as formidable to innocence in my capacity of a Judge, as I was to my Country in that of a Reformer. How admirable is it to see me deciding causes without hearing a word of the pleadings, and commonly without knowing even the names of the parties! My faithful Secretary XANTHIUS, a Greek, saves me much trouble by whispering in my ear,
One is rich, and the other poor: Poverty has nothing to do with litigation.
THE fame of my summary decisions is diffused so widely, that the parties in general say not a word, but after the prostrations due to my dignity, lay their purses down before me. I put both in my pocket, and always decide in favour of the heaviest; thus it may be seen I estimate Justice by the weight, as some people do silk stockings, or English Sailors silver watches.
YET, notwithstanding all my power, and the full enjoyment of every Asiatic Luxury, I often cast my eyes with regret towards my dear native Country.
WHAT fate may await her I cannot pretend to foresee. Whether she will over-run EUROPE, or is on the eve of her dismemberment, may furnish abundant matter of speculation to Coffee-House Politicians, and the Writers of Pamphlets. Her actual condition is too well known to admit of any disguise, except in Newspapers, or the representations of the CONVENTION.
To subdue her entirely is difficult, but to restore her to any state of tranquillity and order much more so. What human industry had raised, human industry may demolish, and erect in its place something perhaps more noble and persect; but the mind of FRANCE is overturned, her principles are rooted out, and her reason lies buried; the present generation cannot live to see that resurrection.
WHETHER AUSTRIA will rest satisfied with the recovery of LORRAIN and ALSACE; whether PRUSSIA will compound for money, or the possession of a district; whether ENGLAND will be content to occupy our harbours, and to annihilate our navy; are events reposing perhaps in the womb of futurity. Desperation is our goad, nor are our internal enemies less desperate. Prisoners on both sides must perish by the executioner.
OUR great contest at home is now between Republicanism and Democracy, or between the Tyranny of many, and the Madness of all, for the Royal Cause in FRANCE has but unlucky supporters; yet there is certainly but one remedy for all her calamities, and that (having now no further interest in their continuance) I hesitate not to declare, can only be found in THE RESTORATION OF ROYALTY.
THE END.