[1792 A.D.]

On Monday, 13th day of August, 1792, in Mayor Pétion's carriage, Louis and his sad suspended Household fare thither; all Paris out to look at them. As they pass through the Place Vendôme, Louis Fourteenth's Statue lies broken on the ground. Pétion is afraid the Queen's looks may be thought scornful, and produce provocation; she casts down her eyes, and does not look at all. The "press is prodigious," but quiet here and there, it shouts Vive la Nation; but for most part gazes in silence. French Royalty vanishes within the gates of the Temple: these old peaked Towers, like peaked Extinguisher or Bonsoir, do cover it up; - from which same Towers, poor Jacques de Molay and his Templars were burnt out, by French Royalty, five centuries since. Such are the turns of Fate below. Foreign Ambassadors, English Lord Gower have all demanded passports; are driving indignantly towards their respective homes.

So, then, the Constitution is over? Forever and a day! Gone is that wonder of the Universe; First biennial Parliament, water-logged, waits only till the Convention come; and will then sink to endless depths. One can guess the silent rage of Old-Constituents, Constitution-builders, extinct Feuillants, men who thought the Constitution would march! La Fayette rises to the altitude of the situation; at the head of his Army. Legislative Commissioners are posting towards him and it, on the Northern Frontier, to congratulate and perorate: he orders the Municipality of Sedan to arrest these Commissioners, and keep them strictly in ward as Rebels, till he say further. The Sedan Municipals obey.

The Sedan Municipals obey: but the Soldiers of the La Fayette Army? The Soldiers of the La Fayette Army have, as all Soldiers have, a kind of dim feeling that they themselves are Sansculottes in buff belts; that the victory of the Tenth of August is also a victory for them. They will not rise and follow La Fayette to Paris; they will rise and send him thither! On the 18th, which is but next Saturday, La Fayette, with some two or three indignant Staff-officers, one of whom is Old-Constituent Alexandre de Lameth, having first put his Lines in what order he could, rides swiftly over the Marches, towards Holland. Rides, alas, swiftly into the claws of Austrians! He, long wavering, trembling on the verge of the Horizon, has set, in Olmütz Dungeons. Adieu, thou Hero of two Worlds; thinnest, but compact honour-worthy man! Through long rough night of captivity, through other tumults, triumphs and changes, thou wilt swing well, "fastanchored to the Washington Formula"; and be the Hero and Perfectcharacter, were it only of one idea.h

THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY

The members of the new commune, having literally conquered power, intended to keep it, and to give the law to the assembly. They were the Revolution. They established themselves permanently at the Hôtel-de-Ville, received numerous deputations and petitions and without examination or discussion passed resolution after resolution, to the number of two hundred per day, eating, drinking, and sleeping in the hall. Their first cares were to take the charge of the police into their own hands, to close the barriers and inspect passports, to release those in custody, and to hand over to the patriots the presses of the royalist journals. They removed the busts of Bailly and La Fayette from the hall of the municipality. They sent commissioners direct to the armies. They suspended the directory of the department and set Pétion at liberty.

[1792 A.D.] The leader and organ of the commune was Robespierre. Although he had gone into hiding on the 10th, according to his custom on days of danger, he presented himself at the Hôtel-de-Ville on the 11th, and, as within and about the hall and on the tribunes he nowhere found any but Jacobins and sectionaries affiliated to the Jacobins, he was received as an oracle; he was chosen to be the principal orator of the deputations. He then assumed a tone of brutal frankness. He avowed in so many words that the 10th of August had been a premeditated plot; that the sections "rousing and guiding the patriotism of the people had organised the whole and selected their moment. "The plot," he added, "was not shrouded in darkness; it was deliberated in open day, in presence of the nation. Notice of the plan was given by the placards, and the people, acting in its sovereign capacity, has not deigned to conceal its design from its enemies." Energy was now demanded. Robespierre complained that the assembly, which was guilty of having absolved La Fayette, had decreed the suspension, not the deposition of the king; that it had spoken of the distrust he inspired and not of his crimes; and that it had actually chosen the sitting of the 10th to appoint a governor for the royal child. Little by little he worked up to the words: "The kings or the French must succumb. Mercy is barbarous. All your enemies must fall under the sword of the laws."

Royalty was vanquished. The legislative was not vanquished, but it was made of no effect. The Revolution had passed over its head."

THE Girondists now wore cheerful faces. They affected delight at what had taken place; they claimed their share in the triumph and the spoils; and the Jacobins for the moment thought fit to respect these allies. The old ministers of the Gironde, Roland, Servan, Clavière, were restored to their respective offices. Pétion was allowed to keep the place of mayor. Such were the terms tacitly offered by the Jacobins, as the price of having their new municipality recognised by the assembly. Nevertheless the commune spoke bold and independent language. They sent a deputation, which thus addressed the assembly:

"The people, which sends us to you, declares you still worthy of its confidence; but at the same time can acknowledge no power authorised to pass judgment on the late extraordinary measures, prompted by necessity, except the people itself, your sovereign and ours, convoked in its primary assemblies." In reply, the assembly had the weakness, inevitable indeed, to acknowledge the new municipality and applaud its acts. With the Girondist ministers were united Lebrun, who was intrusted with foreign affairs, and the redoubtable Danton, who was called, it must have been ironically, the minister of justice.

Themselves entrenched in the commune, and supported by Danton in the government, the Jacobins now pushed their violent measures with audacity. Marat was the soul of this diabolical faction. His was the system and conception that it was necessary to the success of the Revolution to sacrifice unrelentingly the lives of the aristocrats. "Behold the monarch," argued he, "how absurd to have compromised with him, or expected sincerity! From the first moment he ought to have been dethroned or rendered harm

[1792 A.D.]

less. The aristocrats are the same. They can never forgive. In them the Revolution will forever find enemies. But where is the prison ample enough to contain the numbers of the upper classes, were the jailers faithful enough to guard them? The grave is the only prison, the executioner the only certain keeper. Slay, slay! such is the key of true policy. Your armies are of no avail. Give me two hundred Neapolitans, armed with poniards: with them I will revolutionise France!"

It is a great stain upon the moral courage of the French that in their representative assemblies the audacious minority always overpowered the majority. The constitutionalists of the first assembly were crushed by their less numerous adversaries, and now the Girondists were at the mercy of the Jacobins. The municipality usurped all legislative power. Vengeance was their object, terror their support. In order to wreak the one and inspire the other, they proposed the composition of a revolutionary committee, by which alone passports were to be granted, and which was charged to arrest and pursue the suspected. Domiciliary visits enabled their emissaries to penetrate into all the houses of the capital. Moreover, the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal was required, as necessary to the safety of the state. This, to be composed of one member chosen from each section, was to issue summary and irrevocable judgments.

To this atrocious demand the assembly, despite its timidity, demurred; and the commune immediately despatched one of its body to pronounce the following menace: "As citizen, and as magistrate of the people, I come to acquaint the assembly that this evening at midnight the tocsin will sound, and the drums beat to arms. The people are weary of being balked of vengeance. Beware that they do not do themselves justice. I demand that instantly you vote a criminal tribunal, composed of one member from each section." This command was obeyed, and the decree passed.

While the Jacobins were thus directing their efforts to private and domestic vengeance, the Girondists were taking counsel as to the defence of the kingdom. Longwy was taken. In a fortnight the enemies might be in Paris. It was then that the latter party conceived the plan of abandoning the capital, and defending the country behind the Loire. The domineering conduct of the Jacobins and of the municipality, no doubt, rendered this project less displeasing to them. Yet it came ill from men who had been the first to sound the cry for war, even when the anarchists deprecated its chances. Now, however, the parties had changed sides. The Girondists adopted the subdued tone of despair; the Jacobins the uncompromising language of audacity. Danton, above all, inspired those around him with courage, and prepared, rather than surrender the capital, to bury himself beneath its ruins. To this was joined an inveterate resolve that, if the Revolution was destined to succumb, its internal enemies, the aristocrats and royalists, should not survive to enjoy their triumph. Such was the fierce motive of the massacres of September.

Throughout the month of August the revolutionary tribunal and the sections had crowded the prisons with the suspected. There was absolutely no room for more. And it was upon learning this that an agent of the Jacobins was directed to examine the quarries beneath the faubourg St. Germain. They were found to offer a capacious receptacle for the dead. Maillard, the man who had headed the female deputation of the expedition to Versailles, was now chosen, and supplied with funds to collect a band of sturdy assassins like himself, together with all fit instruments of death, such as swords, knives, and mallets.b

[1792 A.D.]

THE POLICY OF EXTERMINATION

The advance of the allies against Paris, and the ridiculous threats of the émigrés, which were strengthened by the signature and authority of the duke of Brunswick, gave great weight to the principle advocated by Danton and Marat, who maintained that there was no other means of rescuing the cause of freedom and the national honour than by a war of extermination carried on by the poor against the rich, and the uneducated against the educated classes.

From the 10th of August the doctrine was universally preached that everything old must be thoroughly extirpated, and the religion and morality of former times put in abeyance till a new order of things was founded; and both Robespierre and Danton acted on this principle to its fullest extent. Horrible as it may seem, it is yet perfectly true that Danton, as minister of justice, employed the administration of the sacred duty with which he was intrusted for the protection of his fellow-citizens, for their murder, and the funds of the state for the payment and reward of the murderers.

The national assembly made preparations for another St. Bartholomew's day in the beginning of September, by passing a decree, on the 15th of August, that the fathers, wives, mothers, or children of émigrés should not be suffered to remove out of the bounds of their respective communes. Previous to this, a decree had been passed with a view to divide the great estates, and to raise a multitude of families from a condition of feudal bondage to the rank and comfort of small proprietors; it had been resolved that the large estates of the émigrés should be divided and sold, and thus brought by portions into the hands of the new possessors.

After the 12th, all those who were called aristocratic journalists in Paris were arrested, and their printing-presses transferred to the patriots. Audouin, accompanied by a band of three hundred and fifty patriots, traversed the whole neighbourhood of Paris, in order to hunt out and arrest aristocrats. Domiciliary visits of all kinds were organised on a great scale, and Fouquier Tinville, together with some other similar persons, is said to have ordered. the violation of private correspondence. Similar laws and measures were all resolved on by the council of the commune, and were only brought to light in the necessary form through the instrumentality of the national assembly; this council therefore called itself the General Revolutionary Council.

The council empowered Chaumette, one of the most fanatical of the Jacobins, and who was afterwards appointed Pétion's successor in the mayoralty, to cause all suspected persons to be judicially interrogated and arrested. The tribunal of the 10th of August was a prelude to those of the Revolution, and the mere mention of some decrees which were issued by the legislative assembly at the end of August will show the manner in which, and the reason why the legislative assembly was used in order to seize upon individuals, who were afterwards murdered without trial or sentence in the September massacres.

First, by the resolution of the 26th of August, the clergy were devoted to death, and on the 28th and 29th care was afterwards taken that no one who was disaffected to the reigning system should escape the eyes of the demagogues. It was decreed that domiciliary visits should be made throughout the whole kingdom, in order to drag to light the persons suspected by the clubs; next, nightly searches were ordered to be made through all the houses of Paris, and everyone was threatened with death who should offer the