ened was far more alarming in the south than in the north; and from the very commencement, civil war, or a state akin to it, had broken out in almost all the great cities, as Lyons, Marseilles, and the towns on the Rhone, as well as Bordeaux. In general, the proprietorial class had the best of the struggle. The rabble was everywhere put down, not without massacre and bloodshed, as the fearful executions at Avignon showed. But still the citizens triumphed, until the emissaries of the Mountain came from Paris to stir up the agitation and arm the dregs of the people against those above them. The great mistake of such of the Girondists as had escaped arrest was their not betaking themselves to the south at once, and organising there a wide and active resistance to the convention. Instead of this, Louvet, Guadet, Pétion, Gorsas, Lanjuinais, and others, betook themselves westward to Lower Normandy. They first stopped at Evreux, and succeeded in persuading municipality and mayor to embrace their cause." Caen, a far more important town, displayed the same sentiments. The fugitive Girondists turned thither, and found a General Wimpfen, who consented to take the command against the convention. Brittany was behind Caen, more incensed against the ultra-revolutionists than Normandy. Caen, therefore, seemed a good centre, and the Girondists formed there a committee of resistance. Unfortunately it was but the inhabitants of the towns who were readers of journals, and who had gathered from them a knowledge of the difference between moderate and ultra-revolutionary republicanism. The Norman rustic was ignorant and indifferent, whilst the Breton peasants were passively opposed to whatever the municipal councils of Rennes and the other Breton * Précis des Événements, par Gardembas. Memoirs of Louvet, of Buzot, and of Meilhan. СНАР. XL. CHAP. XL. towns embraced. The consequence was that the Gironde had no basis, no large population to depend on. As the Parisians were advancing upon Evreux to the number of little more than 1,500, Wimpfen despatched Puisaye to resist them at Evreux. With the national guard of the latter town he marched to meet and drive them back. But the little Parisian army had cannon, the first discharge of which set the army of Puisaye in disarray. It filed on the 13th of June, and Evreux, occupied by the troops of the convention, swore fealty once more to the principles of sans-culottisme. Wimpfen then told the Girondists that there was no hope but in applying for money, arms, and aid from the English, and thus making common cause with the royalists of La Vendée. He spoke truly enough, and whilst they declined to accept any such alliance, the agents of the Mountain were already affixing their placards to the walls of Caen, proscribing Wimpfen and the Girondists. The latter were obliged to fly in the direction of Quimper, which latter port they reached with much difficulty and after considerable suffering. From hence they embarked at last for Bordeaux. The final discomfiture of the Girondists in the west inspired the Jacobins with fresh confidence in their final triumph, yet it required a robust faith to feel assured of this in the months of June and July 1793, when Mayence, Condé, and Valenciennes were successively taken by the allies, when the entire south was in arms, marching against the convention, and when the Vendeans captured all the towns south of the Loire. If over all these the convention triumphed, one cannot say that it was achieved by either statesmanship or skill. Their treatment of the armies was brutal. They sent the best generals to the scaffold, and appointed the inost unscrupulous ruffians to command. They raised the whole country by a levy en masse, the recruits of which often ran away at first; they seized all the pro XL. duce of the kingdom, and ruined its agriculture as well CHAP. as its industry by their requisitions and their maximum. With all this the convention conquered, but it was able officers in a subordinate position who triumphed over the enemy in despite of the military authorities of the convention-not with their aid.* The resistance of the south failed from the discordant elements of which it was composed, and the general inability of a middle class, at least in France, to oppose the hungry multitude, paid with assignats, and driven by terror to devour them. The great boast of the latter was that they saved the revolution, but in truth they lost and destroyed it, for making the very name of republic and of liberty synonymous with terror, spoliation, and blood, they rendered the establishment or restoration of either an impossibility in the country, as long as the records and remembrance of these days survive. By the time the fugitive Girondists from Brittany reached the Gironde, this their native department had abated of its fury, and hesitated in its resistance. In the first days of June its rage was as great as its confidence. The indignant Bordelais formed a committee, which they also called of public safety, despatched a menacing remonstrance to Paris, and threatened to send an army against it; but the middle class, however incensed, dared not quit the city in any numbers, the mob being only kept down by their presence, and the difficulty of doing this became greater as the famine, which then spread over France, added the irritation of hunger to that of evil passions. In this division of parties the presence of Tallien with what troops he could collect changed the ardour of the Bordelais into trepidation, so that, when Buzot and Guadet arrived, instead of making a triumphal entrance into Bordeaux, they were obliged to hide themselves in the caves of St. Emilion. * See the numerous accounts of the conduct of the war in La Vendée and elsewhere. CHAP. XL.. Toulouse had imitated Bordeaux, and set at liberty all the prisoners whom Chabot had immured for the crime of entertaining moderate opinions. The citizens of Marseilles closed their Jacobin clubs on the 3rd of June, and prepared to make common cause with the towns of the south, all sending deputations to Bourges to form an antagonist convention. Lyons, however, was the most important centre. The progress of the revolution was nowhere so plainly designed. In 1789 it rose for the assembly against the king, and compelled the military to confine themselves to their barracks, but the king disposed of, and the aristocracy sent adrift, commerce and manufactures suspended by war and disturbance, the indigent rose against the rich, and the Lyons Jacobins declared their purpose more openly than their Paris brethren. Châlier, the Marat of the region, led the way, and his mode of accomplishing spoliation was first to erect the guillotine; this aroused the burgesses to self-defence, and their national guard, in February, put down the Jacobins. The commissioners of the Mountain came to the support of these, with several detachments of the army of the Alps. A regular battle took place between the parties in the great place of Lyons towards the end of May, in which the defenders of property had the advantage. When tidings came that fortune had taken a direction contrary to that of Paris, the Lyonese prepared for their defence; they welcomed Biroteau and other fugitives, raised a force, and there being none but royalist generals to be had, they chose De Précy for that post. Had the Lyonese confined themselves to military efforts, it would have been wiser, but the dominant party unfortunately thought of vengeance before securing victory. In the middle of July they caused Châlier, chief of the Jacobins, to be tried and executed; he well deserved his punishment, but it was a terrible provocation to the convention, given, too, at a moment when the Nismes insurrection had been quelled, and that of Bordeaux faltered.* The convention instantly ordered the siege of Lyons, and the generals of the army of the Alps were commanded to detach forces for the purpose. General Carteau succeeded in isolating the allied towns; occupying Pont St. Esprit in force, he prevented Marseilles and Nismes from marching to the succour of Lyons. Dubois-Crancé, as commissary, and Kellerman, as general, formed the siege on the 6th of August with 20,000 men. The Lyonese had but 6,000 to oppose to them; the people were far from being resolute or united. They professed as much attachment to the republic as the convention, and asked for a truce to celebrate the 10th of August. The Girondist Biroteau was obliged to depart. The Lyonese accepted the constitution of 1793, but the order of the convention was to listen to no terms. Still the conventionalists, being unable to blockade the city, made but slow progress in reducing it, whilst its gallant governor contrived to make expeditions, and surprise the posts of the enemy. On this DuboisCrancé ordered the bombardment of the town, and its destruction, if possible. A black flag hoisted on the hospital did not even protect it from bombshells. The Lyonese still defended themselves with courage despite the daily tidings which informed them they were more and more alone. General Carteau, towards the end of August, had forced his way into Marseilles, of which the citizens and moderate party fled to Toulon. A sufficient military force could still not be concentrated about Lyons; Couthon, however, the ardent conventionalist and orator, though paralysed in his limbs, found a mode of completing the investment of the city. * Mémoires de Général Doppet. Histoire de la Siége de Lyons. Memoirs of Montléon. Vie de CHAP. XL. |