VIII. CHAP. breast and the mind, wrought up as by the interest of a tragedy, is prepared alike for the most savage deeds of cruelty, or the tenderest emotions of pity. 1792. 33. the Swiss. When massacre was so universal, it may well be conMassacre of ceived that the Swiss, who had been made prisoners on the 10th of August, fifty-four in number, had no chance of escape. The non-commissioned officers and privates were massacred in their cells without even the form of trial; the officers were brought for a few minutes before Maillard's tribunal, and then turned out to be hewn down by the populace. The Swiss, locked in each other's arms, hesitated at first to go through the fatal wicket, and loudly called for mercy, on the ground that they had only obeyed their orders. "There must be an end of this," cried Maillard; "let us see who will go out first." "I will be the first," exclaimed a young officer with a noble air. "Show me the gate: let us prove we do not fear death." So saying, he rushed forward with his hands over his head into the uplifted sabres, and perished on the spot. Unable to restrain their impatience, the people broke in and despatched them where they stood. Rapid as the progress of destruction was, it did not keep pace with the wishes of Marat, who came to the Abbaye, and said"What are these imbeciles about? They do their work very slowly; by this time ten thousand might have been destroyed. Bid them be quick, and earn more money." In some of the prisons they spared the galley-slaves, who were immediately associated with them in their labours : a hundred and eighty prostitutes, at the Salpetrière, were 125. Duval, saved to minister to the pleasures of the assassins, and Terreur, ii. three hundred escaped at the other prisons from the same Lam. Hist. motive: but all the old women were murdered without mercy, and among them many between eighty and ninety years of age.1 1 Prudhom. Crimes de la Rév. iv. 100, 114, Souv. de la 259, 269. des Gir. iii. 342. Similar atrocities were committed in all the other prisons. Two hundred and eighty-nine perished in the Conciergerie. One woman there was, by an unprece VIII. 1792. 34. the Concier dented refinement of cruelty, put to death in a way so CHAP. inexpressibly frightful that the pen can hardly be brought to recount it.* At the Grand Châtelet nearly as many perished. The bodies of the slain in these two prisons Massacres in were dragged out and heaped upon the Pont Notre-Dame, where those female furies, aptly termed the "leeches of the cêtre, and Salpetrière. guillotine," turned them curiously over, and piled them on carts, by which they were conveyed, dripping with blood, so as to leave the track of the vehicle marked by a red line, to the quarries of Mont Rouge, where they were thrown into vast caverns. Above eleven hundred persons, confined for political causes, perished in the different prisons of Paris during these massacres, which continued, with no interruption, from the 2d to the 6th September. When the other captives were all destroyed, the assassins, insatiable in their thirst for blood, besieged the Bicêtre, containing several thousand prisoners confined for ordinary offences, having no connection with the state. They defended themselves with such resolution that it became necessary to employ cannon for their destruction. Seven guns were brought up and opened their fire, which beat down the gates; but the felons within fought with desperate resolution. The multitude, however, were resolutely bent on blood, and continued the contest, by unceasingly bringing up fresh forces, till the felons were overpowered, and all put to death. It took two days, however, to destroy them. At length the murders ceased, from the complete 1 Prudhom. Lac. Pr. Th. iii. 83. exhaustion of the assassins. The remains of the victims iv. 114, 120. were thrown into trenches, previously prepared by the Hist. i. 293. municipality for their reception; they were subsequently Duval, i conveyed to the catacombs, where they were built up, and 266, 269. still remain the monument of crimes which France would Moll.ix.298. Sismondi, willingly bury in oblivion-unfit to be thought of, even vi. 397. in the abodes of death.1 * "Les assassins lui coupèrent les mamelles; après cette barbare et cruelle incision, on lui passa dans la matrice un bouchon de paille, qu'on ne lui ôta que pour la fendre d'un coup de sabre."-PRUDHOMME, Crimes de la Révolution, iv. Bert, de CHAP. VIII. 1792. 35. Montmorin. The fate of M. de Montmorin, formerly minister of foreign affairs to Louis, and a warm supporter of the Revolution, was peculiarly frightful. He was arrested Dreadful during the domiciliary visits, on August 30th, and brought fate of M. de to the bar of the Assembly. His answers, however, were there so clear and satisfactory that he was sent back to the prison of the Abbaye, to await some other ground of accusation. He was one of the earliest victims; and the people carried their ferocity so far, as to impale him, yet alive, on a sharp stake, and bear him in triumph, in that dreadful situation, to the National Assembly! Thus were realised those gloomy presentiments which had retained possession of his mind for six months back, and 1 Vide Ante, which Bertrand de Molleville had in vain endeavoured to c. iv. § 4. Bert. de combat and thus was too fatally verified the mournful ii. 211, 212. prediction of Madame de Montmorin to Madame de Stael, on the first assembling of the States-general.1 Moll. Mém. 36. amples of cruelty in other coun During the crusade against the Albigeois, in the south Similar ex- of France, four hundred men and women were publicly burned at Carcassonne, to "the great joy of the crusading tries. warriors."2 When the Athenian democracy extinguished 2 Sismondi, the revolt in the island of Mytelene, they passed a decree, ordering the whole vanquished people, with their offspring, Thucydi- to be put to death. When the Irish soldiers in Mon vi. 397. des, i. 32. trose's army were made prisoners, after the battle of Philiphaugh, they were thrown, with their wives and children, from the bridge of Linlithgow, in Scotland; and the bands of the Covenanters stood on the banks of the river with uplifted halberds, and massacred such of the helpless innocents as were thrown undrowned upon the shore. Soon after, the whole captives of that nation in the prisons of Scotland were slaughtered in cold blood. During Chambers' the wars of the Roses, quarter on both sides was, for twenty of Scotland, years, refused by the English to each other. Cruelty is not the growth of any particular country; it is not found in a greater degree in France than it would be in any other state similarly situated. It is the unchaining the pas Rebellions iii. 37. Napier's Life of Montrose, 274. sions of the multitude which in all ages and countries CHAP. produces such effects. VIII. 1792. duct of the During these terrific scenes, the National Assembly, 37. however anxious to arrest the disorders, did nothing; the Feeble conministry were equally impotent: the terrible municipality Assembly. ruled triumphant. At the worst period of the massacres, the legislature was engaged in discussing a decree for the punishment of persons guilty of coining bad money. Two municipal officers intimated, upon the 2d of September, that the people were crowding round the gates of the prisons, and praying for instructions; but the Assembly did nothing. Even the announcement by Fauchet, that two hundred priests had been massacred in the prison of Carmes, led to no measure being adopted. When the slaughter of the priests at that place of confinement could no longer be concealed, they sent a deputation to endeavour to save the victims; but they only succeeded in rescuing one. On the following day the commissioners of the magistracy appeared at the bar of the Assembly, and assured the deputies that Paris was in the most complete tranquillity, though the murders continued for four days afterwards. The national guard, divided in opinion, hesitated to act; and Santerre, their new commander, refused to call them out. Roland alone had the courage, at the bar of the Assembly, to exert his talents in the cause of humanity. A few days afterwards, the eloquence Sept. 7. of Vergniaud roused the legislature from their stupor; and he had the resolution to propose, and the influence to 1 Hist. Parl. carry, a decree, rendering the members of the munici- xvii. 348, pality responsible with their heads for the safety of their Lac. i. 295, captives. But it was too late; the prisoners were all de France, killed. This tardy act of vigour only rendered the more Mig. ii. 205. inexcusable their former treason to the King, and supine- 77, 79. ness in their duty to the people.1 The small number of those who perpetrated these murders in the French capital, under the eyes of the legislature, is one of the most instructive facts in the history of 351, 430. 296. Hist. ix. 369. Th. ii. 76, VIII. 1792. 38. sons who perpetrated all these murders, national guard. CHAP. revolutions. Marat had long before said, that with two hundred assassins at a louis a-day, he would govern France, and cause three hundred thousand heads to fall; Small num- and the events of the 2d September seemed to justify the ber of per- assertion. The number of those actually engaged in the massacres did not exceed three hundred, and twice as and in many more witnessed and encouraged their proceedings ciency of the at each jail; yet this handful of men governed Paris and France, with a despotism which three hundred thousand armed warriors afterwards strove in vain to effect. The immense majority of the well-disposed citizens, divided in opinion, irresolute in conduct, and dispersed in different quarters, were incapable of arresting a band of assassins engaged in the most atrocious cruelties of which modern. Europe has yet afforded an example, an important warning to the strenuous and the good in every succeeding age, to combine for defence the moment that the aspiring and the desperate have begun to agitate the public mind; and never to trust that mere smallness of numbers can be relied on for preventing reckless ambition from destroying irresolute virtue. It is not less worthy of observation, that these atrocious massacres took place in the heart of a city where above fifty thousand men were enrolled in the national guard, and had arms in their hands; a force specially destined to prevent insurrectionary movements, and support under all changes the majesty of the law. They were so divided in opinion, and the Revolutionists composed so large a part of their number, that nothing whatever was done by them, either on the 10th August, when the King was dethroned, or on the 2d September, when the prisoners were massacred. This puts in a forcible point of view the weakness of such a body, which, being composed of citizens, is distracted by their feelings and actuated by their passions. In ordinary times it Louvet, may exhibit an imposing array, and be adequate to the repression of smaller disorders; but it is paralysed by the events which throw society into convulsion, and 1 Barbar. 57. Rév. Mém. xlvi. 73. 1 |