XI. 1793. CHAP. in Normandy, where a feeble attempt at resistance to the usurped authority of the Parisian mob was made, which speedily yielded to the efforts of the Jacobin emissaries. Louvet escaped to Bordeaux, and subsequently wandered for months among the forests and caverns of the Jura, x. 325, 328. where he employed his hours of solitude in composing the able memoirs of his life.1 1 Th. iv. 275, 276. Deux Amis, 66. and condem Vergniaud, Guadet, Brissot, and the other leaders, Their trial were soon afterwards arrested in different places, and nation. thrown into prison, from whence, after a painful interval, they were conducted to the scaffold. On the walls of the cell in the prison of the Carmes in the Rue Vaugirard, in which he was confined, were found written with blood, in Vergniaud's handwriting, the words "Potius mori quam fœdari.”* The prison itself bore over its entrance the inscription, “La Liberté, l'Egalité, ou la Mort." The same gloomy abode now contained the Girondists which had formerly witnessed the sorrows of men they had overthrown, and afterwards resounded with the wail of their prosecutors. The walls of their cells bore ample testimony to the heroic feelings with which they were animated. They were detained in confinement for above four months before being brought to trial, in order to secure the power "Rather die than be disgraced." In the handwriting of these eloquent and unhappy men were found the following, among many other inscriptions: "Summum credo nefas animam præferre pudori." If the Girondists had known how to live, as they proved they knew how to die, they might have averted or arrested the whole horrors of the Revolution. -See LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins, vii. 16, 17. XI. 1793. of the Jacobin faction before they brought the illustrious CHAP. leaders of the opposite party, so long the idols of the people, to trial and death. The prisoners during this interval endured the greatest privations: it was only from the aid of their relatives they could procure even a change of linen. But their courage never forsook them. A nephew of Vergniaud having been introduced into his cell, with some little aid, the prisoner took him on his knee. "My child," said he, " don't be afraid: look at me, and remember my visage when you are a man. You will remember you have seen Vergniaud, the founder of the republic, in the most honourable period of his life, when he was suffering the persecution of the wicked, and preparing to die for freemen." Fauchet now bewailed in sincere terms his abandonment of the faith of his youth, and expressed his conviction that it alone furnished an antidote to the evils of life.* When brought to trial, the people were so prejudiced, and the power of their enemies so confirmed, that their conviction was secure ere they were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Their trial and condemnation took place in the end of October before that court. The Convention passed a decree authorising their trial; the indictment against them Oct. 19. was general, but its specific charges affected only five or 1 Toul. iv. six of the accused. They insisted upon the right of se- iv. 389. parate defence; the Jacobins, the Committee of Public Mig. ii. 293. Salvation, and the Convention, held this demand decisive 99. Louv. evidence of a new conspiracy. To obviate its supposed Hist. des danger, and guard against the effect of the well-known 17, 20. * "Fauchet se frappait la poitrine devant ses collègues. Il s'accusait avec un repentir sincère, mais ferme, d'avoir abandonné la foi de sa jeunesse. Il démontrait que la religion seule pouvait guider les pas de la liberté. Il se rejouissait de donner à sa mort prochaine le caractère d'un double martyre, celui du prêtre qui se repent, et celui du républicain qui persévère. Sillery se taisait, trouvant dans ses moments suprêmes le silence plus digne que la plainte. Il revenait, comme Fauchet, aux croyances et aux pratiques religieuses. Tous deux se separaient souvent de leurs collègues pour aller s'entretenir à l'écart avec un vénérable prêtre, enfermé pour sa foi."-LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins, vii. 21, 22. 114. Th. Lac. ii. 78, p. 1. Lam. Gir. vii. 12, XI. 1793. CHAP. eloquence of the accused, which had already strongly moved the audience, the Revolutionary Tribunal, after the trial had proceeded some days, obtained from the Convention a decree, authorising them, when any trial had lasted three days, to ask the jury if their minds were made up as to the guilt of the accused, and if they said they were, to convict and pass sentence, whether they had been heard in their defence or not. 67. The grounds of the accusation were of the most conGrounds of temptible kind, and consisted of the charges brought against the against them by Robespierre, which have been already 1 Ante, c. xi. given. Chaumette recounted all the struggles of the charge Girondists. § 40. municipality with the Côté Droit, without adding a single fact that could inculpate the accused: the wretch Hébert narrated the particulars of his arrest by the Commission of Twelve, and alleged that Roland had endeavoured to corrupt the public writers, by offering to buy up his obscene journal, the Père Duchesne: Destournelle deponed that the accused had exerted themselves to crush the municipality, declared against the massacres in the prisons, and laboured to institute a departmental guard. Chabot was the most virulent of the witnesses against them: he ascribed to them a Machiavelian policy throughout all the Revolution; accused them of endeavouring to convert everything to their own profit, and even permitting the On the fifth day of the trial, the Revolutionary Tribunal addressed to the Convention the following letter:-" Five days have already been consumed, and nine witnesses only have been examined; each in making his deposition thinks it necessary to give a history of the whole Revolution. The loquacity of the accused renders the discussions long between them and the witnesses. The trial, therefore, will never be finished. But why, we ask, have any witnesses at all? The Convention, the whole Republic, are accusers in this case; the proofs of the crimes of the accused are evident. Every one has already in his conscience a conviction of their guilt. But the Tribunal can do nothing of itself; it must follow the law. It is for the Convention itself to sweep away the formalities which trammel our proceedings." Upon this the Convention, on the motion of Robespierre, passed the following resolution, which was precisely in terms of a petition presented the same day by the Jacobin Club to the Convention:-"Après trois jours de débats, le président du Tribunal Révolutionnaire demandera aux jurés si leur conscience est suffisamment éclairée; s'ils répondent négativement, le procès sera continué jusqu'à ce qu'ils XI. 1793. massacres of September, in order to cut off some of CHAP. their enemies among the victims. The prosecution lasted nine days. At the end of that time, the jury declared themselves convinced; the eloquence of Vergniaud, the vehemence of Brissot, had pleaded in vain. The court then read to the accused the decree of the Convention, empowering them to terminate the proceedings as soon as the jury had declared their minds made up; they saw upon this that their fate was determined, as they were to be condemned without being heard in their defence.* They all rose, and by loud expressions of indignation drowned the voice of the president, who read their sentence. Valazé stabbed himself with a poniard, and 1 Bull. du perished in the presence of the court, who immediately Trib. Rév. ordered that his dead body should be borne on a car to 246-255. the place of execution, and beheaded with the other pri- xxx. 110, soners. La Source exclaimed-"I die at a time when 123., Toul. the people have lost their reason you will die as as they recover it." The other prisoners embraced other, and exclaimed, "Vive la République !" audience, though chiefly composed of the assassins of 2d September, was melted to tears.1 No. 62, p. Hist. Parl. iv. 114. soon ac. ii. 99. each Th. v. 389, Mig. ii. 294. 390, 391. The Lam. Hist. des Gir. vii. the 45. 68. The anxiety of his friends had provided Vergniaud with a certain and speedy poison. He refused to make Their last use of it, and threw it away the night before his execu- Oct. 30. tion, in order that he might accompany his friends to the déclarent qu'ils sont en état de prononcer.”—Moniteur, 30 Oct. 1793. The decree was in these terms, and the original was found in Robespierre's own handwriting among his papers after his death :-"S'il arrive que le jugement d'une affaire portée au Tribunal Révolutionnaire ait été prolongé trois jours, le président ouvrira la séance suivante en demandant aux jurés si leur conscience est suffisamment éclairée. Si les jurés répondent 'Oui,' il sera procédé sur-lechamp au jugement. Le président ne souffrira aucune espèce d'interpellation ni d'incident contraire aux dispositions de la présente."-Papiers Inédits trouvés chez ROBESPIERRE, ii. 4. * "L'accusateur public requiert la lecture de la loi sur l'accélération des jugemens criminels. Cette lecture est faite. Le Tribunal ordonne, la transcription de la loi sur ses registres. Le Président-Citoyens purs, en vertu de la loi dont vous venez d'entendre la lecture, je démande si votre conscience est suffisamment éclairée.' Les jurés se retirent pour délibérer."-Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire, No. 62, p. 246. repast. XI. 1793. CHAP. Scaffold. The eloquence of this highly-gifted man, which poured forth the night before his execution, on the expiring liberty of France, in strains of unprecedented splendour, entranced even the melancholy inmates of the prison. On this occasion the Girondists, like the Christian martyrs at Rome, were permitted to take their last repast together. By a strange feeling, but copied from the example of antiquity on such occasions, the table was decked out in the principal apartment of the prison with unusual care. The choicest fruits and flowers of autumn adorned the board: the finest wines circulated among the friends who were to taste of the fruit of the vine no more. Vergniaud presided. "My friends," said he, "in trying to engraft the tree, we have killed it. It was too old; Robespierre cuts it down. Will he be more fortunate than we? No! The soil is too light here to nourish the roots of civil liberty; the people are too infantine to govern themselves: they will return to their king, as a child returns to its playthings. We mistook our time in being born, and dying for the liberty of the world; we thought we were at Rome, and we were at Paris. But revolutions are like the misfortunes which blanch in a night the hair of the sufferer: they quickly ripen a people. The blood in our veins is warm enough to enrich the soil of the Republic. Let us not bear the future with us, but leave hope to the people in exchange for the death which they have given us. Let us die then, if not with confidence, at least with hope: our consciences are our witnesses in the great trial; our Judge the Eternal. Death is only the most important event of life, because it is the passage to a superior state of being. Were it not so, man would be greater than God; for he would have conceived what his Creator could not execute. No! Vergniaud is not greater than God, des Gir. vii. but God is more just than Vergniaud, and He will raise him to-morrow on the scaffold, only to justify him to future ages."1 Christ," said Sillery, "dying on the scaf 1 Lam. Hist. 52, 53, 26, 47. 66 |