XI. fold was, like us, a divine witness. His religion, which CHAP. we have confounded with tyranny, was not oppression, but deliverance. He was the Girondist of Immor tality." 1793. 69. death. The illustrious prisoners were conducted, on the 31st October, to the place of execution. They marched to- Their heroic gether with a firm step, singing the Revolutionary song, Oct. 31. which they applied by a slight change to their own situation, "Allons, enfans de la patrie! Le couteau sanglant est levé." Never since the execution of Lally, in 1766, had there been seen such a crowd as now assembled in the Place Louis XV. to witness their execution. The quays, the gardens of the Tuileries, the Pont de la Concorde, and all the windows from thence to the Conciergerie, from which they were brought, were crowded with spectators. Brissot and Fauchet alone wore a sad and pensive expression. When they arrived at the place of execution at one o'clock in the afternoon, they mutually embraced, exclaiming, "Vive la République!" Sillery ascended first; he bowed with a grave air to the people, and received with unshrinking firmness the fatal stroke. Le Hardi exclaimed "Vive la République!" as he was bound to the plank, so loud as to be heard over the whole Place. The execution of the whole lasted thirty-eight minutes, during which the condemned, awaiting their turn, as their friends were successively beheaded, never ceased chanting with firm voices an air, the burden of which was -"rather death than slavery." A voice was withdrawn from the swell with every fall of the axe; their numbers were thinned at the foot of the guillotine. One voice alone continued to chant the Marseillaise to the very end: it was that of Vergniaud, who, as their leader, was chosen to suffer last. He could hardly be said to die XI. 1793. 1 Lam. Hist. des Gir. Trib. Rév. Lac. ii. 99, CHAP. by the executioner's hand; he swooned, before the blade fell, from the vehemence of his enthusiasm. They all died with the resolution of Romans, chanting with their last breath the hymn of the Revolution. One single grave received their united remains; it was beside that in which had been laid the uncoffined body of their 100. Th. royal victim Louis XVI. Some years after, in searching the archives of the parish of the Madeleine for documents Toul.iv.115. connected with the victims of the Revolution, an order 52. Hist. on the treasury was found for the expenses of the burial 122, 123. of the twenty deputies of the Gironde; it was only 210 xlviii. 206, francs! So humble were the obsequies of the first founders 209. (Verg of the Republic.1* v. 392. Mig. ii. 294. Riouffe, 51, Parl. xxx. Biog. Univ. niaud.) 70. of Dufoce St Etienne. A young man, named Girey Dufoce, editor of the Execution Patriote Français, was brought to the bar of the Revoand Rabaut lutionary Tribunal. The president asked if he had been a friend of Brissot. "I had that happiness."--" What is your opinion of him ?"-"That he lived like Aristides and died like Sidney!" was the intrepid answer. He was forthwith sent to the scaffold, where he perished with the firmness of his departed friend. Rabaut St Etienne, one of the most enlightened and virtuous of the proscribed deputies, had escaped soon after the 2d June from Paris. Tired of wandering through the provinces, he returned to the capital, and lived concealed in the house of one of those faithful friends of whom the Revolution produced so many examples. His wife, influenced by the most tender attachment, incessantly watched over his safety. In the street, one day, she met an acquaintance, a Jacobin, who assured her of his interest in her husband, and professed his desire to give him an asylum in his own No. 97, p. house. Rabaut being informed of the circumstance, and ii. 100. desirous of saving his generous host from further danger, xii. 27, 28. informed the Jacobin of his place of retreat, and assigned 2 Bull. du 387. Lac. Deux Amis, an hour of the night for him to come and remove him * "Bour 22 députés de la Gironde. Les bières, 142 francs; frais d'inhumation, 68 total, 210."-LAMARTINE, Hist. des Girondins, vii. 58, 59. XI. 1793. from it. The perfidious wretch came accompanied by CHAP. gendarmes, who dragged their victim, with his friendly host and hostess, to the Revolutionary Tribunal, whence they were sent to the scaffold. In despair at having been the instrument, however innocently, of such treachery, his wife, in the flower of youth and beauty, put herself to death. 71. ment of Madame Roland was the next victim. This heroic woman had been early involved in the proscription of the ImprisonGirondists, of whom her splendid talents had almost Madame rendered her the head. She was afterwards confined Roland. among the common prostitutes of Paris, in the prison of St Pelagie; and it was only the pity of the jailors which there, at length, procured for her a separate bed. While confined in the prison of the Abbaye, she employed the tedious months of captivity in composing the Memoirs which so well illustrate her eventful life. With a firm hand she traced, in that gloomy abode, the joyous as well as the melancholy periods of her existence; the brilliant dreams and ardent patriotism of her youth; the stormy and eventful scenes of her maturer years; the horrors and anguish of her latest days. While suffering under the fanaticism of the people, when about to die under the violence of the mob, she never abandoned the principles of her youth, nor regretted her martyrdom in the cause of freedom. If the thoughts of her daughter and her husband sometimes melted her to tears, she regained her firmness on every important occasion. In the solitude of prison she had leisure to reflect on the stormy political career in which she had borne so distinguished a part, and lamented the delusions in which she had so long been involved. Her friends had provided her with the means of escape; but she refused to avail herself of them. During the long and dreary period of her captivity, she studied Tacitus incessantly. "I cannot sleep," said she, "without reading some of his writings: we seem to see things in the same light." At another time XI. 1793. CHAP. she said "The present government is a kind of monster, of which the action and the forms are equally revolting: it destroys all it touches, and devours itself." On the day of the execution of the Girondists, she was transferred to the Conciergerie, and placed in a cell adjoining that lately occupied by the Queen. The beautiful and ambitious leader of the Girondists was brought by the Revolution to the same bourne as her royal victim. There she was strictly watched, in a wretched damp apartment, with a straw mattress alone for a bed. Though she had opium secreted, she refused to make use of it, alleging that she would not shrink from the fate of her friends, and that her death would be of service to the world. Her memoirs evince unbroken serenity of mind, though Roland, i. she was frequently interrupted in their composition by the cries of those whom the executioners were dragging from the adjoining cells to the scaffold.1 1Biog. Univ. Riouffe, 56, 57. Lac. ii. 100. passim, and 97. 72. Her con duct at her trial. 8th Nov. On the day of her trial she was dressed with scrupulous care in white. Her fine black hair fell in profuse curls to her waist; but the display of its beauty was owing to her jailors, who had deprived her of all means of dressing it. She chose that colour for her dress as emblematic of the purity of her mind. Her advocate, M. Chaveau Lagarde, visited her to receive her last instructions. Drawing a ring from her finger, she said-" To-morrow I shall be no more; I know well the fate which awaits me; your kind assistance could be of no avail; it would endanger you without saving me. Do not, therefore, I pray you, come to the tribunal; but accept this as the last testimony of my regard." Her defence, composed by herself the night before the trial, is one of the most eloquent and touching monuments of the Revolution. Her answers to the interrogatories of the judges, the dignity of her manner, the beauty of her figure, melted even the revolutionary audience with pity. They had the barbarity to ask her questions reflecting on her honour: the unworthy insult brought tears to her eyes, but did not disturb XI. 1793. her serenity of demeanour. Finding they could implicate CHAP. her in no other way, the president asked her if she was acquainted with the place of her husband's retreat. She replied, that "whether she knew it or not she would not reveal it, and that there was no law by which she was obliged, in a court of justice, to violate the strongest feelings of nature." Upon this she was immediately condemned. When the reading of her sentence was concluded, she rose and said—“You judge me worthy to share the fate of the great men whom you have assassinated. I shall endeavour to imitate firmness on the scaffold." She regained her prison Q. p. 425. with an elastic step and beaming eye; and on enter- Biog. Univ. ing the wicket, made, with a joyous air, a sign show she was to be beheaded. Her whole soul peared absorbed in the heroic feelings with which was animated,1 1 Roland, i. their 40, 41, 43; ii. 439. App. Riouffe, 57. Bull, du to xxxvii.165. ap- Trib. Rév. No. 76, pp. she 301, 302. death. She was conveyed to the scaffold in the same car 73. with a man of the name of Lemarche, condemned for Her heroic forging assignats, whose firmness was not equal to her own. While passing along the streets, her whole anxiety appeared to be to support his courage. She did this with so much simplicity and effect, that she frequently brought a smile on the lips which were about to perish.* At the place of execution she bowed before the gigantic statue of Liberty, and pronounced the memorable words "O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy Bull. du name!" When they arrived at the foot of the scaffold, No. 76, p. she had the generosity to renounce, in favour of her com- 301 Biog. panion, the privilege of being first executed. Ascend xxxviii.463, first," said she: "let me at least spare you the pain of land, i. 43, seeing my blood flow."2 Turning to the executioner, she 278. * "Mira che l'una tace e l'altro geme, E piu vigor mostra il men forte sesso. TASSO, Gerus. Liber. ii. 42. 2 Trib. Rév. Univ. 464. Ro 44. Lac. x. |