Part 17 (1/2)
On September 2, the only persons handed over to the cut-throats, were at the Abbey, the Carmelites, and Saint-Firmin. On September 3, the ma.s.sacre became more general. The a.s.sa.s.sins had said: ”If there is no more work, we shall have to find some.” Their desire realizes itself.
Work will not be lacking. There is still some at the Force, where the Princess de Lamballe, the preferred victim, is {367} murdered. The a.s.sa.s.sins, who at the Abbey had been paid at the rate of eight francs a day, get only fifty sous at the Force. They work with undiminished zeal, even at this reduction. If necessary, they would work for nothing. To drink wine and shed blood is the essential thing. The negro Delorme, servant to Fournier ”the American,” distinguishes himself among them all. His black skin, reddened with blood, his white teeth and ferocious eyes, his b.e.s.t.i.a.l laugh, his ravenous fury, make him a choice a.s.sa.s.sin. There is work too at the Conciergerie, at the great and little Chatelet, the Salpetriere, and the Bicetre. A great number of those detained are people condemned or accused of private crimes which had absolutely nothing in common with politics. No matter; blood is wanted; they kill there as elsewhere. At the Grand Chatelet, work is so plenty, and the a.s.sa.s.sins so few, that they release several individuals imprisoned for theft, and impress them into their service. One of these unfortunate accidental executioners begins in a hesitating way, strikes a few undecided blows, and then throws down the hatchet placed in his hands. ”No, no,” he cries, ”I cannot.
No, no! Rather a victim than a murderer! I would rather receive death from scoundrels like you, then give it to innocent, disarmed people.
Strike me!” And at once the veteran murderers kill the inexperienced cut-throat. There was a woman, known on account of her charms as the Beautiful Flower Girl, who was accused of having wounded {368} her lover, a French guard, in a fit of jealousy. Theroigne de Mericourt, an amazon of the gutters, was her rival. She pointed her out to the a.s.sa.s.sins. They fastened her naked to a post, her legs apart and her feet nailed to the ground. They burned her alive. They cut off her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with sabre strokes. They impaled her on a hot iron. Her shrieks carried dismay as far as the outer banks of the Seine.
Theroigne was at the height of felicity.
At the Salpetriere there was still another spectacle. This prison for fallen women is a place of correction for the old, of amendment for the young, and an asylum for those who are still children. More than forty children of the lower cla.s.ses were slain during these horrible days.
The delirium of murder reached its height. Gorged with wine mingled with gunpowder, intoxicated with the fumes and reek of carnage, the a.s.sa.s.sins experienced a devouring, inextinguishable thirst for blood which nothing could quench. More blood, and yet more blood! And where can it now be found? The prisons are empty. There are no more n.o.bles, no more priests, to put to death. Very well! for lack of anything better, they will go to an asylum for the poor, the sick, and the insane; to the Bicetre. Vagabonds, paupers, fools, thieves, steward, chaplains, janitor, all is fish that comes to their net. The butchery lasts five days and nights without stopping. Ma.s.sacre takes every form; some are drowned in the cellars, others shot in the courts.
Water, fire, and sword, every sort of torture.
{369}
The cut-throats can at last take some repose. They have worked all the week. There are still some, however, who have not yet had enough, and who are going to continue the ma.s.sacres of Paris in the provinces. The Communal Council of Surveillance has taken care to send to every commune in France a circular bearing the seal of the Minister of Justice, inviting them to follow the example of the capital.
September 9, the prisoners who had been detained at Orleans to be tried there by the Superior Court, entered Versailles on carts. At the moment when they approached the grating of the Orangery, a.s.sa.s.sins sent from Paris under the lead of Fournier ”the American” sprang upon them and immolated every one. Thus perished the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, de Lessart, and the Duke de Brissac, former commander of the Const.i.tutional Guard. Fournier ”the American”[2] returned on horseback to Paris and began to caracole on the Place Vendome; Danton loudly felicitated him on the success of the expedition, from the balcony of the Ministry of Justice.
During all this time, what efforts had the a.s.sembly made to put a stop to the murders? None, absolutely none. Never has any deliberative body shown a like cowardice. Neither Vergniaud's voice nor that of any other Girondin was heard in protest. Indignation, pity, found not a single word to say. Speeches, {370} discussions, votes on different questions, went on as usual. Concerning the ma.s.sacres, not a syllable.
During that infamous week, neither the ministers, the virtuous Roland not more than the others, neither Petion, the mayor of Paris, nor the commander of the National Guard sent a picket guard of fifty men to any quarter to prevent the murders. A population of eight hundred thousand souls and a National Guard of fifty thousand men bent their necks under the yoke of a handful of bandits, of two hundred and thirty-five a.s.sa.s.sins (the exact number is known). People trembled. At the a.s.sembly the old moderate party had disappeared. There were not more than two hundred odd deputies present at the shameful and powerless sessions. Terrorized Paris was in a state of stupor and prostration.
The murderers ended by execrating themselves. Tormented by remorse, they could see nothing before them but vivid faces, reeking entrails, bleeding limbs. ”Among the cut-throats,” M. Louis Blanc has said, ”some gave signs of insanity that led to the supposition that some mysterious and terrible drug had been mingled with the wine they drank.” Some of them became furious madmen. Others sought refuge in suicide, killing themselves the moment they had no one else to kill.
Others enlisted. They were chased out of the army. Among these was the man who had carried the head of the Princess de Lamballe on a pike.
One day when he was boasting of his murders, the soldiers became indignant and {371} put him to death. Others still were tried as Septembrists and sent to the scaffold. The guilty received their punishment, even on this earth. Well! there are people nowadays who would like to rehabilitate them! In vain has Lamartine, the founder of the Second Republic, exclaimed in a burst of n.o.ble wrath: ”Has human speech an execration, an anathema, which is equal to the horror these crimes of cannibals inspire in me, as in all civilized men?” In vain have the most celebrated historians of democracy, Edgar Quinet and Michelet, expressed in eloquent terms their indignation against these crimes. In vain has M. Louis Blanc said: ”Every murder is a suicide.
In the victim the body alone is killed; but what is killed in the murderer is the soul.” There are men who would not alone excuse, but glorify the a.s.sa.s.sinations and the a.s.sa.s.sins!
[1] M. Mortimer-Ternaux, _Histoire de la Terreur_.
[2] Claude Fournier-Lheritier, was born in Auvergne, 1745, and served as a volunteer in Santo Domingo, 1772-85, with Toussaint l'Ouverture, whence his sobriquet ”the American.”
{372}
x.x.xVI.
MADAME ROLAND DURING THE Ma.s.sACRES.
Madame Roland's hatred was appeased. The ambitious _bourgeoise_ throned it for the second time at the Ministry of the Interior, and the Queen groaned in captivity in the Temple tower. The Egeria of the Girondins had not felt her heart swell with a single movement of pity for Marie Antoinette. The fatal 10th of August had seemed to her a personal triumph in which her pride delighted. The parvenue enjoyed the humiliations of the daughter of the German Caesars. Her jealous instincts feasted on the afflictions of the Queen of France and Navarre.
Lamartine, indignant at this cruelty on Madame Roland's part, has repented of the eulogies he gave her in his _Histoire des Girondins_.
In his _Cours de Litterature_ (Volume XIII. Conversation XXIII.), he says: ”I glided over that medley of intrigue and pomposity which composed the genius, both feminine and Roman, of this woman. In so doing, I conceded more to popularity than to truth. I wanted to give a Cornelia to the Republic. As a matter of fact, I do not know what Cornelia was, that mother of the {373} Gracchi who brought up conspirators against the Roman Senate, and trained them to sedition, that virtue of ambitious commoners. As to Madame Roland, who inflated a vulgar husband by the breath of her feminine anger against a court she found odious because it did not open to her upstart vanity, there was nothing really fine in her except her death. Her role had been a mere parade of true greatness of soul.” What Lamartine finds fault with most of all is her hostility to the martyr Queen. He adds: ”She inspired the Girondins, her intimate friends, with an implacable hatred against the Queen, already so humiliated and so menaced; she had neither respect nor pity for this victim; she points her out to the rebellious mult.i.tude. She is no longer a wife, a mother, or a Frenchwoman. She poses as Nemesis at the door of the Temple, when the Queen is groaning there over her husband, her children, and herself, between the throne and the scaffold. This ostentatious stoicism of implacability is what, in my view, kills the woman in this female demagogue.”
Alas! if Madame Roland was guilty, she was to be punished cruelly. The colleague of the _virtuous_ Roland was the organizer of the September ma.s.sacres. The republican sheepfold dreamed of by the admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was invaded by ferocious beasts. Human nature had never appeared under a more execrable aspect than since its so-called regeneration. Madame Roland was filled with a nave astonishment. After having sown the wind she was {374} utterly surprised to reap the whirlwind. What! she said to herself, my husband is minister, or, to speak with great exactness, I am the minister myself, and yet there are people in France who are dissatisfied!
Ungrateful nation, why dost thou not appreciate thy happiness? Madame Roland resembled certain politicians, who, having attained to power, would willingly disembarra.s.s themselves of those by whose aid they reached it. For the second time she had just arrived at the goal of her ambition. Who dared, then, to pollute her joy? Why did that marplot, Danton, come with his untimely ma.s.sacres to destroy such brilliant projects and banish such delightful dreams? The man who, as if in derision and ant.i.thesis, allowed himself to be called the Minister of Justice, produced the effect of a monster on Madame Roland.
The republic as conceived by him had not the head of a G.o.ddess, but of a Gorgon. Its eyes glittered with a sinister l.u.s.tre. The sword it held was that of an a.s.sa.s.sin or a headsman.