The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle (urban books to read TXT) 📖

clutched, identified, and without ceremony, being already ‘out of the Law,’

was sent to the Place de la Revolution. He died, recommending his wife and children to the pity of the Republic. It is the ninth day of October 1793.

Gorsas is the first Deputy that dies on the scaffold; he will not be the last.

Ex-Mayor Bailly is in prison; Ex-Procureur Manuel. Brissot and our poor Arrested Girondins have become Incarcerated Indicted Girondins; universal Jacobinism clamouring for their punishment. Duperret’s Seals are broken!

Those Seventy-three Secret Protesters, suddenly one day, are reported upon, are decreed accused; the Convention-doors being ‘previously shut,’ that none implicated might escape. They were marched, in a very rough manner, to Prison that evening. Happy those of them who chanced to be absent!

Condorcet has vanished into darkness; perhaps, like Rabaut, sits between two walls, in the house of a friend.

Chapter 3.4.VII.

Marie-Antoinette.

On Monday the Fourteenth of October, 1793, a Cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these old stone-walls never witnessed: the Trial of Marie-Antoinette. The once brightest of Queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier Tinville’s Judgment-bar; answering for her life! The Indictment was delivered her last night. (Proces de la Reine (Deux Amis, xi. 251-381.) To such changes of human fortune what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate.

There are few Printed things one meets with, of such tragic almost ghastly significance as those bald Pages of the Bulletin du Tribunal Revolutionnaire, which bear title, Trial of the Widow Capet. Dim, dim, as if in disastrous eclipse; like the pale kingdoms of Dis! Plutonic Judges, Plutonic Tinville; encircled, nine times, with Styx and Lethe, with Fire-

Phlegethon and Cocytus named of Lamentation! The very witnesses summoned are like Ghosts: exculpatory, inculpatory, they themselves are all hovering over death and doom; they are known, in our imagination, as the prey of the Guillotine. Tall ci-devant Count d’Estaing, anxious to shew himself Patriot, cannot escape; nor Bailly, who, when asked If he knows the Accused, answers with a reverent inclination towards her, “Ah, yes, I know Madame.” Ex-Patriots are here, sharply dealt with, as Procureur Manuel; Ex-Ministers, shorn of their splendour. We have cold Aristocratic impassivity, faithful to itself even in Tartarus; rabid stupidity, of Patriot Corporals, Patriot Washerwomen, who have much to say of Plots, Treasons, August Tenth, old Insurrection of Women. For all now has become a crime, in her who has lost.

Marie-Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that hideous Indictment was reading, continued calm; ‘she was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one plays on the Piano.’ You discern, not without interest, across that dim Revolutionary Bulletin itself, how she bears herself queenlike. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of Laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. “You persist then in denial?”—“My plan is not denial: it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that.”

Scandalous Hebert has borne his testimony as to many things: as to one thing, concerning Marie-Antoinette and her little Son,—wherewith Human Speech had better not further be soiled. She has answered Hebert; a Juryman begs to observe that she has not answered as to this. “I have not answered,” she exclaims with noble emotion, “because Nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a Mother. I appeal to all the Mothers that are here.” Robespierre, when he heard of it, broke out into something almost like swearing at the brutish blockheadism of this Hebert; (Vilate, Causes secretes de la Revolution de Thermidor (Paris, 1825), p. 179.) on whose foul head his foul lie has recoiled. At four o’clock on Wednesday morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out: Sentence of Death.

“Have you anything to say?” The Accused shook her head, without speech.

Night’s candles are burning out; and with her too Time is finishing, and it will be Eternity and Day. This Hall of Tinville’s is dark, ill-lighted except where she stands. Silently she withdraws from it, to die.

Two Processions, or Royal Progresses, three-and-twenty years apart, have often struck us with a strange feeling of contrast. The first is of a beautiful Archduchess and Dauphiness, quitting her Mother’s City, at the age of Fifteen; towards hopes such as no other Daughter of Eve then had: ‘On the morrow,’ says Weber an eye witness, ‘the Dauphiness left Vienna.

The whole City crowded out; at first with a sorrow which was silent. She appeared: you saw her sunk back into her carriage; her face bathed in tears; hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands; several times putting out her head to see yet again this Palace of her Fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned her regret, her gratitude to the good Nation, which was crowding here to bid her farewell.

Then arose not only tears; but piercing cries, on all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves to such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible sound of wail, in the streets and avenues of Vienna. The last Courier that followed her disappeared, and the crowd melted away.’ (Weber, i. 6.)

The young imperial Maiden of Fifteen has now become a worn discrowned Widow of Thirty-eight; grey before her time: this is the last Procession: ‘Few minutes after the Trial ended, the drums were beating to arms in all Sections; at sunrise the armed force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of the Bridges, in the Squares, Crossways, all along from the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revolution. By ten o’clock, numerous patrols were circulating in the Streets; thirty thousand foot and horse drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie-Antoinette was brought out.

She had on an undress of pique blanc: she was led to the place of execution, in the same manner as an ordinary criminal; bound, on a Cart; accompanied by a Constitutional Priest in Lay dress; escorted by numerous detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the cries of Vive la Republique and Down with Tyranny, which attended her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her Confessor. The tricolor Streamers on the housetops occupied her attention, in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honore; she also noticed the Inscriptions on the house-

fronts. On reaching the Place de la Revolution, her looks turned towards the Jardin National, whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion. She mounted the Scaffold with courage enough; at a quarter past Twelve, her head fell; the Executioner shewed it to the people, amid universal long-continued cries of ‘Vive la Republique.’ (Deux Amis, xi. 301.)

Chapter 3.4.VIII.

The Twenty-two.

Whom next, O Tinville? The next are of a different colour: our poor Arrested Girondin Deputies. What of them could still be laid hold of; our Vergniaud, Brissot, Fauchet, Valaze, Gensonne; the once flower of French Patriotism, Twenty-two by the tale: hither, at Tinville’s Bar, onward from ‘safeguard of the French People,’ from confinement in the Luxembourg, imprisonment in the Conciergerie, have they now, by the course of things, arrived. Fouquier Tinville must give what account of them he can.

Undoubtedly this Trial of the Girondins is the greatest that Fouquier has yet had to do. Twenty-two, all chief Republicans, ranged in a line there; the most eloquent in France; Lawyers too; not without friends in the auditory. How will Tinville prove these men guilty of Royalism, Federalism, Conspiracy against the Republic? Vergniaud’s eloquence awakes once more; ‘draws tears,’ they say. And Journalists report, and the Trial lengthens itself out day after day; ‘threatens to become eternal,’ murmur many. Jacobinism and Municipality rise to the aid of Fouquier. On the 28th of the month, Hebert and others come in deputation to inform a Patriot Convention that the Revolutionary Tribunal is quite ‘shackled by forms of Law;’ that a Patriot Jury ought to have ‘the power of cutting short, of terminer les debats , when they feel themselves convinced.’ Which pregnant suggestion, of cutting short, passes itself, with all despatch, into a Decree.

Accordingly, at ten o’clock on the night of the 30th of October, the Twenty-two, summoned back once more, receive this information, That the Jury feeling themselves convinced have cut short, have brought in their verdict; that the Accused are found guilty, and the Sentence on one and all of them is Death with confiscation of goods.

Loud natural clamour rises among the poor Girondins; tumult; which can only be repressed by the gendarmes. Valaze stabs himself; falls down dead on the spot. The rest, amid loud clamour and confusion, are driven back to their Conciergerie; Lasource exclaiming, “I die on the day when the People have lost their reason; ye will die when they recover it.” (Greek,—Plut.

Opp. t. iv. p. 310. ed. Reiske, 1776.) No help! Yielding to violence, the Doomed uplift the Hymn of the Marseillese; return singing to their dungeon.

Riouffe, who was their Prison-mate in these last days, has lovingly recorded what death they made. To our notions, it is not an edifying death. Gay satirical Pot-pourri by Ducos; rhymed Scenes of Tragedy, wherein Barrere and Robespierre discourse with Satan; death’s eve spent in ‘singing’ and ‘sallies of gaiety,’ with ‘discourses on the happiness of peoples:’ these things, and the like of these, we have to accept for what they are worth. It is the manner in which the Girondins make their Last Supper. Valaze, with bloody breast, sleeps cold in death; hears not their singing. Vergniaud has his dose of poison; but it is not enough for his friends, it is enough only for himself; wherefore he flings it from him; presides at this Last Supper of the Girondins, with wild coruscations of eloquence, with song and mirth. Poor human Will struggles to assert itself; if not in this way, then in that. (Memoires de Riouffe (in Memoires sur les Prisons, Paris, 1823), p. 48-55.) But on the morrow morning all Paris is out; such a crowd as no man had seen. The Death-carts, Valaze’s cold corpse stretched among the yet living Twenty-one, roll along. Bareheaded, hands bound; in their shirt-sleeves, coat flung loosely round the neck: so fare the eloquent of France; bemurmured, beshouted. To the shouts of Vive la Republique, some of them keep answering with counter-shouts of Vive la Republique. Others, as Brissot, sit sunk in silence. At the foot of the scaffold they again strike up, with appropriate variations, the Hymn of the Marseillese. Such an act of music; conceive it well! The yet Living chant there; the chorus so rapidly wearing weak! Samson’s axe is rapid; one head per minute, or little less. The chorus is worn out; farewell for evermore ye Girondins.

Te-Deum Fauchet has become silent; Valaze’s dead head is lopped: the sickle of the Guillotine has reaped the Girondins all away. ‘The eloquent, the young, the beautiful and brave!’ exclaims Riouffe. O Death, what feast