embraced all her companions as they suc- | ried off to the scaffold, while Madame cessively mounted the scaffold: she her- Custine lay insensible on the floor of self, according to the usual custom of his cell. The letter of Beauharnais, the the period, being selected to suffer last. night before his execution, was couched She died with the serenity of an angel, in the most touching strains of elopraying for those who had taken her quence. Marshal Luckner, whom the life. The beauty of her form, and the Jacobins had so long represented as the placidity of her expression, awakened destined saviour of France; General sentiments of commiseration even Biron, whose amiable qualities, notamong the most savage of the revolu- withstanding the profligacy of his chationary spectators. With her was ex-racter, had long endeared him to society; ecuted Madame de Montmorin-the General Lamarlière, whose successful same who, when the States-General walked in procession to church on May 4, 1789, expressed to Madame de Stael her distrust in the unbounded hopes of felicity to France which the latter anticipated from the Revolution.*

49. Custine, son of the celebrated general of the same name, was executed for having let fall some expressions of attachment to his father; Alexander Beauharnais, for having failed to raise the siege of Mayence. The former had been offered, the night before his execution, the certain means of escape; he refused to make use of them, as his doing so would have endangered the life of the daughter of his jailer, who had generously been instrumental in arranging the plan for his delivery. Thirty thousand francs had bribed the jailer; the carriage was ready; his weeping wife threw herself at his feet, conjuring him to make use of these means of escape; but he resolutely refused, lest he should endanger those who had perilled all in his behalf, and was carhorns. So violent was the shock, that Perpetua fell on the ground stunned; but, partially recovering her senses, she was seen gathering her torn clothes about her, so as to conceal her limbs, and after tying her hair, she helped Felicitas to rise, who had been severely wounded; and, standing together, they calmly awaited another attack. people, struck by their heroism, called out that they should be sent to the place where those not killed by the wild beasts were despatched by the "Confectorii," which was accordingly done.-ST AUGUSTIN, Sermons, 283-294; TERTULLIAN, de Anima, c. 55; TIL LEMONT, Annales de l'Empire, t. iii. p. 213. How interesting to find the noble conceptions of female virtue formed by the Greek poet, successively realised by the Christian martyr in the third and the royal victim in the eighteenth century!

The

Ante, chap. IV. § 4. Her husband had been murdered during the massacres in the prisons on September 2.

war of posts had so long covered the northern frontier, and many other distinguished warriors, were sent to the scaffold. All showed the same heroism in their last moments; but not greater than was displayed by pacific citizens and young women, who had been totally unaccustomed to face danger. It was in the class of nobles that the greatest courage was shown: they firmly protested their devotion to their God and their king, and their readiness to die in their service. The priests died like worthy martyrs of their faith, bestowing to their last moments the succours of religion on the captives about to suffer, with whom they were surrounded. Many of the peasants and poorer classes piteously bewailed their fate in being cut off, they knew not why, and condemned, they knew not with whom. Dietrich, mayor of Strassburg, one of the most ardent friends of liberty, wrote to his son the night before his execution-" As he valued his last blessing, never to attempt to revenge his death." One prisoner alone excited the contempt of the spectators, by raising piteous cries on the chariot, and striving in a frenzy of terror with the executioners

on the scaffold it was Madame du Barri, the associate of the infamous pleasures of Louis XV. She had made her escape to London, but returned to France to disinter her diamonds and jewels, which she had secretly buried under a tree in her park, at Luciennes, near Versailles. She was there betrayed by Zamora, a black page, on whom she had long lavished the most unbounded kindness. Her cries on the chariot, when going to the scaffold, resounded through the crowd. "Life! life!" she exclaimed: "life for repent

ance and devotion to the Republic." | were all alike dressed in white, as if they Her fine black hair behind was cut off, had been going to a marriage. Their but that in front remained; and she youth, their beauty, their innocent air, shook her head in the hope of soften- touched even the most savage hearts ing the people by the display of her with pity, and many tears were secretly still beautiful ringlets. Some among the shed at the sight of so many innocent bystanders shuddered, others laughed. human beings being taken together to Instead of answering, the executioner the scaffold. It was generally observed, pointed out, smiling, the block on the after they had been guillotined, that it guillotine on which her head was to was like cutting the spring out of the rest. When lifted on the scaffold, being year. A few days after, the whole nuns unable to stand, she piteously prayed of the Abbey of Montmartre, with the for a minute's respite, and uttered lady-abbess at their head, were executed shrieks when bound to the plank which together. They began to chant the froze every heart with horror. Yet was Salve Regina as they left the doors of this lamentable spectacle not without a the Conciergerie, and continued singbeneficial effect; it recalled the people ing during their whole passage along the to a sense of the horror of the punish-streets; and the mournful strain had ment, which, from the general heroism or resignation of the victims, had come, strange to say, to be almost forgotten.* 50. While prostituted beauty was thus evincing a fearful picture of the weakness of splendid guilt in its last moments, the courage with which a number of young women, supported by the recollections of virtue and the influence of religion, underwent the same fate, excited universal astonishment and sympathy. Two cases in particular, at the very close of the Reign of Terror, attracted general notice, and contributed in no small degree to produce a general heart-sickening at the reign of blood. They are thus described by an eyewitness of these melancholy scenes: "On the 28th of May, fourteen young women of Verdun were brought out for execution together, for no other crime but that of having presented bouquets of flowers to the King of Prussia, when he entered the town in 1792. They

"It is among the nobility that I have

seen," says an eyewitness, the greatest courage: they declared aloud their unalterable attachment to royalty, and their unlimited devotion to their king; they shed with joy their blood on the scaffold for the cause of the monarchy. But what excited the most universal sympathy was the touching resignation of the ministers of the Christian religion. They ministered to the unhappy prisoners in their last moments; they spread before them all the consolations of religion, and taught them to look upon death as the asylum of the just and the persecuted: they themselves gave the example of every virtue, and practised evangelical morality in all its purity."-Témoin Oculaire, i. 41, 42.

not ceased, though they were eighteen in number, till the head of the last had fallen under the guillotine. Their constancy, piety, and resignation produced a profound impression on the multitude,long unaccustomed to impressions of that description, and for once silenced the furies of the guillotine,+ who usually danced round the loaded chariots, singing revolutionary songs, from the time they left the doors of the Conciergerie till they reached the scaffold in the Place de la Revolution. It was chiefly in consequence of the mourn. ful impression produced by this execution, that the place of punishment was removed, first to the Place St Antoine on the 2d June, and on the 7th to the Barrière du Trône, in the Faubourg St Antoine." The furies of the guillotine, paid for their insults, at an early hour stationed themselves round the chariots which awaited the victims in the court of the Palace of Justice, while the executioners were drinking in the neighbouring wine-shops; and, when the prisoners were seated, danced round them without ceasing, mocking their sufferings, till they reached the scaffold.

51. Dreadful as were these scenes at Paris, the ebullitions of revolutionary revenge were, if possible, more strongly marked in the provinces than even in the metropolis. A full account of these atrocities would fill many volumes; but

+ "Les lécheuses de la guillotine," alluding to their passion for licking up blood which fell from the scaffold.

a few details, in addition to those con- | rère, "may have been a little harsh as tained in the former chapters, may serve to form; but these charges have been as an example of the rest. The disturb- suggested by wily aristocrats. The man ances on the northern frontier led to the who crushes the enemies of the people special mission of a monster named Le- can never be a proper object of censure. bon to those districts, armed with the What is not permitted to the hatred of full power of the Revolutionary Govern- a republican against aristocracy? How ment. His appearance in these depart- many generous sentiments atone for ments could be compared to nothing but seeming harshness in the prosecution the apparition of those hideous furies so of the public enemies! Revolutionary much the object of dread in the times measures are ever to be spoken of with of paganism. In the city of Arras, above respect." The Convention passed to the two thousand persons, brought there order of the day. It is no wonder they from the neighbouring departments, per- did so; for it appears, from a letter of ished by the guillotine. To add to the the Committee of Public Salvation still tortures of his victim, Lebon kept a man extant, that his proceedings were exin suspense for a quarter of an hour under pressly enjoined by themselves.* Minthe blade of the guillotine, in order to gling treachery and seduction with sanaugment the bitterness of death by read-guinary oppression, this monster in the ing, before it fell, a letter which he knew would distress him. He did the same with two young Englishwomen, who, under pretence of being aristocrats, had been sent to the scaffold. "It is well," said he, "that the aristocrats like you should hear, in their last moments, the triumph of our armies." "Monster!" said one of the English ladies, Miss Plunkett, "you think to increase the bitterness of death; but undeceive yourself: though women, we can die courageously; and you will die the death of a coward." Yet even these atrocities were palliated in the Convention, when the people of the north implored an investigation into them. "The proceedings of Lebon," said Ba

"The Committee, citizen colleague, reminds you that, invested with unlimited powers, you ought energetically to adopt every measure requisite for the public safety. Keep up your revolutionary attitude. Your powers are unlimited. The amnesty pronounced by the Capetian Constitution (that of 1791) and appealed to by all these miscreants, is a crime in itself which cannot shield others; sins against the Republic can only be redeemed by the axe. The tyrant appealed to it- the tyrant was stricken. Shake over the heads of the traitors the torch and the axe: go forward, citizen colleague, in this revolutionary track which you have courageously marked out: the Committee applauds your labours."-Signé BARERE, BILLAUD VARENNES, CARNOT; Paris, 27 jour du neuvième mois, l'an 2 de la République (18th October 1793). Histoire de la Convention, iii. 207.

human form turned the despotic powers with which he was invested into the means of individual gratification. After having disgraced the wife of a nobleman, who yielded to his embraces in order to save her husband's life, he put the man to death before the eyes of his devoted consort; a species of treachery so common, says Prudhomme, that the examples of it were innumerable. Children whom he had corrupted were employed by him as spies upon their parents; and so infectious did the cruel example become, that the favourite amusement of this little band was putting to death birds and small animals, with little guillotines made for their use.† would be cut off the moment I ordered it.'

Lebon has returned from Paris; immediately a jury terrible, similar to that at Paris, has been adopted at the revolutionary tribunal. A vigorous arrest has caused the incarceration of the wives or husbands of the male and female aristocrats already in prison. A search has just been made by a commission ardente of seven patriots (I was one of them). The guillotine has never been idle since: dukes, marquises, counts, barons, male and female, fall like hail."—DARTHE à ROBESPIERRE, NO. 83.-Pap. trouv. chez Robespierre; and Rap. de COURTOIS, Ibid. i. 75.

It is a curious fact, highly illustrative of the progress of revolutions, that this monster in human form was at first humane and inoffensive in his government, and that it was not till he had received reiterated orders from Robespierre, with a hint of a dungeon in case of refusal, that his atrocities commenced. Let + This monster was very amorous in his dis- no man, if he is not conscious of the utmost position, and mingled lechery with his cruel- firmness of mind, be sure that he would not, ties. "He never caressed his wife or his mis- in similar circumstances, have done the same. tress without saying, 'This beautiful head-DUCHESSE D'ABRANTES, VII. 213, 214.

52. The career of Carrier at Nantes, | them to death even when lying at their where the popular vengeance was to be feet. A large party of women, most of inflicted on the Royalists of the western whom were with child, and many with provinces, was still more relentless.* babes at their breast, were put on board One of the depots for the prisoners the boats in the Loire. The innocent contained fifteen hundred women and caresses, the unconscious smiles of these children, who, without either beds or little innocents, filled their mothers' straw, were huddled together on the breasts with inexpressible anguish; they damp floor, and often kept two days fondly pressed them to their bosoms, without food. The men purchased their weeping over them for the last time. lives only by bribery, the women by One of them was delivered of an infant prostitution. Such as withstood the on the quay; hardly were the agonies advances of their oppressors were sent of childbed over, when she was pushed, without mercy to the scaffold: the chil- with the new-born innocent, into the dren, who had neither money nor plea- galley. After being stripped naked, their sure to offer, were all sacrificed. Re- hands were tied behind their backs; their peated fusillades cut them down. Five shrieks and lamentations were answerhundred of these innocents of both sexes, ed by strokes of the sabre; and while the eldest of whom was not fourteen struggling betwixt terror and shame to years old, were on one occasion led out conceal their nudity from the gaze of to the same spot to be shot. Never the executioners, the signal was given, was so deplorable a spectacle witnessed. the planks cut, and the shrieking vicThe littleness of their stature caused | tims buried in the waves. Carrier himmost of the bullets, at the first discharge, self had a vessel elegantly fitted up, to fly over their heads; they broke their which plied on the Loire, and in which, bonds, rushed into the ranks of the surrounded by a number of friends and executioners, clung round their knees, courtesans, he enjoyed the spectacle of and, with supplicating hands and agon- the sufferings of the Royalists. Female ised looks, sought for mercy. Nothing jealousy added to the zest of the abancould soften these assassins; they put doned ministers of his pleasures; they enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing their rivals destroyed. The shrieks of some hundred victims precipitated into the waves did not interrupt for more than a minute or two the revels in this floating palace of wine and licentiousness. Human cruelty, it would be supposed, could hardly go beyond these executions; but they were surpassed by Lebon at Bordeaux.§ A woman was accused of having wept at the execution of her husband: she was condemned, amidst the applauses of the multitude, to sit several hours under the suspended blade, which shed upon her,

"Everything without exception was burned, massacred, destroyed: towns, burghs, villages have disappeared, and the sword has finished what the flames had spared. It is thus that La Vendée has been revived."-Rapport de JULIEN fils à ROBESPIERRE, 30 Ventose, 1794; Papiers Inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, No. 83.

"Who can relate the horrors of that day, When first these walls became the victor's prey?

With what a stride devouring slaughter pass'd,

And swept promiscuous orders in her

haste!

O'er noble and plebeian ranged the sword;
Nor pity, nor remorse one pause afford.
The sliding streets with blood were clotted

o'er,

And sacred temples stood in pools of gore.
The ruthless steel, impatient of delay,
Forbade the sire to linger out his day;
It struck the bending father to the earth,
And cropp'd the wailing infant at his birth.
(Can innocents the rage of parties know,
And they who ne'er offended find a foe!)
Age is no plea, and childhood no defence,
To kill is all the murderer's pretence.
Rage stays not to inquire who ought to die,
Numbers must fall, no matter which or
why."

LUCAN, Pharsalia, ii. 99.

Son of the Lebon at Arras.

§ The principle of the commissioners at Bordeaux was to destroy the mercantile aristocracy. "The mercantile aristocracy must be destroyed like that of the priesthood and the nobility. The commissioners strike surely; they pardon no one, because they are convinced that such of the aristocrats as have not taken part in the conspiracies have not the less wished the counter-revolution in their hearts."-Papiers Inédits trouvés chez Robespierre; DAILLET, No. 84; BAISSART, No. 85; Rapport de COURTOIS, i. 75, 76.

drop by drop, the blood of the deceased, | virtue to apply the influence which her whose corpse was above her on the scaf- personal charms gave her to the purfold, before she was released by death poses of humanity. "When in a from her agony. country which we all conceived to be on the point of regeneration," says Louvet, "the men of property were everywhere so timid, and the wicked so audacious, it became evident that all assemblages of men, once dignified with the name of the people by such fools as myself, are, in truth, nothing more than an imbecile herd, too happy to be permitted to crouch under the yoke of a despotic master."

54. The Committee of Public Salvation incessantly urged Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, to accelerate the executions. He himself declared, on his subsequent trial, "that on one occasion they ordered him to increase them to one hundred and fifty a-day, and that the proposal filled his mind with such horror, that, as he returned by the Seine, the river appeared to run red with blood, and the pavement on the

53. One of the most extraordinary features of these terrible times, was the apathy which the better classes, both in Paris and the provinces, evinced, and the universal disposition to bury anxiety in the delirium of present enjoyment. The people who escaped death went to the operas without intermission, with equal unconcern whether thirty or a hundred heads had fallen during the day. The class of proprietors at Bordeaux, Marseilles, and all the principal towns, timid and vacillating, could not be prevailed on to quit their hearths; while the Jacobins, ardent, reckless, and indefatigable, inured to crime, plunged a merciless sword into the bosom of the country. The soldiers everywhere supported their tyranny: the prospect of ransacking cellars, ravishing women, and plundering coffers, made them universally faith-streets to be strewn with decapitated ful to the government. St Just, when sent down by Robespierre to Strassburg, wrote to him that the excess of cruelty had blunted men to its effects. The career of Tallien at Bordeaux at first was equally sanguinary: in a short time seven hundred victims perished on the scaffold. But he was at length awakened to more humane feelings by the influence of his beautiful mistress, whom he afterwards married, Madame de Fontenay,* one of those singular characters whom the Revolution raised to eminence, and who had the

human heads." The pretended conspiracy in the prisons served as an excuse for a frightful multiplication in the number of victims. One hundred and sixty were denounced in the prison of the Luxembourg alone, and from one to two hundred in the other prisons of Paris. A fabricated attempt at escape in the prison of La Force, was made the ground for sending several hundreds to the Revolutionary Tribunal. Fouquier Tinville had made such an enlargement of the hall of that dreaded court, that room was afforded for one hundred and

* Madame de Fontenay, whose humanity, Théroigne de Méricourt at Paris, she espoused not less than her beauty, renders her de- the cause of the Revolution. Dressed as an serving a place in the portrait gallery of the Amazon, with her dark locks surmounted by Revolution, was the daughter of the Count a tricolor plume, she was to be seen at the of Cabarus, a Frenchman by descent, but clubs, the theatres, and on horseback in the who had long been established in Spain, and streets, where she pronounced several elowas born at Madrid in 1784. Her mother quent speeches in favour of the Revolution. was a Valencian lady, whom Cabarus had se- But, unlike Théroigne, she had a heart. Sufduced. She united in her person and charac-fering never failed to melt her; and when ter the beauty and fire of the sunny province where her mother first drew breath, with the grace and spirit of coquetry of that where her father was born. Like Cleopatra or Theodora, she seemed born to rule the world by subduing its conquerors. The enthusiasm of the Revolution soon drew her from Spain to Bordeaux, where she soon attracted general notice by the brilliancy of her dress, her dazzling beauty, and the vehemence with which, like

she acquired an influence over Tallien, which she did the moment he arrived as one of the commissioners of the Convention at Bordeaux, she exerted it entirely to save victims from the vengeance of the Republicans. Her influence soon after had no small share in bringing about the 9th Thermidor and fall of Robespierre, in which Tallien bore so prominent a part.-LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins, vii. 333, 334.