XV. 1794. CHAP. the whole literary talent as well as dignified names of France. In a single night three hundred families of the Faubourg St Germain were thrown into prison. Their only crimes were the historic names which they bore, embracing all that was illustrious in the military, parliamentary, or ecclesiastical history of France. There was no difficulty in finding crimes to charge them withtheir names, their rank, their historic celebrity, were sufficient. 46. and his whole family, with d'Espréménil. April 22. In the midst of the general massacre, Malesherbes, the Execution of generous and intrepid defender of Louis XVI., was too Malesherbes immaculate a character to escape destruction. For some time he had lived in the country, in the closest retirement; a young man accused of being an emigrant, concealed in his house, furnished a pretext for the apprehension of the venerable old man and all his family. When he arrived at the prison, all the captives rose up and crowded round him they brought him a seat. "I thank you," said he, "for the attention you pay to my age; but I perceive one amongst you feebler than myself-give it to him." He was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal along with his whole family: even the judges of that sanguinary court turned aside their heads to avoid beholding the heart-rending spectacle. They were all condemned together. His daughter, Madame de Rozambo, when preparing to mount the fatal chariot, perceived Mademoiselle Sombreuil, whose heroic devotion had saved her father on the 2d of September, but who had again followed him to prison. Throwing herself into her arms, she exclaimed-" You have had the good fortune to save your father, and I have the glory of dying with mine!" Malesherbes stumbled over a stone as he crossed the court, with his arms bound, to mount the chariot: he said with a smile-"That is a .bad omen: a Roman would have turned back." Recollecting, with the malice of demons, the heroic manner in which he had come forward to defend the unhappy Louis, the monsters applied to him the cruel privilege invented XV. 1794. in those days of woe, for such as were esteemed the greatest CHAP. criminals. He was selected as the last victim for execution, and had the agony of seeing his daughter, Madame Rozambo, and grand-daughter, Madame de Châteaubriand, with her husband, guillotined before his eyes, ere death. put a period to his sufferings. When bound to the plank, his gray hairs were observed to be sprinkled with the blood of the children he had seen suffer before him. With him was included in the indictment M. d'Esprémé- d'Anglas, nil, so long the idol of the populace of Paris, and who had Vie de done so much in its earlier stages to urge on the Revolu- bes, ii. 274. tion. He was condemned and executed with Malesherbes, 157. Biog. and evinced the same sublime constancy in his last 366, 367. moments.1 The next trial of note, and perhaps the most iniquitous 1 Boissy Malesher Lac. ii. 147, Univ. xxvi. 47. Farmers of the many iniquitous ones which took place before the Trial of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was that of the farmers-general general. of the revenue. The only motive for their prosecution May 5. appears to have been the hope of obtaining something considerable from the confiscation of their estates; but the Committee of Public Salvation had much difficulty in finding any charge to prefer against them. On 5th May, Dupin read a long report to the Convention, concluding with a motion, which, like all the others at that period, was unanimously adopted, that all the farmersgeneral then living should be sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal. Thither they were accordingly brought on the 8th, and at once condemned to be executed. The only thing like a criminal act adduced against them was that of having realised usurious profits, and mixed water with their tobacco prior to 1776 to make it weigh heavier. On these charges they were all straightway condemned. When going to the scaffold, it was discovered that in the hurry *"Oh gioja! più gran pena che la morte Dar ti, poss' io? Saveneti innanzi dunque, Quandi ei sovr' essi cada."-ALFIERI, Oreste, Act iv. scene 4. -How identical is the infernal spirit of cruelty in all ages! VOL. III. U XV. 1794. CHAP. three subordinate officers had been sentenced instead of three farmers-general, and twenty-eight only were executed; but the three missing ones were soon after got, all between seventy and eighty years of age, and guillotined without mercy.* Shortly after, the Abbé de Fénélon, grand-nephew of the illustrious prelate of the same name, was led forth to execution. He was eighty-nine years old, and had spent his long life in deeds of beneficence. He went to death surrounded by a crowd of orphan Savoyard children, to whom he had acted as a father. Such was his bodily weakness, owing to his great age, that he required to be helped up the steps of the scaffold but the firmness of his mind was unshaken; and his last reMoniteur, quest was, that his arms should be unbound, that he might Lam. Hist. give his last blessing to his numerous protégés. The request was granted, and they received the benediction kneeling and in tears around the scaffold.1 1 Prudhom. v. 374. Procès des Fermiers Bull. du Trib. Rev. 8 Mai. Mai 7. des Gir. viii. 128. 48. Elizabeth. May 16. Madame Elizabeth, sister to Louis XVI., was the next Of Madame victim. When she was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the judges and the jury manifested an unusual degree of impatience for her condemnation. She was brought into court with twenty-four other persons, most of them of high birth or descent. "What has she to complain of?" said Fouquier Tinville, casting his eyes on the illustrious group: "when she sees herself at the foot of the scaffold surrounded by that faithful noblesse, she will believe herself still at Versailles." Like the King and Queen, she manifested the utmost composure and serenity when under examination; her answers, clear, distinct, and perfectly true, left no room for suspicion or misconstruc * The sentence was in these terms: -"Qu'il est constant qu'il a existé un complot contre le peuple Français tendant à favoriser de tous les moyens possibles le succès des ennemis de la France, notamment en exerçant toute espèce d'exaction et de concussion sur le peuple Français en mêlant au tabac de l'eau et des ingrédiens nuisibles à la santé, en prenant 6 à 10 pour cent.”— Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire, 8 Mai, 1794. It appears from Dupin's evidence, when afterwards Fouquier Tinville was charged with this iniquity, that their death had previously been arranged by the Committee of Public Salvation.Procès de FoUQUIER TINVILLE; Bull. du Trib. Rév.; Réponse de Dupin, p. 2. 66 XV. 1794. tion. Being accused of having succoured some men who CHAP. had been wounded in the Champs Elysées, on the occasion of the revolt, she replied " 'Humanity alone led me to dress their wounds; I needed no inquiry into the origin of their sufferings to feel the obligation to relieve them. I never thought this a merit, but I cannot see how it can be considered as a crime."-"Admit, at least," said the president, "that you have nourished in the young Capet the hope of regaining the throne of his father.""I devoted myself," said she, "to the care of that infant, who was the more dear to me as he had lost those to whom he owed his being." Being accused of being an accomplice of the tyrant "If my brother had been a tyrant," she replied, "neither you nor I would have been where we now are." She was sentenced along with many others of illustrious rank and dignified virtue. On being taken to the room where the condemned were assembled, she exhorted them with so much calmness and serenity to die, that they were all encouraged by her example. On the chariot she declared that one of her companions. had disclosed to her that she was pregnant, and thus was the means of saving her from destruction. When she had ascended the scaffold, the executioner rudely undid the clasp which closed the veil across her breast. "In the name of modesty," she said to one of the bystanders whose arms were not tied, "cover my bosom."* She embraced all her companions as they successively mounted the scaffold: * « Ἡ δε καὶ θνησκουσ ̓ ὅμῶς Πολλὴν πρόνοιαν εἶχεν ευσχημῶς πεσεῖν Κρυπτουσ ̓ ἃ κρύπτειν· όμματ' αρσενων χρεῶν.” EURIPIDES, Hecuba, 566. "Careful in death, With decent grace, her robe to enfold, Veiling what eye of man should ne'er behold." A similar instance of heroic virtue in death occurred in a female martyr in the early Christian church. Perpetua and Felicitas, both Christians, were sentenced, in the year 203, to be killed by wild cattle at Carthage. They were both attacked, accordingly, by furious bulls, who tossed them on their horns. So violent was the shock, that Perpetua fell on the ground stunned; but, partially XV. 1794. 1 Deux CHAP. she herself, according to the usual custom of the period, being selected to suffer last. She died with the serenity of an angel, praying for those who had taken her life. The beauty of her form, and the placidity of her expresAmis, xii. sion, awakened sentiments of commiseration even among 287, 293. the most savage of the revolutionary spectators. With lême, Mém. her was executed Madame de Montmorin-the same who, Sup. à la when the States-general walked in procession to church on Lam. Hist. 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.1* Duchesse d'Angou Rév.iv. 292. des Gir. viii. 145, 146. 49. son, Luck Dietrich and Barri. Custine, son of the celebrated general of the same name, Of Custine's was executed for having let fall some expressions of ner, Biron, attachment to his father; Alexander Beauharnais, for havMadame Du ing 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 carried off to the scaffold, while Madame Custine lay insensible on the floor of his cell. The letter of Beauharnais, the night before his execution, was couched in the most touching strains of eloquence. Mar 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. The 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.- Vide ST AUGUSTIN, Sermons, 283–294; TERTULLIAN, de Anima, c. 55; TILLEMONT, 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 ! * Ante, chap. IV. § 4. Her husband had been murdered during the massacres in the prisons on September 2. |