XIX. 1795. country; all who are to have any share in the legislature CHAP. should be possessed of some independent income. All Frenchmen are citizens; but the state of domestic service, pauperism, or the non-payment of taxes, forbid the great majority from exercising their rights. The executive government requires a central position, a disposable force, a display calculated to strike the vulgar. The people should never be permitted to deliberate indiscriminately on public affairs; a populace constantly deliberating rapidly perishes by misery and disorder; the laws should d'Anglas never be submitted to the consideration of the multitude." stitution. Such were the principles ultimately adopted by the Revo- 273. Hist. lutionary Assembly of France. In a few years, centuries 34. of experience had been acquired.1 1 Rapport sur la Con Toul. v. 272, Parl.xxxvii. 45. the General The abandonment of democratic sec- principles the and violent the south of If such was the language of the Convention, it may easily be conceived how much more powerful was reaction among the middle classes of the people. national guard, and the Jeunesse Dorée of several tions, had become open Royalists. They wore the green from t and black uniform which distinguished the Chouans of the experience, western provinces; the Réveil du Peuple was beginning reaction in to awaken the dormant, not extinguished, loyalty of the France. French people. The name of Terrorist had become in many places the signal for proscriptions as perilous as that of Aristocrat had formerly been. In the south, especially, the reaction was terrible. Bands, bearing the names of the "Companies of Jesus," and the "Companies of the Sun," traversed the country, executing the most dreadful reprisals upon the revolutionary party. At Lyons, Aix, Tarascon, and Marseilles, they massacred the prisoners without either trial or discrimination; the 2d of September was repeated, with all its horrors, in most of the prisons of the south of France. At Lyons, after the first massacre of the Terrorists, they pursued the wretches through the streets, and when any one was seized, he was instantly thrown into the Rhone; at Tarascon, the captives were cast headlong from the top XIX. 1795. CHAP. of a lofty rock into that rapid stream. One prison at Lyons was set on fire by the infuriated mob, and the unhappy inmates all perished in the flames. The people, exasperated by the blood which had been shed by the revolutionary party, were insatiable in their vengeance ; they invoked the name of a parent, brother, or sister, when retaliating on their oppressors; and, while commit44,50. Hist. ting murder themselves, exclaimed, with every stroke, "Die, assassins!" History must equally condemn such Mig. ii. 382. horrors by whomsoever committed; but it must reserve its severest censure for those by whom they were first perpetrated.1 1 Deux Amis, xiv. Parl. xxxvi. 417, 433. Lac.xii.210. Fréron, 9. 32, 73. 46. Generous conduct of the Duke of Orleans' younger sons, and indulgence shown to the Jacobins. Many innocent persons perished, as in all popular tumults, during those bloody days. The two younger sons of the Duke of Orleans, the Duke de Montpensier, and the Count Beaujoulais, were confined in the Fort of St John at Marseilles, where they had been forgotten during the Reign of Terror. On the 6th June, a terrible noise round the fort announced the approach of the frantic multitude. The cries of the victims in the adjoining cells too soon informed them of the danger which they ran; Royalists and Jacobins were indiscriminately murdered by the bloody assassins. Isnard and Cardroi at length put a stop to the massacres, but not before eighty persons had been murdered. The former, though he strove to moderate the savage measures of the Royalists, increased their fury by the fearful energy of his language. "We want arms," said the young men who were marching against the Jacobins of Toulon. "Take," said he, "the bones of your fathers to march against their murderers." The fate of these young princes was in the highest degree interesting. Some months afterwards they formed a plan of escape; but the Duke de Montpensier, in descending the wall of the fort, broke his leg, was seized, and reconducted to prison. He consoled himself for his failure by the thoughts that his brother had succeeded, when he beheld him re-enter the cell, and fall XIX. 1795. upon his neck. Escaped from danger, and on the point CHAP. of embarking on board a vessel destined for the United States, he had heard of the misfortune of his brother, and, unable to endure freedom without him, he had returned to prison to share his fate. They were both subsequently liberated, and reached America; but they soon died, the victims of a long and severe captivity of four years. During the predominance of these principles, upwards of eighty Jacobins were denounced in the Convention, and escaped execution only by secreting themselves in different parts of France. The only secure asylum which they found was in the houses of the Royalists whom, during the days of their power, they had saved from the scaffold. Not one was betrayed by those to whom they fled. So predominant was the influence of the Girondists, that Louvet obtained a decree, ordering an expiatory fête for the victims of 31st May. None of the Thermi-Lac. xii. dorians ventured to resist the proposal, though many 231. Deux amongst them had contributed in no inconsiderable degree 44, 49. to their fate. 212, 216, Amis, xv. 47. and death prison, and the Duchess lême. About the same time, the infant King of France, Louis XVII., expired. The 9th Thermidor came too late to Last days save the life of this unfortunate prince. His savage of Louis jailer, Simon, was indeed beheaded, and a less cruel XVII. in tyrant substituted in his place; but the temper of the liberation of times would not at first admit of any decided measures d'Angouof indulgence in favour of the heir to the throne. The barbarous treatment he had experienced from Simon, had alienated his reason, but not extinguished his feelings of gratitude. On one occasion, that inhuman wretch had seized him by the hair, and threatened to dash his head against the wall; the surgeon, Naulin, interfered to prevent him, and the unhappy child next day presented him with two pears, which had been given him for his supper the preceding evening, lamenting, at the same time, that he had no other means of testifying his gratitude. Simon and Hébert had put him to the torture, to extract from XIX. 1795. In CHAP. him an avowal of crimes connected with his mother, which he was too young to understand; after that cruel day, he almost always preserved silence, lest his words should prove fatal to some of his relations. This resolution, and the closeness of his confinement, soon preyed upon his health. In February 1795, he was seized with a fever, and visited by three members of the Committee of General Salvation: they found him sitting at a little table, making castles of cards. They addressed to him words of kindness, but could not obtain any answer. May, the state of his health became so alarming, that the celebrated surgeon Dessault was directed by the Convention to visit him; his generous attentions assuaged the sufferings of his latter days, but could not prolong his life he soon after died in prison. The public sympathy was so strongly excited by this event, that it induced the Convention to consent to the freedom of the On the 18th of remaining child of Louis XVI. June, the Duchess d'Angoulême was liberated from the Temple, and exchanged for the four Commissioners whom Dumourier had delivered up to the Austrians. had owed her life, during the ascendency of Robespierre, to a project which he was revolving in his mind, of marrying that unhappy princess, and thus uniting in his person the Revolutionary and Royalist parties.1 * June 8. June 18. 1 Lac. xii. 369, 374, 383. Deux Amis, xiv. 172, 173. 48. captivity of Lafayette, interest in She The fate of Lafayette, Latour Maubourg, and other Continued eminent men who were detained in the Austrian prisons, since their defection from the armies of France, at this and general time excited the most ardent sympathy both in France and his behalf. Great Britain. They had been rigorously guarded since their captivity in the fortress of Olmutz; and the humane in every part of the world beheld with regret men who had voluntarily delivered themselves up, to avoid the excesses of a sanguinary faction, treated with more * "Dans ces tems cette jeune infortunée n'avait dû son salut qu'à l'ambition de Robespierre; et si sous le Règne de la Terreur elle n'avait point suivie sa famille à l'échafaud, c'est que ce monstre avait des vues sur elle, et se promettait de l'épouser pour affermir sa puissance." Deux Amis, xiv. 173. XIX. 1795. severity than prisoners of war. Mr Fox in vain endea- CHAP. voured to induce the British government to interfere in their behalf; the reply of Mr Pitt in the House of Commons equalled the speech of his eloquent rival, and nothing followed from the attempt. The wife and daughters of Lafayette, finding all attempts at his deliverance ineffectual, generously resolved to share his captivity; and they remained in confinement with him at Olmutz, till the victories of Buonaparte in 1796 compelled the Austrian government to consent to their liberation. His imprisonment, however tedious, was probably the means of saving his life; it is hardly possible that in France he could have survived the Reign of Terror, or escaped the multitude which he had roused to revolution, and to 387. whom he had long been the object of execration.1 1 Lac. x.386, 49. of the new Meanwhile, the Convention proceeded rapidly with the formation of the new constitution. This was the third Completion which had been imposed upon the French people during constitu the space of a few years-a sufficient proof of the danger tion. of incautiously overturning long-established institutions. But the constitution of 1795 was very different from those which had preceded it, and gave striking proof of the altered condition of the public mind on the state of political affairs. Experience had now taught all classes that the chimera of perfect equality could not be attained; that the mass of the people are unfit for the exercise of political rights; that the contests of factions terminate, if the people are victorious, in the supremacy of the most depraved. The constitution which was framed under the influence of these sentiments differed widely both from that struck out during the glowing fervour of 1789, and that conceived amid the democratic transports of 1793. The ruinous error was now acknowledged of uniting the whole legislative powers in one Assembly, and enacting the most important laws, without the intervention of any time. to deliberate on their tendency, or recover from the excitement under which they may have originated. Guided by |