Chapter XXIII · Sketch Of The French Revolution Of 1789, As Connected With The History Of Persecution. · 7
Foxe's Book of Martyrs · chapter 119 of 119 · about 16 min
The Hotel de Ville was surrounded by about fifteen hundred men, and cannon turned upon the doors. The force of the assailants was weakest in point of number, but their leaders were men of spirit, and night concealed their inferiority of force.
The deputies commissioned for the purpose read the decree of the assembly to those whom they found assembled in front of the city hall, and they shrunk from the attempt of defending it, some joining the assailants, others laying down their arms and dispersing. Meantime the deserted group of terrorists within conducted themselves like scorpions, which, when surrounded by a circle of fire, are said to turn their stings on each other, and on themselves. Mutual and ferocious upbraiding took place among these miserable men. "Wretch, were these the means you promised to furnish?" said Payan to Henriot, whom he found intoxicated and incapable of resolution or exertion; and seizing on him as he spoke, he precipitated the revolutionary general from a window. Henriot survived the fall only to drag himself into a drain, in which he was afterwards discovered and brought out to execution. The younger Robespierre threw himself from the window, but had not the good fortune to perish on the spot. It seemed as if even the melancholy fate of suicide, the last refuge of guilt and despair, was denied to men who had so long refused every species of mercy to their fellow-creatures. Le Bas alone had calmness enough to despatch himself with a pistol shot. Saint Just, after imploring his comrades to kill him, attempted his own life with an irresolute hand, and failed. Couthon lay beneath the table brandishing a knife, with which he repeatedly wounded his bosom, without daring to add force enough to reach his heart. Their chief, Robespierre, in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself, had only inflicted a horrible fracture on his under-jaw.
In this situation they were found like wolves in their lair, foul with blood, mutilated, despairing, and yet not able to die. Robespierre lay on a table in an anti-room, his head supported by a deal box, and his hideous countenance half hidden by a bloody and dirty cloth bound round the shattered chin.
The captives were carried in triumph to the convention, who, without admitting them to the bar, ordered them, as outlaws, for instant execution. As the fatal cars passed to the guillotine, those who filled them, but especially Robespierre, were overwhelmed with execrations from the friends and relatives of victims whom he had sent on the same melancholy road. The nature of his previous wound, from which the cloth had never been removed till the executioner tore it off, added to the torture of the sufferer. The shattered jaw dropped, and the wretch yelled aloud to the horror of the spectators. A masque taken from that dreadful head was long exhibited in different nations of Europe, and appalled the spectator by its ugliness, and the mixture of fiendish expression with that of bodily agony.
Thus fell Maximilian Robespierre, after having been the first person in the French republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the situation which he held, involved more contradictions than perhaps attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered them unable to endure the rule of a humane and lawful sovereign. A dastardly coward arose to the command of one of the bravest nations in the world; and it was under the auspices of a man who dared scarce fire a pistol, that the greatest generals in France began their careers of conquest. He had neither eloquence nor imagination; but substituted in their stead a miserable, affected, bombastic style, which, until other circumstances gave him consequence, drew on him general ridicule. Yet against so poor an orator, all the eloquence of the philosophical Girondists, all the terrible powers of his associate Danton, employed in a popular assembly, could not enable them to make an effectual resistance. It may seem trifling to mention, that in a nation where a good deal of prepossession is excited by amiable manners and beauty of external appearance, the person who ascended to the highest power was not only ill-looking, but singularly mean in person, awkward and constrained in his address, ignorant how to set about pleasing even when he most desired to give pleasure, and as tiresome nearly as he was odious and heartless.
To compensate all these deficiencies, Robespierre had but an insatiable ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and overstrained, but rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which, they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to be satisfied with possessing the essence of power, without seeming to desire its rank and trappings, formed another art of cajoling the multitude. His watchful envy, his long-protracted but sure revenge, his craft, which to vulgar minds supplies the place of wisdom, were his only means of competing with his distinguished antagonists. And it seems to have been a merited punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the French revolution, that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her destiny. Blood was his element, like that of the other terrorists and he never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim; as when he was at the same time an ancient associate. In an epitaph, of which the following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was represented as incompatible with the existence of the human race:--
"Here lies Robespierre--let no tear be shed:
Reader, if he had lived, thou hadst been dead."
The fall of Robespierre ended the "Reign of Terror." Most of the leaders who had acted a conspicuous part in these horrid scenes, met a doom similar to that of their leaders. It is impossible to convey to the reader any adequate conception of the atrocities committed in France during this gloomy period, in the name of liberty. Men, women, and children were involved in the massacres which took place at the instigation of the Jacobin chiefs. Hundreds of both sexes were thrown into the Loire, and this was called republican marriage and republican baptism. And it should never be forgotten, that it was not till France as a nation, had denied the existence of a Deity, and the validity of his institutions, that she was visited by such terrible calamities. Let it be "burnt in on the memory" of every generation, that such is the legitimate tendency of infidel opinions. They first destroy the conscience--blunt the moral sense--harden the heart, and wither up all the social and kindly affections, and then their votaries are ripe for any deed of wickedness within the possibility of accomplishment by human agency.
Says an eloquent writer--"When the Sabbath was abolished in France, the Mighty God whose being they had denied, and whose worship they abolished, stood aloof and gave them up,--and a scene of proscription, and assassination, and desolation, ensued, unparalleled in the annals of the civilized world. In the city of Paris, there were in 1803, eight hundred and seven suicides and murders. Among the criminals executed, there were seven fathers who had poisoned their children, ten husbands who had murdered their wives, six wives who had poisoned their husbands, and fifteen children who had destroyed their parents."
It may be profitable here to record the end of several other Jacobin leaders who had been conspicuous during these scenes of atrocity and bloodshed. Public opinion demanded that some of the most obnoxious members should be condemned. After hesitating for some time, at length the convention, pressed by shame on the one side and fear on the other, saw the necessity of some active measure, and appointed a commission to consider and report upon the conduct of the four most obnoxious Jacobin chiefs, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes, Vadier, and Barrere. The report was of course unfavourable; yet upon the case being considered, the convention were satisfied to condemn them to transportation to Cayenne. Some resistance was offered to this sentence, so mild in proportion to what those who underwent it had been in the habit of inflicting; but it was borne down, and the sentence was carried into execution. Collot d'Herbois, the demolisher and depopulator of Lyons, is said to have died in the common hospital, in consequence of drinking off at once a whole bottle of ardent spirits. Billaud Varennes spent his time in teaching the innocent parrots of Guiana the frightful jargon of the revolutionary committee; and finally perished in misery.
These men both belonged to that class of atheists, who, looking up towards heaven, loudly and literally defied the Deity to make his existence known by launching his thunderbolts. Miracles are not wrought on the challenge of a blasphemer more than on the demand of a sceptic; but both these unhappy men had probably before their death reason to confess, that in abandoning the wicked to their own free will, a greater penalty results even in this life, than if Providence had been pleased to inflict the immediate doom which they had impiously defied.
Encouraged by the success of this decisive measure, the government proceeded against some of the terrorists whom they had hitherto spared, but whose fate was now determined, in order to strike dismay into their party. Six Jacobins, accounted among the most ferocious of the class, were arrested and delivered up to be tried by a military commission. They were all deputies of the mountain gang. Certain of their doom, they adopted a desperate resolution. Among the whole party, they possessed but one knife, but they resolved it should serve them all for the purpose of suicide. The instant their sentence was pronounced, one stabbed himself with this weapon; another snatched the knife from his companion's dying hand, plunged it in his own bosom, and handed it to the third, who imitated the dreadful example. Such was the consternation of the attendants, that no one arrested the fatal progress of the weapon--all fell either dead or desperately wounded--the last were despatched by the guillotine.
After this decisive victory, and last dreadful catastrophe, Jacobinism, considered as a pure and unmixed party, can scarce be said to have again raised its head in France, although its leaven has gone to qualify and characterize, in some degree, more than one of the different parties which have succeeded them. As a political sect, the Jacobins can be compared to none that ever existed, for none but themselves ever thought of an organized, regular, and continued system of murdering and plundering the rich, that they might debauch the poor by the distribution of their spoils. They bear, however, some resemblance to the frantic followers of John of Leyden and Knipperdoling, who occupied Munster in the seventeenth century, and committed, in the name of religion, the same frantic horrors which the French Jacobins did in that of freedom. In both cases, the courses adopted by these parties were most foreign to, and inconsistent with, the alleged motives of their conduct. The Anabaptists practised every species of vice and cruelty, by the dictates, they said, of inspiration--the Jacobins imprisoned three hundred thousand of their countrymen in the name of liberty, and put to death more than half the number, under the sanction of fraternity.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired except where noted below.
Page vi, "Vallie's" changed to "valleys" (the valleys of Piedmont)
Page vii, "stupifies" changed to "stupefies (first stupefies the)
Page xi, "Hawkes" changed to "Haukes" (Ardeley, Haukes, and)
Page 18, "Icunum" changed to "Iconium" (Jerusalem, Iconium, Lystra)
Page 23, "northen" changed to "northern" (restless northern nations)
Page 26, "catechhmun" changed to "catechumen" (catechumen of Carthage)
Page 33, "i ine" changed to "in fine" (in fine, he was)
Page 39, "batoons" changed to "batons" (with batons, and)
Page 42, "martrydom" changed to "martyrdom" (conclusion of her martyrdom)
Page 51, "dioceas" changed to "diocese" (in the diocese)
Page 51, "remand" changed to "remanded" (They remanded him)
Page 60, "cardina" changed to "cardinal" (crowns of the cardinal)
Page 64, "no" changed to "not" (reached not to)
Page 73, "nflicted" changed to "inflicted" (inflicted twice without)
Page 73, "quiety" changed to "quietly" (peaceably and quietly)
Page 73, "hreatening" changed to "threatening" (threatening words to)
Page 75, "erwise" changed to "otherwise" (far otherwise than)
Page 77, "contributious" changed to "contributions" (last contributions to)
Page 77, word "a" was inferred and placed in text do to spacing and context (such a procedure)
Page 80, inconsistent quotation marks were retained as original intent could not be assertained.
Page 91, "iner" changed to "Gardiner" (Gardiner was drawn)
Page 91, "ne" changed to "near" (near the fire)
Page 125, "Vilaro" changed to "Villaro" (of Villaro and Bobbio)
Page 126, "apprended" changed to "apprehended" (Michialm, was apprehended)
Page 132, "dorpped" changed to "dropped" (till they dropped)
Page 134, "stil kep" changed to "still kept" (and still kept)
Page 136, "s" changed to "his" (completed his regiment)
Page 136, "retron" changed to "return" (and return thanks)
Page 137, "Vilaro" changed to "Villaro" (rocks of Villaro)
Page 137, word "to" inserted into text (put to death)
Page 138, "that" changed to "than" (than their suffering)
Page 158, "tr s" changed to "troops" (of his troops)
Page 158, "un ook" changed to "undertook" (princes undertook the)
Page 158, "wel" changed to "well" (were all well)
Page 159, "w s" changed to "was" (Zisca was solicited)
Page 175, "possesion" changed to "possession" (his possession.)
Page 179, "ban- s hour" changed to "banish our" (banish our preachers)
Page 180, "enj ned" changed to "enjoined" (strictly enjoined his)
Page 204, "see" changed to "she" (whom she forgave)
Page 206, "queen" changed to "Queen" (in Queen Mary's)
Page 207, "Northhampton" changed to "Northampton" (preached at Northampton)
Page 214, "halbered" changed to "halberd" (halberd struck him)
Page 222, "Osmand" changed to "Osmond" (Thomas Watts, Thomas Osmond)
Page 223, "Was" changed to "was" (he was brought)
Page 224, "sherif" changed to "sheriff" (of the sheriff)
Page 232, "passsed" changed to "passed" (he passed Bocardo)
Page 232, word "be" deleted from text. Original read "he be bent himself"
Page 235, the last four names in the article "Rev. T. Whittle, B. Green, T. Brown" do not match the names used in the article. As each was used only once, this was retained as author's intent could not be ascertained.
Page 237, "charg" changed to "charge" (closely the charge)
Page 239, "lest" changed to "lost" (forever lost his)
Page 248, "Asking" changed to "Askin" (Askin and one John Guin)
Page 251, "cemetry" changed to "cemetary" (their former cemetary)
Page 260, "hallejahs" changed to "hallelujahs" (invocations and hallelujahs)
Page 264, "he" changed to "the" (at the stake)
Page 268, "fo" changed to "for" (for these Dr.)
Page 268, word "I" inserted into text (I am unlearned)
Page 276, "Preston" changed to "Prest" (Mrs. Prest for some)
Page 278, "Duchman" changed to "Dutchman" (The Dutchman accused)
Page 285, "nowithstanding" changed to "notwithstanding" (notwithstanding his passion)
Page 292, "t" changed to "to" (every day, to)
Page 293, "beesech" changed to "beseech" (humbly beseech your)
Page 300, deleted repeated word "words". Original read "such words words fell"
Page 310, "Englisman" changed to "Englishman" (an Englishman, who)
Page 314, word "to" inserted into text (to his master)
Page 321, "Richlieu" changed to "Richelieu" (Cardinal Richelieu, the)
Page 321, duplicate word "in" deleted. Original read: "evening in in the city"
Page 325, "massacreing" changed to "massacring" (besides massacring at)
Page 326, "belley" changed to "belly" (up its belly)
Page 336, "addess" changed to "address" (address to the king)
Page 338, "religous" changed to "religious" (of religious duty)
Page 341, word "any" inserted into text (that any person)
Page 347, "Elb" changed to "Elba" (the Isle of Elba)
Page 357, "owever" changed to "however" (This, however, would)
Page 357, "no" changed to "not" (would not avail)
Page 370, word "of" inserted in text. (member of the Roman)
Page 376, "skekh" changed to "shekh" (The shekh declared)
Page 377, "wordly" changed to "wordly" (other worldly motives)
Page 386, word "but" presumed due to smudged text. (but when I)
Page 386, word "the" presumed due to smudged text. (merely the gospel)
Page 387, word "then" presumed due to smudged text. (and then there)
Page 391, "evi" changed to "evil" (you an evil)
Page 398, "o" changed to "to" (to which I was)
Page 399, Footnote: word "a" inserted into text (to a distance)
Page 406, the word "excellent" is presumed as the text was smudged. (a more excellent)
Page 408, repeated word "the" deleted. Original read: "or the the palace"
Page 410, "Assaad" changed to "Asaad" (history of Asaad)
Page 413, "words" changed to "word" (This word tells)
Page 416, "angy" changed to "angry" (more angry than ever)
Page 419, "enter d th" changed to "entered the" (entered the garden)
Page 425, word "I" inserted into text (period, I was)
Page 426, "are" changed to "or" (if you or any other)
Page 432, "word" changed to "words" (first words of)
Page 432, "worne" changed to "worn" (worn out with fatigue)
Page 437, "purose" changed to "purpose" (express purpose of)
Page 442, "Woongypee" changed to "Woongyee" (a Woongyee and Woondouk)
Page 445, "ion" changed to "accusation" (on an accusation)
Page 448, "beeen" changed to "been" (having been transmitted)
Page 453, "Misssionary" changed to "Missionary" (the Wesleyan Missionary)
Page 456, "tell" changed to "Tell" (Tell and Winkelreid)
Page 457, "enlighted" changed to "enlightened" (most enlightened cantons)
Page 480, "exeedingly" changed to "exceedingly" (continued exceedingly troublesome)
Page 481, word "in" inserted into text (in all christian)
Page 483, "subsisttence" changed to "subsistence" (his future subsistence)
Page 485, "cathdral" changed to "cathedral" (cathedral of Salisbury)
Page 486, "Canterbery" changed to "Canterbury" (archbishop of Canterbury)
Page 492, "unwieldly" changed to "unwieldy" (antiquated and unwieldy)
Page 496, "accummulated" changed to "accumulated" (individuals accumulated in)
Page 498, "t" changed to "It" (It required, as in)
Page 499, repeated word "Louis" was deleted. Original text reads: "will of Louis Louis XVI."
Page 501, "Vendee" changed to "Vendee" twice. (La Vendee)
Page 503, "terrour" changed to "terror" (terror was awakened)
Page 508, "poinarded" changed to "poignarded" (poignarded in 1793)
Page 508, "poinard" changed to "poignard" (poignard the tyrant)
Page 511, "l o" changed to "also" (also on the day destined)
Page 512, "assentators" changed to "assentors" (overawed assentors to the)
Varied capitalization of Christian, Jew, de Legal, and d'Herbois was retained. Inconsistent spacing in meanwhile/mean while was retained.
Different spellings of proper names such as Benifield and Benefield, Tlowtdan and Tlowtdau, Wittenberg and Wittenburg were retained. Varied hyphenation was retained throughout.