XII.
Oge"s blood bubbled silently in the hearts of all the mulatto race. They swore to avenge him. The blacks were an army all ready for the ma.s.sacre; the signal was given to them by the men of colour. In one night 60,000 slaves, armed with torches and their working tools, burnt down all their masters" houses in a circuit of six leagues round the Cape. The whites were murdered; women, children, old men--nothing escaped the long-repressed fury of the blacks. It was the annihilation of one race by the other. The bleeding heads of the whites, carried on the tops of sugar canes, were the standards which guided these hordes, not to combat, but to carnage. The outrages of so many centuries, committed by the whites on the blacks, were avenged in one night. A rivalry of cruelty seemed to arise between the two colours. The negroes imitated the tortures so long used upon them, and invented new ones. If certain n.o.ble and faithful slaves placed themselves between their old masters and death, they were sacrificed together. Grat.i.tude and pity are virtues which civil war never recognises. Colour was a sentence of death without exception of persons; the war was between the races, and no longer between men. The one must perish for the other to live! Since justice could not make itself understood by them, there was nothing but death left for them. Every gift of life to a white was a treason which would cost a black man"s life. The negroes had no longer any pity: they were men no longer, they were no longer a people, but a destroying element which spread over the land, annihilating every thing.
In a few hours eight hundred habitations, sugar and coffee stores, representing an immense capital, were destroyed. The mills, magazines, utensils, and even the very plant which reminded them of their servitude and their compulsory labour, were cast into the flames. The whole plain, as far as eye could reach, was covered with nothing but the smoke and the ashes of conflagration. The dead bodies of whites, piled in hideous trophies of heads and limbs, of men, women, and infants a.s.sa.s.sinated, alone marked the spot of the rich residences, where they were supreme on the previous night. It was the revenge of slavery: all tyranny has such fearful reverses.
Some whites, warned in time of the insurrection by the generous indiscretion of the blacks, or protected in their flight by the forests and the darkness, had taken refuge at the Cape Town; others, concealed with their wives and children in caves, were fed and attended to by attached slaves, at the peril of their lives. The army of blacks increased without the walls of the Cape Town, where they formed and disciplined a fortified camp. Guns and cannons arrived by the aid of invisible auxiliaries. Some accused the English, others the Spaniards; others, the "friends of the blacks," with being accomplices of this insurrection. The Spaniards, however, were at peace with France; the revolt of the blacks menaced them equally with ourselves. The English themselves possessed three times as many slaves as the French: the principle of the insurrection, excited by success, and spreading with them, would have ruined their establishments, and compromised the lives of their colonists. These suspicions were absurd; there was no one culpable but liberty itself, which is not to be repressed with impunity in a portion of the human race. It had accomplices in the very heart of the French themselves.
The weakness of the resolutions of the a.s.sembly on the reception of this news proved this. M. Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine, ordered the immediate departure of 6000 men as reinforcement for the isle of San Domingo.
Brissot attacked these repressive measures in a discourse in which he did not hesitate to cast the odium of the crime on the victims, and to accuse the government of complicity with the aristocracy of the colonists.
"By what fatality does this news coincide with a moment when emigrations are redoubled? when the rebels a.s.sembled on our frontiers warn us of an approaching outbreak? when, in fact, the colonies threaten us, through an illegal deputation, with withdrawing from the rule of the mother-country? Has not this the appearance of a vast plan combined by treason?"
The repugnance of the friends of the blacks, numerous in the a.s.sembly, to take energetic measures in favour of the colonists, the distance from the scene of action, which weakens pity, and then the interior movement which attracted into its sphere minds and things, soon effaced these impressions, and allowed the spirit of independence amongst the blacks to form and expand at San Domingo, which showed itself in the distance in the form of a poor old slave--Toussaint-Louverture.
XIII.
The internal disorder multiplied at every point of the empire. Religious liberty, which was desire of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, and the most important conquest of the Revolution, could not be established without this struggle in face of a displaced worship, and a schism which spread far and wide amongst the people. The counter-revolutionary party was allied every where with the clergy. They had the same enemies, and conspired against the same cause. The nonjuring priests had a.s.sumed the character of victims, and the interest of a portion of the people, especially in the country, attached to them. Persecution is so odious to the public feeling that its very appearance raises generous indignation against it. The human mind has an inclination to believe that justice is on the side of the proscribed. The priests were not as yet persecuted, but from the moment that they were no longer paramount they believed themselves humiliated. The ill-repressed irritation of the clergy has been more injurious to the Revolution than all the conspiracies of the emigrated aristocracy. Conscience is man"s most sensitive point. A superst.i.tion attacked, or a faith disturbed in the mind of a people, is the fellest of conspiracies. It was by the hand of G.o.d, invisible in the hand of the priesthood, that the aristocracy roused La Vendee. Frequent and b.l.o.o.d.y symptoms already betrayed themselves in the west, and in Normandy, that concealed focus of religious war.
The most fearful of these symptoms burst out at Caen. The Abbe Fauchet was const.i.tutional bishop of Calvados. The celebrity of his name, the elevated patriotism of his opinions, the _eclat_ of his revolutionary renown, his eloquence, and his writings, disseminated widely in his diocese, were the causes of greater excitement throughout Calvados than elsewhere.
Fauchet, whose conformity of opinions, honesty of feelings for renovation, and even whose somewhat fanciful imagination, which were subsequently destined to a.s.sociate him in acts, and even on the scaffold, with the Girondists, was born at Domes, in the ancient province of Nivernais. He embraced the Catholic faith, entered into the free community of the priests of Saint Roch, at Paris, and was for some time preceptor to the children of the marquis de Choiseul, brother of the famous duke de Choiseul, the last minister of the school of Richelieu and Mazarin. A remarkable talent for speaking gave him a distinguished reputation in the pulpit. He was appointed preacher to the king, abbe of Montfort, and grand-vicaire of Bourges. He advanced rapidly towards the first dignities of the church; but his mind had imbibed the spirit of the times. He was not a destructive, but a reformer of the church, in whose bosom he was born. His work, ent.i.tled _De l"Eglise Nationale_, proves in him as much respect for the principles of the Christian faith as boldness of desire to change its discipline. This philosophic faith, which so closely resembles the Christian Platonism which was paramount in Italy under the Medici, and even in the palace of the popes themselves under Leo X., breathed throughout his sacred discourses. The clergy was alarmed at these lights of the age shining in the very sanctuary. The Abbe Fauchet was interdicted, and, struck off the list of the king"s preachers.
But the Revolution already opened other tribunes to him. It burst forth, and he rushed headlong into it, as imagination rushes towards hope. He fought for it from the day of its birth, and with every kind of weapon.
He shook the people in the primary a.s.semblies, and in the sections; he urged with voice and gesture the insurgent ma.s.ses under the cannon of the Bastille. He was seen, sword in hand, to lead on the a.s.sailants.
Thrice did he advance, under fire of the cannon, at the head of the deputation which summoned the governor to spare the lives of the citizens, and to surrender.[15] He did not soil his revolutionary zeal with any blood or crime. He inflamed the mind of the people for liberty; but with him liberty was virtue; nature had endowed him with this twofold character. There were in his features the high-priest and the hero. His exterior pleased and attracted the populace. He was tall and slender, with a wide chest, oval countenance, black eyes, and his dark brown hair set off the paleness of his brow. His imposing but modest appearance inspired at the first glance favour and respect. His voice clear, impressive, and full-toned; his majestic carriage, his somewhat mystical style, commanded the reflection, as well as the admiration, of his auditors. Equally adapted to the popular tribune or the pulpit, electoral a.s.semblies or cathedral were alike too circ.u.mscribed in limits for the crowds who flocked to hear him. It seemed as though he were a revolutionary saint--Bernard preaching political charity, or the crusade of reason.
His manners were neither severe nor hypocritical. He; himself confessed that he loved with legitimate and pure; affection Madame Carron, who followed him every where, even to churches and clubs. "They calumniated me with respect to her," he said, "and I attached myself the more strongly to her, and yet I am pure. You have seen her, even more lovely in mind than face, and who for the ten years I have known her seems to me daily more worthy of being loved. She would lay down her life for me; I would resign my life for her; but I would never sacrifice my duty to her. In spite of the malignant libels of the aristocrats, I shall go every day at breakfast-time to taste the charms of the purest friendship in her society. She comes to hear me preach! Yes, no doubt of it; no one knows better than herself the sincerity with which I believe in the truths I profess. She comes to the a.s.semblies of the Hotel-de-Ville!
Yes, no doubt of it: it is because she is convinced that patriotism is a second religion, that no hypocrisy is in my soul, and that my life is really devoted to G.o.d, to my country, and friendship."
"And you dare to a.s.sert that you are chaste," retorted the faithful and indignant priests, by the Abbe de Valmeron. "How absurd! Chaste, at the moment when you confess the most unpardonable inclinations; when you attract a woman from the bed of her husband--her duties as a mother--when you take about every where this infatuated female, attached to your footsteps, in order to display her ostentatiously to the public gaze! And who follow, sir! A troop of ruffians and abandoned women.
Worthy pastor of this foul populace, which celebrates your pastoral visit by the only rejoicings that can give you pleasure--your progress is marked by every excess of rapine and debauchery." These bitter reproaches resounded in the provinces, and caused great excitement. The conforming and nonconforming priests were disputing the altars. A letter from the minister of the interior came to authorise the nonjuring priests to celebrate the holy sacrifice in the churches where they had previously done duty. Obedient to the law, the const.i.tutional priests opened to them their chapels, supplied them with the ornaments necessary for divine worship; but the mult.i.tude, faithful to their ancient pastors, threatened and insulted the new clergy. b.l.o.o.d.y struggles took place between the two creeds on the very threshold of G.o.d"s house. On Friday, November the 4th, the former _cure_ of the parish of Saint Jean, at Caen, came to perform the ma.s.s. The church was full of Catholics.
This meeting offended the const.i.tutionalists and excited the other party. The _Te Deum_, as a thanksgiving, was demanded and sung by the adherents of the ancient _cure_, who, encouraged by this success, announced to the faithful that he should come again the next day at the same hour to celebrate the sacrament. "Patience!" he added; "let us be prudent, and all will be well."
The munic.i.p.ality, informed of these circ.u.mstances, entreated the _cure_ to abstain from celebrating the ma.s.s the next day, as he had announced; and he complied with their wishes. The mult.i.tude, not informed of this, filled the church, and clamoured for the priest and the promised _Te Deum_. The gentry of the neighbourhood, the aristocracy of Caen, the clients and numerous domestics of the leading families in the neighbourhood, had arms under their clothes. They insulted the grenadiers; an officer of the national guard reprimanded them. "You come to seek what you shall get," replied the aristocrats: "we are the stronger, and will drive you from the church." At these words some young men rushed on the national guards to disarm them: a struggle ensued, bayonets glittered, pistol shots resounded in the cathedral, and they made a charge, sword in hand. Companies of cha.s.seurs and grenadiers entered the church, cleared it, and followed the crowd, step by step, who fired again upon them when in the street. Some killed and others wounded, were the sad results of the day. Tranquillity seemed restored.
Eighty-two persons were arrested, and on one of them was found a pretended plan of counter-revolution, the signal for which was to be given on the following Monday. These doc.u.ments were forwarded to Paris.
The nonjuring priests were suspended from the celebration of the holy mysteries in the churches of Caen until the decision of the National a.s.sembly. The a.s.sembly heard with indignation the recital of these troubles, occasioned by the enemies of the const.i.tution, and the adherents of fanaticism and the aristocracy. "The only part we have to take," said Cambon, "is to convoke the high national court, and send the accused before it." They deferred p.r.o.nouncing on this proposition until the moment when they should be in possession of all the papers relative to the troubles in Caen.
Gensonne detailed the particulars of similar disturbances in La Vendee: the mountains of the south, La Lozere, l"Herault, l"Ardeche, which were but ill repressed by the recent dispersion of the camp of Jales, the first act of the counter-revolutionary army, were now greatly agitated by the two-fold impulse of their priests and gentry. The plains, furnished with streams, roads, towns, and easily kept down by the central force, submitted without resistance to the _contre-coups_ of Paris. The mountains preserve their customs longer, and resist the influence of new ideas as to a conquest by armed strangers. It seems as though the appearance of these natural ramparts gave their inhabitants confidence in their strength, and a solid conviction of the unchangeableness of things, which prevents them from being so easily carried away by the rapid currents of alteration.
The mountaineers of these countries felt for their n.o.bles that voluntary and traditional devotion which the Arabs have for their sheiks, and the Scots for the chieftains of their clans. This respect and this attachment form part of the national honour in these rural districts.
Religion, more fervent in the south, was in the eyes of these people a sacred liberty, on which revolution made attempts in the name of political liberty. They preferred the liberty of conscience to the liberty as citizens. Under all these t.i.tles the new inst.i.tutions were odious: faithful priests nourished this hatred, and sanctified it in the hearts of the peasantry, whilst the n.o.bility kept up a royalism, which pity for the king"s misfortunes and the royal family made more full of sympathy at the daily recital of fresh outrages.
Mende, a small village hidden at the bottom of deep valleys, half way between the plains of the south and those of the Lyonnais, was the centre of counter-revolutionary spirit. The _bourgeoisie_ and the n.o.bility, mingled together from the smallness of their fortunes, the familiarity of their manners, and the frequent unions of their families, did not entertain towards each other that intestine envy, hatred, and malice, which was favourable to the Revolution. There was neither pride in the one nor jealousy in the other: it was as it is in Spain, one single people, where n.o.bility is only, if we may say so, but a right of first birth of the same blood. These people had, it is true, laid down their arms after the insurrection of the preceding year in the camp of Jales: but hearts were far from being disarmed. These provinces watched with an attentive eye for the favourable moment in which they might rise _en ma.s.se_ against Paris. The insults to the dignity of the king, and the violence done to religion by the Legislative a.s.sembly, excited their minds even to fanaticism. They burst out again, as though involuntarily, on the occasion of a movement of troops across their valleys. The tricoloured c.o.c.kade, emblem of infidelity to G.o.d and the king, had entirely disappeared for several months in the town of Mende, and they put up the white c.o.c.kade, as a _souvenir_ and a hope of that order of things to which they were secretly devoted.
The directory of the department, consisting of men strangers to the country, resolved on having the emblem of the const.i.tution respected, and applied for some troops of the line. This the munic.i.p.ality opposed, in a resolution addressed to the directory, and made an insurrectional appeal to the neighbouring munic.i.p.alities, and a kind of federation with them to resist together the sending of any troops into their districts.
However, the troops sent from Lyons at the request of the directory approached; on their appearance, the munic.i.p.ality dissolved the ancient national guard, composed of a few friends of liberty, and formed a fresh national guard, of which the officers were chosen by itself from amongst the gentry and most devoted royalists of the neighbourhood. Armed with this force, the munic.i.p.ality compelled the directory of the department to supply them with arms and ammunition.
Such were the movements of the town of Mende, when the troops entered the place. The national guard, under arms, replied to the cry of _Vive la nation_, uttered by the troops, by the cry of _Vive le roi_. Then they followed the soldiers to the princ.i.p.al square in the city, and there took, in presence of the defenders of the const.i.tution, an oath to obey the king only, and to recognise no one but the king. After this audacious display, the national guard, in parties, paraded the town, insulting, braving the soldiers: swords were drawn, and blood flowed.
The troops pursued made a stand, and took to their weapons. The munic.i.p.ality, having the directory in check, and holding it as hostage, compelled it to send the troops orders to withdraw to their quarters.
The commandant of the forces obeyed. This victory emboldened the national guard; and during the night it compelled the directory to send the troops an order to leave the city and evacuate the department. The national guard, drawn up in a line of battle in the square of Mende, saw hourly its ranks increase by detachments of the neighbouring munic.i.p.alities, who came down from the mountains, armed with fowling pieces, scythes, and ploughshares. The troops would have been ma.s.sacred if they had not retired under cover of the night. They retreated from the city amidst victorious cries from the royalists. The following day was a series of fetes, in which the royalists of the town and those of the city celebrated their common triumph, and fraternised together. They insulted all the emblems of the Revolution; hooted the const.i.tution; plundered the hall of the Jacobins; burnt down the houses of the princ.i.p.al members of this hateful club--put some in prison. But their vengeance confined itself to outrage. The people, controlled by the gentlemen and the _cures_, spared the blood of their enemies.
XIV.
Whilst humiliated liberty was threatened by fanaticism in the south, it, in its turn, carried on the work of a.s.sa.s.sination in the north. Brest was the very focus of Jacobinism--the close proximity of La Vendee gave this city reason to apprehend the counter-revolution that constantly threatened them--the presence of the fleet, commanded by officers suspected of favouring the aristocratic part--a population greatly composed of strangers and sailors, accessible to corruption, and capable of being readily excited to crime--rendered this city more turbulent and more agitated than any other port in the kingdom. The clubs constantly strove to work on the sailors to mutiny against their officers, whilst the revolutionists mistrusted the navy, as that was far more independent of the people than the army, for the court could at a moment change the station of the fleet, and turn their cannon against the const.i.tution, and the feeling of discipline, of aristocracy, and of the colonies, were all contrary to the new school of ideas; and for this reason the Jacobins had for some time striven to disorganise the fleet. The appointment of M. de Lajaille to the command of one of the vessels destined to carry a.s.sistance to San Domingo, caused an outbreak of the suspicions infused into the minds of the inhabitants of Brest, and of the officers of the navy. M. de Lajaille was designated by the clubs as a traitor to the nation, who was about to introduce the counter-revolutionary feeling in the colonies. Attacked at the moment he was about to embark, by a crowd of nearly three thousand persons, he was covered with wounds, stretched senseless on the ground, and would have been killed, but for the heroic devotion of a workman, who shielded him with his own body, and defended him until the arrival of the civic guard. M. de Lajaille was, however, to appease popular feeling, imprisoned: in vain did the king order the munic.i.p.al authorities of Brest to set this innocent and valuable officer free; in vain did the minister of justice demand chastis.e.m.e.nt for this attempted murder, committed in broad daylight, in the presence of the whole town; in vain was a sabre and a gold medal voted to the courageous LANVERGENT, who had saved de Lajaille; the dread of a more formidable outbreak a.s.sured the guilty of impunity, and detained the innocent in prison. On the eve of war the naval officers, threatened with mutiny on board their vessels, and a.s.sa.s.sination on sh.o.r.e, had as much to apprehend from their crews as from the enemy.
XV.
The same discords were fomented in all the garrisons between the soldiers and the officers, and the insubordination of the troops was, in the eyes of the clubs, the chief virtue of the army. The people every where sided with the soldiers, and the officers were constantly disturbed by conspiracies and revolts in the regiments. The fortified towns were the theatres of military outbreaks, which invariably terminated in the impunity of the soldier, and the imprisonment or the forced emigration of the officers. The a.s.sembly, the supreme and partial judge, always decided in favour of insubordination: unable to restrain the people, it flattered their excesses. Perpignan was a new proof of this.
In the night of the 6th of December, the officers of the regiment of Cambresis, in garrison in this town, went in a body to M. de Chollet, the general who commanded the division, and urged him to retire into the citadel, as they had learnt that a conspiracy was formed in the regiment, which threatened alike his and their lives. M. de Chollet complied with their earnest request, whilst they went to the barracks, and ordered the men to follow them to the citadel. The soldiers replied that they would only obey M. Desbordes, their lieutenant-colonel, in whose patriotism they had the greatest confidence. M. Desbordes came, and read to the soldiers the order of the general; but the inflexion of his voice, the expression of his face, his glance, alike seemed to protest against the order which his duty as a soldier compelled him to communicate to them. The troops understood this mute appeal, and declared that they would not quit their quarters, because the munic.i.p.al authorities had forbidden them: the national guard joined them and patrolled the streets: the officers shut themselves up in the citadel, and shots were fired from the ramparts. Lieutenant-Colonel Desbordes, the national guard, the _gendarmerie_, and the regiments, stormed the citadel. The officers of the regiment of Cambresis were imprisoned by their soldiers; one, however, escaped, and committed suicide on the frontiers of Spain. The unfortunate general, Chollet, victim of the violence of the officers and soldiers, was impeached with fifty officers, or inhabitants of Perpignan. They were ordered before the high national court of Orleans; and thus were fifty victims predestined to perish in the ma.s.sacre at Versailles.
XVI.
Blood flowed every where. The clubs seduced the regiments; patriotic motions, denunciations against the generals, perfidious insinuations against the fidelity of the officers, were constantly instilled into the minds of the army by the people. The officer was a prey to terror, the soldier to mistrust. The premeditated plan of the Jacobins and Girondists was to destroy in concert this body that was yet attached to the king, deprive the n.o.bility of their command, subst.i.tute plebeians for n.o.bles as officers, and thus give the army to the nation. In the meantime they surrendered it to anarchy and sedition; but these two parties finding that the disorganisation was not sufficiently rapid, wished to sum up in one act the systematic corruption of the army, the ruin of all military discipline, and the legal triumph of the insurrection.
We have already mentioned how prominent a part the Swiss regiment of Chateauvieux had taken in the famous insurrection of Nancy during the latter period of the existence of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. An army under M. de Bouille had been necessary to repress the armed revolt of several regiments that threatened all France with the rule of the tyrannical soldiery. M. de Bouille, at the head of a body of troops from Metz, and the battalions of the national guard, had surrounded Nancy, and after a desperate contest at the gates, and in the streets of the town, forced the rebels to lay down their arms. These vigorous measures for the restoration of order were applauded by all parties, and reflected equal glory on M. de Bouille and disgrace on the soldiers.
Switzerland, by virtue of her treaties with France, preserved her right of federal justice over the regiments of her nation, and this essentially military country had tried by court-martial the regiment of Chateauvieux. Twenty-four of the ringleaders had been condemned and executed in expiation of the blood they had shed, and the fidelity they had violated, the remainder had been decimated, and forty-one soldiers now were undergoing their sentence on board the galleys at Brest. The amnesty proclaimed by the king for the crimes committed during the civil troubles, when he accepted the const.i.tution, could not be applied to these foreign soldiers, for the right to pardon belongs alone to those who have the right to punish.
Sentenced by the judgment of the Helvetian jurisdiction, neither the king nor the a.s.sembly could invalidate the judgment, or annul its effects. The king had, at the entreaty of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, in vain attempted to obtain the pardon of these soldiers from the Swiss confederation.
These fruitless negotiations served the Jacobins and the National a.s.sembly as food for accusation against M. de Montmorin. In vain did he justify himself by alleging the impossibility of obtaining such an amnesty from Switzerland, at a moment when this country, who had suffered from civil commotions, sought to restore order by the laws of Draco. "We shall be then the compulsory gaolers of this ferocious people," cried Guadet and Collot d"Herbois. "France must then degrade herself so far as to punish in her very ports those heroes who have gained the people a triumph over the aristocratic officers, and shed their blood for the nation instead of pouring it out in the cause of despotism."
Pastoret, an influential member of the moderate party, and who was said to concert all his measures with the king, supported Guadet"s motion, in order to give the king popularity by an act agreeable to the nation; and the freedom of the soldiers of Chateauvieux was voted by the a.s.sembly.
The king, having delayed his sanction for some time, in order not to wound the cantons by this violent usurpation of their rights over their own countrymen, afforded the Jacobins fresh ground for imprecation and invective against the court and the ministers. "The moment is come when one man must perish for the safety of all," cried Manuel, "and this man must be a minister; they all appear to me so guilty, that I firmly believe the a.s.sembly would be free from crime did it cause them to draw lots for who should perish on the scaffold," "All, all," vociferated the tribunes. But at this very moment Collot d"Herbois mounted the tribune, and announced, amidst loud applause, that the royal a.s.sent to the decree for their liberation had been given the previous evening, and that in a few days he should present to his brother deputies these victims of discipline.
The soldiers of Chateauvieux were in reality advancing to Paris, having been liberated from the galleys at Brest, and their march was one continued triumph, but Paris prepared for them a still more brilliant one through the exertions of the Jacobins. In vain did the Feuillants and the Const.i.tutionalists energetically protest, through the mouth of Andre Chenier, the Tyrtaeus of moderation and good sense, of Dupont de Nemours, and the poet Roucher, against the insolent oration of the a.s.sa.s.sins of the generous Desilles. Collot d"Herbois, Robespierre, the Jacobins, the Cordeliers, and the very commune of Paris, clung to the idea of this triumph, which, according to them, would cover with opprobium the court and La Fayette. The feeble interposition of Petion, who appeared as though he wished to moderate the scandal, served only to encourage it, for he of all men was most fitted to plunge the people into the last degree of excess. His affected virtue served only to cloak violence, and to cover with an hypocritical appearance of legality the outbreaks he dared not punish; and had a representative of anarchy been sought to be placed at the head of the commune of Paris, it could have found no fitter type than Petion. His paternal reprimands to the people were but promises of impunity. The public force always arrived too late to punish; excuse was always to be found for sedition, amnesty for crime. The people felt that their magistrate was their accomplice and their slave, and yet whilst they despised they loved him.
XVII.
"This _fete_ that is preparing for these soldiers," wrote Chenier, "is attributed to enthusiasm. For my part, I confess I do not perceive this enthusiasm. I see a few men who create a degree of agitation, but the rest are alarmed or indifferent. We are told that the national honour is interested in this reparation,--I can scarcely comprehend this; for, either the national guards of Metz, who put down the revolt of Nancy, are enemies of the public weal, or the soldiers of Chateauvieux are a.s.sa.s.sins: there is no medium. How, then, is the honour of Paris interested in _feting_ the murderers of our brothers? Other profound politicians say, this _fete_ will humiliate those who have sought to fetter the nation. What! in order to humiliate, according to their judgment, a bad government, it is necessary to invent extravagances capable of destroying every species of government--recompense rebellion against the laws--crown foreign satellites for having shot French citizens in an _emeute_. It is said, that in every place where this procession pa.s.ses, the statues will be veiled:--Ah! they will do well to veil the whole city, if this hideous orgy takes place; but it is not alone the statues of despots that should be veiled, but the face of every good citizen. It will be the duty of every youth in the kingdom, of every national guard in the kingdom to a.s.sume mourning on the day when the murder of their brothers confers a t.i.tle of glory on foreign and seditious soldiers; it is the eyes of the army that should be veiled, that they may not behold the reward of insubordination and revolt; it is the National a.s.sembly--the king--the administrators--the country--that should veil their faces, in order that they may not become complaisant or silent witnesses of the outrages offered to the authorities and the country. The book of the law must be covered, when those who have torn and stained its pages by musket-b.a.l.l.s and sabre-cuts receive the civic honours. Citizens of Paris, honest yet weak men, there is not one of you who, when he interrogates his own heart, does not feel how much the country--how much he its child--are insulted by these outrages offered to the laws,--to those who execute them, and those who are for them. Do you not blush that a handful of turbulent men, who appear numerous because they are united and make a noise, should constrain you to do their pleasure, by telling you it is your own, and by amusing your puerile curiosity by unworthy spectacles? In a city that respected itself, such a _fete_ would find before it silence and solitude, the streets and public places abandoned, the houses shut up, the windows deserted, and the flight and scorn of the pa.s.sers-by would tell history what share honest and well-disposed men took in this scandalous and baccha.n.a.lian procession."
XVIII.
Collot d"Herbois insulted Andre Chenier and Roucher in his reply.
Roucher replied by a letter full of sarcasm, in which he reminded Collot d"Herbois of his falls on the stage and his misadventures as an actor.
"This personage of comic romance," said he, "who has leapt from the trestles of Punch to the tribune of the Jacobins, rushes at me, as though to strike me with the oar the Swiss have brought him from the galleys."
Placards for or against the _fete_ covered the walls of the Palais Royal, and were alternately torn down by groups of young men or Jacobins.
Dupont de Nemours, the friend and master of Mirabeau, laid aside his philosophical calm, to address a letter on the same subject to Petion, in which his conscience, as an honest man, braved the popularity of the tribune. "When the danger is imminent, it is the duty of all honest men to warn the magistrates of it. More particularly, when the magistrates themselves create it. You told a falsehood when you a.s.serted that these soldiers had aided the Revolution on the 14th of July, and that they had refused to combat against the people of Paris. It is untrue that the Swiss refused to combat against the people of Paris, and it is true that they a.s.sa.s.sinated the national guards of Nancy. You have the audacity to term those men patriots who dare command the legislative body to send a deputation to the _fete_ prepared for these rebels; these are the men whom you adopt as your friends; it is with them that you dine at _la Rapee_, so that the general of the national guard is obliged to gallop about for two hours to receive your orders before he can find you, and you seek in vain to conceal your embarra.s.sment by high-flown phrases.
You seek in vain to conceal this banquet given to a.s.sa.s.sins beneath the pretext of a banquet in honour of liberty. But these subterfuges are no longer available; the moment is urgent, and you will no longer deceive the sections, the army, or the eighty-three departments. Those who rule you, as they would a child, have agreed to surrender Paris to ten thousand pikes, to whom the bar of the a.s.sembly will be thrown open the day the national guard is disarmed; the men destined to bear them arrive every day, and Paris receives an accession of twelve or fifteen hundred bandits every twenty-four hours, and beg, until the day of pillage arrives, which they await as ravens await their prey.--I have not told all;--generals are prepared for this hideous army. The friends of Jourdan, impatient to behold the man whom the amnesty had not delivered sufficiently soon, have broken open his prison at Avignon. Already, he has been received in triumph in several cities of the south, like the Swiss of the Chateauvieux, and will arrive at Paris to-morrow; Sunday he will be present at the _fete_ with his companions--with the two Mainvielle--with Pegtavin;--with all those cold-blooded scoundrels who have killed in one night sixty-eight defenceless persons, and violated females before they murdered them. Catiline!--Cethegus!--march forward, the soldiers of Sylla are in the city, and the consul himself undertakes to disarm the Romans. The measure is full,--it overflows!"