The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic

by Eugène Sue

  CHAPTER XXV.

  ROYALIST BARBARITIES.

  The following extracts from my diary will help to trace the course ofthe important political events occurring in Paris between the 31st ofMay and the 1st of November, 1793.

  JUNE 5, 1793.--Rejoice in the day of the 31st of May, sons of Joel. Itmeans safety for the Republic, certain triumph for the Revolution.Aroused as one body, the population of Paris, embracing more than ahundred and twenty thousand citizens in arms, has succeeded in securing,solely by the moral pressure of its patriotism, the suspension of theGirondin Representatives. The greater part of these went into voluntaryexile. The people of Paris remained under arms for five whole days--fromMay 31 to June 4.

  JUNE 6, 1793.--A singular chance placed in my hands to-day a notewritten by Robespierre. I hastened to take a copy, as it was of thegreatest interest. It sums up in a few firm and concise lines the policywhich he purposes henceforth to impress upon the Jacobin party, which,since the 31st of May, is master of power:

  There must be one will.

  It must be Republican.

  In order that it may be Republican, there must be Republican ministers, Republican journals, Republican deputies, a Republican government. The Republic can not establish itself save with honest and Republican officials.

  The foreign war is a deadly scourge so long as the body politic is suffering from the convulsions of revolution, and from divided counsels. The present insurrection must be sustained until the proper measures be taken to save the Republic. The people must rally to the Convention, and the Convention must serve the will of the people. The insurrection must extend further and further, on the same plan; the sans-culottes must be paid and remain in the cities. They must be furnished with arms, encouraged, and enlightened.

  JUNE 7, 1793.--I received this day a letter from Victoria, in fulfilmentof her promise to write me each week. Not to mention the profound griefher absence caused us, our uneasiness over her was extreme, in spite ofthe assurances she gave us in her farewell letter. She now informed methat Oliver's health was improving, and that his spirits were returning.She did not despair of bringing him back to reason and the practice ofhis civic duties. She was living, she told me, at some distance from thecapital; and she could not yet disclose to us the mainsprings of hermysterious conduct, and the reticence of her correspondence.

  JUNE 10, 1793.--The majority of the Convention has just made recognitionof the value of the passive insurrection of May 31, by adopting theappended resolution:

  The National Convention declares that in the days of May 31 to June 4 the general revolutionary council of the Commune and the people of Paris powerfully co-operated to save the liberty, the unity and the indivisibility of the Republic.

  JULY 12, 1793.--Upon a report from the committee rendered by St. Just,the Girondin members of the Convention were on the 10th of July declaredtraitors to the country, and outlawed. Several other adherents of thatparty were sent before the revolutionary tribunal.

  JULY 19, 1793.--Last Saturday, July 13, Marat was assassinated, betweenseven and eight in the evening. His assailant was Marie Anne CharlotteCorday D'Armans, the daughter of an ex-nobleman, whose usual abode wasCaen, one of those hot-beds of federal insurrection fomented by theGirondins. Simulating the role of a victim who besought assistance andprotection from the Friend of the People, Charlotte Corday solicited aninterview with him. Worn out and unwell, Marat was taking a bath, butyielding to compassion for the young girl who implored his aid, heconsented to receive her. Introduced into his presence, Charlotte Cordaystruck him with a knife. He died almost instantly. I record this newassassination as an abominable crime! The beauty, the youth, theresolute character of Charlotte Corday in no wise lessen her guilt. Itis vain to compare her with Brutus. He struck down Caesar, the undoubtedtyrant of his country, whereas the patriotism of Marat, the Friend ofthe People, had never been called into question. Taken to-day before therevolutionary court presided over by Fouquier-Tinville, the accusedwoman confessed her connection with the Girondin party, of which sheplainly was the instrument. She prided herself on having dealt Marat hisdeath blow, the condign punishment, she said, for his crimes.Unanimously condemned by the jury to death, Charlotte Corday suffered onthe scaffold the penalty for homicide.

  The universal consternation of the patriots as they learned of themurder of the Friend of the People was an additional proof of theimmense influence exercised by this extraordinary man over their headsand hearts. All over Paris these verses were placarded:

  People, Marat is dead, the lover of the land; Your friend, your aid, the hope of all who would be free Is fallen 'neath the blow of an accursed band; Weep--but remember, avenged must he be!

  This morning I received a letter from Victoria. She informs me thatOliver's health is being restored, and that he soon will prove to methat my affection for him was not misplaced. In a few lines in his ownhand at the end of Victoria's letter, Oliver himself repeated the samepledges. What is her project? I know not. She has at least saved theunhappy boy from suicide.

  JULY 30, 1793.--The royalist and "federalist" insurrection of Lyons,Marseilles, Toulon and Bordeaux against the Republic and the Conventionhas assumed a more threatening aspect through the war that broke out inthe Vendee, and which is spreading amid scenes of ungovernable ferocity.Read, sons of Joel, and shudder at the atrocious reprisals, the namelesshorrors, committed by the Vendeans under the leadership of their priestsand the ex-nobles. If the law of retaliation, that savage and barbarouslaw, is ever applied to the Chouans and Vendeans by the avengers of thepatriots, let the responsibility fall upon the heads of these madmenthemselves.

  The brigands of the Vendee themselves gave the signal and set theexample for murder and massacre. Machecoul was the theater of scenes ofhorror. Eight hundred patriots were hatcheted to pieces. Several wereburied alive. The women were forced to witness the torture of theirhusbands; then, together with their children, they were spiked hand andfoot to the doors of their dwellings, where they expired under the blowsand stabs of the assassins. The parish curate, who had taken the oath tothe Constitution, was impaled on a spit, and marched through the streetsand public places of Machecoul with his genitals cut off. Finally, stillbreathing, he was nailed to the liberty tree. A Vendean priestcelebrated the mass standing in blood and upon mutilated corpses. In theswamps of Niort six hundred children of Nantes were rounded up,massacred, and atrociously mutilated. At Chollet the brigands repeatedthe frightful scenes of Machecoul. They put the patriots through themost terrible tortures before depriving them of their lives. There,also, they nailed the women and children alive to their house-doors, andmade their bosoms a target for their bayonets. They put to the tortureeverywhere those patriots whom they found, or persons who would not beararms against the Republic. When they captured Saumur, all who bore thereputation of patriot perished amid indescribable tortures. The women,their children in their arms, were thrown from the windows, and thetigers in the streets poniarded them. The agonies which they made ourbrave defenders undergo were no less cruel; the least barbarous was toslay them with ball or bayonet; but the most common was to hang themfeet uppermost from trees and kindle bonfires under their heads; or tonail them alive to the trees; or to place cartridges in their mouths ornostrils and explode them. It is impossible to take a step in theVendee without opening new perspectives of torture to the eye. Here, atthe entrance of one village, are exposed to our view brave defenders ofthe Republic hewed to pieces or spiked to the doors of their dwellings.There, the fringe of trees at the edge of a wood displays to us thedisfigured forms of our brave brothers hanged from the branches, theirbodies half burned. Yonder, we discern their lifeless corpses bound,nailed to trees, to pieces of timber, mutilated, riddled with wounds,their faces burned and baked. Nor did the brigands confine themselves tothese inhuman tortures. They filled their country ovens with ourdefenders, kindled the fires, and left them to expire slowly in
thisatrocious agony. Recently these cannibals have invented a new manner oftorture; they cut off the noses, hands and feet of their prisoners, shutthem in their dark caves, and abandon them to perish of hunger.

  The distinguished patriot Chalier, at the head of a list ofeighty-three, was led to the scaffold at Lyons. The instrument workedpoorly. Chalier was twice mutilated. The cruelties of the royalists andparishioners of Lyons will call down great calamities upon the city.

  AUGUST 2, 1793.--Often did my sister and I wonder at receiving no newsfrom Prince Franz of Gerolstein, our relative, and one of the mostardent of the Illuminati. The secret of Franz's silence has just beenrevealed to me. An officer of the garrison of Mayence, long a prisonerin the duchy of Deux Ponts, adjoining the principality of Gerolstein,informed me to-day that for four years, the length of time since Franzleft us, the latter was held in a state prison by order of his father,the reigning prince. So did Franz of Gerolstein expiate in harshcaptivity his sympathy with the new ideas.

  AUGUST 4, 1793.--The Convention passed yesterday a decree of markedSocialist and revolutionary character:

  The National Convention, in consideration of the evils which monopolists inflict upon society by their murderous speculations in the most pressing necessaries of life and upon the public misery, decrees:

  Article 1.--Monopoly is a capital crime....

  Article 8.--Eight days from the publication and proclamation of the present law, those who have not made the prescribed declarations shall be held to be monopolists, and, as such, be punished with death; their goods shall be confiscate, and also the merchandise and food-stuffs seized in their possession.

  AUGUST 7, 1793.--The law against monopolies has had its effect upon theproduce and stock jobbers. All food-stuffs have fallen considerably inprice.

  With redoubled energy the Convention is turning its attention to thedangers which threaten the Republic. News is brought that among theVendeans have been uncovered the widow of Louis Capet, a large number ofnon-juring priests, and several imprisoned ex-nobles. The followingdecrees are passed:

  The National Assembly denounces, in the name of the outraged humanity of all nations, and even of the English people, the cowardly, perfidious and atrocious conduct of the British government, which is instigating and paying for the employment of assassination, poison, arson, and every imaginable crime, for the triumph of tyranny and the annihilation of the rights of man.

  Marie Antoinette is taken before the tribunal extraordinary. From thereshe is at once transferred to the Conciergerie Prison:

  All the individuals of the Capet family are to be deported outside of the territory of the Republic, with the exception of the two children of Louis Capet and those members of the family who are under the sword of the law. Elizabeth Capet may not be deported until after the trial of Marie Antoinette.

  Also:

  The tombs and mausoleums of the old Kings, erected in the Church of St. Denis, in the temples, and in other places throughout the whole extent of the Republic, shall be destroyed on the 10th of August next, and their ashes thrown to the winds.

  AUGUST 8, 1793.--Up to date Victoria, true to her promise, has writtenme regularly every week in her own name and that of Oliver. He, shesays, is treading with firm step the path of duty. My sister raises notthe veil of mystery in which she has enshrouded herself since she quitour house. She announces that she is going to suspend hercorrespondence, but that if anything untoward intervenes she will informme of it at once.

  AUGUST 23, 1793.--Allied Europe is increasing the masses of troops sheis hurling on our frontiers, here menaced, there already invaded. OFatherland! you appeal to the heroism of your children; your call shallbe heard. The Committee of Public Safety, among whose most influentialmembers are Robespierre, St. Just and Couthon, increases its vigilance.The Convention passes decree upon decree, brief, pointed, courageous,like the roll of the drum beating the charge:

  The National Convention, having heard the report of its Committee of Public Safety, decrees:

  Article 1.--Until the moment when the foreign hordes and all the enemies of the Republic shall have been driven out of the land, all French people are under permanent requisition for the service of the armies.

  The young men shall go to the front; the married men shall forge arms and transfer supplies; the women shall make tents and uniforms, and serve in the hospitals; the children shall pull lint, and the old men shall betake themselves to the public places to kindle the courage of the warriors, keep alive hatred for Kings, and promote the unity of the Republic.

  The French people will soon present to the tyrants a united front. Theeffect produced to-day by the latest decrees of the Convention wasimmense, indescribable. Thanks to God! the consignment of arms I wascharged with making will be finished in a few days. I will be able torejoin the army. Castillon and I have enrolled in one of the battalionsof our Parisian volunteers.

  SEPTEMBER 18, 1793.--Since the commencement of this month, Terror is theorder of the day. Terror reigns; but to whom impute this fatalnecessity, if not to the enemies of the fatherland? The Republic struckonly after she had been outraged; she attacked not, she but defended.She obeyed the supreme law of self-preservation, the common right of anindividual and a body social. The Terror is reducing our enemies withinto impotence.

  OCTOBER 17, 1793.--Yesterday the revolutionary tribunal sentenced MarieAntoinette to death, in these words:

  The court, in accord with the unanimous verdict of the jury, in accordance with its right as public investigator and accuser, and in conformity with the laws which it has cited, condemns the said Marie Antoinette, of Lorraine in Austria, widow of Louis Capet, to the penalty of death. It declares, conformably to the law of the 10th of March last, that her goods, if any she have within the confines of French territory, be confiscate to the benefit of the nation. It orders that, at the request of the public ministry, the present sentence be executed upon the Place of the Revolution, and printed and posted throughout the Republic.

  Throughout her trial Marie Antoinette maintained an air of calmness andassurance. She left the audience chamber after the pronouncement ofsentence without evincing the slightest emotion, or uttering a word tojudges or jurors. She mounted the scaffold at half past four in themorning. Only a few spectators were present.

  OCTOBER 18, 1793.--The Convention has superseded the old calendar with anew one, based on the observations of exact science. The new names forthe months are as poetic, harmonious, and above all as rational, as theold ones were barbarous and senseless, borrowed, as they were in partfrom the fetes and rulers of the Roman Empire, in part from a pagantheocracy. The decree of the Convention is as follows:

  Article 1.--The era of the French dates from the foundation of the Republic, which took place the 22nd of September, 1792, of the common era, on which day the sun arrived at the true autumnal equinox, and entered the sign Libra at nine hours, eighteen minutes, thirty seconds, Paris Observatory.

  Article 2.--The common year is abolished from civil usage.

  Article 3.--Each year commences at midnight of the day on which falls the true autumnal equinox, for the Observatory of Paris....

  Article 7.--The year is divided into twelve equal months of thirty days each. After the twelve months follow five days to complete the ordinary year. These five days belong to no month.

  Article 8.--Each month in divided into three equal parts of ten days each, which are called decades.

  Article 9.--The names of the days of the decade are: Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Nonidi, Decadi.

  The names of the months are,

  For Autumn:

  Vendemiaire (the Vintage month, September 22 to October 21), Brumaire (the Foggy month, O
ctober 22 to November 20), Frimaire (the Frosty month, November 21 to December 20).

  For Winter:

  Nivose (the Snowy month, December 21 to January 19), Pluviose (the Rainy month, January 20 to February 18), Ventose (the Windy month, February 19 to March 20).

  For Spring:

  Germinal (the Budding month, March 21 to April 19), Floreal (the Flowery month, April 20 to May 19), Prairial (the Pasture month, May 20 to June 18).

  For Summer:

  Messidor (the Harvest month, June 19 to July 18), Thermidor (the Hot month, July 19 to August 17), Fructidor (the Fruit month, August 18 to September 16).[13]

  12TH BRUMAIRE, YEAR II (November 2, 1793).--The detail of arms iscompleted, and Castillon and I leave day after to-morrow to join atLille the Seventh Battalion, Paris Volunteers.