CHAP. V. 1789. the ministry which succeeded Necker, but never entered upon his office. He was seized in the country, and brought into Paris with his hands tied behind his back. What had worked the mob up to a pitch of frenzy against him was a falsehood propagated, and at once believed, that he had said, "The people were fit for nothing but to eat grass. Anxious to save him from their fury, Lafayette, when he was brought to the Hôtel de Ville, proposed to send him to the prison of the Abbaye, in order to gain time to discover his accomplices. He was on the point of succeeding in the humane attempt, when a voice in the crowd exclaimed-" They understand each other: this is all a ruse--what need have we of a trial for a wretch condemned thirty years since?" Upon this the vengeance July 22. of the people could not wait for the forms of trial and condemnation; they broke into the committee-room, where he was undergoing an examination before Lafayette and Bailly, overthrew twelve hundred electors there assembled, and, in spite of the most strenuous efforts on the part of the magistrates, tore him from their arms, and hanged him. Twice the fatal cord broke, and the agonised wretch fell to the ground in the midst of the multitude; and twice they suspended him again, amidst peals of laughter and shouts of joy. Some of the assassins, more humane 85. Toul.i. than the rest, proposed to despatch him with their swords; 280. Moni but the majority declined that mode of death as too speedy, July 1789, and kept the unhappy wretch in mortal agony for a quarter p.117. Lab. of an hour, till a third cord was got. It was with such vii. 117. terrific examples of wickedness that the regeneration of the social body commenced in France.1 Hist. Parl. val, Souv.de ii. 148. Du la Terreur,i. 85. Bailly, iii. 289. Lac. thier. M. Berthier, son-in-law to M. Foulon, soon after shared 16. the same fate. He was arrested at Compiègne, and, after And of Berundergoing the utmost outrages on the road, was brought to the Hôtel de Ville, where the mob presented to him the head of his relative, still streaming with blood. He averted his eyes, and, as they continued to press it towards his face, bowed to the ghastly remains. Falsehood had VOL. I. 20 V. 1789. CHAP. here, as in the case of Foulon, rendered justice impossible. He was preceded by a crowd of people, who shouted, He has robbed the King and France; he has devoured the substance of the people; he has drunk the blood of the widow and the orphan." The efforts of Bailly and Lafayette were again unsuccessful-he was seized by the mob, and dragged towards the lamp-post; but at the sight of the cord, which they prepared to put about his neck, he was seized with a transport of indignation, and, wresting a musket from one of the National Guard, rushed among his assassins, and fell pierced with innumerable wounds. One of the cannibals fell on his body, plunged his hand into his mangled bosom, and tore out his heart, Hist. Parl. which he bore about in triumph, almost before it had Prudhom. ceased to beat. The heads of Berthier and Foulon were Paris, ii. 27. put on the end of pikes, and paraded, in the midst of an immense crowd, through the streets of Paris.1 1 Lac. vii. 117, 118. Toul. i. 86. Th. i. 117. Duval, i. 85. ii. 149. Rév. de 17. Necker's amnesty is Mirabeau and the As sembly. It was from horror at these sanguinary excesses that M. Necker demanded of the assembly of electors at Paris, reversed by and obtained, a general amnesty for political offences. His chief object in doing so was to save the life of the Baron de Besenval, second in command under the Marshal Broglie, formerly his political opponent, whom, at the hazard of his own life, he had generously saved from the fury of the people on his road from Bâle, at the distance of a few leagues from Paris. But in taking this humane step, Necker experienced, once again, his inability to rule the Revolution, and felt the weakness of the thread on which the applause of the people is founded. His efforts were nugatory. Mirabeau, in the Assembly, stood forth as the opponent of humanity. The success he met with proved but too clearly that the reign of blood was approaching. On the following day that fearful orator brought the matter under the consideration of the Legislature. "Whence comes it," said he, "that the municipality takes upon itself, under the very eyes of the Assembly, to publish an amnesty for offences? Has the cause of CHAP. V. 1789. freedom, then, no more perils to encounter? We may pardon M. Necker his generous but indiscreet proceeding, which in any other but him would have been criminal; but let us, with more calmness and equal humanity, establish the public order, not by general amnesties, but by a due separation of the judicial functions from those of the multitude."-" The multitude," said Barnave, "may have been right the main thing we have to think of is the 122, 127. formation of a constitution: we must not be too much Mig. i. 68, alarmed at the storms of freedom. Was, then, the blood 119. Hist. which has been shed so very pure ?" Moved partly by Moniteur, terror, partly by fanaticism, the Assembly reversed the decree of the electors of Paris, and political revenge received ample scope for its development.1 1 Lac. vii. 69. Th. i. Parl. ii, 157. 23d July 1789, p. 99. 18. farmers near July 16. Nor was it only on persons in an elevated sphere of life that the fury of the unchained multitude was exercised. Cruel exEvery person in any rank who was denounced by their cesses on the leaders, or was suspected of thwarting their wishes, became Paris. the victims of their barbarity. Engravings were distributed, representing crowds composed of citizens, peasants, and women, carrying pikes, on the top of which the heads of the obnoxious persons were placed, with the inscription below each❝"It is thus that we avenge traitors."* Worked up by these arts, the people were not slow in taking vengeance on their supposed oppressors. A convoy of grain having come from Poissy, near St Germain, on the 16th July, the farmer who led the party, named Sauvage, was seized by the multitude and brought into Paris, guarded by three hundred armed men, accused of being a monopoliser. Quickly the drum went through the town. with this announcement" Citizens! by order of the King and the Tiers Etat! Notice is hereby given, that Sauvage will be hanged at three o'clock." At that hour an immense multitude assembled at the Hôtel de Ville; the unhappy wretch, who was entirely innocent, was brought out and instantly hung up to the lamp-post. The rope broke, and * Copies of these engravings still exist.-Histoire Parlementaire, i. 150. V. 1789. CHAP. he fell to the earth; again he was hoisted up with a fresh cord, and at the same time pierced through with swords and bayonets amidst savage shouts. His head was then cut off, put on the top of a pike, and paraded through the streets, followed by a butcher who had severed an arm, brandishing his bloody knife, while another occasionally opened the lips to make them receive the stream of blood which flowed down the ghastly cheeks.* Not content with these atrocities, the heart and pieces of the body of Berthier were thrown into a goblet of wine, in which they were boiled; and the savages, standing round the caldron, drank the fuming liquor red with blood, with naked arms uplifting their glasses, and chanting a song, the burden of which was death to all aristocrats who should oppose the will of the people. 1+ Prudhom i. 135, 137. Ibid. Rév. de Paris, No. ii. 30. Deux Amis, ii. 73. 19. Lafayette wish to re not allowed. Confounded by these and similar atrocities, of which Bailly and they were doomed to be the impotent spectators, Bailly and Lafayette sent in the resignations of their respective sign, but are offices of mayor of Paris and commander of the National Guard. "What a magistracy is this," cried the former, "which has not power to prevent a crime perpetrated under its very eyes!" "The people," said Lafayette, "have not listened to my advice; and the day on which they broke the promise which they made to me is that on which I feel I ought to resign my office, in which I can no longer be of any use. use." But it is easier to put a revolutionary torrent in motion than to withdraw from it when in the middle of its course. Earnest entreaties were made "On se met en marche pour la pompe sanguinaire. Le cliqueteur est toujours en tête: le garçon boucher, armé de son coutelas, et le bras tout sanglant, vient ensuite; un troisième porte la tête, et ouvre la bouche pour y recevoir les gouttes de sang qui découlent de cette tête."-PRUDHOMME, (Republican writer,) Crimes de la Révolution, i. 137. "Le cœur du traitre proscrit (Berthier) était porté dans les rues au bout d'un coutelas. Eh bien! dans un lieu public, qui le croirait! Des Français, des êtres sensibles, Dieux! ils ont osé tremper des lambeaux de chair, imprégnés de sang, dans leur breuvage, et leur haine a pu s'en repaître avec acharnement: ce fait a eu lieu dans un café Rue Saint Honoré près de celle de Richelieu."-PRUDHOMME, Révolutions de Paris, No. ii. p. 25, 18 à 25 Juillet 1789. The murder of Berthier was immediately owing to the fabrications CHAP. 1789. all to them to resume their appointments; fair promises were lavished, that the disorders inseparable from the rise of freedom should not be repeated; and these well-meaning but deluded men, seeing that their withdrawing would probably make matters worse, by removing the only restraints on the popular fury, were obliged, much against iii. 299. their will, to resume their functions.1 Mém. ii. 83. Deux Amis, ii. 74. Lab. 20. in the pro It can hardly be conceived that human cruelty could go beyond these dreadful massacres; but the scenes which Atrocities followed the fall of the Bastille in the provincial towns, and vinces." many of the provinces of France, threw the atrocities of the capital into the shade. The regular soldiers almost every where declared for the people; and as this gave the latter the command of the whole arsenals in France, the populace were, in every quarter, speedily armed, and no power existed in the state which could coerce or restrain them. In many provinces the peasants rose in arms, ransacked and burned the chateaus of the landlords, and massacred or expelled the possessors. The horrors of the insurrection of the Jacquerie, in the time of Edward III., were revived on a greater scale, and with circumstances of deeper atrocity. In their blind fury the insurgents did not even spare those seigneurs who were known to be inclined to the popular side, or had done the most to mitigate their sufferings or support their rights. The most cruel tortures were inflicted on the victims who fell into their hands many had the soles of their feet roasted over a slow fire before being put to death; others had their hair and eyebrows burnt off, while their dwellings were already alluded to; but it is now known that it was owing to a deeper cause, and implicated more exalted personages. He had transmitted to Louis two secret memoirs, in which he had advised him either to yield and concede at once the whole demands of the Assembly, or to put himself at the head of his army, and arrest several members of the Assembly who were implicated in the Orleans conspiracy. These memoirs were read in presence of Louis de Narbonne, who informed Madame de Stael of their import, and she had the imprudence to make Mirabeau acquainted with them. Hence the virulence of the chiefs of the revolt against this estimable man, the father of eight children, alike distinguished by their virtues and their manners.-See MADAME CAMPAN, ii. 62; and CONDORCET'S Memoirs, i. 259. |