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V.

CHAP. destroyed, after which they were drowned in the nearest fishpond. The Marquis of Barras was cut to pieces 1789. before his wife, far advanced in pregnancy, who shortly 1 Moniteur, after died of horror; the roads were covered with young 1789, p. 138. Women of rank and beauty flying from death, and leading Lac. vii. 130, their aged parents by the hand. It was amidst the cries 127. Cha of agony, and by the light of conflagration, that liberty arose in France. 1

Aug. 3, 4,

132. Th. i.

teaub. Mém. 83, 84.

21. Hideous

murder of

11.

At Caen, and several other towns of Normandy, the massacres of the metropolis were too faithfully imitated. M. de Belzunce, an amiable young man of a noble family, M. de Bel- major in the regiment of Bourbon, stationed at that town, zunce. Aug. had endeavoured to preserve his men from the contagion of revolt; and he had so far succeeded as to have attracted the notice of Marat, who in several numbers of his incendiary journal had stigmatised him as an aristocrat who should forthwith be delivered over to popular vengeance. Soon a furious multitude arose and demanded his head; the magistrates, to avoid a civil war, requested him to go to the Hôtel de Ville with them, which he at once did, and from thence, for additional security, he was sent under an escort of the national guard, who pledged themselves for his safety, to the citadel, while, to remove all cause of irritation, his regiment was ordered by the commandant of the province to leave the town. No sooner were they gone than the crowd, worked up by a fresh journal of Marat's, in which he was again denounced, broke into the citadel; the national guard, as usual, did nothing to coerce the people, and M. de Belzunce was dragged out and shot in the chief square of the town, in presence of the powerless magistrates. No sooner was he dead than his body was torn in pieces-his head paraded through the streets on a pike, and his entrails hanging on other spears like ribbons.2 Bits of his flesh were divided among the people; some were eaten by the cannibals,* others put into

2 Marat, Avis au Peuple, Aug. 8, 1789.

Duval, Sou.

de la Ter.

1.175, 176.

Prudhom.
Crimes de

la Rév. iii.

149. Lac. vii. 129.

* "Beaucoup de citoyens de Caen voulurent avoir un lambeau de sa chair, beaucoup en emportèrent dans leurs poches, d'autres firent précéder la

V.

1789.

bottles of spirits to be preserved. These hideous atroci- CHAP. ties sank deep into the heart of a young and beautiful woman of rank, with whom, in early life, M. de Belzunce had been acquainted, and who, though belonging to the liberal party, was tinged by none of its vices, and lived to take a signal revenge on the author of his murder her name was CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

22.

at St Denis,

Orleans, and

Similar atrocities disgraced many other of the large towns in France, especially Strasbourg, Troyes, Nismes, Atrocities and Orleans. At St Denis the crowd fell upon M. Troyes, Chatel, the mayor of the town, cut off his head, and Strasbourg, paraded it into Paris: his wife, who witnessed the deed, Marseilles. Aug. 1. threw herself into a well and was drowned. On the same day M. Montesson was seized in the Château de Juigné, near Mans, with M. Cureau, his father-in-law, by a furious mob, which broke open the house. First the noses and ears of these unhappy men, and at length their heads, were cut off, and paraded on pikes in presence of the magistrates, who were compelled to be present at this act of popular atrocity. In Strasbourg, a frightful tumult took place; six hundred rioters besieged the Hôtel de Ville, pillaged it, and threatened the whole town with conflagration. At Troyes, a mob assembled round the Hôtel de Ville, exclaiming that the bread was made of unwholesome flour; and though the mayor, Huez, pronounced a sentence condemning it to be burnt, yet such was the fury of the people that they fell upon him in the Hippodrome: he was knocked down, and instantly a frantic mob of men, women, and children, fell upon him and murdered him on the spot-one woman, seeing that his body yet quivered, plunged her scissors in his eyes,

spectacle de sa tête par la vue de ses entrailles attachées au haut d'une pique en guise de rubans. Un homme envoya un morceau de sa chair à un four de boulanger pour être cuite et pour en faire un repas de famille. Une sage-femme alla plus loin: elle n'eut pas de relache qu'elle n'eut obtenu un fragment des parties sexuelles de la victime, qu'elle conserva dans un bocal rempli d'esprit de vin."-PRUDHOMME, Crimes de la Révolution, iii. 149.

CHAP. and scooped them out.

V.

At Marseilles, the fury of the

populace was only suppressed after a vehement contest 1789. between the national guard and the insurgents.

At

Orleans a still greater calamity ensued. There vigorous efforts were made by the troops of the line and police to protect the convoys of provisions coming into the town from pillage, and in the conflict eight men were killed and twelve wounded. Instantly a furious mob of some thousand persons got up and assailed the troops, but 1 Prudhom. they were boldly met: eighty men were killed, and a Crimes de still greater number wounded; but the insurrection was at once suppressed. If the same fidelity and vigour had Duval, i. 17. been generally exerted in France, the reign of blood would have been stifled in its cradle.1

la Rév. iii.

157, 160.

Lab. iii. 322.

23. Burning of the

chateaus.

But nothing in these frightful days equalled the atrocities which were committed by the insurgent peasants upon the inmates of the chateaus, which they sacked and burnt in the first transports consequent on the taking of the Bastille. In the space of a few days sixty-seven chateaus in the districts Maconnais and Beaujolais alone were delivered over to the flames, and all the churches containing the tombs of the ancestors of the nobility were destroyed. In Dauphiny, thirty-six shared the same fate, and their whole inhabitants were burnt or massacred. In Burgundy several of the nobles strove to resist, and, by arming their servants and a few faithful retainers, succeeded in inflicting some severe losses on the insurgents; but the latter soon became so numerous that all attempts to withstand them only aggravated the sufferings of the landowners, without averting their fate. A forged proclamation of the King was spread, in which he was made * Moniteur, to call on the people to rise and avenge themselves on 1789, col. 2. the oppressors alike of the sovereign and themselves. This at once stimulated revolt and disarmed resistance. A body of six thousand armed brigands traversed the country on both sides of the Saone, burning and destroying chateaus and churches indiscriminately; while French

Aug. 6, 7,

Prudhom.

Crimes de

la Rév. iii. 179, 181.

Duval, iii. 179.

Flanders, Dauphiny, Alsace, and the Lyonnais, were the CHAP. prey of similar disorders.*

V.

1789.

24.

exercised

on the

Nothing in this hideous catalogue could exceed the cruelty exercised by the peasants in endeavouring to ex- Cruelties tort from the seigneurs their title-deeds. As possession of the land for nothing was the real object of the move- seigneurs. ment, they were impressed with the idea, which often proved well-founded, that if they could only discover and destroy these, no one could claim the lands and property, and they would enjoy their farms without disturbance. Incredible were the efforts they made, if they could not find the title-deeds in the chateaus, to torture the landowners and their families into a discovery of where they were. In Normandy, one of the seigneurs was placed on a blazing pile, to make him give up his deeds; he was taken from it, with his two hands burnt to the bone, without disclosing the secret. In Franche-Comté, the axe was raised over the head of Madame de Batteville, to extort from her the same dis- Prudhom. covery, and a pitch-fork held at the throat of the Prin- la Rév. i. cess de Listenay. Cruelties of the same sort were cised on Madame de Tonnerre and many others without extracting, even by the dread of instant the desired disclosure.1t

exer

1

Crimes de

181. Moni

teur, Aug.

3, 4, 1789,

often p. 138. death,

"Ce fut dans le Maconnais et le Beaujolais que la désolation des campagnes offrit le tableau le plus affreux. Soixante-douze châteaux furent la proie des flammes, ou de la rapacité de 6000 brigands. Seigneurs, propriétaires, fermiers, curés, jusqu'aux églises tout portait les marques de leur furieux sacrilège. Les cultivateurs, menacés de l'incendie, tremblants de voir leurs maisons réduites en cendres, n'osèrent pas y renfermer leurs moissons. Cette troupe de forcenés, enhardis par l'impunité, grossissait avec une rapidité effrayante. Ils se portaient dans tous les villages, sonnaient toutes les cloches, et forçaient tous les hommes, le pistolet à la gorge, de marcher avec eux."-Moniteur, 6 à 7 Août 1789, col. 2.

"Dans les premiers momens de l'effervescence ce fut un crime d'être gentilhomme, et le sexe même ne put se garantir de la fureur de la multitude. M. de Montesson fut fusillé au Mans après avoir vu égorger son beaupère; en Languedoc M. de Barras fut coupé en morceaux, devant sa femme prête d'accoucher; en Normandie un seigneur paralytique fut abandonné sur un bûcher, dont on le retira les mains brûlées; en Franche-Comté Mad. de Batteville fut forcée, la hache sur la tête, de faire l'abandon de ses titres; la Princesse de Listenay y fut également contrainte, ayant la fourche au col et ses deux filles évanouies à ses pieds. Madame de Tonnerre, M. L'Allemand

CHAP.

V.

1789.

25. Disgrace

ness of the

amidst these

excesses.

The National Assembly was well aware of the general prevalence of these horrors; its own proceedings and proclamations contain official notice of their extent.* But they did nothing whatever of an efficient character to ful supine- repress them. They issued, indeed, several proclamations Assembly against the disorders, and calling on the people to respect property; but they made no inquiries as to their authors -they instituted no prosecutions, punished no offenders. They even declined to interfere, though violently affected, when M. Berthier flew to Versailles to implore their protection for M. Foulon, his father-in-law, and adjured Lally Tollendal, by the love he had borne to the memory of his parent, to save his father, now tottering on the edge of the tomb. Though they had now, by their direction of the national guard, the control of the whole armed force of France, they gave no orders tending to discharge the first duty of government, that of protecting life and property. Thus their proclamations remained a dead letter; and the people easily saw that they were not sincere in their professed desire to terminate the devastations, by the constant apologies which Mirabeau, Robespierre, Sièyes, and the other popular orators, made for these excesses, as the natural and inevitable result of subirent le même sort; Le Chevalier d'Ambly, traîné nu sur un fumier, vit danser autour de lui les furieux qui venaient de lui arracher les cheveux et les sourcils. M. d'Ormenan et Madame de Monteran eurent pendant trois heures le pistolet à la gorge, demandant la mort comme une grâce; et ne voulant pas consentir à la cession de leurs droits, ils furent tirés de leurs voitures pour être jetés dans un étang."--Moniteur 3 à 4 Août 1789, p. 138, col. i.

*In their report on the disorders on 3d August 1789, the Assembly stated: "Letters and memorials received from all the provinces have proved, that property of every kind is every where the prey of the most atrocious plunders; that through the country the houses are burned, the convents destroyed, and farms given up to pillage; imposts, seignorial rights, all are annihilated; the laws are without force, the magistrates without authority, and justice is now but a phantom which it is vain to seek in the courts of law."-Memorial of 3d August 1789.

"On s'est armé de toutes pièces; on s'est jeté sur les châteaux voisins; le peuple qui ne connaît plus de frein, lorsqu'il croit qu'on a mérité sa fureur, s'est porté et se porte encore aux derniers excès, a brûlé, saccagé les chartriers des seigneurs, les a contraints à renoncer à leurs droits; a démoli et inondé plusieurs châteaux et incendié des abbayes."-Histoire Parlementaire de la France, ii. 162.

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