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

"Citizen, it is true there are great criminals in the Abbey; but all the prisoners are not guilty in the same degree. Are there not some imprisoned merely as suspects? Are you sure that among them there are none innocent? And, with such doubt on your mind, would you kill all? No, citizen, such a crime would defile the Revolution!"

My intervention seemed for a moment to have recalled the throng to less barbarous sentiments. But just at that instant there arrived a panting workman, who jumped on a curbstone, exclaiming:

"Citizens – I come from the Assembly – I bring you serious news!"

"Silence! – Let us listen!"

"When the committee-men of the commune read their decrees to the Assembly, Vergniaud cried out: 'I thank Paris for its courage and energy; now one may say the country is saved!' He called Longwy, which had surrendered to the Prussians, a city of cowards. Hearing the refrain of the Marseillaise he said 'There is enough singing of Liberty – we must defend it. It is no longer Kings of bronze that must be torn down – it is the despots of Europe! Down with the Kings!' And he, Vergniaud, closed his address to the Assembly with these words: 'I demand that the Assembly, at this moment more a military body than a legislative, send at once, and every day hereafter, twelve delegates to the entrenched camp in the Field of Mars, not with empty discourses to exhort the citizens to work, but to ply the pick-ax with their own hands. The time is past for orating. We must dig the graves of our enemies. Our enemies are both in front of and behind us, citizens; in front of us the Prussians, behind us the royalists, the priests, their lay communicants, and the brigands in the prisons!'"

And the workman proceeded with his report of the occurrences in the Assembly:

"When Vergniaud left the platform, Roland, the Minister of the Interior, asked the floor to inform the Assembly of some very important matters. 'The Vendée,' he said, 'spurred on by the dissident clergy, has risen in several places, and patriots have been massacred. One portion of the south, under the instigation of the priests and the former nobles, is the breeding-ground of a vast conspiracy, with the Count of Saillant at its head. He has declared himself "the lieutenant-general of the army of the Princes."'"

Before the crowd had recovered from the stupefaction into which it was thrown by these words the speaker continued:

"After Roland, Lebrun, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced that twenty thousand Russians were advancing on us through Poland and Germany, at the same time that a Russian fleet, proceeding from the Black Sea, was to pass through the Dardanelles and land at Marseilles. At this Danton became sublime! 'Everything stirs, drives on, burns, to a combat,' he exclaimed. 'Verdun is not yet in the hands of the enemy. The garrison has sworn to slay those who mention surrender. Part of the people is rushing to the frontiers; another part is digging entrenchments; another army will defend the city at the point of their pikes. Citizen Representatives,' continued Danton, 'we ask of you to concur with us in directing this heroic movement of the people. Whosoever refuses to serve in person or to give up his arms, let him be punished with death. All who are not with us are against us.' At these last words pronounced by Danton, the Assembly rose with enthusiasm – " added the orator on the curb. "'That bell which now clangs is not a signal of alarm!' Danton cried. 'No! It is the signal for the charge against the enemies of the country. To whip them we must dare, and dare, and dare again – and France is saved!'"

An electric thrill ran over the tossing multitude as these words of Danton's were told it – heroic words accompanied by the tintinnabulations of the tocsin, the prolonged echoes of the five-minute alarm gun, the distant roll of the drums, and the strains of the Marseillaise, chanted in chorus by the column of volunteers. The massive energy of Danton seemed to seize upon every spirit; it roused to its highest pitch their sacred love of country, and reawakened the ardor of vengeance. In that supreme moment, the prison massacres were considered by the population, bourgeois and artisans alike, as a measure of public safety, a Spartan measure which many of the citizens deplored, but which they regarded as a fatal necessity, as a question of life and death for their families, for France, for the Revolution.

Bill-posters were now attaching to the walls the new decrees rendered by the Commune of Paris, which had now declared itself a permanent body. The first of these was conceived as follows:

THE COMMUNE OF PARIS DECIDES AND DECREES:

ARTICLE 1. All horses fit for service are required at once to be turned over to the citizens who depart for the front.

ARTICLE 2. All citizens shall hold themselves in readiness to march at the first call.

ARTICLE 3. Those, who by reason of age or infirmity are unable to join the march, shall deposit their arms with their Sections, to equip those more fortunate citizens ready to go to the front.

ARTICLE 4. The ramparts shall be closed.

Paris, September 2, 1792,

COULOMBEAU.

The last paragraph, ordering the closing of the ramparts, caused a shudder not unmingled with savage joy to shoot through the crowd. Through all minds flashed the thought: "The Commune orders the ramparts to be closed in order to prevent our enemies within from escaping. The work of justice will be the easier!"

Another decree which was posted, read:

THE COMMUNE OF PARIS

Decrees:

1.º Enlistment shall go on in the Sections, in the theaters, in the churches and in the public places.

2.º Foreign citizens shall enrol at the City Hall.

3.º The Department of Paris shall furnish at once sixty thousand men.

4.º The armorers, iron-workers and blacksmiths shall report to the Military Committee how fast they can turn out guns, pikes, swords, etc.

5.º All leaden coffins shall be melted up for bullets. The retired soldiers will take charge of this work.

Paris, September 2, 1792,

COULOMBEAU.

On this terrible day, everything converged to throw the population into a somber vertigo. There was not an event which did not drive fatally onward to the massacres in the prisons.

"Long live the Nation! Death to the traitors!" rose the cry.

The delegates of the Luxembourg Section declared to the Commune that they had adopted and recorded in their minutes the resolution "That it was urgent to purge the prisons before marching to the front." Three committee-men were sent to notify the Commune of this decision. The Sections of the Julian Hot-Baths, the Blind Asylum, and Ill-Counsel took the same action. The crowd about me echoed the cry:

"To the prisons! To the prisons!"

"Exterminate the rogues!"

"Purge the prisons!"

"Down with the black caps!"

"Death to the aristocrats!"

I sank into a stupor of despair. There was room for doubt no longer; public opinion was pronouncing itself for the mass extermination of the prisoners. The Sections were despatching their delegates to the Commune to notify it of the urgency of the move. The Commune, through Tallien's organ, approved the massacre; finally, Danton also approved it, Danton, the Minister of Justice, elected by the Assembly. How could I stem such a tide? Still I tried, not without the knowledge that I thereby risked my life; for in moments of popular impulse and enthusiasm, to pronounce oneself in opposition to the general opinion is to court being taken for a traitor. Nevertheless, I leaped upon a bench hard by, and cried in a voice vibrating with all the anguish of my heart:

"Citizens, in the name of the country, in the name of the Revolution, hear me!"

My paleness, my tears, my supplicating accents impressed the crowd; silence was given me, and I continued:

"Citizens, suppose that we all, patriots here present, were incarcerated by our triumphant enemies. Our enemies rush into our prison, surprise us without defense, without means of escape, and massacre us all! Would that not be a cowardly, a horrible deed? Would you commit a like atrocity?"

Outcries, hisses and curses drowned my voice.

"He is a wheedler!"

"A traitor!"

"A royalist in disguise!"

"Death to the traitors!"

I believed my last hour was come. Thrown down from my bench, I was surrounded, seized, mauled back and forth by the crowd in its fury. My uniform was torn to shreds. A sword was already raised over my head when some patriots, interposing between my adversaries and me, tore me from the hands that grasped me, protected me with their own bodies, and pushed me under the arch of a carriage-gate, which they slammed upon me. I fell battered and almost fainting; and soon I heard the throng disperse, crying:

"Long live the Nation!"

"To the prisons, to the prisons!"

"Death to the royalists!"

So, indeed, it occurred. The massacre was carried out.

CHAPTER IX

"TO THE FRONT!"

The porter of the house in which I had thus compulsorily found asylum, a house neighboring on my own, gave me, together with his wife, his solicitous care. Both knew me by sight as a child of the quarter. I recovered little by little from my commotion. The porter offered me a jacket to replace the ruined tunic of my uniform. Never shall I forget the words the worthy people uttered as I bade them good-bye, thanking them for their attentions.

"What the devil, my dear neighbor! Between you and me, you were on the wrong side, this time!" said the brave fellow, who from his door-sill had taken in the whole scene. "Eh! Without a doubt, you were in the wrong, although you did it out of your good heart! My God! I also have a good heart, and, such as you see me, I couldn't cut the head off a chicken. Nevertheless, I say to myself: Those who, at this moment, have the courage to purge the prisons, are saving the country and our Revolution, by preventing our enemies from letting loose a civil war upon France, and joining themselves to the out-landers to combat us. Alas, it is indeed hard to be driven to it, but 'Necessity knows no law.' It is either kill or be killed. In such a case, each for his own skin!"

"Goodness me, yes!" put in the portress, a debonair matron, taking up her knitting again. "And then, whose fault is it? The nobles and the priests haven't stopped for three years conspiring with Veto and the Austrian woman. They loose the Prussians and Huns upon our poor country. God! Listen, you, neighbor – we are getting tired, and it is high time that, one way or another, this all be put an end to."

"My wife is right. And then, do you see, neighbor, when the Sections, and even the Commune and Monsieur Danton, everyone, in fact, says it is necessary to purge the prisons, one must believe that so many persons would not agree on one and the same course, were it not at bottom just, or at least necessary."

I have cited these good people's words because they are a faithful expression of the general sentiment on the subject of the massacres.

On leaving the house where I had found a refuge, I set out, not for my Section, to join my comrades of the Guard as I had at first intended; but, acting on the subsequent call of the Commune to all the armorer, blacksmith and iron-worker artisans, who were to take in hand the manufacture in haste of the greatest possible number of arms, I turned my steps toward the National Assembly, where the Military Committee sat in permanent session. I hoped that the number of workmen in these trades who reported would be over-sufficient for the turning out of the arms; in that case I was resolved to leave the next day for the army. Two motives impelled me to that resolution. First, my duty to my country; second the profound chagrin into which the aberration of my sister Victoria had thrown me. At that very moment, doubtless, she was – frightful thought – assisting at the massacre in the prisons, calm and terrible as the goddess of Retribution. Moreover, I had received, two days earlier, a letter from Charlotte Desmarais. She was living still at Lyons, with her mother; she assured me of her affection, of her unshakable constancy, and added that, in view of the perils with which the allied arms threatened the country, my duty as a citizen was marked out for me; she would support with firmness the new trials that would await her should I go to the front. Unhappily, I could not enrol. The number of mechanics skilled in iron working would hardly suffice for getting out the arms; by a decree of the Assembly, rendered on September 4, it was forbidden to them to leave Paris.

Behold the spectacle that I was to witness on my way to the Assembly – a spectacle moving in its very simplicity:

In the middle of Vendome Place was raised a tent, supported at each corner by a pike surmounted with a red bonnet. Under this tent, municipal officers, girt with the tricolor scarf, were receiving the enlistments of citizens. Two drums, piled one on the other, served as table. On the upper drum lay an ink-well, a pen, and the register in which were inscribed the names of the volunteers. Each of these received a fraternal embrace from one of the councilmen, and departed amid the cheers of "Long live the Nation!" uttered by the crowd which filled the place. Day without equal in history! Strange day! in which love of country, heroism, civic devotion, and the exaltation of the holiest virtues of the family, were intermingled with the thirst for vengeance and extermination. I heard uttered here and there about me, here with savage satisfaction, there with the accent of indifference or the resignation born of painful necessity: "They are going to execute the conspirators and purge the prisons." "Death to the priests and nobles!"

Into the tent of the municipal officers I saw a distinguished-looking old man enter. His five sons accompanied him. The youngest seemed about eighteen; the eldest, aged perhaps forty, held by the hand his own son, hardly out of his boyhood. These seven persons, completely armed and equipped out of their own purse, carried on their backs their soldiers' knapsacks. The old man acted as spokesman, and addressed one of the officers:

"Citizen, I am named Matthew Bernard, master tanner, No. 71 St. Victor Street, where I live with my five sons and my grandson. We come, they and I, to enlist; we leave for the frontier."

The wife of the brave citizen, his daughter, a young girl of seventeen, and his son's wife, awaited them outside. On the countenances of the three women was legible neither fear nor regret; the tears that shone in their eyes were tears of enthusiasm.

"Farewell, wife! Farewell, daughter and daughter-in-law! We depart assured of your safety. The prisons are purged," said the old man in a voice calm and strong. "We have none now to fight but the Prussians on the frontier. Adieu till we meet again. Long live the Nation! Long live the Republic! Death to the priests and the aristocrats!"

In the midst of the procession of recruits, I heard the snapping of a whip, and these words, shouted out in deep and joyous tones:

"Make way, citizens, make way, please! Oh, hey! Alright, Double-grey! Alright, Reddy!" And soon I saw drawing near, through the crowd which fell back to give him passage, a man in the hey-day of his strength, with an open and martial countenance, clad in a great-coat and an oilskin hat. He rode a grey horse, and led by the bridle a bay, both harnessed for the carriage. Across the crupper of one of the animals were slung a saddle-bag of oats and a bale of grass tied with a cord; the other horse carried a valise. The great-coat of the rider was drawn-tight at the waist by the belt of a cavalry saber that hung beside him. I remarked with surprise that the white leather of his sword-tassel was red, as if wet with blood.

"Citizen officers," called the rider without descending from the horse he rode, and which he reined in on the threshold of the tent, "Write as a voluntary recruit James Duchemin, stage driver by occupation and formerly an artilleryman; I have sold my coach to pay my expenses on the way. I am off to the frontier with my horses Double-grey and Reddy, of whom I make an offering to the country, asking only the favor not to be separated from them and to be enrolled with them in a regiment of field artillery. You'll see them do famously in the harness when they're hitched up to a four-pounder. So, then, citizen officers, write us down, my horses and me. I have just lent a hand to the patriots who are working down there, at the Abbey," added the stage driver, carrying his hand to the blood-reddened saber. "The business is done. The prisons are purged; – now, to the front!"

The day was nearly over when I arrived at the Assembly to put myself at the disposal of the Military Committee. While awaiting my turn for enrolment, I wandered into the Assembly galleries. I was anxious to know whether the massacre in the prisons was known to the popular Representatives. I then learned that the Assembly, informed as to the occurrences at the Abbey, at La Force, and at the Chatelet, had sent to these places, with instructions to oppose the carnage, a commission composed of Citizens Bazire, Dussaulx, Francis of Neufchateau, Isnard and Lequino.

Soon several of the commissioners entered the chamber, accompanied by Tallien, a member of the Commune, who took the floor and said:

"Citizens, the commissioners of the Assembly are powerless to turn aside the vengeance of the people, a vengeance in some sort just, for, we must say it, these blows have fallen upon the issuers of false notes, whom the law condemns to death. What excited the vengeance of the people was that they found in the prisons none but recognized criminals!"

I left the Assembly chamber and returned to take my place in the line and pass before the Committee. The Committee was presided over, that day, by Carnot the elder, an officer of genius, and one of the greatest captains of the time. I had myself inscribed as an iron-worker, and received the order to appear next morning at daybreak, at the green-house of the Louvre, where they were setting up the forges and work-benches for the fashioning of the munitions of war.

While awaiting Victoria, at our lodging, I busied myself with recording in my journal the various events of the day. One in the morning sounded; my sister had not returned. Up till now, I had felt no anxiety for her; only those who would attempt to disarm the popular anger, only those, on that day, ran any danger; and Victoria partook of the general sentiment of Paris on the subject of a mass extermination. But suddenly there flashed back to my mind Jesuit Morlet and his tool Lehiron. I knew the hatred entertained by the reverend Father for my sister. These thoughts threw me into deep anxiety. The Jesuit Morlet and Lehiron were capable of any crime; and on this unlucky day, when blood flowed in torrents, nothing would have been easier than for the wretches to make away with Victoria. Faithful to his hope of seeing the Revolution besmirch itself or lose itself in excesses, Abbot Morlet would not fail to be on hand to urge on the carnage of the prisoners; he could easily, under a new disguise, repair to the prisons with Lehiron and his cut-throats, and, on encountering my sister, point her out to their weapons.

The gloomiest of apprehensions were raised in me by these reflections. My alarm increased from minute to minute. There was, alas, no way to still it. My anguish had almost reached the breaking point when I heard hurried steps on the stair-landing. I ran to the door. It flew open. Victoria uttered a cry of joy, threw herself into my arms, pressed me convulsively to her breast, and broke into tears. Then, between her sobs, she murmured in a voice choked with joy:

"Brother, my poor brother, I find you again! God be praised!"

As her emotion subsided, Victoria acquainted me in the following words with the source of her alarm:

"Just now, on my way here, I met, ten steps from the house, our neighbor Dubreuil. On seeing me he stopped, looked at me an instant with an expression of surprise and grief, and said, 'Are you coming to see John?' 'Surely,' answered I. 'Alas, poor John harangued the crowd this morning at this very place; he spoke against the massacre in the prisons; they took him for a traitor, and the crowd, in its temper – ' and our neighbor buried his face in his hands and did not finish. I understood everything. Yielding to the goodness of your heart, desiring to oppose popular justice in its course, you had paid for the attempt with your life! – such was my first thought. For an instant I stood motionless with stupor, my soul in a whirl. I felt I should go mad. Then I ran to our door. 'Brother, brother!' I cried. 'Whence your alarm, mademoiselle?' the porter asked me; 'Monsieur John is upstairs since ten o'clock.' My heart bounded with joy; – but I was not completely reassured till I saw you."

I recounted to my sister the cause of our neighbor's mistake in thinking I had lost my life in the attempt to intervene in favor of the prisoners. And I followed by confiding to Victoria the fears which her own prolonged absence had caused me.

"True," Victoria answered, "the Jesuit did appear once at the Abbey Prison with Lehiron and some of his brigands. But they soon saw that that was not the place for them, for at the Abbey there was no pillaging, there was no assassination. We judged and condemned the guilty; we freed the innocent."

"Alas, and in the name of what law did you condemn the ones, and acquit the others?"

"In the name of Eternal Justice, which smites the wicked and spares the good."

I heard Victoria in a sort of daze. "And even if," exclaimed I, "a semblance of justice did preside over the carnage, by what right did these men constitute themselves the accusers, judges and executioners of the prisoners?"

"Brother, by what right did the jurors who assisted at the sessions of the revolutionary tribunal instituted on August the 17th of this year, declare the accused innocent or guilty?"

"They exercised a right conferred on them by the law."

"Then the law confers in certain cases, and on citizens elected by the people, the right to judge or to absolve?"

"In certain cases, yes; and the present case is not of their number."

"John, those are the subtleties of a lawyer. Listen to what passed before my eyes: The people elected by acclamation and installed in the prison a revolutionary tribunal of eleven jurors. The prisoners were brought before them. Then – I saw everything, I heard everything, and I swear before God, aye, on my soul and conscience, that all those who were sentenced deserved the death. My mind is clear, my thoughts calm. Hear what I have to tell you, then you shall pronounce between those who glorify the events of September and those who condemn them:

"Three carriages bearing priests accused of having fomented civil war, were driving towards the Abbey. As the vehicles approached the prison, one of the priests, who was braving the crowd with the violence of his discourse, was cursed by it. In a passion he raised his cane and struck one of those who insulted him over the head. The crowd, exasperated, followed the vehicles into the Abbey and massacred all the priests in them."

Victoria gasped for breath and continued:

"It was at this moment that I entered the prison. Almost at the same time as I, Manuel, the attorney-at-law for the Commune, arrived. The people called on the guards to deliver the prisoners to them. Manuel asked to be heard. He began by reading a decision of the Commune, which declared:

"'In the name of the people, citizens, you are enjoined to pass judgment on all the prisoners in the Abbey Prison without distinction; with the exception of Abbot Lenfant, whom you shall bestow in a safe place.

"'At the City Hall, September 2, 1792.

"'Signed, Panis, Sergent, administrators.'

"Having read the decree, Manuel continued:

"'Citizens, your resentment is just. Wage, if you will, war without let upon the enemies of the public weal! Fight them to the death; they must perish. But you love justice, and you would shudder at the thought of imbruing your hands with innocent blood. Cease, then, from throwing yourselves like tigers upon men, your brothers.'"

Victoria, after accentuating this fact, went on:

"A court elected by those present and presided over by Maillard, convened in the registrar's office; one enters the place by a grating communicating with the interior of the prison, and leaves it by a door opening on the prison courtyard. It was in the latter place that the justiciaries awaited the condemned, to execute them. Maillard laid before him the prison register; this gave the charge against each inmate, and the cause of his arrest. A warder, as each prisoner's name was called, went to fetch him. He was led before the tribunal, which proceeded in this wise: