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

"Oliver is, indeed, the brother of Maurice, and by one of those inexplicable mysteries of nature, the physical resemblance between the two is even perhaps less remarkable than their mental resemblance. My knowledge of Maurice's nature has given me the key to Oliver's. Woe is me!" cried Victoria in heartrending tones. "In seeing, in hearing the one, I thought I saw and heard the other! The same voice, the same look! How many times, entranced in memories, have I surprised myself moved, my heart beating for this living phantom of the only man I ever loved in my sad life!"

"You love Oliver – or rather in him you continue to love Maurice. Unhappy sister!"

"Sister, dear," said Charlotte, warmly seizing the two hands of Victoria, who stood mute and overcome, bowing her face which was empurpled with shame and flooded with tears, "do you suppose that we could breathe one word of censure against you? Your new agonies inspire but the tenderest compassion. Ah, if our sisterly affection were capable of any growth, it would increase before this touching proof of the persistence of the single love of your life. Do we not know, alas, that for you to love Oliver is but for you to continue faithful to Maurice?"

"And still this love, although as pure as the former one, would be shameful, revolting," murmured Victoria.

"Victoria," interposed John, unable to restrain his tears, "do not abandon yourself to despair. Let us face the reality coolly, and regulate our conduct accordingly."

"Helas, the reality!" broke from Victoria. "This it is: No human power can prevent the suicide of Oliver, if I do not promise to be his wife – or his mistress. The only alternatives are my shame or his death."

Victoria's words were followed by silence for several minutes.

"Woe is us," at length resumed John, the first to speak. "Aye, fate has shut us in an iron circle. And still, despite myself, some dim hope supports me. Some inspiration will come to us."

"Yes," replied Charlotte, "I also hope, because our sister Victoria is a noble creature; because Oliver is gifted with generous qualities. I believe it will be possible to discover a solution honorable for all of us."

"Oh, dear wife," exclaimed John, "how your words do comfort me. Aye, aye, every situation, desperate as it may seem, is capable of an honorable solution. Beloved sister, raise that bowed forehead. Let us have faith in the unison of noble hearts."

Suddenly Victoria lifted her head, transfigured, radiant; and passionately embracing her brother's wife, she cried:

"You spoke sooth, Charlotte. We shall come out of this situation with honor." Then, clasping John with redoubled ardor, she continued: "Ah, brother, what a weight of fear has been lifted from my heart! To-morrow you shall know all. To-morrow that circle of iron shall be broken which now hems us in. A happy path opens itself before me."

The following morning, as John Lebrenn was leaving his house for the shop, he was met in the courtyard by the servant Gertrude, who drew from her pocket an addressed envelope.

"Mademoiselle Victoria gave me this letter for you, Monsieur John."

"My sister has gone out, then?"

"Yes, sir. She left at daybreak with Oliver. He had a traveling-case on his shoulder."

"My sister has left us!" stammered John, in amazement. Then he hastily broke the envelope he had just received from Gertrude, and read as follows:

Adieu, brother! Embrace your wife tenderly for me.

I have taken Oliver away. I may not at present let you into my plans; but of one thing be assured, the solution is honorable for all. I am and shall remain worthy of your esteem and affection. Do not seek for the present to fathom what has become of me, and have no uneasiness over my fate. You shall receive a letter from me every week, until the day, close at hand, it may be, or perhaps far away, when I can return to you, dear brother, dear sister, never to leave you again.

While awaiting that day so much to be desired, continue, both of you, to love me – for never shall I have so much needed your affection.

VICTORIA.

CHAPTER XXV

ROYALIST BARBARITIES

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

June 5, 1793. – Rejoice in the day of the 31st of May, sons of Joel. It means safety for the Republic, certain triumph for the Revolution. Aroused as one body, the population of Paris, embracing more than a hundred and twenty thousand citizens in arms, has succeeded in securing, solely by the moral pressure of its patriotism, the suspension of the Girondin Representatives. The greater part of these went into voluntary exile. The people of Paris remained under arms for five whole days – from May 31 to June 4.

June 6, 1793. – A singular chance placed in my hands to-day a note written by Robespierre. I hastened to take a copy, as it was of the greatest interest. It sums up in a few firm and concise lines the policy which 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 fulfilment of her promise to write me each week. Not to mention the profound grief her absence caused us, our uneasiness over her was extreme, in spite of the assurances she gave us in her farewell letter. She now informed me that Oliver's health was improving, and that his spirits were returning. She did not despair of bringing him back to reason and the practice of his civic duties. She was living, she told me, at some distance from the capital; and she could not yet disclose to us the mainsprings of her mysterious conduct, and the reticence of her correspondence.

JUNE 10, 1793. – The majority of the Convention has just made recognition of the value of the passive insurrection of May 31, by adopting the appended 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 declared traitors to the country, and outlawed. Several other adherents of that party were sent before the revolutionary tribunal.

JULY 19, 1793. – Last Saturday, July 13, Marat was assassinated, between seven and eight in the evening. His assailant was Marie Anne Charlotte Corday D'Armans, the daughter of an ex-nobleman, whose usual abode was Caen, one of those hot-beds of federal insurrection fomented by the Girondins. Simulating the role of a victim who besought assistance and protection from the Friend of the People, Charlotte Corday solicited an interview with him. Worn out and unwell, Marat was taking a bath, but yielding to compassion for the young girl who implored his aid, he consented to receive her. Introduced into his presence, Charlotte Corday struck him with a knife. He died almost instantly. I record this new assassination as an abominable crime! The beauty, the youth, the resolute character of Charlotte Corday in no wise lessen her guilt. It is vain to compare her with Brutus. He struck down Caesar, the undoubted tyrant of his country, whereas the patriotism of Marat, the Friend of the People, had never been called into question. Taken to-day before the revolutionary court presided over by Fouquier-Tinville, the accused woman confessed her connection with the Girondin party, of which she plainly was the instrument. She prided herself on having dealt Marat his death blow, the condign punishment, she said, for his crimes. Unanimously condemned by the jury to death, Charlotte Corday suffered on the scaffold the penalty for homicide.

The universal consternation of the patriots as they learned of the murder of the Friend of the People was an additional proof of the immense influence exercised by this extraordinary man over their heads and 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 freeIs 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 that Oliver's health is being restored, and that he soon will prove to me that my affection for him was not misplaced. In a few lines in his own hand at the end of Victoria's letter, Oliver himself repeated the same pledges. What is her project? I know not. She has at least saved the unhappy boy from suicide.

JULY 30, 1793. – The royalist and "federalist" insurrection of Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon and Bordeaux against the Republic and the Convention has assumed a more threatening aspect through the war that broke out in the Vendee, and which is spreading amid scenes of ungovernable ferocity. Read, sons of Joel, and shudder at the atrocious reprisals, the nameless horrors, committed by the Vendeans under the leadership of their priests and the ex-nobles. If the law of retaliation, that savage and barbarous law, is ever applied to the Chouans and Vendeans by the avengers of the patriots, let the responsibility fall upon the heads of these madmen themselves.

The brigands of the Vendee themselves gave the signal and set the example for murder and massacre. Machecoul was the theater of scenes of horror. Eight hundred patriots were hatcheted to pieces. Several were buried alive. The women were forced to witness the torture of their husbands; then, together with their children, they were spiked hand and foot to the doors of their dwellings, where they expired under the blows and stabs of the assassins. The parish curate, who had taken the oath to the Constitution, was impaled on a spit, and marched through the streets and public places of Machecoul with his genitals cut off. Finally, still breathing, he was nailed to the liberty tree. A Vendean priest celebrated the mass standing in blood and upon mutilated corpses. In the swamps of Niort six hundred children of Nantes were rounded up, massacred, and atrociously mutilated. At Chollet the brigands repeated the frightful scenes of Machecoul. They put the patriots through the most terrible tortures before depriving them of their lives. There, also, they nailed the women and children alive to their house-doors, and made their bosoms a target for their bayonets. They put to the torture everywhere those patriots whom they found, or persons who would not bear arms against the Republic. When they captured Saumur, all who bore the reputation of patriot perished amid indescribable tortures. The women, their children in their arms, were thrown from the windows, and the tigers in the streets poniarded them. The agonies which they made our brave defenders undergo were no less cruel; the least barbarous was to slay them with ball or bayonet; but the most common was to hang them feet uppermost from trees and kindle bonfires under their heads; or to nail them alive to the trees; or to place cartridges in their mouths or nostrils and explode them. It is impossible to take a step in the Vendee without opening new perspectives of torture to the eye. Here, at the entrance of one village, are exposed to our view brave defenders of the 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 the disfigured forms of our brave brothers hanged from the branches, their bodies 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 to these inhuman tortures. They filled their country ovens with our defenders, kindled the fires, and left them to expire slowly in this atrocious agony. Recently these cannibals have invented a new manner of torture; they cut off the noses, hands and feet of their prisoners, shut them in their dark caves, and abandon them to perish of hunger.

The distinguished patriot Chalier, at the head of a list of eighty-three, was led to the scaffold at Lyons. The instrument worked poorly. Chalier was twice mutilated. The cruelties of the royalists and parishioners of Lyons will call down great calamities upon the city.

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

AUGUST 4, 1793. – The Convention passed yesterday a decree of marked Socialist 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 the produce and stock jobbers. All food-stuffs have fallen considerably in price.

With redoubled energy the Convention is turning its attention to the dangers which threaten the Republic. News is brought that among the Vendeans have been uncovered the widow of Louis Capet, a large number of non-juring priests, and several imprisoned ex-nobles. The following decrees 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 there she 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 written me regularly every week in her own name and that of Oliver. He, she says, is treading with firm step the path of duty. My sister raises not the veil of mystery in which she has enshrouded herself since she quit our house. She announces that she is going to suspend her correspondence, but that if anything untoward intervenes she will inform me of it at once.

AUGUST 23, 1793. – Allied Europe is increasing the masses of troops she is hurling on our frontiers, here menaced, there already invaded. O Fatherland! you appeal to the heroism of your children; your call shall be heard. The Committee of Public Safety, among whose most influential members 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. The effect produced to-day by the latest decrees of the Convention was immense, indescribable. Thanks to God! the consignment of arms I was charged with making will be finished in a few days. I will be able to rejoin the army. Castillon and I have enrolled in one of the battalions of our Parisian volunteers.

SEPTEMBER 18, 1793. – Since the commencement of this month, Terror is the order of the day. Terror reigns; but to whom impute this fatal necessity, if not to the enemies of the fatherland? The Republic struck only after she had been outraged; she attacked not, she but defended. She obeyed the supreme law of self-preservation, the common right of an individual and a body social. The Terror is reducing our enemies within to impotence.

OCTOBER 17, 1793. – Yesterday the revolutionary tribunal sentenced Marie Antoinette 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 and assurance. She left the audience chamber after the pronouncement of sentence without evincing the slightest emotion, or uttering a word to judges or jurors. She mounted the scaffold at half past four in the morning. Only a few spectators were present.

October 18, 1793. – The Convention has superseded the old calendar with a new one, based on the observations of exact science. The new names for the months are as poetic, harmonious, and above all as rational, as the old ones were barbarous and senseless, borrowed, as they were in part from the fetes and rulers of the Roman Empire, in part from a pagan theocracy. 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, October 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 is completed, and Castillon and I leave day after to-morrow to join at Lille the Seventh Battalion, Paris Volunteers.

CHAPTER XXVI

A REVOLUTIONARY OUTPOST

On the 5th Nivose of the year II (December 25, 1793), an advance post of the main body of the Army of the Republic lay in military occupancy of an isolated tavern some quarter of a league's distance from Ingelsheim, a French burg about twelve leagues from Strasburg. Hoche and Pichegru, the Generals of the detachments called "of the Rhine and Moselle," had removed their headquarters to Ingelsheim, after several advantages gained over Marshal Wurmser, the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Condé. The republican troops were bivouacked about the city. The light of their campfires struggled with difficulty through the mists of a black winter's night. A line of scouts and pickets covered the position of the post, which was composed of a company of the Seventh Battalion, Paris Volunteers, among whom were John Lebrenn and his foreman Castillon.

The company was gathered in the large hall of the inn, and in the kitchen, where blazed a great fire. The greater part of the men, worn out with fatigue, sought repose on beds of fresh straw laid along the walls, making shift to use their knapsacks as pillows. Others furbished their arms, or blacked their cartridge-boxes; still others were mending their dilapidated garments or exercising their wits to cobble their shoes into a semblance of serviceableness; for neither the stores of the army nor draughts on nature sufficed to clothe and shoe all the citizens called to the flag in the last levies, or to replenish their wardrobes against the havocs of war. Few, indeed, of the volunteers, wore the complete uniform decreed by the Convention and which was already covered with the glory of so many victories. This consisted of a coat of deep blue, with facings and trimmings of red, and large white lapels, which left displayed the vest of white cloth, like the trousers; black knit leggins, with leather buttons, reaching to the knee; a flat three-cornered hat, surmounted with a plume of red horse-hair, falling beside the cockade; and a knapsack of white calf or buffalo-skin. Only the most recent recruits to the battalion were dressed correctly in accord with the decree.

The company was in command of a captain named Martin, a pupil of the painter David, the Convention member. Martin had enrolled after the days of September and at once left for the front. He had already advanced through all the elective ranks. Twice wounded, full of bravery and dash, and knowing how to win obedience in the moment of action, Captain Martin showed himself always jovial, open, and engaging in his relations with the volunteers. Although he had now followed war for fifteen months, David's young pupil did not renounce his former profession. He only awaited peace to lay down his sword, take up his brushes, and attempt to open a new field in his art by depicting the battles of the Revolution, and episodes of camp life. Seated at one corner of a table that was lighted by an iron lamp, Captain Martin was even now amusing himself with sketching, in a little pocket sketch-book, the figure, at once pitiable and grotesque, of the frightened innkeeper. Although a native of Alsace, the latter spoke an unintelligible dialect, and understood no French. Castillon, who was addressing him, indicated with a gesture a young volunteer in spick-and-span new uniform, scrupulously combed and shaven, and altogether looking, as they say, as if he had stepped out of a band-box, and explained: