Letters containing a sketch of the scenes which passed in various Departments of France during the tyranny of Robespierre: and of the events which took place in Paris on the 28th of July 1794. By Helen Maria Williams. Vol.III.

LETTER VII.

ROBESPIERRE, finding the com|mittee so little inclined to pay him that submissive homage which was yielded to him by the rest of France, absented him|self both from them and the conven|tion during some weeks; and began to prepare for open hostilities, with the as|sistance of the jacobins, the revolution|ary tribunal, and the regenerated com|mune. The united strength of these bo|dies was very formidable, and the con|vention had nothing to oppose to them but the possibility of exciting rebellion against the constituted authorities; for the military force was in the hands of Henriot, who was the devoted slave of Robespierre; and the civil and revolu|tionary concerns of the sections of Paris

centred in the commune, the directors of which were of his immediate appoint|ment. The jacobins bore sway over the whole, and he was the absolute monarch of the jacobins.

When Robespierre thought that his plan was sufficiently matured, he appear|ed at the tribune of the convention, which he had not entered for some time, and made a vehement harangue on the op|pression which was exercised over him|self, and against the operations of the committees; promising the convention, that he would propose the only means fitted to save the country.

His speech excited much agitation; the members appeared to listen to him with sensations similar to those of the in|habitants of some great city, who hear the murmurs of the earthquake, and feel the ground shake beneath them, but are ignorant where the gulph will open, and what part, or if the whole, will be swal|lowed

up. The convention, although alarmed, and doubtful how to act, yet seeing the prospect of irremediable ruin before their eyes through the thin cover|ing which the tyrant had thrown over his designs, assumed sufficient courage to debate on the prominent parts of his speech, which they ordered to be printed.

Having opened himself thus far to the convention, Couthon explained the speech more fully at the jacobins' in the evening. There he denounced the two committees of government as traitors, and insisted that the persons who com|posed those committees should be ex|cluded from the society. The president of the revolutionary tribunal was the next commentator on Robespierre's speech, and pronounced without any re|serve, that the convention should be pu|rified also; which implied the entire dis|solution of the representative body.

This purification was not to be con|fined

to the convention; for the con|spiracy against the republic had, to borrow the language of these regenera|tors, its authors and accomplices in every quarter of Paris. The fate of one description of those conspirators was so certain, that their graves were literally dug before their eyes, and graves of no ordinary extent. These were the multi|tude of prisoners who were waiting a more formal, but not less certain death, before the revolutionary tribunal. It had been proposed to build a scaffolding in the great hall of the Palais, resembling the hall of Westminster, where two or three hundred might be tried at once, instead of fifty or sixty as was the present mode. But it was now thought the great ends of national justice might be better answered by what was called emptying the prisons at once; and that, as the sen|tence of these conspirators was already passed, the formality of their appear|ance

at a tribunal might be dispensed with. For some days therefore labourers had been employed in several prisons of Paris, in making large excavations in their re|spective court-yards; and it was not con|cealed from many of the prisoners by their keepers, and even by the admini|strators of the police, how they were to be filled up. We cannot hesitate in believing this new instance of atrocity, when we compare the revolutionary lan|guage held by the chiefs on the necessity of quick expedients to get rid of traitors, together with the changes made just at this period in the keepers of the various prisons; since those who had most dis|tinguished themselves for firmness of nerve in the commission of murders, had succeeded the ordinary ruffians* 1.1;

and also, what is more certain evidence, the information of many of the pri|soners, who, confined in different prisons, agree in relating the same facts. There is also little doubt that the nobles and strangers, who by the law of the fifteenth of Germinal were dispersed through the various communes of the republic, under the eye of tyrants, who were in|formed of their residence by the deca|dary returns of the several municipali|ties which they inhabited, would have shared the fate of the prisoners.

The convention in the mean time observed their usual submissive silence, although they well knew that certain

portions of them were designated, lists of proscription having been discovered from the carelessness of those who were to co-operate in the bloody work. One was found by accident among the papers of Vilate, one of the revolutionary jury, who, being refractory on some particular point, had been arrested.

The same state of stupefaction which had led the convention to see former masses torn from their body, seemed still to benumb their faculties. Robe|spierre, whose secession from the com|mittees had not rendered him less the master of their operations, flattered him|self that the task was now perfectly easy; for, independent of his irresistible pha|lanxes, the jacobins, the revolutionary committees, the regenerated commune, and the military force of Paris, the ter|ror which he had infused into the con|vention came powerfully to his aid.

The hours of the tyrant were never|theless

numbered, and the moment ap|proached when he was to make his ac|count with eternal justice. The attack of Robespierre upon his colleagues on the morning of the 8th of Thermidor, and the commentary made by his accom|plices at the jacobins' the same evening, roused the convention from their dis|honourable lethargy, and they became bold from desperation.

The eventful day at length arrived, and both parties took their places in the hall of the convention with an air of affected calmness, while some ordinary business of the day went on; for no one even of the proscribed members seemed anxious to become the Curtius of the rest, al|though the next meeting of the jaco|bins, or the next motion of the munici|pality, might have decided the arrest of the whole of the convention, except Robespierre's faction. But St. Just hav|ing ascended the tribune, and begun a

speech in the same whining tone which Robespierre had used the preceding day, complaining of the bad treatment he had received, and of the treason of his colleagues in the committee; Tallien, and Billaud Varennes, the former of whom was on the list of proscription, and the latter Robespierre's rival in the committee, overpowered his voice by their denunciations against the perfi|dious and horrible designs of the tyrants, which they unveiled to the convention. Robespierre, who was ignorant of this counter conspiracy, though he saw a disposition the preceding day to mu|tiny, was struck as with a thunderbolt. He made at length some attempts to speak; but his voice was drowned in the denunciations poured forth against him. Tallien insisted on his arrest: but the convention, under the impression of its habitual terror, contented itself with pronouncing that of his inferior agents;

and it was not till Robespierre had mounted the tribune, and, with the air of a chief, called the convention a band of robbers, that Vadier, one of his former accomplices, obtained the vote of accu|sation, by turning evidence against him. Robespierre, seeing himself beset on every side, threw a look of piercing indigna|tion towards his brother mountaineers, and reproached them for their cowardice. Hearing curses poured down upon him from every quarter, and seeing that his kingdom was departed from him, he call|ed out in the fury of desperation to be led to death; which the convention virtually decreed, in an unanimous vote of accu|sation against him. His colleagues St. Just, Couthon, Le Bas, and his own brother, were arrested at the same time, and after some resistance were led away to prison.

Thus far the convention had been successful; for all parties had concurred

in the humiliation of a tyrant, by whom all had been equally oppressed. But the scene which the city presented was truly alarming. The jacobins, hearing of the insurrection against Robespierre, imme|diately assembled. The commune, which was ordered to the bar of the convention, instead of obeying, rang the tocsin to call the citizens to arms. Henriot, the com|mander of the military force, who had been arrested and led to the committee of general safety, was released, and pa|rading the streets on horseback, while the cannoneers under his orders had loaded their pieces. Robespierre with his colleagues was delivered from prison by the administrators of the police, and, being installed at the hotel de ville, had outlawed the whole convention.

Had the conspirators acted with ordi|nary sagacity; had they immediately marched their cannon against the con|vention, which for some hours was only

guarded by a small number of armed citizens, the triumph of Robespierre and the municipality would have been com|plete. But, happily for humanity, they wasted those moments in deliberations and harangues; whilst the convention, taking courage at the goodness of its cause, and in the hope of some sparks of remaining virtue in the people, discovered a disposition to defend themselves, and in a short time thousands slew to their aid. The hall of the jacobins was cleared by the energy of Legendre; and seven deputies were named as generals for the conventional cause against the commune, who were now declared to be in a state of rebellion, and put out of the law. Such at this moment was the state of Paris, when the commander of the mi|litary force, Henriot, appeared in the court of the convention, and ordered it to surrender. But he came too late: the convention was now prepared for de|fence,

and answered his summons by put|ting him out of the law as well as his employers.

This "hors la loi" has the same effect on a Frenchman as if it were the cry of the pestilence: the object becomes civil|ly excommunicated, and a sort of con|tamination is apprehended if you pass through the air which he has breathed. Such was the effect which this decree produced upon the cannoneers, who had planted their artillery against the con|vention: without receiving any further instructions, except hearing that the com|mune were "hors la loi," they instantly turned their pieces. Henriot, seeing this unexpected resistance, and finding that the sections meant to deliberate before they put the convention to death, slunk back to the commune, who were also in a profound state of deliberation. In the mean time the convention had sent deputies into every quarter of the

town, to rally the citizens around the as|sembly; and they succeeded so well, that in a few hours the convention had an hundred thousand men to march against the commune. The hotel de ville was now besieged in its turn; and might have made a formidable resistance, had not the cannoneers of that quarter also heard of the "hors la loi," and refused to fire their pieces; while the immense multitude that were idly assembled in the place de Greve before the hotel, had taken posses|sion of the carriages of the artillery to serve as ladders, from which they could stare into the windows, and crowds were mounted on the cannon to enjoy the spectacle. The conspirators now, aban|doned, and, like Nero, having no friend or enemy at hand to dispatch them, had no means of escaping from ignominy but by a voluntary death, which they had not the courage to give themselves.

Catiline, it is said, was found at a con|siderable

distance from his friends, mingled amongst his enemies, with a countenance bold and daring in death. It is somewhat remarkable, that nearly two years since a writer, drawing the parallel, or rather the dissimilitude of character between Catiline and Robes|pierre, observed, that whenever the de|cisive moment of contest should arise between the parties which were formed after the 10th of August, Robespierre would perish; not plunged into the ranks of his foes, but be struck by some ig|noble hand, and die from a wound in his back.

The conspirators, seeing that all resist|ance was fruitless, hid themselves or took to flight. Robespierre was found in an apartment of the hotel, and was sternly reminded by a gendarme that a supreme being really existed. Robespierre held a knife in his hand, but had not courage to use it; the gendarme fired at him with a

pistol, and broke his jaw-bone; he fell, without uttering a word. His brother threw himself out of a window, and broke his thigh by the fall. Henriot had given his associates the strongest assurances that he was secure of the military force of Pa|ris; and Coffinhal, a judge of the revolu|tionary tribunal, when he saw that all was lost, poured forth the most bitter invec|tives against Henriot for having thus de|ceived them; and at length seizing him, in a fit of rage and despair, threw him out of a window. Henriot concealed himself a short time in a common-sewer, from whence he was dragged after having lost an eye. These criminals, with their ac|complices, were brought, some on biers and others on foot, to the convention; from whence they were all sent to the Conciergerie, except Robespierre, who was carried into the anti-chamber of the committee of public safety, where those who attended him told me he lay stretch|ed

motionless on a table four hours, with his head bound up, and his eyes shut; making no answer to the taunting ques|tions that were put to him, but pinch|ing his thighs with convulsive agony, and sometimes looking round when he ima|gined no one was near. He underwent the operation of dressing his wounds, in order to prolong his existence a few hours; after which he was sent, with the rest of his associates, to the tribunal. The identification of their persons was all that was necessary, since they were hors la loi, and the sentence of execution against them was demanded by their for|mer friend, Fouquier Tainville.

On the evening of the 10th of Thermi|dor (the 28th of July 1794), these crimi|nals were led to the scaffold. The frantic joy which the Parisians discovered on this occasion was equal to the pusillani|mous stupor into which they had been hitherto plunged. The maledictions

that accompanied the tyrants on their way to execution were not, as usual, the clamour of hireling furies; they proceed|ed with honest indignation from the lips of an oppressed people, and burst invo|luntarily from the heart of the fatherless and the widow. These monsters were made to drink the cup of bitterness to the very dregs. Many of them were so disfi|gured by wounds and bruises, that it was difficult to distinguish their persons, and little attention had been paid to alleviate these intermediate sufferings. In the mass perished Robespierre, his co-adjutors Couthon and St. Just; Henriot, the com|mander of the military force of Paris; the mayor of Paris; the national agent; the president of the jacobins; the president of the revolutionary tribunal; the sans|culotte preceptor of the young dauphin; and the agents of these leaders, to the number of twenty-two. The following day the members of the commune of

Paris, to the amount of seventy-two, were beheaded on the place de Greve; and twelve, on the day after, completed the list of the chiefs of the present conspiracy.

The bar of the convention, which had hitherto been the echo of the tyrants, ap|plauding every barbarous measure, and sanctioning every atrocious deed, now resounded with gratulation and triumph upon the victory, and assurances, since it was gained, that those who offered the address would have shed the last drop of blood to have obtained it; or, according to the accustomed phrase, "have made a rampart of their bodies." This incon|sistency on the part of the Parisians will not appear surprising, when we reflect that the city was divided into two par|ties—the murderers, who were now over|thrown, and those who were to have been murdered, and who now exulted in their deliverance.

Considering the immense influence

which the terrorist faction, the denomi|nation now given to Robespierre's sup|porters, had obtained both in Paris and in the departments, the whole of the ad|ministrations, both civil and military, throughout the republic being put into their hands, it is scarcely credible that so mighty an host should have been over|thrown by one single effort, and in which no measures were prepared or combined.

The inhabitants of those living sepul|chres, the prisons of Paris, felt with most ecstacy this happy revolution. Hope had entirely forsaken them; they had re|signed themselves in fixed despair to that fate, which they believed to be inevi|table.

The prisoners knew that some extra|ordinary scenes were passing in the city; for in all the prisons they had been or|dered to retire to rest one hour earlier than usual, and to leave their doors un|locked; and at the same time they ob|served

an air of mystery on the faces of their keepers, which seemed to bode some near and dreadful evil.

The ringing of the tocsin during the night served to increase their apprehen|sions; they imagined a great tumult agi|tated the city, but concluded that it was only some stroke of more extensive ty|ranny that was about to be inflicted, and that would consolidate more firmly the power of the tyrants. In this state of torture they passed the night, and waited the light of the morning in all the pangs of terror and dismay. At length the morning returned, and the important secret had not yet penetrated the walls of the prisons; but a feeling like hope animated the sinking spirits of the pri|soners, when, with the searching eye of anxious expectation, they sought to read their fate in the countenances of their jailors, and there discovered evident marks of disappointment and dejection,

while some relaxation from their habi|tual severity succeeded the extraordinary precautions and rigour of the preceding day.

They were not however long held in suspense. In some of the prisons the newspaper of the past evening was pro|cured at an enormous price: but who could rate too high the purchase which brought the tidings of deliverance? In some of the prisons, the citizens who were obliged to perform the painful office of guards within their gloomy courts, contrived to tell the prisoners in monosyllables breathed in whispers (for all intercourse between the guards and the prisoners was sternly prohibited), that the hour of hope and mercy beamed upon their sufferings. In other prisons they were informed of what was passing, by women who displayed upon the roofs of houses, which overlooked at a distance

the prison walls, the names of Robes|pierre and his associates, written in such broad characters that the prisoners with the aid of glasses could read them plainly; and after presenting the name, the gene|rous informer shewed by expressive ges|tures, that the head of him who bore that name had fallen.

A military gentleman who was con|fined in the prison of the Abbey told me, that, after having passed the night of the 27th of July, in the immediate ex|pectation of being massacred, all his fears were instantly relieved by a very slight circumstance. The prisoners had long been denied the consolation of any inter|view with their friends; the utmost pri|vilege allowed them was that of writing upon the direction of the packets of li|nen, when they were sent to their houses to be washed, or received from thence, after a very strict examination, "Je me

porte bien* 1.2." The wife of this gentle|man, to whom she was tenderly attached, used every day to write with an aching heart upon the packet, "Je me porte bien." On the morning of the 28th of July, the packet arrived as usual; but one monosyllable and one note of ad|miration were added to the direction: "Ah, que je me porte bien† 1.3!" With an emotion of transport which told him his misfortunes were at an end, he read those little words, and hailed the blessed augur.

During many hours the fall of the tyrant was repeated with cautious timi|dity through the dreary mansions of con|finement, and the prisoners related to each other the eventful tale, as if they feared that

More than echoes talked along the walls.

Even the minds of those who were at li|berty,

were too strongly fettered by ter|ror to bear the sudden expansion of joy; and the gentleman who first brought the tidings to my family that Robespierre was arrested, after having been blamed for his imprudence in mentioning such a circumstance before some strangers who were present, said in a tone of resentment, "This is the fourth family which I have endeavoured to make happy by this news; and instead of being thanked for the intelligence, all are afraid to hear it."

At length, however, the clouds of doubt, mistrust, and apprehension va|nished, the clear sunshine of joy beamed upon every heart, and every eye was bathed in tears of exultation. Yet those overwhelming emotions were empoison|ed by bitter regrets. Every individual had to lament some victim to whom he was bound by the ties of nature, of grati|tude, or of affection; and many were doomed to mourn over a friend, a father,

or a husband, whom a month, a week, a day would have snatched from death. With peculiar pangs those victims were regretted, who were led to execution, to the number of nearly sixty, on the 27th of July, without guards, the military having been called to the aid of the con|vention on the arrest of Robespierre. It was recollected when too late, it was re|echoed through Paris with a general feeling of remorse, that one word might have rescued those last martyrs of tyranny from death, and that yet they were suf|fered to perish.

If any private individual had from the gallery, or at the bar of the convention, demanded a respite, there is no doubt it would immediately have been granted. The heart dilates at the idea of that sub|lime happiness which he would have prepared for himself, who should thus have rescued the innocent. What evil could malignity or misfortune have in|flicted

upon a mind, which could have re|pelled them with the consciousness of such an action? But tyranny, like "guilt, makes cowards of us all;" every man trembled for himself; the event of the day yet hung in suspense, and the suf|ferers were left to die.

Soon after the execution of Robes|pierre, the committee of general safety appointed a deputation of its members to visit the prisons, and speak the words of comfort to the prisoners; to hear from their own lips the motives of their cap|tivity, and to change the bloody rolls of proscription into registers of promised freedom. In the mean time orders for liberty arrived in glad succession; and the prisons of Paris, so lately the abodes of hopeless misery, now exhibited scenes which an angel of mercy might have contemplated with pleasure.

The first persons released from the Luxembourg were mons. and madame

Bitauby, two days after the fall of Robe|spierre. When they departed, the pri|soners, to the amount of nine hundred persons, formed a lane to see them pass; they embraced them, they bathed them with tears, they overwhelmed them with benedictions, they hailed with transport the moment which gave themselves the earnest of returning freedom: but the soul has emotions for which the lips have no utterance, and the feelings of such moments may be imagined, but cannot be defined.

Crowds of people were constantly as|sembled at the gates of the prisons, to enjoy the luxury of seeing the prisoners snatched from their living tombs, and restored to freedom: that very people, who had beheld in stupid silence the daily work of death, now melted in tears over the sufferers, and filled the air with acclamations at their release.

Among a multitude of affecting scenes

which passed at those prison-doors, where the wife, after a separation like that of death, again embraced her husband—where children clung upon the necks of their long-lost parents—none were more interesting than the unbounded trans|ports of a little boy of six years of age, the son of mons. de F_…_…, when his father met him at the gate, and while he pressed him in his arms with an emotion which choked his voice. This child was particularly remarked, having en|gaged the affections of many persons in the neighbourhood by his behaviour dur|ing his father's long confinement. He had never failed to come every day bounding along the terrace of the Lux|embourg, till he approached the walls of the prison; and when he reached the sentinel, he always pulled off his hat very respectfully, and, looking up in his face with a supplicating air, enquired, Citoyen, vous me permettrez de saluer mon

papa* 1.4? and unless when he spoke to those "who never had a son," his petition was generally granted. He then used to kiss his hands again and again to his fa|ther, and play over his sportive tricks before him, while the parent's tears fol|lowed each other in swift succession.

All the little artifices which affection had prompted to cheat the watchful seve|rity of unrelenting jailors, and soften the agonies of separation by the charm of mutual intercourse, were now disclosed. And it was found that love and friend|ship had been more vigilant than suspi|cion itself; had eluded its wakeful eye; and, in spite of triple bolts, and guards, and spies, had poured forth those effu|sions of tenderness, those assurances of fidelity not to be shaken by the frown of tyrants, which cheered the gloom of the prison, and awakened in the heart

of the captive those luxurious feelings that arise when

—sweet remembrance sooths With virtue's kindest looks the aching breast, And turns our tears to rapture.

Sometimes pieces of paper carelessly torn, and sent at different periods wrapped round fruit or vegetables, when the scat|tered scraps were rejoined by the pri|soner, communicated the tidings he was most anxious to hear. Sometimes a tender billet was found inclosed within a roasted fowl; and when the period arrived at which no nourishment was suffered to be sent to the prisoners, the fainting frame was occasionally revived by rich and cordial wines, which were conveyed on the pretence of sickness, labelled as bottles of medicine. But one of the pious frauds most successfully employed was the agency of a dog. His master was confined in the prison of the Lux|embourg,

and the faithful animal con|trived every day to get into the prison, and penetrate as far as his chamber, when he used to overwhelm him with caresses, and seem to participate in his distress. His wife, who was at liberty, but deprived of all intercourse with her husband, used to caress the dog upon his return from the prison with the same kind of emotion with which Werter gazed upon the little ragged boy whom he sent to see Charlotte when he was pre|vented from seeing her himself. At length the idea suggested itself to the lady of inclosing a billet within the dog's collar; she contrived to give her husband some intimation of her scheme, which she immediately put in practice. From that period the four-legged courier, fur|nished with his invisible packet, march|ed boldly forward every day at the ap|pointed hour through hosts of foes, and, in defiance of revolutionary edicts, laid

his dispatches and his person at his mas|ter's feet.

Paris was now converted into a scene of enthusiastic pleasure. The theatres, the public walks, the streets, resounded with the songs of rejoicing; the people indulged themselves in all the frolic gai|ety which belongs to their character; and all the world knows that joy is no where so joyous as at Paris, which seems the natural region of Pleasure, who, though scared away for a while by sullen ty|rants, soon returns upon her light wing, like the wandering dove, and appears to find on no other spot her proper place of rest.

Upon the fall of Robespierre, the ter|rible spell which bound the land of France was broken; the shrieking whirl|winds, the black precipices, the bottom|less gulphs, suddenly vanished; and re|viving nature covered the wastes with flowers, and the rocks with verdure.

All the fountains of public prosperity and public happiness were indeed poison|ed by that malignant genius, and there|fore the streams have since occasionally run bitter; but the waters are regaining their purity, are returning to their natu|ral channels, and are no longer disturb|ed and sullied in their course.

I shall, in a short time, send you an account of the events which have suc|ceeded the fall of Robespierre, and which wind up the singular drama of re|volutionary government conformably to the most rigid rules of poetical justice; or rather let me say, that we see heaven calming the doubts of human weakness on its mysterious ways, by the triumph of innocence and the expiation of guilt.

The eventful scenes of the last winter will lead us to the present moment at which revolutionary government ceases, and a new constitution is presented to the people of France. The vessel of

the state, built with toil and trouble, and cemented with blood, will soon be launch|ed. We have yet seen nothing but dis|jointed planks, and heard only the dis|cordant turbulence of the hammer and the anvil. The fabric is at length erect|ed; and it now remains to be tried, if it be framed of materials sufficiently firm and durable to defy the shock of the conflicting elements, and float majesti|cally down the stream of time.

Notes

• * 1.1

  The jailor most celebrated for his atrocities was Benoit, who had been an executioner under the orders of Collot d'Herbois at Lyons, and who at this period was appointed keeper of the Luxem|bourg. His ferocious manners formed a lamentable contrast with the gentleness of the good Benoit whom I have mentioned in my former letters. I shall subjoin an article concerning him, which I have just received from the gentleman who has translated those letters into the German language. See Appendix, No. III.
• * 1.2

  I am well.
• † 1.3

  Ah, how well I am!
• * 1.4

  Citizen, you will give me leave to kiss my hand to my papa?