The life of Napoleon Buonaparte, emperor of the French. By Sir Walter Scott.

LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 119
the poor suffered no less under scarcity of grain, protection. But Bordeaux was by this time no more
under the depreciation of assignats, and a compul- than a wealthy trading town, where the rich, tremsory levy of no less than three hundred thousand bling before the poor, were not willing to increase
men over France, to supply the enqrmous losses of their own imminent danger, by intermeddling with
the French army. But everywhere the insurrection the misfortunes of others. All doors, or nearly so,
took a royalist, and not a republican character; and of La Gironde itself, were shut against the gironalthough the girondists were received at Caen and dists, and they wandered outcasts, in the country,
elsewhere with compassion and respect, the votes suffering every extremity of toil and hunger, and
they had given in tile king's trial, and their fianatic bringingng, in some cases, death upon the friends who
zeal for a kind of government fob which France wvas entured to afford them refilge.
totally unfitted, and which those fiom whom. they Louvet alone escaped, of the six girondists wlho
obtained refuge were far from desiring, prevented took refilge in their own peculiar proillnce. Guadet,
their playing any distinguished part in the disturbed Salles, and the enthusiastic Barbaroux, were seized
districts of the west. and executed at Bordeaux, but not till the last had
Buzot seenmsto see thisin the trluesense. " It is twice attempted suicide with his pistols. IBuzot
certain," lie says, " that if we could have rested our and Petion killed themselves in extremity, and were
pretensions upon having wished to establish in found dead in a field of corn. This was the same
France a moderate government of that character, Pdtion who had been so longr the idol of the Pari.
which, according to many well-instructed persons, sians, and who, when the forfeiture of the king
best suited thle people of France" (indicating a was resolved on, had been heard to say with simple
limited monarchy), "we might have entertained vanity, " If they should force 2me to become regent
hopes of forming a formidable coalition in the de- now, I cannot see any means by which I can avoid
paltlnent of Calvados, and rallying around us all it.".Others of this unhappy party shared the same
whom ancient prejudices attached to royalty." As melancholy fate. Condorcet, who had pronounced
it was, they were only regarded as a fewv enthlu- his vote fobr the king's life, but in perpetual fetters,
siasts, whom thle example of America had induced was arrested, and poisoned himself: Rabaud de
to attempt the establishment of a republic, in a St-Etienne was betrayed by a fiiend in whoml he
country where'all hopes and wishes, save those of trusted, and was executed. Roland was found
the jacobins, and the vile rabble whom they courted dead in the high-road, accomplishing a prophecy of
and governed, were turned towards a mloderate mo- his wife, whom the jacobins had condemned to
narchy. Buzot also observed, that the many violences death, and who had declared her conviction that
mid atrocities, forced levies, and other acts of op- her husband would not long survive her. That repression practised in the name of the republic, had markable woman, happy if her high talents had, in
disgusted men with a form of government, where youth, fallen under the direction of those who could
cruelty seemed to rule over misery by the sole aid better have cultivated them, made before the Revoof terror. With more candour than some of his lutionary Tribunal a defence more umanly than the
companions, he avows his error, and admits that lie most eloquent of the girondins. The bystanders,
would, at this closing scene, have willingly united who had become amateurs in cruelty, were as much
Nwith the moderate monarchists, to establish royalty delighted with her deportlnent, as the hunter with
under the safeguard of constitutional restraints. the pulling down a noble stag. " Whlat sense,"
Several of the deputies, Louvet, Riouffe, Bar- they said; " what wit, what courage! What a
baroux, Petion, and others, united themselves with magnificent spectacle it will be to behold such a
a body of royalists of Bretagne, to whom General'woman upon the scaffold!" She nlet her death
Wimpfen had given something of the name of an with great firmness, and, as she passed the statue
armny, buat which never attained the solidity of one. of Liberty, on her road to execution, she exclaimed,
It was defeated at Vernon, and never afterwards " Ah, Liberty! what crimes are commlnitted in thy
could be again assembled. name!"
The proscribed deputies, at first with a few armed About forty-two of the girondist deputies perished
associates, afterwards entirely deserted, wandered by the guillotine, by suicide, or by the flatigue of
through the country, incurring some romantic ad- their wanderings. About twenty-four escaped these
ventures, which have been recorded by the pen perils, and were, after many and various slfierings,
of their historian, Louvet. At length, six of the recalled to the Convention, when tle jacobin inparty succeeded in obtaining the means of trans- fluence was destroyed. They owed their fall to
portation to Bordeaux, the capital of' the Gilronde the fantastic philosophy and visionary theories which
from wiich their party derived its name, and which they had adopted, not less than to their presumptuolus
those who were natives of it, remembering only the confidence, that popular assemblies, w;:hen actuated
limited society in which they had first acquired by the miost violent personal feelings, must yieldl to
their fame, had described as possessing and cherish- the weight of argumrent, as inanimate bodies obey
ing the purest principles of philosophical freedom. the impulse of external force; and that they who
Guadet had protested to his coumpanions in misfor- possess thle highest powers of oratory, caln, by mere
tune a thousand tinmes, that if liberal, honourable, elocution, take tile weight fiom clubs, the edge
and generous sentiments were chased from every fromn sabres, and the angry and brutal passions from
other corner of France, they were nevertheless those who wield them. They made no further
sure to find refuige itl La Gironde. The proscribed figure as a party in any of the state changes in
wanderers had well nigh kissed the land of refuige, France; and, in relation to their experimental rewhen they disemnbarked, as in a country of assured public, nmiay remind the reader of the presumptuou,