La Vendee Part 42

"I will go down to them," said M. Henri.

"It will be no use," said Chapeau, "they will not listen to you."

"I will try them at any rate, for they have never yet disobeyed me. I know they love me, and I will ask for Adolphe's life as a favour to myself: if they persist in their cruelty, if they do kill him, I will lay down my sword, and never again raise it in La Vendee."

"If it were put off for a week, or a day, M. Henri, so that they could get cool; if you could just consent to his being hung, but say that he was to have four-and-twenty hours to prepare himself, and then at the end of that time they wouldn't care about it: mightn't that do? Wouldn't that be the best plan, Mademoiselle?"

"No," said Henri. "I will not stoop to tell them a falsehood; nor if I did so, would they ever believe me again." And he walked towards the pa.s.sage, intending to go down to the front-door.

"Stop, Henri, stop a moment!" said Agatha, "I will go down to them. I will speak to them. They are not accustomed to hear me speak to them in numbers, as they are to you, and that of itself will make them inclined to listen to me. I will beg them to spare the unfortunate man, and I think they will not refuse me."

She got up and walked to the door, and her brother did not attempt to stop her.

"Let me go alone, Henri," said she. "You may, at any rate, be sure that they will not hurt me." And, without waiting for his reply, she descended the stairs, and walked into the hall. When Chapeau left them, the crowd were collected immediately in the front of the house and on the steps, but none of them had yet forced their way into the chateau; since he had gone upstairs, however, they had pushed open the door, and now filled the hall; although their accustomed respect for the persons and property of those above them, had still kept them from breaking into the room, in which they knew were M. de Lescure and Adolphe Denot. The foremost of them drew back when they saw Agatha come among them, and as she made her way to the front-door, they retreated before her, till she found herself standing on the top of the steps, and surrounded by what seemed to her a countless crowd of heads. There was a buzz of many voices among them, and she stood there silent before them a moment or two, till there should be such silence as would enable them to hear her.

Agatha Larochejaquelin had never looked more beautiful than she did at this time. Her face was more than ordinarily pale, for her life had lately been one of constant watching and deep anxiety; but hers was a countenance which looked even more lovely without than with its usual slight tinge of colour. Her beautiful dark-brown hair was braided close to her face, and fastened in a knot behind her head. She was dressed in a long white morning wrapper, which fell quite down over her feet, and added in appearance to her natural high stature. She seemed to the noisy peasants, as she stood there before them, sad-looking and sorrowful, but so supremely beautiful, to be like some G.o.ddess who had come direct from heaven to give them warning and encouragement. The hum of their voices soon dropped, and they stood as silent before her, as though no strong pa.s.sion, no revenge and thirst for blood had induced them, but a moment before, all but to mutiny against the leaders who had led them so truly, and loved them so well.

"Friends, dear friends," she began in her sweet voice, low, but yet plainly audible to those whom she addressed; and then she paused a moment to think of the words she would use to them, and as she did so they cheered her loudly, and blessed her, and a.s.sured her, in their rough way, how delighted they were to have saved her and the Marquis from their enemies.

"Dear friends," she continued, "I have come to thank you for the readiness and kindness with which you have hurried to my protection--to tell you how grateful I and mine are for your affection, and at the same time to ask a favour from your hands."

"G.o.d bless you, Mademoiselle. We will do anything for Mademoiselle Agatha. We all know that Mademoiselle is an angel. We will do anything for her," said different voices in the crowd. "Anything but pardon the traitor who has insulted her," said the man who had been most prominent in demanding Denot's death. "Anything at all--anything, without exception. We will do anything we are asked, whatever it is, for Mademoiselle Agatha," said some of the younger men among the crowd, whom her beauty made more than ordinarily enthusiastic in her favour.

"Mademoiselle will not sully her beautiful lips to ask the life of a traitor," said another. "We will do anything else; but Denot must die."

"Yes, Denot must die," exclaimed others. "He shall die; he is not fit to live. When the traitor is hung, we will do anything, go anywhere, for Mademoiselle."

"Ah! friends," said she, "the favour I would ask of you is to spare the life of this miserable young man. Hear me, at any rate," she continued, for there was a murmur among the more resolute of Denot's enemies. "You will not refuse to hear what I say to you. You demand vengeance, you say, because he has betrayed your cause, and insulted me. If I can forgive the insult, if my brother can, surely you should do so too.

Think, dear friends, what my misery must be, if on my account you shed the blood of this poor creature. You say he has betrayed the cause for which you are fighting. It is true, he has done so; but it is not only your cause which he has betrayed. Is it not my cause also? Is it not my brother's? Is it not M. de Lescure's? And if we can forgive him, should not you also do so too? He has lived in this house as though he were a child of my father's. You know that my brother has treated him as a brother. Supposing that you, any of you, had had a brother who has done as he has done, would you not still pray, in spite of his crimes, that he might be forgiven? I know you all love my brother. He deserves from you that you should love him well, for he has proved to you that he loves you. He--Henri Larochejaquelin--your own leader, begs you to forgive the crime of his adopted brother. Have we not sufficient weight with you--are we not near enough to your hearts, to obtain from you this boon?"

"We will, we will," shouted they; "we will forgive--no, we won't forgive him, but we'll let him go; only, Mademoiselle, let him go from this--let him not show himself here any more. There, lads, there's an end of it.

Give Momont back the rope. We will do nothing to displease M. Henri and Mademoiselle Agatha," and then they gave three cheers for the inhabitants of Durbelliere; and Agatha, after thanking them for their kindness and their courtesy, returned into the house.

For some days after the attack and rescue, there was great confusion in the chateau of Durbelliere. The peasants by degrees returned to their own homes, or went to Chatillon, at which place it was now intended to muster the whole armed royalist force which could be collected in La Vendee. Chatillon was in the very centre of the revolted district, and not above three leagues from Durbelliere; and at this place the Vendean leaders had now determined to a.s.semble, that they might come to some fixed plan, and organize their resistance to the Convention.

De Lescure and Henri together agreed to give Santerre his unconditional liberty. In the first place, they conceived it to be good policy to abandon the custody of a man whom, if kept a prisoner, they were sure the Republic would make a great effort to liberate; and who, if he ever again served against them at all, would, as they thought, be less inclined to exercise barbarity than any other man whom the Convention would be likely to send on the duty. Besides, Agatha and the Marquis really felt grateful to Santerre, for having shown a want of that demoniac cruelty with which they supposed him to have been imbued; and it was, therefore, resolved to escort him personally to the northern frontier of La Vendee, and there set him at liberty, but to detain his soldiers prisoners at Chatillon; and this was accordingly done.

They had much more difficulty in disposing of Denot. Had he been turned loose from the chateau, to go where he pleased, and do what he pleased, he would to a certainty have been killed by the peasantry. De Lescure asked Santerre to take charge of him, but this he refused to do, saying that he considered the young man was a disgrace to any party, or any person, who had aught to do with him, and that he would not undertake to be responsible for his safety.

Denot himself would neither say or do anything. Henri never saw him; but de Lescure had different interviews with him, and did all in his power to rouse him to some feeling as to the future; but all in vain. He usually refused to make any answer whatever, and when he did speak, he merely persisted in his declaration that he was willing to die, and that if he were left alive, he had no wish at all as to what should become of him. It was at last decided to send him to his own house at Fleury, with a strong caution to the servants there that their master was temporarily insane; and there to leave him to his chance. "When he finds himself alone, and disregarded," said de Lescure, "he will come to his senses, and probably emigrate: it is impossible for us now to do more for him. May G.o.d send that he may live to repent the great crime which he has attempted."

Now again everything was bustle and confusion at Durbelliere. Arms and gunpowder were again collected. The men again used all their efforts in a.s.sembling the royalist troops, the women in preparing the different necessaries for the army. The united families were at Durbelliere, and there was no longer any danger of their separation, for at Clisson not one stone was left standing upon another.

VOLUME III.

CHAPTER I.

ROBESPIERRE'S CHARACTER.

We will now jump over a s.p.a.ce of nearly three months, and leaving the chateaux of royalist La Vendee, plunge for a short while into the heart of republican Paris. In the Rue St. Honore lived a cabinet-maker, named Duplay, and in his house lodged Maximilian Robespierre, the leading spirit in the latter and more terrible days of the Revolution. The time now spoken of was the beginning of October, 1793; and at no period did the popularity and power of that remarkable man stand higher.

The whole government was then vested in the Committee of Public Safety--a committee consisting of twelve persons, members of the Convention, all of course ultra-democrats, over the majority of whom Robespierre exercised a direct control. No despot ever endured ruled with so absolute and stringent a dominion as that under which this body of men held the French nation. The revolutionary tribunal was now established in all its horror and all its force. A law was pa.s.sed by the Convention, in September, which decreed that all suspected people should be arrested and brought before this tribunal; that n.o.bles, lawyers, bankers, priests, men of property, and strangers in the land, should be suspected unless known to be acting friends and adherents of the ultra-revolutionary party; that the punishment of such persons should be death; and that the members of any revolutionary tribunal which had omitted to condemn any suspected person, should themselves be tried, and punished by death. Such was the law by which the Reign of Terror was organized and rendered possible.

At this time the Girondists were lying in prison, awaiting their trial and their certain doom. Marie Antoinette had been removed from the Temple to the Conciergerie, and her trial was in a day or two about to commence. Her fate was already fixed, and had only to be p.r.o.nounced.

Danton had retired from Paris to his own province, sick with the shedding of so much blood, jealous of the pre-eminence which Robespierre had a.s.sumed; watching his opportunity to return, that he might sell the republic to the royalists; equally eager, let us believe, to save his country as to make his fortune, but destined to return, only that he also might bend his neck beneath the monster guillotine. Marat, the foulest birth of the revolution, whose licentious heat generated venom and rascality, as a dunghill out of its own filth produces adders'

eggs--Marat was no more. Carnot, whose genius for war enabled the French nation, amidst all its poverty and intestine contests, even in the pangs and throes of that labour in which it strove to bring forth a const.i.tution, to repulse the forces of the allied nations, and prepare the way for future conquests, was a member of the all-powerful Committee, and we cannot suppose that he acted under the dictation of Robespierre; but if he did not do so, at any rate he did not interfere with him. The operations of a campaign, in which the untaught and ill-fed army of republican France had to meet the troops of England, Flanders, Prussia, Austria, Sardinia, and Spain, besides those of royalist France, were sufficient to occupy even the energies of Carnot.

Robespierre, in the Convention and in the Committee, was omnipotent; but he also had his master, and he knew it. He knew that he could only act, command, and be obeyed, in union with, and dependence on, the will of the populace of Paris; and the higher he rose in that path of life which he marked out for himself with so much precision, and followed with so much constancy, the more bitterly his spirit chafed at the dependence.

He knew it was of no avail to complain of the people to the people, and he seldom ventured to risk his position by opposing the wishes of the fearful masters whom he served, but at length he was driven to do so, and at length he fell.

Half a century has pa.s.sed since Robespierre died, and history has become peculiarly conversant with his name. Is there any one whose character suffers under a more wide-spread infamy? The abomination of whose deeds has become more notorious? The tale of whose death has been oftener told; whose end, horrid, fearful, agonized, as was that of this man, has met with less sympathy? For fifty years the world has talked of, condemned, and executed Robespierre. Men and women, who have barely heard the names of Pitt and Fox, who know not whether Metternich is a man or a river, or one of the United States, speak of Robespierre as of a thing accursed. They know, at any rate, what he was--the demon of the revolution; the source of the fountain of blood with which Paris was deluged; the murderer of the thousands whose bodies choked the course of the Loire and the Rhone. Who knows not enough of Robespierre to condemn him? Who abstains from adding another malediction to those which already load the name of the King of the Reign of Terror.

Yet it is not impossible that some apologist may be found for the blood which this man shed; that some quaint historian, delighting to show the world how wrong has been its most a.s.sured opinions, may attempt to vindicate the fame of Robespierre, and strive to wash the blackamoor white. Are not our old historical a.s.surances everywhere a.s.serted? Has it not been proved to us that crooked-backed Richard was a good and politic King; and that the iniquities of Henry VIII are fabulous?

whereas the agreeable predilections of our early youth are disturbed by our hearing that glorious Queen Bess, and learned King James, were mean, bloodthirsty, and selfish.

I am not the bold man who will dare to face the opinion of the world, and attempt to prove that Robespierre has become infamous through prejudice. He must be held responsible for the effects of the words which he spoke, and the things which he did, as other men are. He made himself a scourge and a pestilence to his country; therefore, beyond all other men, he has become odious, and therefore, historian after historian, as they mention his name, hardly dare, in the service of truth, to say one word to lessen his infamy.

Yet Robespierre began his public life with aspirations of humanity, which never deserted him; and resolutions as to conduct, to which he adhered with a constancy never surpa.s.sed. What shall we say are the qualifications for a great and good man?--Honesty. In spite of his infamy, Robespierre's honesty has become proverbial. Moral conduct--the life he led even during the zenith of his power, and at a time when licentiousness was general, and morality ridiculous, was characterized by the simplicity of the early Quakers. Industry--without payment from the State, beyond that which he received as a member of the Convention, and which was hardly sufficient for the wants of his simple existence, he worked nearly night and day in the service of the State. Constancy of purpose--from the commencement of his career, in opposition at first to ridicule and obscurity, then to public opinion, and lastly to the combined efforts of the greatest of his countrymen, he pursued one only idea; convinced of its truth, sure of its progress, and longing for its success. Temperance in power--though in reality governing all France, Robespierre a.s.sumed to himself none of the attributes or privileges of political power. He took to himself no high place, no public situation of profit or grandeur. He was neither haughty in his language, nor imperious in his demeanour. Love of country--who ever showed a more devoted love? For his country he laboured, and suffered a life which surely in itself could have had nothing attractive; the hope of the future felicity of France alone fed his energies, and sustained his courage. His only selfish ambition was to be able to retire into private life and contemplate from thence the general happiness which he had given to his country. Courage--those who have carefully studied his private life, and have learnt what he endured, and dared to do in overcoming the enemies Of his system, can hardly doubt his courage.

Calumny or error has thrown an unmerited disgrace over his last wretched days. He has been supposed to have wounded himself in an impotent attempt to put an end to his life. It has been ascertained that such was not the fact, the pistol by which he was wounded having been fired by one of the soldiers by whom he was arrested. He is stated also to have wanted that firmness in death which so many of his victims displayed.

They triumphed even in their death. Louis and Vergniaud, Marie Antoinette, and Madame Roland, felt that they were stepping from life into glory, and their step was light and elastic. Robespierre was sinking from existence into infamy. During those fearful hours, in which nothing in life was left him but to suffer, how wretched must have been the reminiscences of his career! He, who had so constantly pursued one idea, must then have felt that that idea had been an error; that he had all in all been wrong; that he had waded through the blood of his countrymen to reach a goal, which, bright and luminous as it had appeared, he now found to be an ignis fatuus. Nothing was then left to him. His life had been a failure, and for the future he had no hope. His body was wounded and in tortures; his spirit was dismayed by the insults of those around him, and his soul had owned no haven to which death would give it an escape. Could his eye have been lit with animation as he ascended the scaffold! Could his foot have then stepped with confidence! Could he have gloried in his death! Poor mutilated worm, agonised in body and in soul. Can it be ascribed to want of courage in him, that his last moments were pa.s.sed in silent agony and despair?

Honesty, moral conduct, industry, constancy of purpose, temperance in power, courage, and love of country: these virtues all belonged to Robespierre; history confesses it, and to what favoured hero does history a.s.sign a fairer catalogue? Whose name does a brighter galaxy adorn? With such qualities, such attributes, why was he not the Washington of France? Why, instead of the Messiah of freedom, which he believed himself to be, has his name become a bye-word, a reproach, and an enormity? Because he wanted faith! He believed in nothing but himself, and the reasoning faculty with which he felt himself to be endowed. He thought himself perfect in his own human nature, and wishing to make others perfect as he was, he fell into the lowest abyss of crime and misery in which a poor human creature ever wallowed. He seems almost to have been sent into the world to prove the inefficacy of human reason to effect human happiness. He was gifted with a power over common temptation, which belongs to but few. His blood was cool and temperate, and yet his heart was open to all the softer emotions. He had no appet.i.te for luxury; no desire for pomp; no craving for wealth. Among thousands who were revelling in sensuality, he kept himself pure and immaculate. If any man could have said, I will be virtuous; I, of myself, unaided, trusting to my own power, guarding myself by the light of my own reason; I will walk uprightly through the world, and will shed light from my path upon my brethren, he might have said so. He attempted it, and history shows us the result. He attempted, una.s.sisted, to be perfect among men, and his memory is regarded as that of a loathsome plague, defiling even the unclean age in which he lived.

At about five o'clock in the afternoon on an October day, in 1793, Robespierre was sitting alone in a small room in the house of his friend, Simon Duplay, the cabinet-maker. This room, which was the bed-chamber, reception-room, and study of the arbitrary Dictator, was a garret in the roof of Duplay's humble dwelling. One small window, opening upon the tiles, looked into the court-yard in which were stored the planks or blocks necessary to the cabinet-maker's trade. A small wooden bedstead, a long deal table, and four or five rush-bottomed chairs, const.i.tuted the whole furniture of the apartment.

A deal shelf ran along the wail beneath the slanting roof, and held his small treasure of books; and more than half of this humble row were ma.n.u.scripts of his own, which he had numbered, arranged, and bound with that methodical exactness, which was a part of his strange character.

He was sitting at a table covered with papers, on which he had now been laboriously preparing instructions for those who, under him, carried on the rule of terror; and arranging the measured words with which, at the Jacobins, he was to encourage his allies to uphold him in the b.l.o.o.d.y despotism which he had seized.

The weight upon his mind must have been immense, for Robespierre was not a thoughtless, wild fanatic, carried by the mult.i.tude whether they pleased: he led the people of Paris, and led them with a fixed object.

He was progressing by one measure deeply calculated to the age of reason, which he was a.s.sured was coming; and that one measure was the extermination of all who would be likely to oppose him. The extent of his power, the multiplicity of his cares, the importance of his every word and act, and the personal danger in which he lived, might have ruffled the equanimity of a higher-spirited man than he is supposed to have been; but yet, to judge from his countenance, his mind was calm; the traces of thought were plain on his brow, but there was none of the impatience of a tyrant about his mouth, nor of the cruelty of an habitual blood-shedder in his eyes. His forehead showed symptoms of deep thought, and partially redeemed the somewhat mean effect of his other features. The sharp nose, the thin lips, the cold grey eyes, the sallow sunken cheeks, were those of a precise, pa.s.sionless, self-confident man, little likely to be led into any excess of love or hatred, but little likely also to be shaken in his resolve either for good or evil. His face probably was a true index to his character.

Robespierre was not a cruel man; but he had none of that humanity, which makes the shedding of blood abominable to mankind, and which, had he possessed it, would have made his career impossible.

His hair was close curled in rolls upon his temples, and elaborately powdered. The front and cuffs of his shirt were not only scrupulously clean, but starched and ironed with the most exact care. He wore a blue coat, a white waistcoat, and knee-breeches. His stockings, like his shirt, were snow-white, and the silver buckles shone brightly in his shoes. No one could have looked less like a French republican of 1793 than did Robespierre.

He had just completed a letter addressed jointly to Thurreau and Lech.e.l.le, the commissioners whom he had newly appointed to the horrid task of exterminating the royalists of La Vendee. Santerre had undertaken this work, and had failed in it, and it was now said that he was a friend and creature of Danton's; that he was not to be trusted as a republican; that he had a royalist bias; that it would be a good thing that his head should roll, as the heads of so many false men had rolled, under the avenging guillotine. Poor Santerre, who, in the service of the Republic, had not shunned the infamy of presiding at the death of Louis.

He, however, contrived to keep his burly head on his strong shoulders, and to brew beer for the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire.

Thurreau and Lech.e.l.le, it was correctly thought, would be surer hands at performing the work to be done. They had accepted the commission with alacrity, and were now on the road to commence their duties. That duty was to leave neither life nor property in the proscribed district. "Let La Vendee become a wilderness, and we will re-populate it with patriots, to whom the fertility of fields, rich with the blood of traitors, shall be a deserved reward." Thus had Robespierre now written; and as he calmly read over, and slowly copied, his own despatch, he saw nothing in it of which he could disapprove, as a reasoning being animated with a true love of his country. "Experience has too clearly proved to us that the offspring of slaves, who willingly kiss the rod of tyrants, will have no higher aspiration than their parents. In allowing them to escape, we should only create difficulties for our own patriot children.

Hitherto the servants of the Convention have scotched the snake, but have not killed it; and the wounded viper has thus become more furiously venomous than before. It is for you, citizens, to strike a death-blow to the infamy of La Vendee. It will be your glory to a.s.sure the Convention that no royalist remains in the western provinces to disturb the equanimity of the Republic." Such were the sentiments he had just expressed, such the instructions he had given, calmly meditating on his duty as a ruler of his country; and when he had finished his task, and seen that no expression had escaped him of which reason or patriotism could disapprove, he again placed the paper before him, to write words of affection to the brother of his heart.

Robespierre's brother was much younger than himself; but there was no one whom he more thoroughly trusted with State secrets, and State services of importance; and no one who regarded him with so entire a devotion. Robespierre the elder believed only in himself; Robespierre the younger believed in his brother, and his belief was fervid and a.s.sured, as is always that of an enthusiast. To him, Maximilian appeared to be the personification of every virtue necessary to mankind. Could he have been made to understand the opinion which the world would form of his brother's character, he would have thought that it was about to be smitten with a curse of general insanity. Robespierre's vanity was flattered by the adoration of his brother, and he loved his worshipper sincerely. The young man was now at Lyons, propagating the doctrines of his party; and in his letters to him, Robespierre mingled the confidential greetings of an affectionate brother with those furious demands for republican energy, which flooded the streets of the towns of France with blood, and choked the rivers of France with the bodies of the French.

"I still hope," he wrote, slowly considering the words as they fell from his pen, "for the day when this work will have been done--for the happy day when we shall feel that we have prevailed not only against our enemies, but over our own vices; but my heart nearly fails me, when I think how little we have yet effected. I feel that among the friends whom we most trust, those who are actuated by patriotism alone are lukewarm. l.u.s.t, avarice, plunder, and personal revenge, are the motives of those who are really energetic . . . It is very difficult for me to know my friends; this also preys heavily on my spirits. The gold of the royalists is as plentiful as when the wretched woman, who is now about to die, was revelling in her voluptuous pride at Versailles. I know that the hands of many, who call themselves patriots, are even now grasping at the wages for which they are to betray the people. A day of reckoning shall come for all of them, though the list of their names is a long one. Were I to write the names of those whom I know to be true, I should be unable to insert in it above five or six. . . . I look for your return to Paris with more than my usual impatience. Eleanor's quiet zeal, and propriety of demeanour, is a great comfort to me; but even with her, I feel that I have some reserve. I blame myself that it is so, for she is most trustworthy; but, as yet, I cannot throw it off. With you alone I have none. Do not, however, leave the work undone; remember that those who will not toil for us, will a.s.suredly toil against us.

There can be none neutral in the battle we are now waging. A man can have committed no greater crime against the Republic than having done nothing to add to its strength. I know your tender heart grieves at the death of every traitor, though your patriotism owns the necessity of his fall. Remember that the prosperity of every aristocrat has been purchased by the infamy of above a hundred slaves! How much better is it that one man should die, than that a hundred men should suffer worse than death!"