The Sword of Honor Part 32

"Brother, by what right did the jurors who a.s.sisted at the sessions of the revolutionary tribunal inst.i.tuted on August the 17th of this year, declare the accused innocent or guilty?"

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

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

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

"John, those are the subtleties of a lawyer. Listen to what pa.s.sed before my eyes: The people elected by acclamation and installed in the prison a revolutionary tribunal of eleven jurors. The prisoners were brought before them. Then--I saw everything, I heard everything, and I swear before G.o.d, aye, on my soul and conscience, that all those who were sentenced deserved the death. My mind is clear, my thoughts calm.

Hear what I have to tell you, then you shall p.r.o.nounce between those who glorify the events of September and those who condemn them:

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

Victoria gasped for breath and continued:

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

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

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

"'Signed, Panis, Sergent, administrators.'

"Having read the decree, Manuel continued:

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

Victoria, after accentuating this fact, went on:

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

"For instance, they brought in a Knight of St. Louis, an ex-captain of the King's Huntsmen. The accused, formerly the seigneur of several parishes, enjoyed still a large fortune. His name was Journiac of St.

Meard. Here he comes before the tribunal. He gives his name and surname.

'Are you a royalist?' asks Maillard. And as, at that question, St. Meard seemed troubled, Maillard adds: 'Answer truthfully and without fear. We are here to judge not opinions but their consequences.' The Chevalier of St. Meard, a firm and loyal man, replies: 'I am a royalist, I mourn the old regime. I believe that France is essentially monarchist. I have never concealed my regrets. I have a naturally satirical spirit, and I have published in several miscellanies, adhering to my opinion, several mocking verses against the Revolution. Those are the princ.i.p.al facts charged against me. As to the rest, I have here papers which will, happily, make clear to you my innocence.' And St. Meard drew from a portfolio several sheets. They were carefully examined. Some witnesses, brought there by the merest chance, were heard for and against the accused. His defense, worked out in much detail, occupied over half an hour, and ended with these words: 'I mourn the old regime; but I have never conspired against the new. I did not flee the country; I regard as a crime the appeal to foreign arms. I hope I have proved to you, citizens, my innocence, and I believe that you will set me at liberty, to which I am much inclined both by principle and by nature.' The jurors conferred in a low voice, and in a few seconds Maillard rose, removed his hat, and said aloud, 'Prisoner at the bar, you are free.' Then, addressing three patriots armed with pikes and b.l.o.o.d.y swords, Maillard added, 'Watch over the safety of this citizen; conduct him to his home.'--"

"Ah," I broke in, experiencing a mingled sensation of compa.s.sion and horror, "the heart of man is an abyss--an abyss--one's reason is lost in trying to fathom it!"

"That is how things were conducted at the Abbey," proceeded Victoria.

"After examination and free defense I saw set at liberty Bertrand La Molleville, brother of the minister; Maton La Varenne, a lawyer; Abbot Solomon Duveyrier; and the Count of Afry, a colonel in the Swiss regiments, after he had proven an alibi from Paris during the events of the 10th of August."

And Victoria completed the account of the things she witnessed while the prisoners were being judged:

"I told you, brother, how they acquitted the innocent; now I shall show you how they performed sentence on the guilty. Let me take the case of Montmorin, the double traitor absolved by the Orleans High Court. That scandalous acquittal was one of the causes of to-day's events. The people, tired and irritated at seeing the criminals pa.s.s scatheless under the sword of the law, has done justice to itself, by striking them! Montmorin, brought before the court, showed himself haughty and arrogant; a contemptuous smile contracted his lips. 'You are Citizen Montmorin? The crimes of which you are accused are notorious. What have you to say in your defense?' Maillard asked the former minister. 'I refuse to reply; I do not recognize your right to sit upon me,' retorted Montmorin. In vain Maillard urged him to speak; the prisoner maintained an obstinate silence. 'Take the accused to La Force,' ordered Maillard, after with a look consulting the jurors, all of whom gave, by an affirmative nod of the head, their approval of the sentence of the Count of Montmorin."

"But Maillard had just ordered the prisoner to be taken to La Force?"

"A conventional phrase, to spare the condemned up to the last moment the agonies of death. 'Take the accused to La Force,' or 'Release the accused,' were the formulas for the supreme penalty. They opened before them the door that gave on the courtyard; the door closed on them, and the justiciaries performed their office."

"Strange contradiction--pity and ferocity!"

"Misled by the words p.r.o.nounced by Maillard, Montmorin quoth in a supercilious voice, 'I do not go on foot; let them call a coach.' 'It awaits you at the door,' responded Maillard. Montmorin was pushed into the courtyard, where they ended him. Bakman, the Swiss regimental colonel, also acquitted by the High Court of Orleans, underwent the same fate as Montmorin; also Protot and Valvins, both counterfeiters; Abbot Bardy, a monster who had cut his own brother to pieces, and--but we can content ourselves with these examples."

Victoria sank into somber silence; I pressed her hand compa.s.sionately, and pa.s.sed to my own room to seek in repose forgetfulness from this wretched day.

CHAPTER X.

ROYALTY ABOLISHED.

Tallien, in his account of the times, traces the events leading up to these September days; he marks among the causes of the public indignation the scandalous acquittals of the Orleans High Court, and the approach of the foreign armies, after the capture of Longwy and Verdun.

Then he proceeds:

"At the same time, a criminal exposed in the public place had the temerity to cry on the scaffold, 'Long live the King! Long live the Queen! Long live Lafayette! Long live the Prussians! To the devil with the Nation!' These utterances provoked the anger of the people, and the wretch would have perished on the instant had not the attorney of the Commune shielded him with his own body, and had him taken back to prison to be turned over to the judges. In the course of his examination he declared that for several days money had been scattered profusely in the prisons, and that, at the first opportunity, the brigands there held in durance were to be armed in the service of the counter-revolutionists!

"Moreover, no one is ignorant that it was in the prisons that the false notes put in circulation were forged; and, in fact, during the expedition of the 2nd of September, there were found in the prisons plates, paper, and all the necessary apparatus for issuing the notes.

These articles are in existence now, and are deposited in the archives of the courts....

"Soon thousands of citizens were a.s.sembled under the banners of liberty, ready to march. But before their departure, a simple and natural reflection occurred to them:

"'At the very moment that we march against the enemy,' they said, 'when we go to shed our blood in defense of the country, we do not wish to leave our fathers, our wives, our children, our old folks, exposed to the onslaughts of the reprobates shut up in the prisons. Before setting out against the foreign enemies, we must first wipe out those in our midst.'

"Such was the language of these citizens, when two refractory priests whom they were taking to the Abbey Prison, hearing some seditious cries, offered insults to the Revolution. The rage of the people was at white heat....

"The Swiss, the a.s.sa.s.sins of the people on the 10th of August, imprisoned to the number of some three hundred, were set free and incorporated in the national battalions....

"Such were the circ.u.mstances which preceded and provoked the events of September, events unquestionably terrible, and which, in time of peace would demand legal vengeance, but which, in a period of agitation, it is better to draw the veil over, leaving to the historian the task of appreciating this period of the Revolution, which, however, had many more uses than one thinks."

To wind up the portrayal of this redoubtable evolution, I take this extract from a speech of Robespierre's:

"They have spoken to you often of the events of September 2. That is the subject at which I am impatient to arrive. I shall treat it in an absolutely disinterested manner....

"The general council of the Commune, far from exciting the events of September, did its levellest to prevent them. In order to form a just idea of these occurrences, one must seek for truth not alone in calumnious orations in which they are distorted, but in the history of the Revolution. If you have the idea that the mental impulse given by the insurrection of August 10 had not entirely subsided by the beginning of September, you are mistaken. There is not a single likeness between the two periods....

"The greatest conspirators of August 10 were withdrawn from the wrath of the victorious people, who had consented to place them in the hands of a new tribunal. Nevertheless, after judging three or four minor criminals, the tribunal rested. Montmorin was acquitted, the Prince of Poix and other conspirators of like importance were fraudulently set free. Vast impositions of this character were coming to light, new proofs of the conspiracy of the court were developing daily. Nearly all the patriots wounded at the Tuileries died in the arms of their brother Parisians.

Indignation was smouldering in all hearts. A new cause burst it into flame. Many citizens had believed that the 10th of August would break the thread of the royalist conspiracies, they considered the war closed.

Suddenly the news of the taking of Longwy hurtled through Paris; Verdun had been given up, Brunswick with his army was headed for Paris. No fortified place interposed between us and our enemies. Our army, divided, almost ruined by the treasons of Lafayette, was lacking in everything. Arms had to be found, camp equipments, provisions, men. The Executive Council dissimulated neither its fears nor embarra.s.sment.

Danton appeared before the a.s.sembly, graphically pictured to it its perils and resources, and besought it to take vigorous measures. He went to the City Hall, rang the alarm bell, fired the guns, and declared the country in danger. In an instant forty thousand men, armed and equipped, were on the march to Chalons. In the midst of this universal enthusiasm the approach of the out-land armies reawakened in every breast sentiments of indignation and vengeance against the traitors who had beckoned in the enemy. Before leaving their wives and children, the citizens, the vanquishers of the Tuileries, desired the punishment of the conspirators, which had been promised them. They ran to the prisons.

Could the magistrates halt the people! for it was a movement of the people; not, as some have ridiculously supposed, a fragmentary sedition of a few rascals paid to a.s.sa.s.sinate their fellows. The Commune, they say, should have proclaimed martial law. Martial law against the people, with the enemy drawing nigh! Martial law after the 10th of August!

Martial law in favor of the accomplices of a tyranny dethroned by the people! What could the magistrates do against the determined will of an indignant population, which opposed to the magistrates' talk the memory of its own heroism on August 10, its present devotion in rushing to the front, and the long-drawn-out immunity from punishment enjoyed by the traitors?...

"They protest that innocent persons perished in these executions; they have been pleased to exaggerate the number of these. Even one, no doubt, is too many, citizens! Mourn that cruel mistake, as we have for long mourned it! Mourn even the guilty ones reserved for the law's retribution, who fell under the sword of popular justice!"

The volunteers, who in those September days enrolled in mult.i.tudes, were sent first to the intermediary camps, where they received the rudiments of military training. Thence they were sent to the army. Their courage saved France and inaugurated the victories of the Republic.

Thanks, O, G.o.d! To-day I have seen the triumph which crowns fifteen centuries of struggle maintained by our oppressed fathers against their oppressors; by slaves, serfs, and va.s.sals against Kings, n.o.bles and clergy; by the descendants of the conquered Gauls against the descendants of the Frankish conquerors.