The Sword of Honor Part 54

The brigands of the Vendee themselves gave the signal and set the example for murder and ma.s.sacre. 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 a.s.sa.s.sins. The parish curate, who had taken the oath to the Const.i.tution, 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 ma.s.s standing in blood and upon mutilated corpses. In the swamps of Niort six hundred children of Nantes were rounded up, ma.s.sacred, 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 princ.i.p.ality 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 pa.s.sed 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-n.o.bles. The following decrees are pa.s.sed:

The National a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sa.s.sination, 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 G.o.d! 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 a.s.surance. She left the audience chamber after the p.r.o.nouncement 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, s.e.xtidi, 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 Conde. 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of red, and large white lapels, which left displayed the vest of white cloth, like the trousers; black knit leggins, with leather b.u.t.tons, reaching to the knee; a flat three-cornered hat, surmounted with a plume of red horse-hair, falling beside the c.o.c.kade; 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:

"This citizen asks for twenty bottles of Moselle wine, to be paid for, of course. Isn't what I'm saying to you clear enough--barbarian!"