The Sword of Honor Part 66

"Whatever your opinions, I have always found you a man of courage,"

quoth the financier, in a voice of emotion. "If any consolation can temper the bitterness of your temporary separation, let it be the certainty that my sister and my niece, your wife, will find in me a most tender and devoted friend. I shall watch over them both."

John Lebrenn and Charlotte left with the commissioner. Monsieur Hubert and Madam Desmarais accompanied them as far as the waiting carriage, and strained them in a last adieu.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.

Eight months after the events of Thermidor just described, I, John Lebrenn, write this chapter of the story of the Sword of Honor, on the 26th Germinal, year III of the Republic (April 15, 1795).

Escaped from my prison, I lay for several weeks in hiding in a retreat offered me by the friendship of Billaud-Varenne; to him I also owed a pa.s.sport made out in another name, thanks to which I was enabled to leave Paris, gain Havre, and there take a coasting vessel for Vannes. I chose Vannes as a haven not alone because I was unknown in that retired community, but because it was close by the cradle of our family, towards which, after such excitement and such cruel political deception, I felt myself strongly attracted. At the end of about a month's sojourn in Vannes, certain then that I could continue to dwell there without danger, I wrote to my wife to rejoin me in Brittany, with her mother and our son, whom she had named Marik, and who was born the 7th Vendemiaire, year III. Thus I had the joy of being soon reunited with my family. My wife brought with her the inestimable treasure of our domestic legends, happily preserved from the clutches of Jesuit Morlet. My wound, received at the battle of the Lines of Weissenburg, having reopened, I was for some time almost helpless, and was forced to give up my trade of ironsmith. Madam Desmarais was able to lay out for us some moneys, and Charlotte proposed that they be expended in setting up a linen-drapery and cloth store in Vannes.

This business afforded my wife and mother-in-law an occupation in line with their tastes and apt.i.tudes. For my part I was able, although still very lame, to drive about in a carriage to the various markets and out into the country, to dispose of our cloth. Everything gave me to hope that my obscure name was forgotten in the hurly-burly of the Thermidorean reaction.

A short time after the arrival here of my cherished wife, we made a pilgrimage to the sacred stones of Karnak; we found them as they had lain for so many centuries. You will undertake that same pilgrimage for yourself when you have attained the age of reason, my son Marik, you to whom I bequeath this legend of the Sword of Honor, which I add to the relics of my family.

I conclude my recital of the events of the bourgeois revolution of 1789 with a few words on the last moments of the martyrs of the 9th Thermidor, the words of a hostile eye witness. What could be more touching than his account:

"Robespierre the elder was carried to the City Hall, to the Committee of Public Safety, on the 10th Thermidor, between the hours of one and two in the morning. He was carried in on a board, by several artillerymen and armed citizens. He was placed on a table in the audience hall which lay in front of the executive room of the committee. A pine box, which held some samples of bread sent from the Army of the North, was placed under his head and served in some sort as a pillow. He lay for the s.p.a.ce of nearly an hour so immobile that one might think he had ceased to live. Then he began to open his eyes. Blood flowed freely from the wound in his lower left jaw. The jawbone was shattered by a pistol shot. His shirt was b.l.o.o.d.y; he was hatless and cravatless. He wore a sky-blue coat, and trousers of nankeen; his white stockings were rolled down to his shoes. Between three and four in the morning they noticed that he held in his hand a little bag of white skin, inscribed 'At the Grand Monarch; Lecourt, outfitter to the King and his troops, St. Honore Street, near Poulies Street, Paris.' This sack he used to dispose of the clotted blood which came from his mouth. The citizens surrounded him, observing all his movements. Some of them even gave him a piece of white linen paper, which he put to the same use, keeping himself ever propped up on his left elbow, and using only his right hand. Two or three different times he was scolded at by citizens, but especially by a cannonier of the same district as himself, who reproached him, with military vigor, for his perfidy and scoundrelism. Towards six in the morning a surgeon who happened to be in the courtyard of the National Palace was called in to tend him. For precaution he placed a key in Robespierre's mouth, and found that his jaw was fractured. He drew two or three teeth, bandaged the wound, and had a hand-basin with water placed beside him. Robespierre made use of this, and also of pieces of paper folded several times, to clean out his mouth, still employing only his right hand. At the moment when it was least expected, he sat up, raised his stockings, slid quickly from the table, and ran to seat himself in an arm-chair. As soon as seated he asked for water and some clean linen. During all the time he had lain on the table, after he regained consciousness, he fixedly regarded all who surrounded him, especially those employes of the Committee of Public Safety whom he recognized. He often raised his eyes toward the platform; but apart from some almost convulsive movements, the bystanders constantly remarked in him a great impa.s.sibility, even during the dressing of his wound, which must have caused him the severest pain. His complexion, habitually bilious, a.s.sumed the pallor of death.

"At nine o'clock in the morning Couthon, and Gombeau, a conspirator of the Commune, were brought in on stretchers as far as the big staircase of the Committee, where they were deposited. The citizens detailed to watch them stood about, while a commissioner and an officer of the National Guard went to report to Billaud-Varenne, Barrere and Collot D'Herbois, then sitting in committee. They took an order to these three calling for Robespierre, Couthon and Gombeau to be removed at once to the Conciergerie Prison, a decree which was immediately carried out by the good citizens to whom had been confided the guard over the three prisoners.

"St. Just and Dumas were taken before the Committee in the audience hall, and at once taken on to the Conciergerie by those who had brought them in. St. Just gazed at the large engrossing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and said, as he pointed towards it, 'Yet it was I who got that pa.s.sed!'

"Such was the downfall of Robespierre. His agony was more cruel than his death. His erstwhile colleagues on the committees insulted him, struck at him, spat in his face; the clerks of the bureau p.r.i.c.ked him with their penknives."

So died Robespierre by the guillotine. Let us glorify, sons of Joel, the memory of this great citizen, the Incorruptible revolutionist. And as sacred for us let the memory be of the other ill.u.s.trious martyr-victims of Thermidor, like St. Just, Lebas, Couthon, Robespierre the younger; or martyrs obscure, like that throng of patriots whose blood flowed from the scaffold in torrents during the Four Days. The reaction of Thermidor smote with the guillotine without judgment; it a.s.sa.s.sinated the greater part of the last defenders of the Republic.

PART III.

NAPOLEON

CHAPTER I.

THE WHITE TERROR.

To-day, the 22nd of September, 1830, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the foundation of the French Republic in 1792, I, John Lebrenn, arrived at the sixtieth year of my life, add these pages to the legend of the Sword of Honor.

I have been for long back in Paris, established with my family in St.

Denis Street. During my stay in Brittany, beginning after the days of Thermidor, 1794, I kept track of the more important historical events by means of the journals of the period. Later, on my return to Paris, I re-entered political life and took part in the events of the Eighteenth Brumaire, the Hundred Days, and the Revolution of 1830. In the following pages I shall endeavor to reproduce briefly the princ.i.p.al deeds of these three epochs--1800, 1815, and 1830.

Should I depart this life before the completion of my task, my son Marik Lebrenn, now arrived in his thirty-seventh year, will supply my place in the work, aided thereto by the material and notes left by me, and by his own memories. I have postponed from year to year this continuation to our family legends, awaiting the accomplishment of the two prophecies which hover ever above these accounts. One has been realized, in the period from 1800 to 1814; the other has had but one approach toward success--in July of this present year 1830.

Alas, we have already seen the sinister fulfilment of the prophecy of Robespierre the Incorruptible, the martyr of Thermidor--'_The brigands have triumphed, the Revolution is lost._' The reins of the Revolution fell into hands that were corrupt, perfidious, criminal. The national representation was debauched, annihilated in the month of Brumaire by Bonaparte; _military despotism seized the power, and civil war desolated the country_.

The second prophecy of our family records--that there should be no more Kings--had already begun to move towards fulfilment. Since 1793 the tradition of republicanism had struck in the people's minds roots that were live, deep, and indestructible. The people protested against the Consulate of Bonaparte by the conspiracy of Topino Lebrun and Arena; it protested against the Empire by forming the secret society of the _Philadelphians_ and by the conspiracy of General Mallet; it protested against the Restoration by several conspiracies, among them that of the four sergeants of La Roch.e.l.le.

Let us rest firm in the a.s.surance that, despite these eclipses, the star of the Republic will yet rise over France, over the world, and our children will yet greet the appearance of the United States of Europe, the Universal Republic.

Meanwhile the disinherited shuddered and trembled before the fury of the counter-revolution. At Avignon, at Lyons, at Ma.r.s.eilles, prisoner patriots were ma.s.sacred without even the excuse the latter had when in September they put the traitors to death in the name of public safety and of the fatherland, menaced from without and within. The victims of the royalist reaction were ten times as numerous as those of the Terror.

The murders of Lyons pa.s.s all belief, and that in time of peace, without provocation or cause. In one single day and in one single prison one hundred and ninety-seven prisoners, among whom were three women, were a.s.sa.s.sinated by the royalist dandies known as the Jeunesse Doree, or "Gilded Youth." At Ma.r.s.eilles, at the St. John Fortress, two hundred and ten patriots were slashed to pieces or burned in the same day.

But let us draw the veil over these saturnalia of blood, these orgies of the White Terror, and compose our minds in thoughts of the republican armies. Our armies learned with grief of the fall of Robespierre; but then, submissive to the civil and military powers, and respecting the decrees of the Convention, they accepted the Thermidor government; and under the command of Hoche, Marceau, Jourdan, Moreau, Augereau, and Joubert, they continued to battle against the coalized Kings. Holland, freed by our arms, set itself up anew as a Republic; Prussia and Spain sued for peace and obtained it; the royalists, encouraged by the reaction, attempted again to arouse the Vendee, with the support of the English, who made a descent upon Quiberon; but Hoche snuffed out that civil war in its first flickers. The Convention modified on the 15th Thermidor, year III (August 2, 1795), the Const.i.tution of 1793. The ma.s.s of the proletariat was stripped of its political rights. According to the Const.i.tution of 1793, all citizens twenty-one years old, born and living in France, were electors, and members of the sovereign people; according to the Const.i.tution of 1795, on the contrary, it was necessary to pay a direct tax in order to be eligible to the electoral right. The Const.i.tution of the year III, further, divided the legislative power into two bodies, the Council of Five Hundred, and the Council of Ancients; to be a member of the latter, one must have attained the age of forty. The executive power, or Directorate, was to be composed of five members, chosen by the Councils, which were themselves elected by a taxpayers' and indirect vote, in two degrees. Primary a.s.semblies nominated electors, and these latter chose the deputies to the Councils.

The imposition of a tax qualification excluded the proletariat from the count, and delivered it up to the will of a reactionary bourgeoisie; hence the royalist party had not the slightest doubt of the success of its candidates. The majority of the old Convention, composed in part of lukewarm oligarchic republicans, but in the main of corrupted legislators who were opposed to a restoration of the monarchy (whose vengeance they feared, most of them having been regicides), attempted to obviate the certain success of the royalists by decreeing that two-thirds of the old members must be re-elected. This restraint imposed upon the freedom of the ballot was at once iniquitous and absurd, and paved the way for a new civil war. The Const.i.tution of the year III and the clause relative to the re-election of two-thirds of the members of the Convention was submitted to the sanction of the primary a.s.semblies, composed of taxpayers. Among these, thanks to the exclusion of the proletariat, the reaction was on top. Certain of a majority in the approaching elections, and expecting consequently to control both the Councils and Directorate, the reaction had antic.i.p.ated dealing the last blows to the expiring Republic, and re-establishing the monarchy. But defeated in their hope by the decree rendering obligatory the re-election of two-thirds of the Conventionals, the royalists incited the primary a.s.semblies against this decree. On the 11th Vendemiaire, year IV (October 3, 1795) the bourgeois and aristocratic Sections of the center of Paris--Daughters of St. Thomas and Hill of the Mills among others--came to the front of the movement, and a horde of Emigrants and ex-suspects raised an insurrection. The rebels declared the decree compelling the re-election of two-thirds of the old Conventionals an a.s.sault upon the rights of the 'sovereign people'; they took up arms and organized a council of resistance under the presidency of the Duke of Nivernais. The Convention named a committee of defense and called to its a.s.sistance the patriots of the suburbs. Twelve or fifteen hundred patriots responded to the appeal. The royalists, to the number of forty thousand men, or thereabouts, under the command of Generals Danican, Duhoux, and the ex-bodyguard Lafond, marched against the troops of the Convention, and won at first some advantage over them. Barras, commander-in-chief of the forces at the disposal of the a.s.sembly, called to his staff a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose military renown dated from the siege of Toulon. The latter hastily brought up the cannon from the camp of Sablons, made an able strategic disposition of his forces, and, with the aid of the patriots of '93, wiped out the royalist insurrection before the Church of St. Roche, on the 13th Vendemiaire, year IV. The Convention employed its last session in organizing the Councils; that of the Ancients was composed of two hundred and fifty members; the remaining elected deputies formed the Council of the Five Hundred.

The members of the Directorate elected by these Councils were Carnot, Rewbell, Lareveillere-Lepaux, Letourneur, and Barras--all of them, except Barras, men of honesty, only moderate republicans, but sincere.

The 4th Brumaire, year IV (October 26, 1795), the Convention p.r.o.nounced its own dissolution. It had been in session since the proclamation of the Republic, September 21, 1792.

CHAPTER II.

COLONEL OLIVER.

The studio of Citizen Martin, painter, member of the Council of Five Hundred, and former captain and then battalion commander of the Paris Volunteers who fought at Weissenburg, was decorated in martial fashion with pictures and sketches depicting episodes in the republican wars, placed here and there on easels; models of antique statuary and studies of nature graced the walls. On one side was a gay display composed of the epaulets of Commander Martin, his arms of war, and his military hat, whose two bullet holes bore witness to its wearer's intrepidity. One morning early in November, 1799, the painter himself was gladsomely embracing John Lebrenn, who had just deposited on a stool the traveling bag he carried.

"Well, but I'm glad to see you, my friend," said John warmly, "after so many chances and such a long separation!"

"It was made less grievous for me," rejoined Martin, "by our correspondence. What is the news of your worthy wife, your little Marik, and Madam Desmarais?"

"They were all well when I left them."

"And your cloth business--does it prosper as you would wish?"

"Our labor furnishes us the means to supply our modest wants; we desire nothing more. Our life is rolling on peacefully at Vannes, that old town of Armorica, the cradle of our family."

"I know how greatly the country should please you."

"And nevertheless, we must soon leave our nest, for it is impossible there to give my son a suitable education. In a year or two, or perhaps even sooner, we shall return to Paris, where we shall continue our Breton cloth commerce. Such, at least, is my intention and that of my dear wife and her mother."

"Hurrah! May your plan be realized, the sooner the better, my dear friend. Then we shall no longer be reduced to a correspondence for consolation."