49. The Revolution —(continued)
CHAPTER XLIX. The Revolution —(continued) (1792-1795)
After the death of the king the people found themselves not much happier or more prosperous than they had been before. There was a riot in Paris for bread, of which scarcely any could be found; and a body of washerwomen came one day to complain to the Convention that there was no soap to be had in Paris. But what was worse than this, the different parties who had joined together to make the Revolution now began to quarrel with each other. Some of the men who voted for the king's death had really been his friends; they had voted against him partly from cowardice and partly because they thought it the best way of helping him, as, if they pleased the Jacobins by saying he ought to die, they hoped afterwards to be able to persuade them to change his punishment to something less severe. When they found their hopes were vain they were much grieved at what had happened, and they began to hate the Jacobins, who were the men most pleased by the death of the king, and to look upon them as their enemies.
The friends of Louis were called the Girondists. They had wished for a revolution of a much quieter and more orderly kind. They did not like to see the laws broken, and they were not really in earnest about helping to free the people from all the wrongs they had had to bear, but wanted a republic which would be like those of the Greeks and Romans of old times; for the Girondists were most of them learned men, and knew about old times and what had happened in them.
The Jacobins, on the other side, were called the Mountain, because they used to sit in the Assembly in a part of the hall which was raised up above where the others were. The men of the Mountain were the most violent of all the people who took part in the Revolution, and they looked upon the Girondists as traitors to the people, and considered themselves as the people's special defenders. Thus there were constant disputes going on; difficulties in Paris grew greater rather than less. At last the people rose up in a body, went to the Convention, and obliged the members to arrest all the leaders of the Girondists. There were thirty-two chief leaders, who were all arrested at once, and some of them were afterwards brought up for trial, and put to death. Others escaped from their prisons and had strange adventures of many kinds while they were trying to fly for their lives out of France, or into distant parts of the country, where they thought they should be safe from their enemies.
The Jacobins had made an easy arrangement for having every one who resisted them condemned quickly, so that there might be no fear of the prisoner escaping when he was tried for treason to the people. (They) had set up a kind of court of law or tribunal, which was called the Revolutionary Tribunal, where any one who was accused of being an enemy of the Republic was brought up and tried, and where almost every one who was tried was found guilty and put to death. The men who were to judge in these courts were chosen by the people, and so were pretty sure at this time to be Jacobins.
The way in those days of executing prisoners was by what was called a guillotine, a kind of axe fastened in a frame, instead of being held in a man's hand, as was done in (old) times. The prisoner had to lay his head on a ledge like a window ledge, and the axe dropped down on his neck from above, so as to cut his head off. In this way the king had died, and most of the other people who had been put to death in the Revolution, except those who had been hanged to the lanterns in the streets. The guillotine had been invented by a doctor after whom it had been named — a kind man who wished to spare people pain by making their deaths as quick as possible. It is said that he was himself put to death by one of these machines that he had invented. The Revolutionary Tribunal was always sending people to the guillotine, more and more every day. There were tribunals of this sort in every town in France. The Girondists were tried before the Paris tribunal, and twenty-one of them were guillotined together.
Before their death one of their worst enemies had also ended his life. Marat was one of the three most violent men of the Revolution. He had made himself hated by his cruelty, and by continually stirring up the people to fierce acts and risings against the Convention and every one in power.
There lived at Rouen a young woman, named Charlotte Corday, who was a friend of the Girondists, and who was made very angry by hearing of their arrest and trial. She had heard much about Marat and his cruelties, and she fancied that if he were but dead, the country would be quiet once more, and the troubles of the Revolution come to an end.
Some of his enemies had once brought him up before the tribunal and had a kind of trial, hoping that he might be sentenced to death or some other punishment for his bad deeds; but the tribunal was on his side, and he had been declared innocent. Charlotte Corday saw that the only chance of his being put to death was that some private person should do it She knew of no one who would do it but herself. She went to Paris, asked to see Marat, and found him sitting in a covered bath, where he was accustomed to write and do business. She began to talk to him about the affairs of Rouen, and suddenly stabbed him in the heart with a large knife which she had brought with her. He died at once. His friends, who heard him cry out, rushed in, and Charlotte Corday was taken prisoner. Three days afterwards she was tried for murder, and sentenced to death.
She declared solemnly at the trial that it was she who killed Marat; that she had killed one villain to save a hundred thousand innocent people, one fierce monster to give rest to her country. She was taken that same evening to the guillotine, and there her head was cut off. She was perfectly firm and brave to the end of her life, and looked so young and good and beautiful that even the people who hated her most, because she had murdered their friend, were sorry for her, and could scarcely help admiring her. Marat was buried with great pomp and honour, and speeches in praise of his virtues were made all over France.
At about this time the Convention made a new set of rules for the government of France. There had now been several such made, and it had not been found that the country was much the better for them. The new plan gave still more power than they had had before to the common people, who were all to have a share in choosing the deputies who were to make the laws of the country. These deputies were to be chosen new every year. In order to show more decidedly that a new state of things had begun, all the weights, measures, and even the names of the days and months were changed, as well as the names and size of the different provinces into which France was divided. There were to be no more weeks, the year was divided in decades, each decade having ten days instead of seven. There was to be no Sunday, but every tenth day was to be a day of rest, so that there were three instead of four days of rest in every month. This arrangement lasted in France for twelve years, after which it was given up, and the old names were used again for days and months, though the weights and measures in France have never been altered back to the old plan, the new one being better and more convenient. The money of France too, has stayed as it was made at the time of the Revolution, and the division of the country into eighty-five departments, instead of thirty-six provinces, has remained unaltered. The names invented for the months were taken from the different natural events that might be expected to happen in them. This is a list of them.
January, changed to Nivose, the snowing month. February „ „ Pluviose, the rainy month. March „ „ Ventose, the windy month. April „ „ Germinal, the budding month. May „ „ Floreal, the flowery month. June „ „ Prairial, the meadows month. July „ „ Messidor, the harvest month. Augost „ „ Thermidor, the heat month. September „ „ Fructidor, the fruitful month. October „ „ Vendemiaire, the vintage month. November „ „ Brumaire, the foggy month. December „ „ Frimaire, the freezing month.
In the month of Vendemiaire or October, another person of great importance was brought up for trial in the Revolutionary Court at Paris. This was the former Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette. When King Louis was put to death nine months before, she was left living in the Temple with her two children and Madame Elizabeth, her sister-in-law. In August she was separated from them, and shut up in the most miserable prison that was to be found in Paris. It was small, damp, and gloomy, with nothing in it but an old mattress and a bed of straw. She was not allowed to have any employment. Madame Elizabeth wished to send her some knitting, but her jailers would not let her have it, lest she should try to kill herself with the knitting needles.
When, after two months of this horrible treatment, the queen was brought up for trial, there was much excitement in Paris, and the few friends she had left tried to stir up the people to do something in her defence, but it was of no use. She was an Austrian by birth, and had always been considered as a foreigner, and it was now thought unsafe for the country that she should be kept alive. She was accused of the same crimes as the king. She was still beautiful, though she looked old and sad, and all her hair had turned white. Nothing was found for which she could justly be punished, but it had been already (settled) that she was to die, and sentence of death was passed upon her. Nine months, after the death of her husband, she was taken in a cart to the place of execution, and there her head was cut off, and all her many troubles were ended; while a crowd of people looked on, horrified, but, on the whole, wishing her to die. Her last words were: "O God, pardon my enemies; farewell, my beloved children, I am about to join your father." A few months after her, Madame Elizabeth, whom she had charged to take care of her children, and be like a second mother to them, was also brought up for trial and guillotined. She died bravely, cheering her friends who were to die with her by her last kind words. The children of the king and queen were left alone in the Temple; the little prince was now about nine years old and his sister fourteen. They were not together, the little boy having been taken away from the others before his mother left them. He had been kept since in a room by himself with no companions or amusement — no one to teach him or talk to him except the man supposed to be in charge of him, who treated him unkindly, and at last cruelly, not even giving him clean clothes or fresh air.
He grew dull and silent; by degrees he fell ill and seemed to become almost an idiot. His keepers asked him questions about his mother, and persuaded him to say things which they repeated at her trial, and which they told in such a way as to make it seem that she had done wicked and horrible things of which she was entirely innocent. The little prince heard of this, and was so much grieved that he declared he would never speak again, and for some time kept his word. After the worst part of the Revolution was over, he had a kinder guardian, who tried to amuse him and to (bring back) his health by kindness, but it was too late, and the poor boy died a year or two after his father's death. His sister lived to escape (out of) her prison, and grew up to be a woman, and to write an account of all that she and her relations had suffered.
After this a time began in France known by the name of the Reign of Terror, and no name could better describe the state of the French people at that time. All over France the Revolutionary tribunals were at work, (having up) before them one person after another, trying them as enemies to the Revolution, and sending them to the guillotine. In some towns the guillotine was thought too slow. At Nantes, on the river Loire, a company of women, with their babies in their arms, were sent on a flat-bottomed boat into the middle of the river. The bottom of the boat then opened, the water rushed in, the women found themselves struggling in the river, and soon all sank and were drowned. This happened (one) night after (another); sometimes old men or clergymen were sent out instead of women; but whoever went out, the people along the banks took good care that no one should come back alive. At the same place five hundred children, girls and boys, all under fourteen, were brought out in a body, and arranged in lines to be shot. They were so short that many of them were not touched by the bullets, which went over their heads. After the first shot they broke out from their lines and rushed up to the soldiers round them, begging for their lives; but the soldiers killed them all with their bayonets.
In other cities the same kind of executions were going on. There was at this time a war in a western province of France called La Vendée, where the people, peasants and noblemen alike, had risen up to resist the Revolution, and do what was possible for the royal family while they lived. These people made a brave struggle, but were defeated at last, and it was some of the prisoners from this war who were the most cruelly treated, and put to death with the worst tortures. One of the places attacked by the Revolutionists was Saint Denis, where the kings of France had been buried. Their tombs were opened, and many of the bodies were found presearved, so that they looked just the same as when they were buried. They were taken out of their graves and destroyed.
Soon afterwards, it was resolved that a great feast should be held in honour of Reason. The people who had given up so many of their old beliefs had also given up their religion. Many of them said that they believed all they had been taught of God was a fable, and that there was no God; but still wishing for something to worship, they said that Reason should be their God, They dressed up a woman whom they called Reason, and then held a feast in her honour, carrying her on their shoulders, and dancing and singing before her. The same was done in most of the other towns of France. It was as if for a time people had lost their senses.
In Paris, meanwhile, the prisons were crowded more and more. There were sometimes as many as eight thousand prisoners shut up at one time. Every evening carts went round to the prisons to collect those who were to be guillotined that night. The chief leaders of the people were now Robespierre and Danton. These two were at this time the most important men of the Revolution; they were cruel and bloodthirsty towards their enemies, though in private life Danton was kind and generous both to friends and enemies. They have always been remembered as almost monsters of wickedness, though something might no doubt be said on their side by people who knew all that the French nation had had to bear before the Revolution began.
Danton, who had always been gentler than Robespierre, now began to wish to put a stop to the executions. Robespierre then turned against him, and accused him before the Convention of having always been an enemy of freedom. The Convention sent him to be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which he himself had invented; he was tried for some days, and then sentenced to death with some of his friends. He was guillotined, as so many of his enemies had been before him. When he was on the scaffold he said to himself, "Danton, no weakness;" and then to the executioner, "Thou wilt show my head to the people, it is worth showing." These were his last words.
Robespierre was left, and Robespierre was now the most powerful man in France, He had friends who for the time seemed faithful to him, though the deaths of Danton and Marat might have shown him that he had not much good to hope or expect for himself. The people in the prisons suffered terribly; they were at first, all of them, either nobles or people of high family, who had been accustomed to comfort and riches, and who were now crowded together in small, low, dirty rooms, hardly ever allowed to go even into the prison-court, with scarcely any air to breathe, no change of clothes, coarse unwholesome food, old ragged mattresses for almost their only furniture, and large rats, which sometimes came out from the walls and gnawed their clothes, for companions. At night the jailers would come and rattle chains outside on purpose to distress them by making them think that some of their friends were being taken away for execution. At first thirty were sent to the guillotine each evening, but the number grew greater. At last eighty often went out together, and their places in the prison were at once filled by new prisoners sent in from the country round Paris. A plan was made for a new kind of guillotine, which could cut off the heads of four people at one stroke. But at last this grew more than the French people could endure. They saw, too, that when all the more important men in the country were destroyed, the turn of others, who were more nearly of the rank of common people, would follow. They began to turn against Robespierre; the Convention suspected that he would not be satisfied till some of them had also been put to death, and resolved that if so, he himself should die first. His different enemies, the friends of the Girondists who were still left, the Jacobins who were becoming afraid of him, and the people who had seen their friends and relations put to death by him, all joined together against him. He was accused in the Convention as Danton had been, and arrested; his friends brought up a guard and set him free. The struggle went on all day, but by the evening his enemies had been successful.
They came into the room where he was, to arrest him. He took out a pistol and tried to shoot himself, but only managed to give himself a severe wound. The next afternoon Robespierre was carried to the guillotine, and was treated as so many other people had been by his orders — his head was cut off and held up to the people.
This was the end of the Reign of Terror, and it may be said of the Revolution as well. That evening, for the first time, no prisoners were sent to the guillotine; the people in the streets, as soon as he was dead, ran (about) embracing each other, and calling out, "Friends, rejoice. Robespierre is no more, the tigers are dead !" This was on the day, called, in their new calendar, the 9th of Thermidor, which meant the 27th of July, and the party who had triumphed then were called the Thermidorians in honour of the date. All the peaceable and more respectable men in France rose up to support and help them, so there seemed, for the first time, to be some chance of the Government in France being strong enough to resist any fresh attack that might be made against it by the people. I will here end the chapter of the Revolution.
