It is mercifully unnecessary to the purpose of this book to describe the rest of the massacres, which lasted for five days and nights in succession ;[97] enough has already been told to give some faint idea of the horrors that took place throughout that week of infamous memory—the whole truth would be unbearable to read, still more to write. It only now remains to show who were the principal victims.
The number of aristocrats who perished was, as we have seen, comparatively infinitesimal ; several of the most ardent Royalists succeeded in disarming their assassins. At the Abbaye, where the massacre continued for two days and nights almost without intermission, the heroic Princesse de Tarente, having refused, in almost the same words as the Princesse de Lamballe, to betray the Queen, was carried home in triumph by the crowd. [98] Mademoiselle de Cazotte, with her arms around her white-haired father, touched the hearts of the spectators, and the old man was set at liberty by the populace,[99] only to fall a victim to the revolutionary tribunal three weeks later.
Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, who really did drink the glass of blood to save her father’s life, also secured for him a temporary reprieve. [100] Jourgniac de St. Méard was acquitted after boldly admitting himself to be “ a frank Royalist.” The Abbé de Salamon was saved by his housekeeper, Madame Blanchet, a heroic old peasant woman who had followed him weeping to the door of the Abbaye, and waited about there patiently for five days without touching solid food. Hearing at one moment that her master had been massacred, Blanchet and a friend, a woman of the people as robust and courageous as herself, made their way into the courtyard of the Abbaye, resolved to know the worst.
Then, weeping bitterly the while, the two poor women turned over the naked corpses one by one, fearing each time to find the face they sought. When they had thus examined about a hundred of the dead, Madame Blanchet cried out with tears of joy, “ He is not there ! ” and from that moment she importuned every one she met to obtain his release.
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These efforts meeting with no success, Madame Blanchet at last seized a deputy of the Assembly by the collar of his coat as he made his way through the Tuileries garden, and forced him to intercede for the Abbé de Salamon. By this means the faithful Blanchet achieved her purpose, and her master was given back to her alive.
Whilst a number of aristocrats were thus saved from the massacres, to “ the people,” as on the 10th of August, the revolutionaries showed no mercy. For although the object of the massacres was, as we have seen, to rid the State of that gangrened limb, the nobility and clergy, the operation was very imperfectly carried out, whilst on the other hand drastic amputation was exercised on “ the people.”
Thus at the Conciergerie, where the massacre began on the night of September 2-3, the prisoners were, with the exception of M. de Montmorin, governor of Fontainebleau, and seven or eight Swiss officers, all ordinary criminals of the poorer classes,[101] and of
these at least 320 were massacred without even the formality of a trial. [102] Thirty-six who survived were set at liberty on the condition they should join themselves to the assassins, and seventy-five women, mostly thieves, were enrolled with the rest of the liberated female delinquents to swell the ranks of the future tricoteuses.[103] Only one
woman—a flower-seller of the Palais Royal—perished here after the most inhuman tortures. [104]
The Châtelet, attacked on the same night, contained nothing but men of the people—all were thieves ; 223 perished also without a trial.[105]
Of these poor victims of the cause of “ liberty ” we have no record ; in the great whirlpool of the Revolution they went down in one indistinguishable mass ; no chronicler was there to describe their last moments, no survivor wrote his memoirs ; of several hundred, indeed, it is unrecorded whether they lived or died—they simply disappeared. [106] One trait of heroism stands out from the darkness of oblivion : a poor criminal, who had been offered his life on condition he should enrol himself amongst the massacrers, set himself to the ghastly work, struck one or two ill-aimed blows, then, overcome with horror at himself, flung down the hatchet, crying out, “ No, no, I cannot ! Better be a victim than a murderer ! I would rather be given my death by scoundrels like you than give it to disarmed innocents. Strike me ! ” And instantly he fell beneath the blows of his assassins.
On the following day, the 3rd of September, the Tour Saint-Bernard was attacked ; here seventy-five men condemned to the galleys were put to death, and their bodies robbed of their poor savings.[107] But of all the brutalities that took place on these September days,
the massacre at Bicêtre was the most atrocious. Bicêtre had always been the prison of “ the people,” and, as we have seen earlier in this book, far more dreaded by them than the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_06.html (34 of 61)5.4.2006 10:40:30
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Bastille. We might then have expected the breaking open of this stronghold of despotism to end, as did the “ taking ” of the Bastille, with the triumphant liberation of its victims. If the Revolution had been made by the people this no doubt is what would have happened, but it was by the revolutionary sections of Paris, under the control of the Commune, that the attack on Bicêtre was organized, and by them cannons were provided for the purpose. [108] “ They went to Bicêtre with seven cannons,” says the lying report of the Assembly ; “ the people in exercising their vengeance thus showed their justice.” [109] What form did this justice take ? The massacre of 170 poor people, amongst whom
were a number of young boys of twelve years old and upwards—unfortunate little “ street urchins ” detained, in many cases, at the request of their relations, as a punishment for minor offences. [110] In all the annals of the Revolution there is no passage more heart-rending than the account of this foul deed given more than forty years later by one of the gaolers :
“ They killed thirty-three of them, the unhappy ones ! The assassins said to us—and indeed we could see it for ourselves—that these poor children were far more difficult to finish off than grown-up men. You understand at that age life holds hard. They killed thirty-three of them ! They made a mountain of them, over there in the corner … at your right… . The next day, when we had to bury them, it was a sight to rend one’s soul ! There was one who looked as if he were asleep, like an angel of the good God ; but the others were horribly mutilated.”[111]
At the Salpetrière, a house of correction for women, as Bicêtre was for men, unspeakable barbarities took place ; thirty-five victims in all perished, and these were not the most unfortunate. The abominations committed towards little girls of ten to fifteen years cannot be described.[112]
“ If you knew the frightful details ! ” Madame Roland wrote later of the massacre at the Salpetriere, “ women brutally violated before being torn to pieces by these tigers ! …
You know my enthusiasm for the Revolution ; well, I am ashamed of it ; it is dishonoured by villains, it has become hideous ! ” [113]
That the “ people ” were therefore the principal sufferers in the massacres of September is not a matter of opinion but of fact. The following table gives the precise statistics concerning the class of victims sacrificed :—
If, therefore, we except the sixty-nine soldiers who perished as the last defenders of Royalty, we arrive at the enormous total of 1011 victims from amongst “ the people ” who had no connection whatever with the political situation. Yet it was this senseless and wholesale butchery that the revolutionary leaders described as “ just ” and “ http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_06.html (35 of 61)5.4.2006 10:40:30
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necessary,” but that, when they realized the universal horror it inspired, they basely attributed to the people.
“ It was a popular movement,” Robespierre afterwards declared, “ and not, as has been ridiculously supposed, the partial sedition of a few scoundrels paid to assassinate their fellows.” And with revolting hypocrisy he added, “ We are assured that one innocent perished—they have been pleased to exaggerate the number—but even one is far too many without doubt. Citizens, weep for the cruel error, we have long wept for it … but let your grief have its term like all human things ! Let us keep a few tears for more touching calamities ! ” [115]
Marat likewise heaped all the blame on to the people : “ The disastrous events of the 2nd and 3rd of September were entirely provoked by the indignation of the people at seeing themselves the slaves of all the traitors who had caused their disasters and misfortunes.” It was a “ perfidious insinuation to attribute these popular executions ” to the Commune—executions that, in the same breath, Marat, with his usual wild inconsequence, describes as “ unfortunately too necessary.”[116] If necessary, why was it
perfidious to attribute them to the Commune ?
The historians who have made it their business to whitewash Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, effect their purpose by the same process of blackening the people.
“ We believe that the massacre at the prison of the Abbaye,” writes Bougeart, the adorer of Marat, “ was executed by the people, by the true people… . Marat cannot be accused of it, for he did everything before and during the event to prevent such horrible atrocities.” [117] Of all calumnies on the people uttered by the men who called themselves their friends, this accusation of having committed the massacres of September is the most infamous and the most unfounded. Apart from the revelations of Prudhomme, to whom the authors of the massacres confided their designs in the dialogues already quoted,[118] apart from the evidence of eyewitnesses who saw the
assassins being paid by the emissaries of the Commune, we have documentary proof of these facts—the registers of the Commune recording the sums paid were preserved ;[119]
a number of receipts signed by the murderers were still in existence until 1871. [120] The immense researches of M. Granier de Cassagnac and M. Mortimer Ternaux long ago laid bare the whole plot, and no revolutionary writer has ever succeeded in disproving their assertions. Yet, in spite of all this overwhelming evidence, we still read in English books—not merely the books of fanatics, but dry histories and manuals for schools—that the people of Paris, overcome by panic, marched on the prisons and massacred the prisoners !
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