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The Reign of Terror.-Alison.

[From the "History of Europe," by Archibald Alison.]

1. THE Committee of Public Safety, now confident in its own strength, and strong in the universal submission of France, decreed the disbanding of the Revolutionary army, raised to overawe the capital. At the same time, the situations of the different ministers were abolished, and twelve committees appointed to carry on the details of the government. These commissions, entirely appointed by the Committee of Public Safety, and dependent on their will, were, in fact, nothing but the offices in which they exercised their mighty and despotic

powers. .

2. The Jacobins, swayed with absolute power by the Committee of Public Safety, with their affiliated societies, alone remained of all the innumerable clubs which had sprung up in France. Thus on all sides, the anarchy of revolution was destroying itself, and out of its ruins the stern and relentless despotism of a few political fanatics was wringing out of the heart's blood of France the last remnant of democratic fervor. Robespierre was the leader of this sect of fanatics; but he was associated in the committee with zealots more unpitiable or less disinterested than himself. These were St. Just (sang zhoost) and Couthon (coo-tong')...

3. To accomplish their regeneration of the social body, this triumvirate proceeded with gigantic energy, and displayed the most consummate ability. For two months after the fall of Danton, they labored incessantly to confirm their power. Their commissioners spread terror through the departments, and communicated the requisite impulse to the affiliated Jacobin clubs, which alone now remained in existence. The National Guard was universally devoted to their will, and proved the ready instrument of the most sanguinary measures. The armies, victorious on every side, warmly supported their energetic administration, and made the frontiers resound with the praise of the government.

4. Strong in the support of such powerful bodies, the fanatical leaders of the Revolution boldly and universally began the work of extermination. The mandates of death issued from the capital, and a thousand guillotines instantly were raised in every town and village of France. Amid the roar of cannon, the rolling of drums, and the sound of the tocsin, the suspected were everywhere arrested, while the young and active marched off to the defense of the country. Fifteen hundred Bastiles (bahs-teels'), spread through the departments, soon groaned with the multitude of captives; unable to contain their numbers, the monasteries, the palaces, the chateaux (shah-to'), were generally employed as temporary places of confinement. The abodes of festivity, the palaces of kings, the altars of religion, were loaded with victims; fast as the guillotine did its work, it could not reap the harvest of death which everywhere presented itself; and the crowded state of the prisons soon produced contagious fevers, which swept off thousands of their unhappy inmates.

5. To support these violent measures, the utmost care was taken to preserve in full vigor the democratical spirit in the club of the Jacobins, the centre of the revolutionary action throughout France. By successive purifications, as they were called, all those who retained any sentiments of humanity, any tendency toward moderation, were expelled, and none left but men of iron, steeled against every approach to mercy. The club, in this way, at length became the complete quintessence of cruelty, and the focus of the most fearful revolutionary energy. Its influence daily augmented; as he approached the close of his career, Robespierre, suspicious of the Convention and the Mountain, rested almost entirely on that chosen band of adherents, whose emissaries ruled with absolute sway the municipality and the departments.

6. Seven thousand prisoners were soon accumulated in the different places of confinement in Paris; the number throughout France exceeded two hundred thousand. The condition of such a multitude of captives was necessarily miserable in the extreme; the prisons of the Conciergerie, of La Force, and

the Marie, were more horrible than any others in Europe. All the comforts which, during the first months of the Reign of Terror, were allowed to the captives of fortune, were withdrawn. Such luxuries, it was said, were an insupportable indulgence to the rich aristocrats while, without the prison walls, the poor were starving for want. In consequence, they established refectories, where the whole prisoners, of whatever rank or sex, were allowed only the coarsest and most unwholesome fare.

7. None were permitted to purchase better provisions for themselves; and, to prevent the possibility of their doing so, a rigorous search was made for money of every description, which was all taken from the captives. Some were even denied the sad consolation of bearing their misfortunes together; and to the terrors of solitary confinement were added those of death, which daily became more urgent and inevitable. Not content with the real terrors which they presented, the ingenuity of the jailors was exerted to produce imaginary anxiety; the long nights were frequently interrupted by visits from the executioners, solely intended to excite alarm; the few hours of sleep allowed to the victims were broken by the rattling of chains and the unbarring of doors, to induce the belief that their fellow-prisoners were about to be led to the scaffold, and the warrants for death against eighty persons were made the means of keeping six hundred in agony.

8. Dissatisfied with the progress of the executions, the Revolutionary Tribunal fell upon an extraordinary expedient to accelerate them. By the prospect of amnesty' to themselves, they prevailed on some of the basest of the captives to announce a project for escape in the prisons. "We must have a conspiracy," said Fouquier Tinville, "in the prisons; its chiefs are already named; choose their companions-we must have sixty or a hundred." The victims whom the traitors selected were those whose rank or fortune was most likely to render them acceptable to the committee; their names were announced aloud in the prisons, and they were led out next morning to execution.

9. Despair of life, recklessness of the future, produced their usual effects on the unhappy crowd of captives. Some sunk into sullen indifference; others indulged in immodest gayety, and sought to amuse life even to the foot of the scaffold. .The day before his execution, the poet Ducroneau composed a beautiful ode, which was sung in chorus by the whole prisoners, and repeated, with slight variation, after his execution. At other times the scene changed; in the midst of their ravings, the prisoners first destined for the scaffold were transported by the Phædon of Plato and the death of Socrates; infidelity in its last moments betook itself with delight to the sublime belief of the immortality of the soul. The affections, continually called forth, flowed with uncommon warmth; their mutual fate excited among the prisoners the strongest feelings of commiseration; and nothing astonished the few who escaped from confinement so much as the want of sympathy for the sufferings of mankind which generally prevailed in the world.

10. From the farthest extremities of France, crowds of pris oners daily arrived at the gates of the Conciergerie, which successively sent forth its bands of victims to the scaffold. Gray hairs and youthful forms; countenances blooming with health, and faces worn with suffering; beauty and talent, rank and virtue, were indiscriminately rolled together to the fatal doors. With truth might have been written over their portals what Dante placed over the entrance of the infernal regions: "Give up all hope, ye that enter here!" Sixty persons often arrived in a day, and as many were on the following morning

sent out to execution.

11. Night and day the cars incessantly discharged victims into the prison; weeping mothers and trembling orphans were thrust in without mercy with the brave and the powerful; the young, the beautiful, the unfortunate, seemed in a peculiar manner the prey of the assassins. Nor were the means of evacuating the prisons augmented in a less fearful progression. Fifteen only were at first placed on the chariot, but their number was soon augmented to thirty, and gradually rose to eighty persons who daily were sent forth to the place of execu

tion; when the fall of Robespierre put a stop to the murders, arrangements had been made for increasing it to one hundred and fifty. An immense aqueduct, to remove the gore, had been dug as far as the Place St. Antoine (plahs sang ahntwahn); and four men were daily employed in emptying the blood of the victims into that reservoir.

12. It was at three in the afternoon when the melancholy procession set out from the Conciergerie; the troop passed slowly through vaulted passages of the prison, amid crowds of captives who gazed with insatiable avidity on the aspect of those about to undergo a fate which might so soon become their own. The higher orders, in general, behaved with firmness and serenity; silently they marched to death, with their eyes fixed on the heavens, lest their looks should betray their indignation. Numbers of the lower class piteously bewailed their fate, and called heaven and earth to witness their innocence.

13. The pity of the spectators was in a peculiar manner excited by the bands of females led out together to execution; fourteen young women of Verdun (rare-duhng), of the most attractive forms, were cut off together. "The day after their execution," says Riouffe (re-oof'), "the court of the prison looked like a garden bereaved of its flowers by a tempest." On another occasion, twenty women of Poitou (pwah-too'), chiefly the wives of peasants, were placed together on the chariot; some died on the way, and the wretches guillotined. their lifeless remains; one kept her infant in her bosom till she reached the foot of the scaffold; the executioners tore the innocent from her breast, and the screams of maternal agony were only stifled with her life.

14. Such accumulated horrors annihilated all the charities and intercourse of life. Before daybreak the shops of the provision-merchants were besieged by crowds of women and children, clamoring for the food which the law of the maximum in general prevented them from obtaining. The farmers trembled to bring their fruits to the market; the shopkeepers, to expose them for sale. The richest quarters of the town were deserted; no equipages or crowds of passengers were to be seen

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