13.—“The Tenth of the City Fell.”
The object for which “the Earth” had exhaled from its stratum the Cloud of Deputies in response to the Royal Edict, saying, “Ascend hither!” was the establishment of a Constitution. The instruction given to its deputies energetically expressed its demand for this, with the understanding that the new government was to be monarchical and hereditary. The constituents of the deputies were all agreed in desiring the regeneration of France; and the whole French nation claimed with energy the rights of the citizen, liberty, and property, and the free communication of thought. It insisted on being free; and “the genius of France,” says Clermont-Tonnerre, “hurried, as it were, the march of the public mind; and had accumulated for it in a few hours the experience which could scarcely be expected from many centuries.”
Clermont-Tonnerre’s “Genius of France,” was John’s “Spirit of Life from God.” It was this that “hurried on the march of the public mind,” and gave it a certain amount of wisdom for the crisis beyond its experience of ages.
But the instability of the king, and the infatuation of the court and aristocracy, proved an obstacle quite insurmountable by a wise moral force, and precipitated events which threatened, and at length effected, their destruction. Had the estates of the kingdom been left to their own action, the result would probably have been in favor of the old abuses; but there were forces exterior to these orders, vigilantly observing the course of events, and ever ready to shape them into the direction it was considered they ought to go for the development of the public good. These forces were famine and the fury of the people, worked by agents invisible and unknown. The parliaments, the nobility, the clergy, the court, all threatened with the same ruin, had united their interests, and acted in concert. They were all pervaded with consternation mingled with despair. Their policy was to have the people commit as much evil as possible, that what they called good might be brought about by the very excess of that evil. In promotion, therefore, of this “political pessimism,” compounded of spite and perfidy, the aristocracy p. 689 began from the time of the capture of the Bastile to coöperate with the most violent members of the popular party.
Under the influence of these antagonist forces, unexpected events would result to the astonishment and dismay of all parties. The agitation was general. A sudden terror had spread itself everywhere. On the night between July 14 and 15, Paris was to be attacked on seven points, and the National Assembly dissolved. The treachery of the court was revealed by its imprudence, and effectually defeated by the fury of the people, who stormed the Bastile, July 14, 1789, and caused the Assembly to triumph over its enemies.
But the reconciliation was only transitory. The court resumed its pride, and the people its distrust; and implacable hatred recommenced its course. Atrocious outrages were committed throughout the whole kingdom, which were rather increased than pacified by the spontaneous abolition of the feudal system, and the tithes without redemption. The king, who sanctioned this revolution, accepted the flattering but undeserved title of “the Restorer of French Liberty.” His was a struggle of power against liberty; and every concession was a victory gained by the people, and one step nearer the precipice over which “the Tenth of the City” was doomed to fall.
The work upon which the National Assembly was now engaged was the New Constitution. “The nation wills, the king executes:” these were its simple elements, and they imagined that they wished for a monarchy, because they left a king as the executor of the national resolve. Real monarchy is the rule of one, to which limits are set by means of the national concurrence. There the will of the prince in reality does almost every thing. But the moment the nation can order what it pleases, without the king having the power to oppose it by a veto, the king is no more than a magistrate. It is then a republic with one consul instead of several. Such was the monarchy existing in men’s opinions; and they were republicans without being aware of it.
But events were too slow for the impatient populace; for while the court and the aristocracy were intriguing, and the National Assembly discussing, the people were crying for bread. The mob determined to go to Versailles, and call the king and Assembly to account for their hesitation to secure the welfare of the people. From all quarters was heard the cry of “The king to Paris!” which the aristocracy proposed to prevent by carrying him off to Metz, where, in a fortress, the court might order what it pleased. All p. 690 were in commotion. Paris poured forth its thousands, and attacked the palace of the king, whose foreign mercenaries would have been massacred but for the interposition of Lafayette. With frightful howlings, the mob demanded the removal of the royal family to Paris. At length they were gratified, and the procession started. “I hope,” says Lavallette, “such a scene will never be witnessed again!” It was: the conveyance of the royal representatives of Charles IX., his Queen-Mother, and Louis XIV., the sanguinary murderers of the witnesses of Jesus, prisoners of a mob as ferocious as they, to the place of their future execution. “These madmen, dancing in the mire and covered with mud, surrounded the king’s coach. The foremost groups carried on long pikes the bloody heads of the life-guardsmen butchered in the morning. A group of women, ugly as crime itself, swarming like insects, and wearing grenadiers’ hairy caps, went to and fro, howling barbarous songs. Several of these abandoned women, drunk with wine and fury, rode astride upon the cannon, celebrating by their abominable howlings all the crimes they had committed or witnessed. Others, near the king’s carriage, were singing allegorical airs, and, by their gross gestures, applying the insulting allusions in them to the Queen. In the transports of their brutal joy, the women stopped the passers by, and yelled in their ears, while pointing to the royal carriage: ‘Courage, my friends; we shall have plenty of bread now that we have got the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s boy.’ This scene lasted for eight hours before the royal family arrived at the Place de Grève. They alighted at the Hotel de Ville, their first resting-place during protracted misery, that terminated afterwards in a horrible death. Thus ended the memorable 6th of October, 1789.”
The new constitution being finished, it was sworn to by all parties on the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile, July 14, 1790. Having concluded its labors, the National Constituent Assembly was replaced by the Legislative Assembly. The members of this body were of opinion that enough had not yet been done. Their minds were incessantly recurring to the idea of a republic. The National Assembly had changed an absolute monarchical despotism into a constitutional and very limited monarchy; but the hot-headed republicans of the new legislature, who occupied the highest benches, and thence denominated The Mountain, were all-powerful in the clubs and among the populace, and were determined to be satisfied with nothing short of the abolition of monarchy, as an expensive and useless pageant.
p. 691 The policy of the Legislative Assembly was the curtailing of the prerogatives of Royalty. Its predecessor had already wrested from the king the privilege of pardoning criminals. It continued the work by decreeing that he should no longer be addressed by the titles Sire and Your Majesty; and, on August 11, 1792, they suspended him, and formed an Executive Council to exercise his constitutional functions; and, on August 13, imprisoned him and the rest of the royal family in the Temple.
The Legislative Assembly held its first sitting October 1, 1791. It passed 2,140 decrees relative to administration or legislation, and closed its labor without abolishing monarchy, September 21, 1792.
During the brief reign of this Assembly some very exciting events had transpired in the history of the King. He considered himself as a prisoner in the hands of his enemies; more especially since the failure of his attempt to establish himself and family at Montmady. He had fled with them in disguise from Paris; but was recaptured at Verennes, whence he was brought back by the populace with ignominy.
On June 20, 1792, the mob invaded his palace in great tumult and in arms to lay before him their remonstrances. They highly disapproved of his use of the veto, and demanded that he should sanction the decrees of the Legislative Assembly against the priests, and for the formation of a camp of 20,000 men, for the defence of Paris against foreign enemies. But the king, true to the catholic instincts of his blood-stained dynasty, was indisposed to endorse the decrees which expelled non-juring priests from France, and demanded a vigorous prosecution of hostilities against foreign powers, upon whose success against the revolutionary “earth” he looked for deliverance and restoration to his former despotic authority. He regarded the revolution as merely a transient popular movement that would soon be stopped by a few victories of the invaders. Neither he nor his Queen, Marie Antoinette, could be persuaded of the truth of Dumouriez’s words, that the movement was “an almost unanimous insurrection of a mighty nation against inveterate abuses, the flame of which was fanned by great factions.” “Thus, by a kind of fatality,” says Thiers—yes, a fatality, apocalyptically registered, decreeing the fall of “the Tenth of the City”—by this fatality “the supposed intentions of the palace excited the distrust and fury of the people, and the uproar of the people increased the anxiety and the imprudence of the palace. Despair therefore reigned within and without.” Utter detestation of royalty moved the heart of p. 692 the abyss. “You see me very sad,” said the Queen to Dumouriez. “I dare not approach the palace window which looks into the garden. Yesterday evening I went to the window towards the court just to take a little air. A gunner of the guard addressed me in terms of vulgar abuse, adding, ‘How I should like to see your head on the point of my bayonet.’ In this horrid garden you see on one side a man mounted on a chair, reading aloud the most abominable calumnies against us; on the other, a military man or an abbé, dragged through one of the basins, overwhelmed with abuse, and beaten; whilst others are playing at ball, or quietly walking about. What an abode! What a people!”
The Girondins, who were enthusiasts for liberty and philosophy, ruled in the Legislative Assembly. They despaired of the king’s sincerity. Therefore, having Paris at their back, they determined to make their party master of the king, and to forestall his suspicious intentions. Through Roland they declared to the king that “the declaration of rights is become a political gospel, and the French constitution a religion for which the people are ready to perish. That all attacks made upon it are but means of kindling enthusiasm in its behalf. That it was too late to recede, and that means of temporizing no longer exist. That the Revolution was accomplished in men’s minds,and would be consummated at the expense of their blood, and cemented with it, if prudence did not prevent the calamities which it was yet possible to avoid. Gracious Heaven!” exclaimed they, “hast thou stricken with blindness the powers of the earth, and are they never to have any counsel but such as shall lead them to perdition!”
The combat had now commenced between the Girondins and the Court—a combat which was for life or death. Lafayette, who was a constitutionalist, offered to deliver the king from his enemies by an armed rescue. But the king and queen refused to be saved by him a second time, hoping that salvation would come from the occupation of Paris by Austrian and Prussian troops. The discovery of Lafayette’s intrigue made the popular party absolutely desperate, and resolved to strike a blow at the court before it could carry into execution the plots of which it was accused.
June 20, 1792, was the insurrection of the Sans Culottes. They bore flags inscribed with the words, “The Constitution or Death.” Ragged breeches were held up in the air with shouts of Vivent les sons-culottes! Besides which an atrocious sign was displayed to add ferocity to the whimsicality of the spectacle. On the point of a p. 693 pike was borne a calf’s heart, with the inscription, “Heart of an Aristocrat.” The court had called in the disciplined barbarians of the North, by which its adversaries were stirred up to call in those other undisciplined barbarians, who by turns merry and ferocious, abound in the heart of cities, and remain sunk in depravity amid the most polished civilization. This motley multitude filed by thousands through the Legislative Hall, and there forcibly intruded themselves upon the king, whom they compelled to don the red Phrygian “cap of liberty.” He consented to hear them read their petition. This terrible lecture of the rabble was listened to amid uproar and shouts, and the oft-repeated cries of “No Veto,” “No Priests,” “No Aristocrats!” “The Camp near Paris!”
At length, in the evening, these unwelcome visitors were persuaded to retire in peace and order. He was immediately rejoined by his family. Tears flowed copiously from these royal constituents of “the affrighted remnant”—ch. xi. 13. The king, with the red cap still perched on the top of his wig, was overcome by the scene. Recollecting that the offensive symbol was still there, he flung it from him with indignation. The Queen perceived tears in the eyes of M. Thionville, a staunch republican deputy. “You weep,” said she, “to see the king and his family treated so cruelly by a people whom he has always wished to render happy.” “It is true, Madam,” replied he, “I weep over the misfortunes of a beautiful, tender-hearted woman and mother of a family. But, do not mistake; there is not one of my tears for the king or the queen— I hate kings and queens.”
The attacks against royalty were as yet only indirect. None seemed to be satisfied with the constitution. One party wished to modify it by the intervention of foreigners; the other to overthrow it by establishing a republic. The report of the committees on public affairs was alarming, and caused the Assembly, on July 11, to pronounce the solemn formula: “Citizens, the country is in danger!” The meaning of this was, that every one should now lay down his life in behalf of the State. The Revolutionary ardour was excited to the utmost. An universal phrenzy seized the public mind. The idea of declaring that the king had forfeited the crown, and of forcing him to abdicate, was regarded as the only possible remedy for the evils which threatened France. Many departments openly defied the authority of government, and without any orders sent their contingents to form the camp near Paris. This was the commencement of the revolt that overturned “the tenth of the Great City.”
p. 694 Consternation pervaded the court, and a new trial of fortitude awaited the king. July 14, 1792, had arrived—the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile—which was to be celebrated. An immense tree was planted by “the Earth,” who styled it “the Tree of Feudalism.” It bore on its branches crowns, blue ribbons, tiaras, cardinals’ hats, St. Peter’s keys, ermine mantles, doctors’ caps, bags of law proceedings, titles of nobility, escutcheons, coats of arms, and so forth, and the king was invited to set fire to it. This, however, he declined, saying there was no longer any such thing as feudalism. The concourse of rabble, federalists from the provinces, and troops, was immense. No accident, however, occurred, and the king returned to the palace, glad at having escaped the dangers, which he conceived to be great, but alarmed at those he beheld approaching.
Everything indicated a speedy revolution. The Girondins foresaw and wished for it; but they did not clearly distinguish the means, and dreaded the issue of it. The people accused them of indolence and incapacity. They were weary of eloquent speeches without result, and the leaders of the clubs and sections demanded an active and concentrated direction, that the popular efforts might not prove unavailing.
This demand was supplied by a secret conclave styled the insurrectional committee. It was composed of Jacobins, who concerted the celebrated insurrection of the 10th of August, ’92, “which was due,” says Petion, “to the Guardian Genius which has constantly governed the destinies of France ever since the first meeting of its representatives”—“the Spirit of Life from God.”
The plan definitely adopted was to set the people in motion, repair in arms to the palace, and to depose the king. On the 3d of August, Petion, the Mayor of Paris, was directed to petition the Assembly in the name of the forty-eight sections of the city, to decree the dethronement of Louis XVI. The crisis was now approaching. Everything was arranged by the royalists for the king’s flight, which at the last moment was frustrated by his refusal to fly. A general agitation pervaded Paris. The drum beat the call in all quarters. The cry, “To arms!” was raised, and the insurrection proclaimed on the 10th of August. The dismal sound of the tocsin pervaded the whole extent of the capital. At length it reached the palace, proclaiming that the terrible night had come—that fatal night of agitation and blood—destined to be the last the monarch should pass in the palace of his ancestors, a sanguinary and cruel race.
p. 695 At dawn of day the palace was besieged by “the Earth,” full of fury against the royal and courtly representatives of the murderers of the saints and witnesses of Jesus. The king had with him about nine hundred Swiss mercenaries, and more than one battalion of the national guard, besides a crowd of hangers on about royalty. But he lacked the boldness necessary to use them with effect; and though it is said that the Queen presented a pistol angrily at him, and said to him, with energy, “Sire, it is time to show yourself!” it was found impossible to arouse him from that judicial infatuation sent upon him by the Divine Avenger of his own. Instead of staying to defend himself in the royal den of Charles IX. who, from its windows, had glutted his thirst for righteous blood in shooting Huguenot, men and women, while flying from their murderers in the streets, in 1572—Louis took refuge with his family in the midst of the Assembly. Soon after their arrival, the roar of cannon and the roll of musketry was heard. The massacre, retaliatory for that of St. Bartholomew’s, had begun. The resurrected witnesses were striking terror and dismay into the hearts of their enemies; and a most sanguinary combat raged. The Marseillais and Bretons, boiling with fury, rushed forward with ardor, fell in great numbers, but at length made themselves masters of the palace. The rabble, with pikes, poured in after them, and the rest of the scene was one general massacre. They put to death every person without distinction. Streams of blood flowed everywhere from the roofs to the cellars. All were butchered alike. It was scarcely possible to set foot any where without treading upon a dead body. Modesty forbids the description of the mutilation of the slain. Among the perpetrators of these atrocious deeds were found women! Every corner of the palace was plundered by the mob. Devastation and death everywhere prevailed. The butchery did not cease for hours. Carnage was the revelry of the day; and when “aristocrats” were no longer found, the rabble continued to drink blood in mutual slaughter; so that the mangled bodies of the seven hundred and fifty Swiss guards were covered with fresh heaps of the self-destroyed rabble.
The Assembly anxiously awaited the issue of the combat. Shouts of victory at length arose from the populace, intoxicated with joy and fury. They soon filled the Hall, bringing with them plunder, and the few Swiss prisoners they had spared. The king and his family, cribbed and confined in the reporters’ box, beheld in these trophies the ruin of their throne, and the joy of their conquerors. The reward of victory was the abolition of royalty. The Assembly p. 696 dared not refuse this. The celebrated decree was therefore passed to the effect, that
Louis XVI. is, for the time being suspended from royalty; A plan of education is directed for the Prince Royal; A national convention is convoked.
The tumult continued to rage with extreme violence, and, in the opinion of the people it was not sufficient to have suspended royalty, it behoved them to destroy it. In their petitions they insisted that the suspension should be changed into dethronement. They were pacified with the assurance that a convention had been decreed to decide irrevocably the great question. In the meantime the Royal Family was imprisoned in the Temple.
Forty days after this event, Sept. 20, the National Convention was constituted at the Tuileries. A new constitution was to be formed, based upon absolute equality, and the sovereignty of the people. After certain motions and decrees, the question of royalty was brought forward. It was insisted that its abolition should be forthwith pronounced. “The people,” it was said, “had just been declared sovereign, but it will not be really so till delivered from a rival authority—that of kings.” The Assembly and the tribunes rose to express their unanimous reprobation of royalty. Discussion was proposed. “What need is there of discussion,” it was objected, “when all are agreed? Courts are the hotbed of crime, the focus of corruption; the history of kings is the martyrology of nations. Discussion is not needed.”
Profound silence ensued, and by unanimous desire, the President of the National Convention declared that ROYALTY WAS ABOLISHED IN FRANCE. This decree was hailed with universal applause. It was then proposed not to date 1792 the year 4 of liberty, but the year 1 of THE REPUBLIC. The year 1789, was no longer considered as having commenced liberty, and the new republican era began on that very day, Sept. 22, 1792; which was 1260 years from Justinian’s delivery of the saints into the hands of the Supreme Pontiff of the Great City.
14.—Seven Thousand Names of Men
“And in the earthquake seven thousand names of men were put to death.”
In the English version this text reads, “were slain of men seven thousand.” This error has probably crept in through editors not being able to conceive how names could be slain. They have therefore p. 697 left ονοματα, names, out of the text, without any good reason. In my translation it is restored as indispensable to the right understanding of the prophecy.
We have seen how “the Tenth of the City fell” by the concussion of “the Earth.” It required the shocks of three entire years to level it with the ground. It was caused to fall by the shaking of “the Earth” in a special sense. It was the fury of the populace, excited and directed by an invisible agency, dictating its will to affrighted assemblies, that overthrew the monarchy. The assemblies left to themselves would not have found the courage needful for such a work. Their sympathy was with royalty even after Aug. 10. The decree of heaven, however, could not be circumvented. “The Earth” had no love for the power that had crushed it in 1685. It hated kings, and all that constituted the pillars of their thrones. It began its work by throwing down the pillars, and having removed these, abolished the throne, and ignominiously executed its incumbent.
The aristocracies and hierarchy of a monarchy are its strongest supports. To these belong names of divers sorts. The names of aristocracy are the titled orders of nobility, such as dukes, marquises, counts, and such like, to which are attached feudal rights, privileges, and immunities, denied to the common people. Hierarchial names are representative of ecclesiastical orders and associations, which are known by their titles—monks and priests, orders of men at once the creatures and supporters of despotism and superstition; the flatterers of princes, and the spoilers of the common people. To put these names to death would be to abolish them, both as to their associational existence, and the titles by which the classes of men, and the individuals of those classes, were distinguished.
These names are put down at seven thousand. This is the symbolical number by which the real number is expressed—a definite totality for an undefined whole; and equivalent to all orders of monks, priests, and nobles related to the Tenth Kingdom of the Papal City. Hence, the interpretation of the text is, that “in the insurrectional agitation of the democracy all the monastic and sacerdotal orders, together with all ranks and degrees of nobility, should be utterly abolished.” Such is the prophecy; and we shall find, that in the epoch of the fall of the French Monarchy, the things predicted were literally and sanguinarily fulfilled.
The destruction of the Bastile by the mob, and the excesses of the day, were a warning to the upper classes of their approaching p. 698 ruin. Consternation, mingled with despair, pervaded them all. On the 4th of August, 1789, these disturbances and the means of putting an end to them, were discussed. Two of the nobility, members of the National Assembly, urged that it would be silly to employ force to quiet the people: that the right way would be to destroy the cause of their sufferings, and then the agitation which was the effect of them would instantly cease. They proposed the abolition of all feudal rights, which were frightfully oppressive. A sudden paroxysm of disinterestedness seized upon the Assembly, and everyone hurried to the tribune to renounce his privileges. A sort of intoxication seized all orders, all classes, all the possessors of prerogatives of every kind, who sought only to cast them all away. As the commons had no privileges to give up, they relinquished those of the provinces and the towns. The equality of rights was thus established between individuals and all parts of the French territory. The Assembly abolished tithes without redemption, and decreed the maintenance of the clergy by the State, which was very humiliating to their pride.
The feudal system having been abolished, the Assembly proceeded to destroy those great bodies, or “names,” which were enemies in the state against the state. The clergy possessed immense property, conferred on them by princes as feudal grants, or by the pious by way of legacy. Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, proposed to them to renounce the property of the ecclesiastical benefices in favor of the nation. The clergy, however, struggled against this proposition, but without effect. The Assembly decreed that all their possessions were at the disposal of the state; by which it destroyed their formidable power, and the luxury of the high dignitaries of the order; and secured those immense financial resources which so long upheld The Revolution. It declared also, that it ceased to recognize “religious vows,” and restored liberty to all the inmates of cloisters. “From this moment,” says Mignet: “The hatred of the clergy to the revolution broke forth. It had been less intractable than the noblesse at the commencement of the States General, in the hope of preserving its wealth; afterwards it showed itself not less opposed to the new regime.”
The exasperated clergy continued to excite disturbances throughout France. They deemed themselves sacrificed to the creditors of the state. Their property was ordered to be sold. Rendered desperate by the loss of the “filthy lucre” they adored, they circulated writings among the people, declaring that the plan of the revolutionists or John’s resurrected and ascended witnesses, was to attack the p. 699 catholic religion—that great name by which they had their wealth; and whose functionaries had put them to death. They neglected no means to awaken the ancient fanaticism of Provence and Languedoc. The protestants of these parts excited the envy of the catholics, whose priests took advantage of the dissensions to widen the breach. In this spirit it was proposed in the Assembly to declare, that the catholic religion was the only religion of the state. An ecclesiastic threatened them with malediction for intending to abolish the catholic religion. This was denied. In the course of the debate Louis XIV. was mentioned. “I am not surprised,” exclaimed Mirabeau, “that reference should be made to the reign in which the Edict of Nantes was revoked; but consider that, from this tribune whence I address you, I see that fatal window, where a king (Charles IX.), the murderer of his subjects, mingling worldly interests with those of religion, gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew!” The Assembly refused to make the declaration. The catholics and protestants had come to blows on the subject in the south; and the former were repulsed.
But, while the clergy were filling up the measure of their fathers, the nobles were not forgotten. On June 19, 1790, it was proposed to abolish the titles of count, marquis, baron, etc.; to prohibit liveries; in short, to suppress all hereditary titles. A noble asked what they would substitute for the words, “Such an one was created count for service rendered to the state?” “Let it merely be said, replied Lafayette, “that on such a day such a person saved the state.” The motion was carried, notwithstanding the extraordinary irritation of the nobility, which was more galled by the abolition of its titles than by the more substantial losses which it had sustained since the commencement of the revolution. The more moderate portion of the Assembly had proposed that, in abolishing titles, those who chose to retain them, should be at liberty to do so. Lafayette tried to procure its return for amendment; but the king instantly gave his sanction, with the disingenuous intention, as some supposed, of driving things to extremities.
On July 30, 1791, decorations and orders of knighthood were suppressed; and to consummate the whole, the titles of Sire and Your Majesty were taken from the king. The Duke of Orleans assumed the name of Egalitè, in English, Equality. Thus, all were reduced to an undistinguished multitude, having no preëminence to title one above another. Citizen and citizeness, was the designation common to all the French.
“The clergy,” says Thiers, “stripped of the immense possessions p. 700 which had formerly been given to it, on condition of relieving the poor, whom it did not relieve, and of performing that worship which it left to be performed by poor curates, was no longer a political order. But its ecclesiastical dignities were preserved, its dogmas respected, its scandalous wealth changed into a sufficient, nay, we may say, an abundant revenue, for it still possessed considerable episcopal luxury.”
But the time had arrived in Nov. 1793, to substitute for the clerical system of blasphemy, another equally profane. The National Assembly had made the dioceses and the departments the same, and caused the bishops to be elective like all other functionaries. This was the civil constitution of the clergy to which they were obliged to bind themselves by oath. From that day a schism had taken place. Those who took the oath, were called constitutional priests; and those who refused so to do, refractory priests. These were condemned by the Convention to exile.
At length people began to ask, why, when all the old monarchical superstitions were abolished, there should yet remain this clerical phantom, in which scarcely any one continued to believe? With the exception of reducing the pay of the bishops to the maximum of six thousand francs, the Convention kept silence upon the subject, leaving France to take the initiative in the abolition of this GREAT NAME OF SUPERSTITION by which it had been cursed for so many centuries. What the Convention feared to do, the Commune of Paris, less reserved, zealously undertook, and set the first example for the abjuration of the catholic worship of dæmonials and idols.
The dogma of the Commune was, that a nation ought to be governed by reason alone, and to allow no other worship, but that of reason. If they had gone a little further, and had said by reason enlightened by scripture truth, there could be no objection to the proposition, except from those who knew that the scriptures of truth and their systems are at variance. In the name of reason, then, the leaders of the municipality, Hebert and Chaumette, launched out against the publicity of the Romish mummery. A resolution was therefore obtained that the ministers of no religion should be allowed to exercise their worship out of the temples appropriated to it. Chaumette caused to be instituted new funeral ceremonies. The friends and relations alone were to accompany the coffin. All the religious emblems were to be suppressed in the cemeteries, and to be replaced by a statue of Sleep. Instead of cypress and doleful shrubs, the burial-grounds were to be planted with such as were more cheerful and more fragrant. All the outward signs of the superstition were p. 701 entirely abolished. It was also decided that there should not be sold in the streets “any kind of jugglery, such as holy napkins, St. Veronica’s handkerchiefs, Ecce Homos, crosses, Agnus Deis, virgins, bodies and rings of St. Hubert, or any powders, medicinal waters, or other adulterated drugs.” The image of the Virgin was everywhere suppressed, and all the Madonnas in niches at the corners of streets were removed to make room for busts of Marat and Lepelletier.
Anacharsis Clootz, a Prussian baron, and deputy to the National Convention, and who announced himself as the Orator of the Human Race, coöperated with Chaumette in incessantly preaching up the worship of reason. To him deism appeared as culpable as catholicism itself. He never ceased to propose the destruction of tyrants, and of all sorts of gods, declaring that there is no other God but Nature, no other sovereign but the human race, the people-god; and that it was now high time to destroy religion, the only obstacle to the happiness of mankind.
The hopes of Clootz were all revived by the requisitions of Chaumette. He called upon Gobel, the constitutional Bishop of Paris. He persuaded him that the moment had arrived for abjuring, in the face of France, the Catholic Name, of which he was the Chief Pontiff. Gobel consented to go and abdicate the episcopacy, and prevailed upon the majority of his vicars to follow his example.
Accordingly, on November 7, 1793, all the constituted authorities of Paris accompanied Gobel and all his vicars to the Convention. Chaumette informed it that the Clergy of Paris had come to pay a signal and sincere homage to reason. Gobel was then introduced, with a red cap on his head, and holding in his hand his mitre, his crosier, his cross, and his ring. Addressing the Assembly, he said: “Born a plebeian curate of Porentruy, sent by my clergy to the first assembly, then raised to the archbishopric of Paris, I have never ceased to obey the people. I accepted the functions which that people formerly bestowed on me, and now, in obedience to it, I am come to resign them. I suffered myself to be made a bishop when the people wanted bishops. I cease to be so now when the people no longer desire to have any.” He spoke for himself and all his clergy, who ratified his declaration. Having laid down his insignia of office, the president replied that the Convention had decreed freedom of religion; that it had left it unshackled to each sect; that it had never interfered in their creeds, but it applauded those who, enlightened by reason, came to renounce their superstitions and their errors.
p. 702 Several bishops and curates, members of the Convention, abjured catholicism. These abdications were hailed with tumultuous applause by the Assembly and the tribunes. The deputation then retired, and, attended by an immense concourse, proceeded to the Hotel de Ville to receive the congratulations of the Commune.
The example once given, it was not difficult to excite all the sections of Paris, and all the communes of the Republic to follow it. The sections all declared that they renounced the errors of superstition, and acknowledged no other worship than that of reason. The section of L’Homme-Armé declared that it acknowledged no other worship than that of truth and reason; no other fanaticism than that of liberty and equality; no other doctrine than that of fraternity and of the republican laws decreed since May 31, 1793. The section of La Reunion intimated that it would make a bonfire of all the confessionals and of all the books used by the catholics; and that it would shut up the church of St. Mary. The section William Tell renounced forever the worship of error and imposture. That of Mutius Scœvola abjured the catholic superstition. That of Les Piques that it would adore no other God than the God of liberty and equality. And that of the Arsenal also renounced the catholic religion.
“Thus the sections taking the initiation, abjured the Catholic Name as the established superstition, and seized its edifices and treasures, as pertaining to the communal domains. A great number of the departmental communes seized the movable property of the churches, which they said was not necessary for religion. All the churches were stripped, and deputations were sent to the Convention with the gold and silver accumulated in the shrines of saints, or places appropriated to devotion. They went in procession, and the rabble, indulging in their fondness for burlesque, caricatured in the most ludicrous manner the ceremonies of catholicism, which they took as much delight in profaning as they had formerly done in celebrating them. Men wearing surplices and copes, came singing hallelujahs, and dancing the Carmagnole, to the bar of the Convention. There they deposited the host or Wafer-god, the boxes in which it was kept, and the idols of gold and silver. They made burlesque speeches, and sometimes addressed the most singular apostrophes to the saint-dæmonials themselves. ‘O you,’ exclaimed a deputation from St. Denis, ‘O, you instruments of fanaticism; blessed saints of all kinds; be at length patriots. Rise in mass. Serve the country by going to the mint to be melted, and give us in this world that felicity which you wanted to obtain for p. 703 us in the other.’ Having thus trampled on the saints of Romanism, they unveiled the busts of Marat and Lepelletier, and pointing to them, said: ‘These are not gods made by men, but the images of worthy citizens assassinated by the slaves of kings.’ They then filed off before the Convention, again singing hallelujahs and dancing the Carmagnole, carried the rich spoils of the altars to the mint, and placed the busts of the revered Marat and Lepelletier in the churches, which thenceforth became the temples of a new worship.”
Such was the putting to death among the “seven thousand Names of men,” of the beast’s “Name of Blasphemy,” in all the territory of the Tenth of the Great City—Apoc. xiii. 1. It was a conflict between reason based upon the “vain philosophy” of Voltaire, and idolatry sustained by the power of the state. The power had first to be destroyed, and then the idolatry fall. Unenlightened reason and vain philosophy were too strong for catholic ghost and relic worship, and therefore it was destroyed. Thus one abomination was played off against another, and the most guilty before God was treated by a base rabble even as contemptible and vile. How admirably the Deity avenges his own. He cast down the bloody throne of the Bourbons; caused the royal representatives of the murderers of his saints and witnesses first to be humbled in the dust and impoverished, then tried for their crimes by “vile plebeians,” and insultingly condemned, and finally ignominiously guillotined before the mob; and as the crowning expression of his indignation, exhibited the symbols, superstition and imposture of his enemies to the contempt of an awakened world. These were wonderful events, all consequent upon the ascent of the political witnesses of Jesus “in the cloud;” and an earnest of that grander and universal judgment of the Great City, when the Lord God, YAHWEH ELOHIM, shall arise to exterminate its temporal and spiritual power, and to bless all nations in their deliverance.
As I have said, the spiritual bazaars, dedicated to the guardian ghosts of fictitious saints, called “churches,” were turned into temples for the worship of Deified Reason! The bazaar, where the archbishops of Paris used to exhibit their spiritual wares, and dedicated to the ghost the Laodiceans style “Our Lady,” was converted into a republican edifice called The Temple of Reason. A festival was instituted to be celebrated there every tenth day as a substitute for the catholic mummery of Sundays. To this Temple of Reason the mayor, municipal officers and public functionaries repaired. Here they read the declaration of the rights of man and the constitutional act, analyzed the news from the army, and related the p. 704 brilliant actions which had been performed during the Decade or past ten days. A mouth of truth was placed in this temple to receive opinions, censures, advice, that might be useful to the public. These letters were examined and read every Decade or tenth day; a discourse on morals was delivered, after which pieces of music were performed, and the ceremonies concluded with the singing of republican hymns.
“The first festival of Reason was held with pomp, on Nov. 10, 1793. It was attended by all the sections and constituted authorities. A young woman, the wife of a printer, personated the Goddess of Reason. She was draped in white, and a mantle of azure blue hung from her shoulders, and her flowing hair was covered with the cap of liberty. She sat upon an antique seat, entwined with ivy, and borne by four citizens. Young girls, robed in white and crowned with roses, preceded and followed the deified rival of the catholic Queen of Heaven. Then came the busts of the sanguinary Marat and the regicide Lepelletier (assassinated by a soldier because he had voted the death of Lous XVI.), with musicians, troops, and all the armed sections. Speeches were delivered, and hymns sung, upon which they left the Temple of Reason and presented themselves before the Convention.
“Legislators!” said Chaumette. “Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse has assembled beneath the Gothic vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the truth. There the French have celebrated the only true worship—that of liberty, that of reason. There we have formed wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the republic. There we have abandoned inanimate idols (the images of saints) for reason, for that animated image, the masterpiece of nature,”—pointing to the printer’s wife, the new-made goddess of reason. This young and brazen beauty then descended from her seat, and went up to the presiding Jupiter of the Convention, who gave her the fraternal kiss amidst universal bravos and shouts of the Republic forever! Reason forever! Down with fanaticism! This farce being over, the procession, accompanied by the reluctant Convention, returned to the Temple of Reason, sang a patriotic song, and dismissed.
15.—“The Rest were Terrified.”
The rest, styled in the text ὁι λοιποι, the others not of the titled and privileged orders, became terrified. These terrified people p. 705 composed that inert and patient part of the population of France, on which political experiments were being made. They were the swinish multitude of catholicism, which still clung to the worship of demonials and the works of men’s hands. The refractory priests were the living deities of these terrified heirs of capture and destruction. In this great judgment the Deity of Heaven first smote “the worldrulers of the darkness, and their spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies;” he was now about to descend in terrorism upon the guilty devotees of blasphemy, who in a past generation had lent a willing hand in slaying his witnesses, and suppressing their enlightening testimony.
The wicked are Deity’s sword for vengeance upon blasphemers of his word and name, until the time come to give the execution of judgment into the hands of the saints. We need not, therefore, be surprised at finding among his political witnesses and avengers such men as Marat, Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, surnamed “the Apocalyptic,” and such like. If he did not employ “the basest of men” to execute terrifying vengeance upon guilty nations, how would such have been punished during the past eighteen centuries? If nations will “blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven;” if they will persist in upholding spiritual impostures, and in making his word of none effect by their absurd and impious traditions, they must be punished as nations; and, as real, scriptural, saints are so scarce, the vengeance of Samuel upon Agag must be in the meantime executed by wicked men as the blind instruments of his will.
A terrified people implies the existence of terrifiers; and that these terrorists were stronger than the terrified. The history of the period is in rigid harmony with this implication. The retributive and righteous providence of Deity, by successive shocks of the great earthquake, had brought the besotted worshippers of the dæmonials and idols under what has been styled by eminence “THE REIGN OF TERROR.” This power was more terrific than any that has oppressed society since the flood. The twenty-five millions of affrighted catholic French “dared no longer express any opinion. They were afraid to visit their friends lest they might be compromised with them, and lose liberty and even life. A hundred thousand arrests, and hundreds of condemnations, rendered imprisonment and the scaffold ever present to their minds. They had to bear heavy taxes. Sometimes they had to give up their crops, or their most valuable effects in gold and silver. They durst no longer display any luxury, or indulge in noisy pleasures. They were no p. 706 longer permitted to use metallic money, but obliged to take and give a depreciated paper, with which it was difficult to procure such things as they needed. They were forced, if storekeepers, to sell at a fictitious price; if buyers, to put up with the worst commodities. They had but one sort of black bread, common to the rich as to the poor, for which they were obliged to contend at the doors of the bakers, after waiting for several hours. Never had power overthrown with greater violence the habits of a people. It threatened all lives, decimated all fortunes, fixed compulsorily the standard of the exchanges, gave new names to all things, and abolished with insult the superstition of the ‘terrified.’”
This terrible power that blindly avenged the saints, found vent through the Jacobins of the Mountain. Of these, the most terrible was Marat. He was born of Calvinist parents, with a hideous face, and head monstrously disproportioned to his size. He had a daring mind, an ungovernable imagination, a vindictive temper, and the heart of a tiger. In the period of the earthquake, his natural enthusiasm rose to delirium, in which he preached up revolt, murder, and pillage. In one of his speeches he said, “Massacre 270,000 partisans of the former order of things.” “His political exhortations,” says Sir Walter Scott, “began and ended like the howl of a bloodhound for murder. It was blood which was Marat’s constant demand; not in drops from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter of families; but blood in the profusion of an ocean.” “None exercised a more fatal influence upon the period in which he lived. To him was owing the idea realized at a later period—the extermination of multitudes. He regarded the French as paltry revolutionists. ‘Give me,’ said he, ‘two hundred Neapolitans, the knife in their right hand, in their left a muff, to serve for a shield, and with these I will traverse France, and complete the Revolution.’ It was necessary, he asserted, to strike off several thousand heads, and to destroy all the aristocrats, who rendered liberty impossible. Under this name he included royalists, constitutionalists, and Girondins; and that none might escape, it was only necessary to fall upon those who had carriages, servants, silk clothes, and who were coming out of the theatres. All such were assuredly aristocrats. This pitiless avenger was supported by Danton, Robespierre, and others like them; sat in the National Convention as a member of the Mountain, presided over the Society of Jacobins, and was ultimately deified in this carnival of blood.
“Marat was abhorred by his colleagues; but they did not abhor making use of him. They placed him in their midst, they put him p. 707 in their van, they bore him as it were upon their breasts, like a head of Medusa. As the horror of such a man was everywhere, you fancied that you perceived him everywhere; you almost imagined,” said Garat, “that he was the whole Mountain, or that the whole Mountain was, as it were, he. Among the leaders, in fact, there were several who found no other fault of the misdeeds of Marat, but that they were too undisguised.”
From this class of agents issued the sanguinary terror by which “the rest were affrighted.” After it had prostrated the Tenth Throne of the Great City, it filled the prisons with crowds of suspected sympathizers with royalty and the recent order of things. These arrests were made by the police under the direction of Marat, “whose name alone,” says Petion, “strikes terror into the souls of all peaceable citizens.” A rumor was started that there was a plot to liberate all the prisoners, who were then to spread themselves through Paris, to commit all sorts of excesses, and to carry off the king. Apprehensive of this, the secret directory caused the alarm gun to be fired, and the tocsin to be sounded. The mob collected, broke into the prisons, and, on September 2, 1792, began a work of carnage which continued for several days. Twenty-four priests were sent to the Abbaye for refusing to take the oath to the constitution. On descending from the coaches to enter the prison, they were immediately pierced by a thousand weapons, amidst the howls of an infuriated populace. Led by Maillard, they rushed to the church of the Carmelites, where they butchered two hundred priests of the Catholic Baal who had been confined there.
Being refreshed with wine, they returned to the Abbaye. There they organized a criminal tribunal, of which Maillard was the terrible president. A list of the prisoners was placed before him. They were brought out in order and questioned. When he pronounced the words, “Sir, to La Force!” he was passed out at the gate, supposing that he was being transferred to that prison. But, when the door closed upon him, he was suddenly hewn to pieces by the swords of the party posted there.
“Terror,” was proclaimed to be “the order of the day,” and a secret authority overawed that which was public. The massacre continued through the night. Amidst this carnage, however, they spared some victims, and manifested inconceivable joy in giving them their lives. A young man, declared pure from aristocracy, was acquitted with shouts of “Vive la nation!” and borne in triumph in the bloody arms of the executioners. The Governor of the Invalides was sentenced to La Force. Perceiving him from the p. 708 prison, his daughter rushed out amongst pikes and swords, and, with piteous supplications, besought them to spare him. Handing her a pot of human blood, “Drink, then,” said they, “the blood of the aristocrats!” She drank—and her father was saved.
“After thirty hours of carnage,” says Peltier, “sentence was passed on Cazotte. The instrument of death was already uplifted; and bloody hands were stretched out to pierce his aged breast. His daughter, seizing him round the neck, exclaimed, “You shall not get at my father till you have forced your way through my heart.” The pikes were instantly checked, and a shout of pardon was raised by a thousand voices. Elizabeth embraced the murderers; and, covered with human blood, but triumphant, proceeded to lodge her father safe in the midst of his family.” Another of the few capriciously saved was escorted home with great attention by these Avengers. Dripping with blood, they begged leave to witness the joy of his family, and immediately after returned to the carnage. “In this convulsive state,” says M. Thiers, “all the emotions succeeded each other in the heart of man. By turns, a mild and ferocious animal, he weeps and then slaughters. Steeped in blood, he is all at once touched by an instance of ardent affection or of noble firmness. He is sensible to the honor of appearing just, to the vanity of appearing upright or disinterested.”
During this terrific night, the avengers had divided and carried destruction into the other prisons of Paris. Like massacres were perpetrated, and blood flowed in streams. Consternation pervaded all Paris. The slaughter of the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal by the command of Elijah was nothing in comparison. The members of the Commune declared that the people had been just; that they had punished criminals only; and that, in their vengeance, if they had done wrong, it was merely by anticipating the sword of the law. The only place preserved from attack was the Temple, against the royal inmates of which the popular fury was particularly excited; so that, for six hours, it was very doubtful whether they would be massacred or not.
The Bicêtre Hospital was the scene of the longest and bloodiest carnage. This prison was the receptacle of every vice; it was an hospital, also, for the foulest and most afflicting diseases. It was the sink of Paris. The avengers of crime put every creature there to death. Not less than 6000 were slain during the eight days and night of the slaughter. Pikes, swords, and muskets not being expeditious enough, recourse was had to cannon. A long and deadly resistance was made by the victims, but they were all eventually p. 709 slain. During the three days of slaughter, about eight thousand prisoners were mercilessly put to death.
The prisons having been thus cleared by fire and sword, the terrorists began to fill them again by new arrests founded upon suspicions of incivism. While operating in Paris, terrorist commissioners were despatched to the departments to exhort them to imitate the sanguinary example of the capital. Collot d’Herbois, surnamed the Tiger, was almost equal to Marat. When he departed for Lyons, he protested that the South should be soon purified. He employed a column of the revolutionary army, with cannon, to make up for the slowness of the guillotine. Freron displayed extreme activity and zeal in the work of death. He proclaimed the purpose of rasing Toulon to the ground. Writing to Bayle, he says: “Things go on well here; every day since our arrival we have caused two hundred heads to fall, and already eight hundred Toulonese have been shot.” Eight thousand Toulonese assembled in the Champs de Mars. The commissioners were shocked at the sight of this multitude of victims. Freron himself was terrified. A great number of the most guilty were instantly shot. The musketry shooting being insufficient, they afterwards had recourse to cannon. In another execution of this nature, in order to despatch the victims who had not perished by the first discharge, Freron cried out, “Let those who are still living rise; the republic pardons them.” Some arose, when he caused them to be immediately fired upon. On quitting Toulon, he went to finish the depopulation of Marseilles. Here they destroyed more than four hundred persons by a criminal tribunal; and caused some of its finest buildings to be demolished.
“Wearied with the slow operation of the guillotine,” says Alison, “they destroyed their prisoners in masses by firing at them with grapeshot.” In La Vendee, the noyades became celebrated: men and women, in vessels full or in couples, being there drowned by the victorious avengers, and the noyades called Republican Baptism and Republican Marriage. At Pillau, they roasted women and children in a heated oven. In these horrors, one regiment assumed to itself the title of Infernal. Altogether, the massacres during the Reign of Terror are reckoned at 1,022,351. Thus were avenged the 75,000 slain in France, A. D. 1572; the unnumbered thousands slain in the anti-witness war; the 100,000 destroyed at their political death; and the 800,000, or 1,000,000, ruined exiles of 1685. The kings of France are computed to have put to death in torments a million of the witnesses for Jesus under the Satanic inspiration of the Romish priests, Can we, then, in reading the horrors perpetrated in the p. 710 Reign of Terror, and which principally fell upon the clergy and their adherents, forbear to exclaim, “Righteous art thou, O Lord, who art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus: for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. True and righteous are thy judgments!”—Apoc. xvi. 5.
The Terrorists were the sword and scourge of Deity upon the guilty. They were raised up by him to retaliate upon the king, court, nobility, priests, and people, the murders and crimes of every sort, which had accumulated upon their heads until his longsuffering was exhausted. The nation was paralyzed, as well as astounded and affrighted. It was the Terrorists that condemned the king and queen to lose their heads, by which they broke definitively with royalty and all thrones; and afterwards destroyed the Girondins for their want of zeal in the regeneration of France by the guillotine. This was the overthrow of all legality, and the establishment of the Terrible Dictatorship, developed in the Committee of Public Welfare.
From May 31, 1793, commence scenes a hundred times more awful and more terrible than the massacres of the prisons of Paris. La Vendee, the stronghold of the priests, was all fire and blood. Their forces were styled, “the royal and catholic armies.” The partisans of absolute power were simultaneously lifting up their heads for a grand rally against the Revolution. The conflict that ensued resulted in the establishment of the Committee of Public Welfare, which was absolute master of the situation, being empowered to send the people either to the field of battle, to the scaffold, or to prison; and, for the defence of the Revolution, was possessed of a sovereign and terrible dictatorship. The judgment-seat of this fearful committee was the Revolutionary Tribunal, whose institution was caused by Danton. Its familiars pervaded the land, and all the great cities of France experienced its vengeance. “THE MOUNTAIN” was now in the ascendant—it ruled with terror in the heaven into which it had ascended when called up thither by the “great voice,” or edict of the king. The ruling power in the Mountain was Robespierre and the Jacobins. The Committee and Tribunal were directed by them; and however great their vengeance upon nobles, priests, the rich, and their adherents, greater vengeance was soon to be displayed in Paris. It is a remarkable fact, that the cities and districts where the blood of the saints and witnessing prophets of Jesus had been poured out most abundantly, and with the greatest barbarity, suffered the most horribly in the p. 711 Reign of Terror. After the decapitation of Marie Antoinette and the Girondins, the sword of execution had no rest. All that was considered most noble and most generous was perishing either by suicide or by the blade of the executioner. “The whole country seemed one vast conflagration of revolt and vengeance. The shrieks of death were blended with the yell of the assassin and the laughter of buffoons.”
In conclusion, under this head, I remark, in the words of Alison, that, after April, 1794, “one only power now remained—alone, terrible, irresistible. This was the power of Death, wielded by a faction (of which Robespierre was chief), steeled against every feeling of humanity, dead to every principle of justice. In their iron hands order resumed its sway from the influence of terror; obedience became universal from the extinction of hope. Silent and unresisted, they led their victims to the scaffold, dreaded alike by the soldiers who crouched, the people who trembled, and the victims who suffered. The history of the world has no parallel to the horrors of that long night of suffering!”