Events now followed with terrible rapidity. The Prussians entered France and the town of Verdun fell into their power. That humiliation brought about the massacres of September. The town council purposed their capitulation. Then Colonel Beaupaire, the commandant, opposed it; and refusing to sign the capitulation, he blew out his brains at the council. His body was removed, the capitulation signed, the Prussians marched in, and the daughters of the principal inhabitants, strewed flowers before the foreign troops.
All of those girls—to be excused, by reason of their youth—were, during the Reign of Terror, sent to the guillotine.
Beaupaire’s body was carried away by his men, who marched out of Verdun with all the honors of war, and to it was accorded a state funeral, while the heart was placed in the Pantheon.
Every day, Danton was rising into power.
Every day, Robespierre was following him, and marking him down with the vigor of a sleuth hound.
It was he who organised the September massacres. On the 28th of August, a grave-digger, who knew the plan of certain catacombs, was awakened at six in the morning by a Government agent, and told to prepare this place, within ten days, for receiving a large number of bodies. He was ordered to be silent, on pain of death.
On this same day, organised bands of fierce-looking men, springing no one knew whence, patrolled the streets. The gates of Paris were closed, so that no one could escape, though thousands had fled between the day of the King’s first fall and this one, the 28th of August.
Every house was visited. Five thousand persons, suspected of leaning towards royalty, were seized during the following night. Every court-house, convent, prison, was overflowing with prisoners.
Robespierre still remained quiet and watchful—still lived in hiding in the house of good Duplay, the joiner.