The King, once in prison, it has been seen how the fact was followed by the fearful massacres of September 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Scarcely were they complete, than the men in power began to protest against their enormity, and it was endeavored to be shown, with some success, that these wholesale murders were perpetrated by a fierce organization of but comparatively few men, who cast this great shame upon France.
Certainly, the same men were at the doors of the various prisons, while the rough order established amongst them, far more clearly pointed to the operation of a secret society, than to the sudden unorganized rage of a maddened people.
The Convention was really divided into Girondists and Jacobins—the former led by Roland and Vergniaud, their party being distinguished by moderation; the latter, led by Robespierre (now rapidly becoming the leading man in the Revolution), Danton, and the miserable savage, Marat, who even condescended to attract the approbation of the lowest rabble, by wearing rags, as clothes, offensive from very want of cleanliness—a shape of vanity fortunately rarely to be found.
The life or death of the King was really the question of the Convention; it was the test of Royalty or Republicanism, and no man knew this better than Robespierre. It was by the exercise of this knowledge that he rose to power—to that power, by the exercise of which almost all the men who had formed a portion of the National Assembly, who were members of the Convention which superseded the Assembly, were sent to the scaffold before he himself mounted the fatal ladder.
It was evident how things lay when the question of lodging the President of the Convention was mooted. It being proposed that he should lodge in the Tuileries, then called the National Palace, Tallien cried, “Why, out of this chamber, your President is but a plain citizen; therefore, if he is wanted, let him be sought for in the garrets where, in general, only truth and virtue are to be found.”
Danton and Robespierre were now mortal, although concealed, enemies. They knew that one must destroy the other—which?
The theory of a republic was now declared; it was the first step to the beheading of the King, to whom I will now return.
The Temple, to which the royal family had been taken, was an old building, half monastery, half castle, which had once been one of the strong-holds of those monk-soldiers, the Knights Templars. It was composed of a couple of towers, one seventy feet high, the other much smaller, and a large space of ground, surrounded by a comparatively low wall. This enclosure contained many houses, and especially a very fine building, once the palace of the Templars themselves. Many of the windows of the surrounding houses, which formed part of the lowest quarter of Paris, overlooked these grounds, in which there was an avenue of chestnut trees, and a pretty garden.
The towers had not been used for almost hundreds of years, and the contents of their several floors were of the most wretched description. The rooms themselves, built round a central staircase, were desolate in the extreme; while the walls being nine feet deep, the windows loopholes, and even these barred, it need not be said that the interior was never wholesomely light.
The royal prisoners were taken to the old palatial building upon their arrival, and the poor King at once expressed a sense of relief at the serenity his wife and children now enjoyed, compared with the dangers they ran at the royal palace.