“Citizen—we, your judges, admire your courage. What would you do with your life if we gave it you?”
“Use it to kill you!”
She ascended the scaffold, alarmed at the crowd of people—fearless of death. She refused the executioner’s help—cried twice, “God save the King!”—and lay down to die.
After her death, the executioner found amongst her clothes a note written in blood. It was from her lover, who had been shot some days before.
The lovers were only separated by a few days. Their history touched the people, but the people of that day did not know how to pardon.
These awful executions were at last arrested, not because the victims were exhausted, but because the soldiers threw down their arms and positively refused any longer to play the shameful parts of executioners.
Napoleon Bonaparte, the tyrant-liberator of the oppressed republic, now rose to his first distinction.
The English were in possession of Toulon. Admiral Hood was preparing to flood France with English red-coats.
Within a week Bonaparte had compelled the English to retire, but not before they had destroyed the arsenal and the whole of the French navy.
On the beach, fifteen thousand refugees from various parts of France sought to get away to the combined English and Spanish fleets.