Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
After their arrival at the scaffold the song was continued, while each in turn received the blow of the fatal knife, and did not cease until the head of the last had fallen.
From this time a number of victims, some distinguished, others obscure, belonging to all parties, went every week to end their lives at the Place de la Révolution. Amongst them were the late King’s sister, the gentle and pious Madame Elizabeth; the former Mayor of Paris, the grey-haired Bailly; the youthful Barnave, Mirabeau’s rival for popularity in the Constituent Assembly; Philip Egalité, who could not atone for the crime of his birth, although he had voted for the death of Louis; and Madame Roland, the friend and inspirer of the Girondists, condemned for plotting against the unity and indivisibility of the republic. Her husband, the former Minister of the Interior, who had been in hiding at Rouen, was found lying in a field, stabbed to death by his own hand, soon after the news of her condemnation reached him.
Worship of Reason.
Those who were prepared to shed blood like water, and had, in their own words, put terror on the order of the day, recognised no limitations to their power. All, however, were not prepared to adopt the same course of action. The Hébertists, following the atheistic and materialistic doctrines which had been circulated by Diderot and other philosophers of the same school, denied the existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul. Theists and sceptics, the followers of Rousseau and of Voltaire, regarded the Catholic faith as pernicious and degrading; but various reasons restrained them from attempting its suppression. They held in theory the principles of religious toleration; they believed that the Catholic faith would necessarily lose influence as knowledge became more diffused; they were alive to the danger of exciting the peasantry against the revolution by depriving them of the rites to which they were accustomed. Hébert and Chaumette entertained no such scruples. They were active propagandists, eager to avail themselves of the power of the State in order to impose a new form of worship on Catholic France. Unlike Marat and Robespierre, Hébert from the beginning of the revolution had exhibited equal hostility towards the hard-working and poorly-paid curé, whose parents were peasants, as towards the titled and wealthy bishop who belonged to the caste of the nobility; and he now exhibited equal hostility towards the constitutional priest who had accepted the work of the revolution, as towards the nonjuror who sought to excite reaction in favour of royalty. Morality and reason as displayed by man were declared alone fit for veneration, and the worship to take the place of the Catholic ritual was to be one which, refusing to recognise a spiritual world beyond the sphere of human knowledge, glorified human nature and material objects. The people, said Chaumette, shall be our God; we need no other. We want, said Hébert, no other religion than that of nature; no other temple than that of reason; no other worship than that of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By the orders of the Commune the suppression of the Catholic worship was begun. Constitutional priests were encouraged to marry and to abdicate their functions, and those who refused were imprisoned. The exercise of the Catholic worship, either in the streets or in the churches, was prohibited. Even burial rites were changed. Every sign of mourning was abolished, and the black pall was replaced by a tricolour cloth.
These things were done by the Commune on its sole authority, but the Convention offered no opposition. The voices of Catholics were silent through fear. Forty bishops and curés had seats in the House. But of these the bravest had been proscribed with the Girondists. If few deputies professed atheism, those who were theists and sceptics saw not without gratification the suppression of the Catholic worship by other hands than their own. Urged on by the Commune the Assembly adopted a new calendar, which was in reality incompatible with the maintenance of the Catholic Church as a State institution. The year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each and five odd days; each of the months into three weeks of ten days each. The months were named after the seasons, the Frosty, the Rainy, and the like. The year I. began on September 22, 1792, the day of the proclamation of the republic. Hostility towards Catholicism was yet more plainly evinced by the adoption of a new law, which treated the constitutional clergy as enemies of the revolution. Not only were nonjurors to be immediately transported to the West Coast of Africa, and if taken in hiding in France to be put to death, but constitutional priests were made subject to transportation to the same place at the pleasure of the administrative authorities. Willingly or unwillingly the Convention was dragged in the wake of the Commune, and had to give official recognition to the new worship. Gobel, the Archbishop of Paris, attended by his chaplains and curés, was brought before the Assembly to make public resignation of his office. Several bishops and curés, who were deputies, rose and followed his example. One man alone, a Montagnard, Grégoire, the constitutional Bishop of Blois had the courage to protest and to declare his intention of maintaining his post (November 7). From day to day revellers, masquerading in priestly vestments and laden with church plate, visited the Convention, there to deposit their spoils and to denounce as impostors the maintainers of Catholic doctrines. Finally, a festival in honour of Reason was celebrated in the Church of Notre Dame. A mountain of painted wood was erected in the choir, on which was seated a woman representing Reason, dressed in white, with a pike in her hand and a red cap on her head. All the civic authorities attended the ceremony. A procession, carrying this representative of Reason in its midst, marched to the Convention to the sound of music, and upon the demand of the municipal officers it was decreed that the Church of Notre Dame should thenceforth be converted into the Temple of Reason (November 10). From this time the churches of Paris were either closed or used as meeting-places, where disorderly crowds from time to time assembled to hear speeches made and songs sung in honour of Liberty and of Reason.
Destruction of the Vendean army.
While these strange scenes were being enacted in Paris, war on the frontiers, and war in the interior of France continued to be waged as fiercely as before. The allies, when they deferred invasion till the next campaign, had made the error of rendering no assistance to the royalist insurgents within France. England sent no aid to the Vendeans; Austria none to Lyons. Accordingly, in October, Lyons surrendered. Toulon, by admitting an English and Spanish fleet into its harbour, was enabled to lengthen out till the end of the year its isolated and hopeless resistance. In La Vendée the war on both sides was conducted with extreme ferocity. The Convention adopted a decree, brought in by the Committee of Public Safety, which ordered the generals to burn the forests and insurgent villages, to seize the corn and cattle, and to make prisoners of the women and children (August 1). The intention was to burn and starve the country out. But the undisciplined republican levies were repelled whenever they sought to make their way into the interior. The generals were incompetent and authority divided. The Commune, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Mountain, were severally represented by a number of agents and deputies in mission, who contended with one another for the direction of the war and gave support to different generals. The situation was at last changed by the arrival at Nantes of several thousand troops of the line who had formed the late garrison of Mainz, and who were bound by the terms of their capitulation not to fight against the allies for a year, but were not forbidden to fight against French insurgents. Led by one of their own officers, Kléber, these troops penetrated to the heart of Upper Vendée, driving before them the largest army the Vendeans ever brought together. At the same time forces marched from Saumur and other points to effect a junction with them. The retreating Vendeans were accompanied by a host of non-combatants, old men, women, and children, burnt out of their homes or flying for their lives. Forced back on the Loire, they made a stand at Chollet, but only to experience fresh defeat. A general flight was effected across the river in boats (October 20). By this time most of the chiefs were either dead or dying. La Rochejaquelein, a young noble, and Stofflet, a peasant, took the command. Compelled always to move onwards through scarcity of food, the fugitives made their way to Normandy, in the hope of occupying Granville, a port town, and of receiving aid from England. But they had no siege pieces, and their repeated attempts to storm the fortifications failed. Then despair, long since felt by the chiefs, overtook the whole body. The ranks of the fighting men, incessantly called on to repel the attacks of the pursuing enemy, were gradually thinned; there was dearth of food, and the sufferings of the wounded were intense. The republicans massacred every man, woman, and child left behind. The peasants forced their officers to lead them back to their own country. Angers was reached, where was a bridge over the Loire. But their attempt to force an entrance into the town failed. A defeat took place outside Le Mans (December 12); the retreat became a flight. Thousands were killed and made prisoners; a few escaped in boats; the rest were hunted down and slaughtered on the banks of the Loire.
The Terror in the departments.