A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Part III., 1794 / Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners - Charlotte Biggs

* It is worthy of remark, that the sixty-nine people executed as accomplices of Miss Renaud, except her father, mother, and aunt, were totally unconnected with her, or with each other, and had been collected from different prisons, between which no communication could have subsisted.

—They were conducted to the scaffold in a sort of red frocks, intended, as was alleged, to mark them as assassins—but, in reality, to prevent the crowd from distinguishing or receiving any impression from the number of young and interesting females who were comprised in this dreadful slaughter.—They met death with a courage which seemed almost to disappoint the malice of their tyrants, who, in an original excess of barbarity, are said to have lamented that their power of inflicting could not reach those mental faculties which enabled their victims to suffer with fortitude.*

* Fouquier Tinville, public accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal, enraged at the courage with which his victims submitted to their fate, had formed the design of having them bled previous to their execution; hoping by this means to weaken their spirits, and that they might, by a pusillanimous behaviour in their last moments, appear less interesting to the people.

Such are the horrors now common to almost every part of France: the prisons are daily thinned by the ravages of the executioner, and again repeopled by inhabitants destined to the fate of their predecessors. A gloomy reserve, and a sort of uncertain foreboding, have taken possession of every body—no one ventures to communicate his thoughts, even to his nearest friend—relations avoid each other—and the whole social system seems on the point of being dissolved. Those who have yet preserved their freedom take the longest circuit, rather than pass a republican Bastille; or, if obliged by necessity to approach one, it is with downcast or averted looks, which bespeak their dread of incurring the suspicion of humanity.

I say little of my own feelings; they are not of a nature to be relieved by pathetic expressions: "I am e'en sick at heart." For some time I have struggled both against my own evils, and the share I take in the general calamity, but my mortal part gives way, and I can no longer resist the despondency which at times depresses me, and which indeed, more than the danger attending it, has occasioned my abandoning my pen for the last month.—Several circumstances have occurred within these few days, to add to the uneasiness of our situation, and my own apprehensions. Le Bon,* whose cruelties at Arras seem to have endeared him to his colleagues in the Convention, has had his powers extended to this department, and Andre Dumont is recalled; so that we are hourly menaced with the presence of a monster, compared to whom our own representative is amiable.—

* I have already noticed the cruel and ferocious temper of Le Bon, and the massacres of his tribunals are already well known. I will only add some circumstances which not only may be considered as characteristic of this tyrant, but of the times—and I fear I may add of the people, who suffered and even applauded them. They are selected from many others not susceptible of being described in language fit for an English reader. As he was one day enjoying his customary amusement of superintending an execution, where several had already suffered, one of the victims having, from a very natural emotion, averted his eyes while he placed his body in the posture required, the executioner perceived it, and going to the sack which contained the heads of those just sacrificed, took one out, and with the most horrible imprecations obliged the unhappy wretch to kiss it: yet Le Bon not only permitted, but sanctioned this, by dining daily with the hangman. He was afterwards reproached with this familiarity in the Convention, but defended himself by saying, "A similar act of Lequinio's was inserted by your orders in the bulletin with 'honourable mention;' and your decrees have invariably consecrated the principles on which I acted." They all felt for a moment the dominion of conscience, and were silent.—On another occasion he suspended an execution, while the savages he kept in pay threw dirt on the prisoners, and even got on the scaffold and insulted them previous to their suffering. When any of his colleagues passed through Arras, he always proposed their joining with him in a "partie de Guillotine," and the executions were perpetrated on a small square at Arras, rather than the great one, that he, his wife, and relations might more commodiously enjoy the spectacle from the balcony of the theatre, where they took their coffee, attended by a band of music, which played while this human butchery lasted. The following circumstance, though something less horrid, yet sufficiently so to excite the indignation of feeling people, happened to some friends of my own.—They had been brought with many others from a distant town in open carts to Arras, and, worn out with fatigue, were going to be deposited in the prison to which they were destined. At the moment of their arrival several persons were on the point of being executed. Le Bon, presiding as usual at the spectacle, observed the cavalcade passing, and ordered it to stop, that the prisoners might likewise be witnesses. He was, of course, obeyed; and my terrified friends and their companions were obliged not only to appear attentive to the scene before them, but to join in the cry of "Vive la Republique!" at the severing of each head.— One of them, a young lady, did not recover the shock she received for months. The Convention, the Committees, all France, were well acquainted with the conduct of Le Bon. He himself began to fear he might have exceeded the limits of his commission; and, upon communicating some scruples of this kind to his employers, received the following letters, which, though they do not exculpate him, certainly render the Committee of Public Welfare more criminal than himself. "Citizen, "The Committee of Public Welfare approve the measures you have adopted, at the same time that they judge the warrant you solicit unnecessary—such measures being not only allowable, but enjoined by the very nature of your mission. No consideration ought to stand in the way of your revolutionary progress—give free scope therefore to your energy; the powers you are invested with are unlimited, and whatever you may deem conducive to the public good, you are free, you are even called upon by duty, to carry into execution without delay.—We here transmit you an order of the Committee, by which your powers are extended to the neighbouring departments. Armed with such means, and with your energy, you will go on to confound the enemies of the republic, with the very schemes they have projected for its destruction. "Carnot. "Barrere. "R. Lindet."