[200] Gustavus III., King of Sweden (1746-1792), was assassinated by Anckarström in March, 1792. He had offered his services against France as generalissimo of the forces of the Allied Powers.
[201] Russia, after withdrawing her ambassador from Paris, ordered the French minister to leave St. Petersburg in August, 1792.
[202] The negroes in the French or western part of the Island of St. Domingo rose against the whites in August, 1791. In September the General Assembly of the island appealed to the National Assembly at Paris for aid, by a letter detailing the horrors of the insurrection, and later (November 30) by sending a deputy, who was heard in the National Assembly. The insurrection was the first step in the independence of Hayti, which was recognized by the French in 1825. A Comte d'Argout succeeded the Comte d'Ennery as governor of the colony in 1777.
[203] A commission presided over by M. Fischer, supported by two or three thousand militia of the Canton of Berne, was sent to inquire into the attempts to introduce the principles of the French Revolution into the Pays de Vaud. Several persons were arrested, and secretly examined. MM. Rosset and La Motte were confined in the Castle of Chillon, and being afterwards condemned to a long period of imprisonment for correspondence with the French, were transferred to the Castle of Arbourg, whence they escaped.
[204] Lally's tragedy of Strafford, in five acts and verse, was printed at London in 1795. His Essai sur la vie de Thomas Wentworth, Comte de Strafford, was published at London in the same year. Madame d'Arblay, in February, 1792, speaks of Miss Fanshawe having heard "the famous M. Lally Tolendahl read a French tragedy upon an English subject written by himself! The subject was the death of Strafford." Lally was probably attracted to the subject by the circumstances of his own father's execution.
[205] Marie Antoinette was born November 2, 1755.
[206] Bouillé, warned by a messenger from Choiseul that the king was detained at Varennes, rode from Dun-sur-Meuse, about twenty-two miles from Montmédy, to within sight of the village, but could not cross the Aire; thousands of the National Guard had mustered, and the king was already on his return journey to Paris.
[207] The Comte de Damas, who was stationed on the Ste. Menehould side of Varennes, joined the king at Clermont-en-Argonne, where the road westward from Ste. Menehould strikes to the north to Varennes and Montmédy. The Duc de Choiseul and his hussars, who had been posted on the Montmédy side of Varennes, also joined the king at Varennes. But their troops refused to act against the National Guard. The relays were stationed at the further side of the bridge over the Aire, which had been blocked by Postmaster Drouet.
[208] In Westmoreland County, Jamaica, "particularly in the parish of St. Elizabeth, there have been nightly meetings of the Negroes, where they have not hesitated to call Wilberforce their King, by the name (in their way) of King Wilberforce." (Extract from a letter quoted in the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1792, vol. 62, p. 174.)
[209] Amélie de Boufflers, only daughter of the Duc de Boufflers, was born in 1751. J. J. Rousseau speaks enthusiastically of her, when he saw her as a girl at the house of her grandmother, the Maréchale de Luxembourg. She married, in 1766, Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duc de Lauzun, who succeeded his uncle as Duc de Biron. Dissolute and a spendthrift, the duke hated the king and queen because he had not been appointed to succeed his uncle as Colonel of the Guards (Souvenirs et Portraits, par le Duc de Lévis, pp. 191-201). He joined the extreme revolutionary party. His wife, who had lived apart from him for many years, in 1791-2 passed some months at Lausanne. She returned to France from England in November, 1792, was arrested and released at the intercession of her husband, whom she had not seen for fifteen years. In England she lived with the Princesse d'Hénin till October, 1793, when she again returned to France. She was arrested and guillotined in 1794. The Duc was executed in December, 1793.