Footnote 11: [(return)]
Pepin and Charlemagne were, properly speaking, simply German princes reigning in Gaul. The kingdom of France is usually dated from the accession of the first of the Capetian kings, late in the tenth century, 987. However, the Frankish nation, of whom the Carlovingian kings were leaders, laid the foundation of the French kingdom and gave a new name to Gaul—France.
This revolution commenced on the fifth of May, 1789, in the Convocation of the States General, for the redress of grievances and the extrication of the government and nation from the difficulties under which they were laboring. A conflict had been going on between despotism and popular rights, the throne and nobility contending for absolute power, and the people, for freedom. But when in this encounter the popular party triumphed, there was no fear of God before the eyes of those who seized the reins of government. The infidelity of Voltaire and his associates had removed the last restraint upon human passion, and the scenes of terror that followed are without a parallel in history. The king was condemned to death and executed. The barbarous execution of the queen, Marie Antoinette, followed in about six months, and this was immediately succeeded by the decree of the National Convention, of the most infamous character, that of the violation of the tombs of St. Dennis and the profanation of the sepulchres of the kings of France. I will quote from Sir A. Alison's noted History of Europe:
"By a decree of the Convention, these venerable asylums of departed greatness were ordered to be destroyed.... A furious multitude precipitated itself out of Paris; the tombs of Henry IV., of Francis I., and of Louis XII., were ransacked, and their bones scattered in the air. Even the glorious name of Turenne could not protect his grave from spoilation. His remains were almost undecayed, as when he received the fatal wound on the banks of the Lech. The bones of Charles V., the savior of his country, were dispersed. At his feet was found the coffin of the faithful Du Gueselin, and the French hands profaned the skeleton before which English invasion had rolled back. Most of these tombs were found to be strongly secured. Much time, and no small exertion of skill and labor, were required to burst their barriers. They would have resisted forever the decay of time or the violence of enemies; they yielded to the fury of domestic dissension. This was followed immediately by a general attack upon the monuments and remains of antiquity throughout all France. The sepulchres of the great of past ages, of the barons and generals of the feudal ages, of the paladins, and of the crusaders, were involved in one undistinguished ruin. It seemed as if the glories of antiquity were forgotten, or sought to be buried in oblivion. The tomb of Du Gueselin shared the same fate as that of Louis XIV. The skulls of monarchs and heroes were tossed about like foot balls by the profane multitude; like the grave-diggers in Hamlet, they made a jest of the lips before which the nations had trembled."
Having begun by waging this profane warfare upon their own glorious dead, another scene of the fatal drama immediately succeeded. The same author continues: "Having massacred the great of the present and insulted the illustrious of former ages, nothing remained to the revolutionists but to direct their vengeance against heaven itself. Pache, Hebert, and Chaumette, the leaders of the municipality publicly expressed their determination 'to dethrone the God of heaven, as well as the monarchs of earth.' To accomplish this design, they prevailed on Gobet, the apostate constitutional bishop of Paris, to appear at the bar of the Assembly, accompanied by some of the clergy of his diocese, and there abjure the Christian faith. He declared 'that no other national religion was now required but that of Liberty, equality, and morality.' Many of the constitutional bishops and clergy in the Convention joined in the proposition. Crowds of drunken artisans and shameless prostitutes crowded to the bar, and trampled under their feet the sacred vases, consecrated for ages to the holiest purposes of religion. The churches were stripped of all their ornaments; their plate and valuable contents brought in heaps to the municipality and the Convention, from whence they were sent to the mint to be melted down. Trampling under foot the images of our Savior and the Virgin, they elevated, amid shouts of applause, the busts of Marat and Lepelletier, and danced around them, singing parodies on the Halleluiah, and dancing the Carmagnole.
"Shortly after a still more indecent exhibition took place before the assembly.... Hebert and Chaumette, and their associates, appeared at the bar and declared 'that God did not exist, and that the worship of Reason was to be substituted in his stead.' A veiled female, arrayed in blue drapery, was brought into the Assembly; and Chaumette, taking her by the hand, 'Mortals,' said he, 'cease to tremble before the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears have created. Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its noblest and purest image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only to this.' When, letting fall the veil, he exclaimed, 'Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, O Veil of Reason!' At the same time, the goddess appeared personified by a celebrated beauty, the wife of Momoro, a printer, known in more than one character to most of the Convention. The goddess after being embraced by the president, was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to the cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There she was elevated on a high altar, and received the adoration of all present, while the young women, her attendants, whose alluring looks already sufficiently indicated their profession, retired into the chapels around the choir, where every species of licentiousness and obscenity was indulged in without control, with hardly any veil from the public gaze. To such a length was this carried, that Robespierre afterward declared that Chaumette deserved death for the abominations he had permitted on that occasion. Thenceforward that ancient edifice was called the Temple of Reason."
Such horrible events are sickening to relate; but as I started out to describe the condition of this "sea" when it became as the blood of a dead man, I must be faithful to the task. God was now dethroned; the services of religion abandoned; every tenth day set apart for the hellish orgies of atheism and Reason; Marat was deified; the instrument of death sanctified by the name "the holy Guillotine"; on the public cemeteries was inscribed, "Death is an Eternal Sleep"; marriage was a civil contract, binding only during the pleasure of the contracting parties. Mademoiselle Arnout, a celebrated comedian, expressed the public feeling when she said, "Marriage the sacrament of adultery." What an awful harvest would be expected of such seed! Alison continues:
"A Revolutionary Tribunal was formed at Nantes, under the direction of Carrier, and it soon outstripped even the rapid march of Danton and Robespierre. Their principle was that it was necessary to destroy en masse, all the prisoners. At their command was formed a corps, called the Legion of Marat, composed of the most determined and bloodthirsty of the revolutionists, the members of which were entitled, on their own authority, to incarcerate any person whom they chose. The number of their prisoners was soon between three and four thousand, and they divided among themselves all their property. Whenever a further supply of captives was wanted, the alarm was spread of a counter-revolution, the generale beat, the cannon planted; and this was followed immediately by innumerable arrests. Nor were they long in disposing of their captives. The miserable wretches were either slain with poinards in prison, or carried out in a vessel and drowned by wholesale in the Loire. On one occasion a hundred 'fanatical priests,' as they were termed, were taken out together, striped of their clothes, and precipitated into the waters.... Women big with child, infants eight, nine, and ten years of age, were thrown together into the stream, on the sides of which men, armed with sabres, were placed to cut off their heads if the waves should throw them undrowned on the shore.
"On one occasion, by orders of Carrier, twenty-three of the revolutionists, on another twenty-four, were guillotined without any trial. The executioner remonstrated, but in vain. Among them were many children of seven or eight years of age, and seven women; the executioner died two or three days after, with horror at what he himself had done. So great was the multitude of captives who were brought in on all sides, that the executioners, as well as the company of Marat, declared themselves exhausted with fatigue; and a new method of disposing of them was adopted, borrowed from Nero, but improved on the plan of that tyrant. A hundred or a hundred and fifty victims, for the most part women and children, were crowded together in a boat, with a concealed trap-door in the bottom, which was conducted into the middle of the Loire; at a signal given, the crew leaped into another boast, the bolts were withdrawn, and the shrieking victims precipitated into the waters, amid the laughter of the company of Marat, who stood on the banks to cut down any who approached the shore. This was what Carrier called his Republican Baptisms. The Republican Marriages were, if possible, a still greater refinement of cruelty. Two persons of different sexes, bereft of every species of dress, were bound together, and after being left in torture in that situation for half an hour, thrown into the river. Such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of that river was affected, so as to render a public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use of it to the inhabitants; and the mariners, when they heaved their anchors, frequently brought up boats charged with corpses. Birds of prey flocked to the shores and fed on human flesh; while the very fish became so poisonous, as to induce an order of the municipality of Nantes, prohibiting them to be taken by the fishermen.