Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

“It is remarkable,” writes Mr. Sneyd Edgeworth, the Abbé’s brother, “that in this account of the last moments of Louis XVI., the Abbé Edgeworth has omitted to relate that fine apostrophe, which everyone has heard, and which everyone believes that he addressed to his king at the moment of execution—

“‘Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!’

“The Abbé Edgeworth has been asked if he recollected to have made this exclamation. He replied that he could neither deny nor affirm that he had spoken the words. It was possible, he added, that he might have pronounced them without afterwards recollecting the fact, for that he retained no memory of anything which happened relative to himself at that awful instant. His not recollecting or recording the words is perhaps the best proof that they were spoken from the impulse of the moment.”

The Reign of Terror had now begun. Foreign armies were marching towards Paris in order to liberate the King from prison and replace him on his throne. The Republican Government replied by removing the head of the monarch whom it was prepared to restore.

During the Reign of Terror the Place de la Concorde, as it was afterwards to be called, might fitly have been named, not merely the Place of the Revolution, the title it bore, but the Place of Blood. In the terrible year of 1793 Charlotte Corday was guillotined on the 17th of July; Brissot, leader of the Girondists, with twenty-one of his followers, on the 2nd of October; Queen Marie Antoinette on the 16th of October; and Philippe Égalité, Duke of Orleans (father of Louis Philippe), on the 14th of November. Among the victims of the year 1794 may be mentioned Madame Élizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., who was guillotined on the 12th of May; Hébert and several of his most bloodthirsty associates, who, at the instigation of Robespierre and Danton, lost their heads on the 14th of March; Marat and members of his party, who followed a few days afterwards; Danton himself and a number of his adherents, with the heroic Camille Desmoulins among them, on the 8th of April; Chaumette and Anacharsis Cloots, together with the wives of some previous victims on April 16th; Robespierre, Saint-Just, and {151} other members of the Committee of Public Safety, on July 28th; seventy members of the Commune who had acted under Robespierre’s direction on July 29th; and twelve other members of the same body the day afterwards.

One of the most eminent figures in the Girondist party, Lasource, exclaimed to his sanguinary judges, on receiving his sentence: “I die at a moment when the people have lost their reason; you will die the day they regain it.”

In reference to Saint-Just’s arrogance, Camille Desmoulins had said: “He carries his head with as much veneration as though he were bearing the Church Sacrament on his shoulders;” to which Saint-Just playfully replied: “And I will make him carry his head as St. Denis carried his.” St. Denis, the martyr, it will be remembered, is said, after decapitation, to have marched some distance with his head under his arm.

In the course of the two years over which the Reign of Terror extended (though its duration is variously estimated according to the political principles of the calculator) nearly 3,000 persons are declared to have perished on the Place de la Révolution; though this estimate would certainly be regarded by some as excessive, by others as inadequate.

In reference to the Reign of Terror, Victor Hugo calls upon the world “not to criticise too closely the bursting of the thunder-cloud which had been slowly gathering for eighteen centuries;” as though, from the earliest period, France had always been grossly misgoverned, to be suddenly governed in perfection from the time of the Revolution. It is the simple truth, however, that the Reign of Terror was the result, not of the natural development of the Revolutionary forces, but of threats from abroad, the presence, real and imaginary, of foreign agents in Paris, and the advance of the German armies with a view to the liberation of the king and the suppression of the Republic. It ought also in fairness to be remembered that if the Revolutionists made a free use of the guillotine, they abolished torture and the cruel methods of executions (such as beating to death with an iron bar) in use under the ancient monarchy until the moment of the outbreak. Nor can it be forgotten that at various periods of French history (the Massacre of St. Bartholomew is an instance) life has been sacrificed more copiously, more recklessly, and more wantonly, than during the worst excesses of the French Revolution. When many years afterwards it was proposed to erect a fountain on the spot where the scaffold of Louis XVI. had stood, Chateaubriand declared that all the water in the world would not suffice to remove the blood-stains which had sullied the Place.

Of those who suffered under the Revolution, many, such as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, well deserved their fate, and none more so than the infamous Philippe Égalité, who, after playing the part of a democrat, and democratically voting for the death of his cousin the king, was himself, on democratic grounds, brought to the guillotine.