Sine cæde et sanguine Pauci.—Juv.
[CHAPTER IX.]
Character of the times in the year 1757—Contest in France between the Parliament and the Clergy—King of France stabbed—Damiens the criminal—His torture and execution—Trial of Admiral Byng—His sentence, and behaviour of the Court-Martial—Remarks on his case—Two Highland Regiments raised—Ordnance estimates—Guinea Lottery—Militia Bill.
A century had now passed since reason had begun to attain that ascendant in the affairs of the world, to conduct which it had been granted to man six thousand years ago. If religions and governments were still domineered by prejudices, if creeds that contradict logic, or tyrannies that enslave multitudes to the caprice of one, were not yet exploded, novel absurdities at least were not broached; or if propagated, produced neither persecutors nor martyrs. Methodism made fools, but they did not arrive to be saints; and the histories of past ages describing massacres and murders, public executions of violence, and the more private though not less horrid arts of poison and daggers, began to be regarded almost as romances. Cæsar Borgia seemed little less fabulous than Orlando; and whimsical tenures of manors were not more in disuse, than sanguinary methods of preserving or acquiring empires. No Prime Ministers perished on a scaffold, no heretics in the flames; a Russian[73] Princess spared her competitor; even in Turkey the bow-string had been relaxed—alas! frenzy revived in France the credibility of assassination; guilt renewed in England machinations of scarce a whiter dye.
The contests between the Parliament and the clergy about the Bull unigenitus were still carried on in France. The conduct of the former was such a happy composition of good sense and temper, that they neither deserted their duty under oppression, nor sought to inflame the populace to support them against their oppressors. Even the Clergy were blessed with more moderation than is usual in such contentions; and, what was as lucky, had no able heads to direct them. The Court of Rome, instead of profiting of these divisions, had used its influence to compose them. Benedict the Fourteenth then sat in the Apostolic Chair; a man in whom were united all the amiable qualities of a Prince and a Pastor: he had too much sense to govern the Church by words, too much goodness to rule his dominions by force. Amid the pomp of Popery he laughed at form, and by the mildness of his virtue made fanaticism, of whatever sect, odious. Yet this venerable Pontiff, now sinking under the weight of fourscore years, was at last surprised into, or perhaps never knew that his name was used in, issuing a Bull to enforce, under pain of damnation, the acceptance of the Bull unigenitus. Louis the Fifteenth was persuaded to use that most solemn act of their government, a Bed of Justice, to compel the Parliament to register the Papal Ordinance. The greater part of the members preferred resigning their employments. The King had taken this step in one of those relapses into weakness which his constitution furnished, rather than a want of understanding. The Dauphin was a far more uniform bigot. It is related of him, that about a year before this period, reading the life of Nero, he said, “Ma foi, c’étoit le plus grand scélérat du monde! il ne lui manquoit que d’être Janseniste.” And he had even gone so far as to tell his father, “that were he King, and the Pope should bid him lay down his Crown, he would obey.” The King, with a tender shrewdness, said, “and if he should bid you take mine from me, would you?”
The King not being constant in such steady obedience to the Clergy, they had much aspersed him, and traduced his life and Government. The partizans of the Parliament loved him as little; and when he passed through Paris to hold his Bed of Justice, he was received with sullen coldness. One woman alone crying, Vive le Roi! was thrown down and trampled to death by the mob. In such a disposition, it was almost extraordinary that no fanatic was found to lift the arm of violence; a madman supplied the part, without inviting Heaven to an association of murder.
January 5th.—Between five and six in the evening the King was getting into his coach to go to Trianon. A man, who had lurked about the colonnades for two days, pushed up to the coach, jostled the Dauphin, and stabbed the King under the right arm with a long knife; but the King having two thick coats, the blade did not penetrate deep. The King was surprised, but thinking the man had only pushed against him, said, “Le coquin m’a donné un furieux coup de poing”—but putting his hand to his side and feeling blood, he said, “Il m’a blessé; qu’on le saississe, et qu’on ne lui fasse point de mal.” The King was carried to bed; the wound proved neither mortal nor dangerous; but strong impressions, and not easily to be eradicated, must have been made on a mind gloomy and superstitious. The title of Well-beloved could but faintly balance the ideas of Henry the Third stabbed, of Henry the Fourth stabbed, of enraged Jesuits, and an actual wound. Yet all the satisfaction that the most minute investigation of circumstances could give, and that tortures could wrest from the assassin, was obtained.
Damiens, the criminal, appeared clearly to be mad. He had been footman to several persons, had fled for a robbery, had returned to Paris from a dark and restless habit of mind; and from some preposterous avidity of horrid fame, and from one of those wonderful contradictions of the human mind, a man aspired to renown that had descended to theft. Yet in this dreadful complication of guilt and frenzy, there was room for compassion. The unfortunate wretch was sensible of the predominance of his black temperament; and the very morning of the assassination, asked for a surgeon to let him blood; and to the last gasp of being, persisted that he should not have committed his crime, if he had been blooded. What the miserable man suffered is not to be described. When first seized, and carried into the Guard-chamber, the Garde-des-sceaux and the Duc d’Ayen ordered the tongs to be heated, and pieces of flesh torn from his legs, to make him declare his accomplices. The industrious art used to preserve his life was not less than the refinement of torture by which they meaned to take it away. The inventions to form the bed on which he lay, (as the wounds on his leg prevented his standing,) that his health might in no shape be affected, equalled what a refining tyrant would have sought to indulge his own luxury.