As Jefferson was intimate with La Fayette and other prominent popular leaders, it is evident that these views were those which were generally entertained of the queen at that time. It is deeply to be regretted that no subsequent developments can lead one to doubt that they were essentially correct. While we weep over the woes of the queen we must not forget that she was endeavoring with all her energy to rivet the chains of unlimited despotism upon twenty-five millions of people.
THE JACOBINS TRIUMPHANT.
Views of the Girondists.—Anecdote of Vergniaud.—The Girondists brought to Trial.—Suicide of Valazé.—Anguish of Desmoulins.—Fonfrede and Ducos.—Last Supper of the Girondists.—Their Execution.—The Duke of Orleans; his Execution.—Activity of the Guillotine.—Humane Legislation.—Testimony of Desodoards.—Anacharsis Cloots.—The New Era.
The Jacobins now resolved to free themselves from all internal foes, that they might more vigorously cope with all Europe in arms against them. Marie Antoinette was executed the 16th of October. On the 22d, the Girondists, twenty-two in number, were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. They were the most illustrious men of the most noble party to which the Revolution had given birth. They had demolished a despotic throne that they might establish a constitutional monarchy upon the model of that of England.[402] With great generosity they had placed Louis XVI. on that throne, and he had feigned to accept the Constitution. But with hypocrisy which even his subsequent woes can not obliterate, he secretly rallied his nobles around him, or rather allowed them to use him as their leader, and appealed to the armies of foreign despotisms to overthrow the free Constitution and re-establish the old feudal tyranny.
"The question thenceforth was, whether their sons should, as in times past (as in Mr. Burke's splendid Age of Chivalry), be sent to manure Europe with their bodies, in wars undertaken at the nod of a courtesan—whether their wives and daughters, cursed with beauty enough to excite a transient emotion of sensuality, should be lured and torn from them and debauched—whether every man who dared to utter a manly political thought or to assert his rights against rank should be imprisoned at pleasure without a hearing—whether the toiling masses, for the purpose of supporting lascivious splendor, of building Parcs aux Cerfs, of pensioning discarded mistresses, of swiftly enriching corrupt favorites and minions of every stamp, should be so taxed that the light and air of heaven hardly came to them untaxed, and that they should be so sunk by exactions of every kind in the dregs of indigence that a short crop compelled them to live on food that the hounds, if not the swine, of their task-masters would reject; and, finally, whether, when, in the bloody sweat of their agony, they asked some mitigation of their hard fate, they should be answered by the bayonets of foreign mercenaries; and a people—stout manhood, gentle womanhood, gray-haired age, and tender infancy, turned their pale faces upward and shrieked for food, fierce, licentious nobles should scornfully bid them eat grass."[403]
In this terrible dilemma, the Girondists felt compelled to abandon the newly-established Constitutional monarchy, which had proved treacherous to its trust, and to fall back upon a republic, as their only asylum from destruction, and as the only possible refuge for French liberty. But the populace of France, ignorant and irreligious, were unfitted for a republic. Universal suffrage threw the power into the hands of millions of newly-emancipated slaves. Violence and blood commenced their reign. The Girondists in vain endeavored to stem the flood. They were overwhelmed. Such is their brief history.
The Girondists had been for some time confined in the dungeons of the Conciergerie. They were in a state of extreme misery. Vergniaud, one of the most noble and eloquent of men, was their recognized leader. His brother-in-law, M. Alluaud, came to the prison to bring him some money. A child of M. Alluaud, ten years of age, accompanied his father. Seeing his uncle with sunken eyes and haggard cheeks and disordered hair, and with his garments falling in tatters around him, the child was terrified, and, bursting into tears, clung to his father's knees.