At three o'clock he was placed in the cart with three other condemned prisoners. The prince was elegantly attired and all eyes were riveted upon him. With an air of indifference he gazed upon the crowd, saying nothing which could reveal the character of his thoughts. On mounting the scaffold the executioner wished to draw off his boots.
"No, no," said the duke, "you will do it more easily afterward."
He looked intently for a moment at the keen-edged axe, and, without a word, submitted to his fate. Madame Roland and others of the most illustrious of the friends of freedom and of France soon followed to the scaffold. And now every day the guillotine was active as the efficient agent of government, extinguishing all opposition and silencing every murmur. The prisons were full, new arrests were every day made, and dismay paralyzed all hearts. Four thousand six hundred in the prisons of Paris alone were awaiting that trial which almost surely led to condemnation.
The Jacobin leaders, trembling before Europe in arms, felt that there was no safety for France but in the annihilation of all internal foes. Danton, Marat, Robespierre, were not men who loved blood and cruelty; they were resolute fanatics who believed it to be well to cut off the heads of many thousand reputed aristocrats, that a nation of thirty millions might enjoy popular liberty. While the Revolutionary Tribunal was thus mercilessly plying the axe of the executioner, the National Convention, where these Jacobins reigned supreme, were enacting many laws which breathed the spirit of liberty and humanity. The taxes were equally distributed in proportion to property. Provision was made for the poor and infirm. All orphans were adopted by the Republic. Liberty of conscience was proclaimed. Slavery and the slave-trade were indignantly abolished. Measures were adopted for a general system of popular instruction, and decisive efforts were made to unite the rich and the poor in bonds of sympathy and alliance.[408]
We can not give a better account of the state of Paris at this time than in the words of Desodoards, a calm philosophic writer, who had ardently espoused the cause of the Revolution, and who consequently will not be suspected of exaggeration.
"What then," says he, "was this Revolutionary government? Every right, civil and political, was destroyed. Liberty of the press and of thought was at an end. The whole people were divided into two classes, the privileged and the proscribed. Property was wantonly violated, lettres de cachet re-established, the asylum of dwellings exposed to the most tyrannical inquisition, and justice stripped of every appearance of humanity and honor. France was covered with prisons; all the excesses of anarchy and despotism struggling amid a confused multitude of committees; terror in every heart; the scaffold devouring a hundred every day, and threatening to devour a still greater number; in every house melancholy and mourning, and in every street the silence of the tomb.
"War was waged against the tenderest emotions of nature. Was a tear shed over the tomb of father, wife, or friend, it was, according to these Jacobins, a robbery of the Republic. Not to rejoice when the Jacobins rejoiced was treason to freedom. All the mob of low officers of justice, some of whom could scarcely read, sported with the lives of men without the slightest shame or remorse. Often an act of accusation was served upon one person which was intended for another. The officer only changed the name on perceiving his error, and often did not change it. Mistakes of the most inconceivable nature were made with impunity. The Duchess of Biron was judged by an act drawn up against her agent. A young man of twenty was guillotined for having, as it was alleged, a son bearing arms against France. A lad of sixteen, by the name of Mallet, was arrested under an indictment for a man of forty, named Bellay.
"'What is your age?' inquired the president, looking at him with some surprise.
"'Sixteen,' replied the youth.
"'Well, you are quite forty in crime,' said the magistrate; 'take him to the guillotine.'