"Come, children of your country, come,
The day of glory dawns on high,
And tyranny has wide unfurl'd
Her blood-stained banner in the sky."
[407] Edmund Burke has most unpardonably calumniated these noble men. Even Prof. Smyth, who espouses his opinions, says, "Burke was a man who, from the ardor of his temperament and the vehemence of his eloquence, might be almost said to have ruined every cause and every party that he espoused. No mind, however great, that will not bow to the superiority of his genius; yet no mind, however inferior, that will not occasionally feel itself entitled to look down upon him, from the total want which he sometimes shows of all calmness and candor, and even, at particular moments, of all reasonableness and propriety of thought."—Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. iii., p. 4.
[408] History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 291.
[409] "There were in the prisons of Paris on the 1st of September, 1793, 597; October 1, 2400; November 1, 3203; December 1, 4130; and in six months after, 11,400."—Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards.
[410] Cloots declared himself "the personal enemy of Jesus Christ." France adopted the atheistic principles of Cloots, and sent him to the guillotine. See article Cloots, Enc. Am.
FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS AND OF THE DANTONISTS.
Continued Persecution of the Girondists.—Robespierre opposes the Atheists.—Danton, Souberbielle, and Camille Desmoulins.—The Vieux Cordelier.—The Hebertists executed.—Danton assailed.—Interview between Danton and Robespierre.—Danton warned of his Peril.—Camille Desmoulins and others arrested.—Lucile, the Wife of Desmoulins.—Letters.—Execution of the Dantonists.—Arrest and Execution of Lucile.—Toulon recovered by Bonaparte.
The leaders of the Girondists were now destroyed, and the remnants of the party were prosecuted with unsparing ferocity. On the 11th of November, Bailly, the former mayor, the friend of La Fayette, the philanthropist and the scholar, was dragged to the scaffold. The day was cold and rainy. His crime was having unfurled the red flag in the Field of Mars, to quell the riot there, on the 17th of July, 1791. He was condemned to be executed on the field which was the theatre of his alleged crime. Behind the cart which carried him they affixed the flag which he had spread. A crowd followed, heaping upon him the most cruel imprecations. On reaching the scaffold, some one cried out that the field of the federation ought not to be polluted with his blood. Immediately the mob rushed upon the guillotine, tore it down, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the banks of the Seine. They dragged Bailly from the tumbril, and compelled him to make the tour of the Field of Mars on foot. Bareheaded, with his hands bound behind him, and with no other garment than a shirt, the sleet glued his hair and froze upon his breast. They pelted him with mud, spat in his face, and whipped him with the flag, which they dipped in the gutters. The old man fell exhausted. They lifted him up again, and goaded him on. Blood, mingled with mire, streamed down his face, depriving him of human aspect. Shouts of derision greeted these horrors. The freezing wind and exhaustion caused an involuntary shivering. Some one cried out, "You tremble, Bailly." "Yes, my friend," replied the heroic old man, "but it is with cold."[411] After five hours of such a martyrdom, the axe released him from his sufferings.