"Robespierre," she wrote to him, "is it not enough to have assassinated your best friend; do you desire also the blood of his wife, of my daughter? Your master, Fouquier Tinville, has just ordered her to be led to the scaffold. Two hours more and she will not be in existence. Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human shape, if the blood of Camille has not inebriated you to the point of losing your reason entirely, if you recall still our evenings of intimacy, if you recall to yourself the caresses you lavished upon the little Horace, and how you delighted to hold him upon your knees, and if you remember that you were to have been my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim! But, if thy fury is that of a lion, come and take us also, myself, Adèle [her other daughter], and Horace. Come and tear us away with thy hands still reeking in the blood of Camille. Come, come, and let one single tomb reunite us."
To this appeal Robespierre returned no reply. Lucile was left to her fate. In the same car of the condemned with Madame Hebert she was conducted to the guillotine. She had dressed herself for the occasion with remarkable grace. A white gauze veil, partially covering her luxuriant hair, embellished her marvelous beauty. With alacrity and apparent cheerfulness she ascended the steps, placed her head upon the fatal plank, and a smile was upon her lips as the keen-edged knife, with the rapidity of the lightning's stroke, severed her head from her body.
While these cruel scenes were transpiring in Paris, and similar scenes in all parts of France, the republican armies on the frontiers were struggling to repel the invading armies of allied Europe. It was the fear that internal enemies would rise and combine with the foreign foe which goaded the Revolutionists to such measures of desperation. They knew that the triumph of the Bourbons was their certain death. The English were now in possession of Toulon, the arsenal of the French navy, which had been treasonably surrendered to an English fleet by the friends of the Bourbons. A republican army had for some months been besieging the city, but had made no progress toward the expulsion of the invaders.
Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young man about twenty-five years of age and a lieutenant in the army, was sent to aid the besiegers. His genius soon placed him in command of the artillery. With almost superhuman energy, and skill never before surpassed, he pressed the siege, and, in one of the most terrific midnight attacks which ever has been witnessed, drove the British from the soil of France. This is the first time that Napoleon appears as an actor in the drama of the Revolution. The achievement gave him great renown in the army. On this occasion the humanity of Napoleon was as conspicuous as his energy. He abhorred alike the tyrannic sway of the Bourbons and the sanguinary rule of the Jacobins. One of the deputies of the Convention wrote to Carnot, then Minister of War, "I send you a young man who distinguished himself very much during the siege, and earnestly recommend you to advance him speedily. If you do not, he will most assuredly advance himself."
At St. Helena Napoleon said, "I was a very warm and sincere Republican at the commencement of the Revolution. I cooled by degrees, in proportion as I acquired more just and solid ideas. My patriotism sank under the political absurdities and monstrous domestic excesses of our legislatures."[418]
FOOTNOTES:
[411] "Few victims ever met with viler executioners; few executioners with so exulted a victim. Shame at the foot of the scaffold, glory above, and pity every where. One blushes to be a man in contemplating this people. One glories in this title in contemplating Bailly."—Lamartine, Hist. Gir., vol. iii., p. 282.
[412] In Parl. Hist., "I would not debauch my humanity."
[413] History of Civilization in England, by Henry Thomas Buckle, vol. i., p. 338.
[414] Hebert was a low fellow, impudent, ignorant, and corrupt, and connected with one of the theatres in Paris. He was an ardent Jacobin, and established a paper called "Father Duchesne," which, from its ribaldry, was eagerly sought for by the populace. He was one of the leaders of the prison massacres on the 10th of August. His paper was the zealous advocate of atheism. He it was who brought the disgusting charge against the queen that she had endeavored to pollute her own son, and had committed incest with him, a child of eight years. Robespierre even was indignant at the foul accusation, and exclaimed, "Madman! was it not enough for him to have asserted that she was a Messalina, without also making an Agrippina of her?"—Biographie Moderne.