Empress Josephine: An Historical Sketch of the Days of Napoleon

by L. Mühlbach

The misfortune, which she had so long expected and foreseen, was now upon her and ready to crush her and the future of her children. Her husband was arrested—that is to say, he was condemned to die.

At this thought Josephine rose up like a lioness; the indolence, the dreamy quietude of the creole, had suddenly vanished, and Josephine was now a resolute, energetic woman, anxious to risk every thing, to try every thing, so as to save her husband, the father of her children. She now knew no timidity, no trembling, no fear, no horror; every thing in her was decision of purpose; keen, daring action. Letters, visits, petitions, and even personal supplications, every thing was tried; there was no humiliation before which she shrank. For long hours she sat in the anterooms of the tribunal of the revolution, of the ministers who, however much they despised the aristocrats, imitated their manners, and made the people wait in the vestibule, even as the ministers of the tyrant had done; with tears, with all the eloquence of love, she entreated those men of blood and terror to give her back her husband, or at least not to condemn him before he had been accused, and to furnish him with the means of defence.

But those new lords and rulers of France had no heart for compassion; Robespierre, Marat, Danton, could not be moved by the tears which a wife could shed for an accused husband. They had already witnessed so much weeping, listened to so many complaints, to so many cries of distress, their eyes were not open for such things, their ears heard not.

France was diseased, and only by drawing away the bad blood could she be restored to health, could she be made sound, could she rise up again with the strength of youth! And Marat, Danton, Robespierre, were the physicians who were healing France, who were restoring her to health by thus horribly opening her veins. Marat and Danton murdered from bloodthirsty hatred, from misanthropy and vengeance; Robespierre murdered through principle, from the settled fanatical conviction, that France was lost if all the old corrupt blood was not cleansed away from her veins, so as to replenish them with youthful, vitalizing blood.

Robespierre was therefore inexorable, and Robespierre now ruled over France! He was the dictator to whom every thing had to bow; he was at the head of the tribunal of revolution; he daily signed hundreds of death-warrants; and this selfsame man, who once in Arras had resigned his office of judge because his hand could not be induced to sign the death-warrant of a convicted criminal [Footnote: See “Maximilian Robespierre,” by Theodore Mundt, vol. i.]—this man, who shed tears over a tame dove which the shot of a hunter had killed, could, with heart unmoved, with composed look, sit for long hours near the guillotine on the tribune of the revolution, and gaze with undimmed eyes on the heads of his victims falling under the axe.

He was now at the summit of his power; France lay bleeding, trembling at his feet; fear had silenced even his enemies; no one dared touch the dreaded man whose mere contact was death; whose look, when coldly, calmly fixed on the face of any man, benumbed his heart as if he had read his sentence of death in the blue eyes of Robespierre.

At the side of Robespierre sat the terrorists Fouquier-Tinville and Marat, to whom murder was a delight, blood-shedding a joy, who with sarcastic pleasure listened unmoved to the cries, to the tearful prayers of mothers, wives, children, of those sentenced to death, and who fed on their tears and on their despair.

With such men at the head of affairs it was natural that the reign of terror should still be increasing in power, and that with it the number of the captives in the prisons should increase.

In the month of January, 1794, the list of the incarcerated within the prisons of Paris ran up to the number of 4,659; in the month of February the number rose up to 5,892; in the beginning of April to 7,541; and at the end of the same month it was reckoned that there were in Paris eight thousand prisoners. [Footnote: Thiers, “Histoire de la Revolution Francaise,” vol. vi., p. 41]

The greater the number of prisoners, the more zealous was the tribunal of the revolution to get rid of them; and with satisfaction these judges of blood saw the new improvements made in the guillotine, and which not only caused the machine to work faster, but also prevented the axe from losing its edge too soon by the sundering of so many necks.