The Pont-royal, the new bridge of Lewis XVI. the Place des Victoires, the Place Royal, the Rue d'Artois, &c. have all new names, which, added to the division of the kingdom into eighty-three departments, abolishing all the ancient noble names of Bourgogne, Champagne, Provence, Languedoc, Bretagne, Navarre, Normandie, &c. and in their stead substituting such as these: Ain, Aube, Aude, Cher, Creuse, Doubs, Eure, Gard, Gers, Indre, Lot, Orne, Sarte, Tarne, Var, &c. which are the names of insignificant rivers; to that of Paris into forty-eight new sections, and to all titles being likewise abolished, makes it very difficult for a stranger to know any thing about the geography of the kingdom, nor what were the ci-devant titles of such of the nobility as still remain in France, and who are at present only known by their family names.
BEHEADING. DEAD NAKED BODIES.
BUT to return to those "active citizens, whom aristocratic insolence has stiled sans-culottes, brigands."[28]
On Sunday, they dragged a man to the Hôtel de Ville, before a magistrate, to be tried, for having stolen something in the Tuileries as they said. He was accordingly tried, searched, and nothing being found on him, was acquitted; n'importe, said these citizens, we must have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing. They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase in the justice-hall.[29]
At the corner of almost every chief street is a black marble slab, inserted in the wall about ten feet high, on which is cut in large letters, gilt, Loix et actes de l'autorité publique (laws and acts of the public authority) and underneath are pasted the daily and sometimes hourly decrees and notices of the National Assembly. One of these acquainted the citizens, that Mandat (the former commander-general of the national guards) had yesterday undergone the punishment due to his crimes; that is to say, the people had cut off his head.
During several days, after the day I procured all the Paris newspapers, about twenty, but all on the same side, as the people had put the editors of the aristocratic papers, hors d'état de parler (prevented their speaking) by beheading one or two of them, and destroying all their presses.
They, about this time, hanged two money changers (people who gave paper for louis d'or, crowns, and guineas) under the idea that the money was sent to the emigrants.
On the Saturday morning, at seven, I was in the Tuileries gardens; only thirty-eight dead naked bodies were still lying there; they were however covered where decency required; the people who stript them on the preceding evening, having cut a gash in the belly, and left a bit of the shirt sticking to the carcase by means of the dried blood. I was told, that the body of a lady had just been carried out of the Carousel square; she was the only woman killed, and that probably by accident. Here I had the pleasure of seeing many beautiful ladies (and ugly ones too as I thought) walking arm in arm with their male friends, though so early in the morning, and forming little groups, occupied in contemplating the mangled naked and stiff carcases.
The fair sex has been equally courageous and curious, in former times, in this as well as in other countries; and of this we shall produce a few instances, as follows: