[32]. [The Anti-Jacobin (in No. 8) thus speaks of the threatened invasion of this country, for which “they have publicly formed, and (as they term it) organized their Army of England. Its Advanced Guard is to be formed from a chosen Corps of Banditti, the most distinguished for Massacre and Plunder. It is to be preceded, as it naturally ought, by the Genius of French Revolutionary Liberty, and it will be welcomed, as they tell us, ‘on the ensanguined shores of Britain, by the generous friends of Parliamentary Reform’. In the interval, however, till these golden dreams are realized, it is necessary that this ‘Army of England,’ while it yet remains in France, should be fed, paid, and clothed. For this purpose a new and separate fund is provided (in the same spirit with the rest of their measures), and is to be termed ‘The Loan of England,’ to be raised by anticipation on the security and mortgage of all the Lands and Property of this Country. This gasconade, which sounds too extravagant for reality, is nevertheless seriously announced by a message from the Executive Directory; and we are told that the Merchants of Paris are eagerly offering to advance, on such a security, the money which is to defray the expenses of the Expedition against this country.”—Ed.]

[33]. [The above verses refer to the memorable events of the 18th Fructidor, Sept. 4, 1797 (the model of Prince Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état, Dec. 2, 1851), when Rewbell, Barras, and Laréveillère-Lepaux, on the plea that the Republic was in danger, got rid of their fellow-directors, Carnot (grandfather to the present President of the French Republic) and Barthélemy, who were replaced by Merlin and François de Neufchateau, dispersed by military force the members of the Five Hundred and the Ancients, fifty-three of whom were condemned to transportation—banished the editors, &c., of forty-two newspapers—annulled the elections of forty-eight departments—and effected other arbitrary measures without opposition. The springs of the movement were throughout directed by Buonaparte, seconded by Hoche and Augereau. This event was the true era of the commencement of military despotism in France. But Thiers considers “the Directory by these means prevented civil war, and substituted an arbitrary but necessary act of power, carried out with energy, but with all the mildness and moderation that revolutionary times would allow”.—Ed.]

[34]. [Alluding to the National Thanksgiving for the three great naval victories achieved by Lords Howe, St. Vincent, and Duncan. On this occasion the King and Queen, with their family, the Houses of Lords and Commons, &c., went in procession to St. Paul’s, where Divine Service was performed. The Government Papers attributed to the Opposition Press a desire to throw discredit on this proceeding. “The consequence of the Procession to St. Paul’s” (says the Morning Post, of Dec. 25) “was, that one man returned thanks to the Almighty, and one woman was kicked TO DEATH.”—Ed.]

[35]. [Mary Frampton, in her journal (Dec. 20, 1797), gives a lively account of the King’s attendance at St. Paul’s for Duncan’s Victory on the 11th Oct. “The King,” she says, “stopped under the dome, and conversed for some time with Lord Duncan and the sailors; and, to the great scandal of good church-goers, did not hold his tongue for any considerable time together during the service.... Pitt was attacked at Temple Bar by three ruffians, who rushed from the mob and seized upon the door of his carriage undoubtedly with an intent to drag him out, but three of the Light Horse Volunteers rode up, and backing their horses against them, sent them head over heels to the place from whence they came, rather faster than they ventured out.” Page [99].—Ed.]

[36]. [Prince Talleyrand.—Ed.]

[37]. General Danican, in his Memoirs, tells us, that while he was in command, a felon, who had assumed the name of Brutus, chief of a revolutionary tribunal at Rennes, said to his colleagues, on Good Friday, “Brothers, we must put to death this day, at the same hour the counter-revolutionist Christ died, that young devotee who was lately arrested”: and this young lady was guillotined accordingly, and her corpse treated with every possible species of indecent insult, to the infinite amusement of a vast multitude of spectators.

[38]. The reader will find in the works of Peter Porcupine [W. Cobbett] (a spirited and instructive writer) an ample and satisfactory commentary on this and the following stanza. The French themselves inform us, that by the several modes of destruction here alluded to, upwards of 30,000 persons were butchered at Lyons, and this once magnificent city almost levelled to the ground, by the command of a wretched actor (Collot d’Herbois), whom they had formerly hissed from the stage. From the same authorities we learn, that at Nantz 27,000 persons, of both sexes, were murdered; chiefly by drowning them in plugged boats. The waters of the Loire became putrid, and were forbidden to be drunk, by the savages who conducted the massacre:—that at Paris 150,000, and in La Vendée 300,000 persons were destroyed.—Upon the whole, the French themselves acknowledge, that TWO MILLIONS of human beings (exclusive of the military) have been sacrificed to the principles of Equality and the Rights of Man: 250,000 of these are stated to be WOMEN, and 30,000 CHILDREN. In this last number, however, they do not include the unborn; nor those who started from the bodies of their agonizing parents, and were stuck upon the bayonets of those very men who are now to compose the “Army of England,” amidst the most savage acclamations.

[At the beginning of the revolution, some companies of children, called Bonsbons, were dressed and drilled as National Guards, as a compliment to the Dauphin, who to please the Parisians sometimes donned that uniform. Similar companies were afterwards formed in Brittany, and employed to shoot those poor wretches whom the two guillotines could not dispatch in sufficient numbers!—Biog. Univ., art. St. André.—Ed.]

[39]. At Lyons, Jabogues, the second murderer (the Actor being the first), in his speech to the Democratic Society, used these words—“Down with the edifices raised for the profit or the pleasure of the rich; down with them ALL. Commerce and ARTS are useless to a warlike people, and are the destruction of that sublime Equality which France is determined to spread over the globe.” Such are the consequences of Radical Reform! Let any merchant, farmer, or landlord; let any husband or father consider this, and then say, “Shall we or shall we not contribute a moderate sum, IN PROPORTION TO OUR ANNUAL EXPENDITURE, for the purpose of preserving ourselves from the fate of Lyons, La Vendée, and Nantz?”

Styptic.