[437] Fouché, on the 19th December, wrote to Collot d'Herbois—"Let us show ourselves terrible: let us annihilate in our wrath, and at one blow, every conspirator, every traitor, that we may not feel the pain, the long torture, of punishing them as kings would do. We this evening send two hundred and thirteen rebels before the thunder of our cannon. Farewell, my friend! tears of joy stream from my eyes, and overflow my heart.—(Signed) Fouché."—Moniteur, No. 85.
[438] Guillon de Montléon, Mémoires pour servir à l'Hist. de la Ville de Lyon, tom. ii., p. 405; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 68; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 186; Thiers, tom. v., p. 310; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 109.
[439] The Convention having, by a decree of the 17th March, 1792, come to the determination to substitute decapitation for hanging, this instrument was adopted, on the proposition of Dr. Guillotin, an eminent physician of Paris; who regretted to the hour of his death, in 1814, that his name should have been thus associated with the instrument of so many horrors. He had devised it with a view to humanity.
[440] The fate of Custine illustrates this,—a general who had done much for the Republic, and who, when his fortune began to fail him, excused himself by saying, "Fortune was a woman, and his hairs were growing grey."—S.—He was guillotined in August, 1793.
[441] Witness Houchard, who performed the distinguished service of raising the siege of Dunkirk, and who, during his trial, could be hardly made to understand that he was to suffer for not carrying his victory still farther.—S.—Guillotined, Nov., 1793.
[442] Several generals of reputation sustained capital punishment, from no other reason than the jealousy of the committees of their influence with the army.—S.
[443] Luckner, an old German thick-headed soldier, who was of no party, and scrupulously obeyed the command of whichever was uppermost at Paris, had no better fate than others.—S.—He was guillotined in Nov., 1793.
[444] David is generally allowed to have possessed great merit as a draughtsman. Foreigners do not admire his composition and colouring, so much as his countrymen.—S.
[445] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 6; Mignet, tom. i., p. 248.
[446] Moniteur, No. 995, 25th December, 1793.—S.