Mme. Roland in the Prison of Ste. Pélagie.

GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN

A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of

THE LIVES OF MORE THAN 200 OF THE MOST PROMINENT PERSONAGES IN HISTORY.

VOL. VI.

Copyright, 1894, by SELMAR HESS
Edited By Charles F. Horne

New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher
Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VI.

PHOTOGRAVURES

ILLUSTRATIONARTISTTo face
page
MME. ROLAND IN THE PRISON OF STE. PÉLAGIE,Évariste Carpentier[Frontispiece]
THE ARCH OF STEEL,Jean Paul Laurens[224]
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND MARAT,Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry[230]
MARIE ANTOINETTE,Théophile Gide[244]
QUEEN LOUISE VISITING THE POOR,Hugo Händler[250]
THE FIRST VACCINATION—DR. JENNER,Georges-Gaston Mélingue[266]
VICTORIA GREETED AS QUEEN,H. T. Wells[362]
PASTEUR IN HIS LABORATORY,Albert Edelfelt[380]

WOOD-ENGRAVINGS AND TYPOGRAVURES

ANDREAS HOFER LED TO EXECUTION,Franz Defregger[248]
WATT DISCOVERING THE CONDENSATION OF STEAM,Marcus Stone[256]
SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE TELEGRAPH,From a photograph[298]
CUTTING THE CANAL AT PANAMA,Melton Prior[338]
WINDSOR CASTLE,G. Montbard[364]
GORDON ATTACKED BY EL MAHDI'S ARABS,W. H. Overend[388]
CUSTER'S LAST FIGHT,A. R. Ward[394]
STANLEY SHOOTING THE RAPIDS OF THE CONGO,W. H. Overend[400]
THOMAS A. EDISON—THE WIZARD OF MENLO PARK, [406]

BENEDICT ARNOLD[1]
By Edgar Fawcett
(1741-1801)

Some of Arnold's biographers have declared that he was a very vicious boy, and have chiefly illustrated this fact by painting him as a ruthless robber of birds'-nests. But a great many boys who began life by robbing birds'-nests have ended it much more creditably. The astonishing and interesting element in Benedict Arnold's career was what one might term the anomaly and incongruity of his treason. Born at Norwich, Conn., in 1741, he was blessed from his earliest years by wholesome parental influences. The education which he received was an excellent one, considering his colonial environment. Tales of his boyish pluck and hardihood cannot be disputed, while others that record his youthful cruelty are doubtless the coinings of slander. It is certain that in 1755, when the conflict known as "the old French war" first broke out, he gave marked proof of patriotism, though as yet the merest lad. Later, at the very beginning of the Revolution, he left his thriving business as a West India merchant in New Haven and headed a company of volunteers. Before the end of 1775 he had been made a commissioned colonel by the authorities of Massachusetts, and had marched through a sally-port, capturing the fortress of Ticonderoga, with tough old Ethan Allen at his side and 83 "Green Mountain Boys" behind him. Later, at the siege of Quebec, he behaved with splendid courage. Through great difficulties and hardships he dauntlessly led his band to the high-perched and almost impregnable town. Pages might be filled in telling how toilsome was this campaign, now requiring canoes and bateaux, now taxing the strength of its resolute little horde with rough rocks, delusive bogs and all those fiercest terrors of famine which lurk in a virgin wilderness. Bitter cold, unmerciful snow-falls, drift-clogged streams, pelting storms, were constant features of Arnold's intrepid march. When we realize the purely unselfish and disinterested motive of this march, which has justly been compared to that of Xenophon with his 10,000, and to the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow as well, we stand aghast at the possibility of its having been planned and executed by one who afterward became the basest of traitors.

During the siege of Quebec Arnold was severely wounded, and yet he obstinately kept up the blockade even while he lay in the hospital, beset by obstacles, of which bodily pain was doubtless not the least. The arrival of General Wooster from Montreal with reinforcements rid Arnold, however, of all responsibility. Soon afterward the scheme of capturing Quebec and inducing the Canadas to join the cause of the United Colonies, came to an abrupt end. But in his desire to effect this purpose Arnold had identified himself with such lovers of their country as Washington, Schuyler, and Montgomery. And if the gallant Montgomery had then survived and Arnold had been killed, history could not sufficiently have eulogized him as a hero. Soon afterward he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and on October 11, 1776, while commanding a flotilla of small vessels on Lake Champlain, he gained new celebrity for courage. The enemy was greatly superior in number to Arnold's forces. "They had," says Bancroft, "more than twice his weight of metal and twice as many fighting vessels, and skilled seamen and officers against landsmen." Arnold was not victorious in this naval fray, but again we find him full of lion-like valor. He was in the Congress galley, and there with his own hands often aimed the cannon on its bloody decks against the swarming masses of British gunboats. Arnold's popularity was very much augmented by his fine exploits on Lake Champlain. "With consummate address," says Sparks, "he penetrated the enemy's lines and brought off his whole fleet, shattered and disabled as it was, and succeeded in saving six of his vessels, and, it might be added, most of his men." Again, at the battle of Danbury he tempted death countless times; and at Loudon's Ferry and Bemis's Heights his prowess and nerve were the perfection of martial merit. It has been stated by one or two historians of good repute that Arnold was not present at all during the battle of Saratoga; but the latest and most trustworthy researches on this point would seem to indicate that he commanded there with discretion and skill. He was now a major-general, but his irascible spirit had previously been hurt by the tardiness with which this honor was conferred upon him, five of his juniors having received it before himself. He strongly disliked General Gates, too, and quarrelled with him because of what he held to be unfair behavior during the engagement at Bemis's Heights. At Stillwater, a month or so later in the same year (1777), he issued orders without Gates's permission, and conducted himself on the field with a kind of mad frenzy, riding hither and thither and seeking the most dangerous spots. All concur in stating, however, that his disregard of life was admirable, in spite of its foolish rashness. In this action he was also severely wounded.

One year later he was appointed to the command of Philadelphia, and here he married the daughter of a prominent citizen, Edward Shippen. This was his second marriage; he had been a widower for a number of years before its occurrence, and the father of three sons. Every chance was now afforded Arnold of wise and just rulership. In spite of past disputes and adventures not wholly creditable, he still presented before the world a fairly clean record, and whatever minor blemishes may have spotted his good name, these were obscured by the almost dazzling lustre of his soldierly career. But no sooner was he installed in his new position at Philadelphia than he began to show, with wilful perversity, those evil impulses which thus far had remained relatively latent. Almost as soon as he entered the town he disclosed to its citizens the most offensive traits of arrogance and tyranny. But this was not all. Not merely was he accused on every side of such faults as the improper issuing of passes, the closing of Philadelphia shops on his arrival, the imposition of menial offices upon the sons of freemen performing military duty, the use of wagons furnished by the State for transporting private property; but misdeeds of a far graver nature were traced to him, savoring of the criminality that prisons are built to punish. The scandalous gain with which he sought to fill a spendthrift purse caused wide and vehement rebuke. For a man of such high and peculiar place his commercial dabblings and speculative schemes argued most deplorably against him. There seems to be no doubt that he made personal use of the public moneys with which he was intrusted; that he secured by unworthy and illegal means a naval State prize, brought into port by a Pennsylvanian ship; and that he meditated the fitting up of a privateer, with intent to secure from the foe such loot on the high seas as piratical hazard would permit. His house in Philadelphia was one of the finest that the town possessed; he drove about in a carriage and four; he entertained with excessive luxury and a large retinue of servants; he revelled in all sorts of pompous parade. Such ostentation would have roused adverse comment amid the simple colonial surroundings of a century ago, even if he had merely been a citizen of extraordinary wealth. But being an officer intrusted with the most important dignities in a country both struggling for its freedom and impoverished as to funds, he now played a part of exceptional shame and folly.

Naturally his arraignment before the authorities of the State soon followed. The Council of Pennsylvania tried him, and though their final verdict was an extremely gentle one, its very mildness of condemnation proved poison to his truculent pride. Washington, the commander-in-chief, reprimanded him, but with language of exquisite lenity. Still, Arnold never forgave the stab that was then so deservingly yet so pityingly dealt him.

His colossal treason—one of the most monstrous in all the records of history, soon afterward began its wily work. Under the name of Gustavus he opened a correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton, an English officer in command at New York. Sir Henry at once scented the sort of villainy which would be of vast use to his cause, however he might loathe and contemn its designer. He instructed his aide-de-camp, Major John André, to send cautious and pseudonymic replies. In his letters Arnold showed the burning sense of wrong from which he believed himself (and with a certain amount of justice) to be suffering. He had, when all is told, received harsh treatment from his country, considering how well he had served it in the past. Even Irving, that most dispassionate of historians, has called the action of the court-martial just mentioned an "extraordinary measure to prepossess the public mind against him." Beyond doubt, too, he had been repeatedly assailed by slanders and misstatements. The animosity of party feeling had more than once wrongfully assailed him, and his second marriage to the daughter of a man whose Tory sympathies were widely known had roused political hatreds, unsparing and headstrong.

But these facts are merely touched upon to make more clear the motive of his infamous plot. Determined to give the enemy a great vantage in return for the pecuniary indemnity that he required of them, this unhappy man stooped low enough to ask and obtain from Washington, the command of West Point. André, who had for months written him letters in a disguised hand under the name of John Anderson, finally met him, one night, at the foot of a mountain about six miles below Stony Point, called the Long Clove. Arnold, with infinite cunning, had devised this meeting, and had tempted the adventurous spirit of André, who left a British man-of-war called the Vulture in order to hold converse with his fellow-conspirator. But before the unfortunate André could return to his ship (having completed his midnight confab and received from Arnold the most damning documentary evidence of treachery) the Vulture was fired upon from Teller's Point by a party of Americans, who had secretly carried cannon thither during the earlier night. André was thus deserted by his own countrymen, for the Vulture moved away and left him with a man named Joshua Smith, a minion in Arnold's employ. Of poor André's efforts to reach New York, of his capture and final pathetic execution, we need not speak. On his person, at the time of his arrest, was found a complete description of the West Point post and garrison—documentary evidence that scorched with indelible disgrace the name of the man who had supplied it.

On September 25, 1780, Arnold escaped to a British sloop-of-war anchored below West Point. He was made a colonel in the English army, and is said to have received the sum of £6,315 as the price of his treachery. The command of a body of troops in Connecticut was afterward given him, and he then showed a rapacity and intolerance that well consorted with the new position he had so basely purchased. The odium of his injured countrymen spoke loudly throughout the land he had betrayed. He was burned in effigy countless times, and a growing generation was told with wrath and scorn the abhorrent tale of his turpitude. Meanwhile, as if by defiant self-assurance to wipe away the perfidy of former acts, he issued a proclamation to "the inhabitants of America," in which he strove to cleanse himself from blame. This address, teeming with flimsy protestations of patriotism, reviling Congress, vituperating France as a worthless and sordid ally of the Crown's rebellious subjects, met on all sides the most contemptuous derision. Arnold passed nearly all the remainder of his life—eleven years or thereabouts—in England. He died in London, worn out with a nervous disease, on June 14, 1801. It is a remarkable fact that his second wife, who had till the last remained faithful to him, suffered acutely at his death, and both spoke and wrote of him in accents of strongest bereavement.

To the psychologic student of human character, Benedict Arnold presents a strangely fascinating picture. Elements of good were unquestionably factors of his mental being. But pride, revenge, jealousy, and an almost superhuman egotism fatally swayed him. He desired to lead in all things, and he had far too much vanity, far too little self-government, and not half enough true morality to lead with success and permanence in any. The wrongs which beyond doubt his country inflicted upon him he was incapable of bearing like a stoic. Virile and patriotic from one point of view, he was childish and weak-fibred from another. He has been likened to Marlborough, though by no means so great a soldier. Yet it is true that John Churchill won his dukedom by deserting his former benefactor, James II, and joining the Whig cause of William of Orange. If the Revolution had been crushed, we cannot blind our eyes to the fact that Arnold's treason would have received from history far milder dealing than is accorded it now. Even the radiant name of Washington would very probably have shone to us dimmed and blurred through a mist of calamity. Posterity may respect the patriot whose star sinks in unmerited failure, but it bows homage to him if he wages against despotism a victorious fight. Supposing that Arnold's surrender of West Point had extinguished that splendid spark of liberty which glowed primarily at Lexington and Bunker Hill, the chances are that he might have received an English peerage and died in all the odor of a distinction as brilliant as it would have been undeserved. The triumph of the American rebellion so soon after he had ignominiously washed his hands of it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative poverty and the dread of still darker reverses.

Extreme sensitiveness is apt to accompany a spirit of just his high-strung, petulant, and spleenful sort. Beyond doubt he must have suffered keen torments at the disdain with which he was everywhere met in English society, and chiefly among the military officers whom his very conduct, renegade though it was, had in a measure forced to recognize him. When Lord Cornwallis gave his sword to Washington, its point pierced Arnold's breast with a wound rankling and incurable. He had played for high stakes with savage and devilish desperation. Our national independence meant his future slavery; our priceless gain became his irretrievable loss. It is stated that as death approached him he grew excessively anxious about the risky and shattered state of his affairs. His mind wandered, as Mrs. Arnold writes, and he fancied himself once more fighting those battles which had brought him honor and fame. It was then that he would call for his old insignia of an American soldier and would desire to be again clothed in them. "Bring me, I beg of you," he is reported to have said, "the epaulettes and sword-knots which Washington gave me. Let me die in my old American uniform, the uniform in which I fought my battles!" And once, it is declared, he gave vent to these most significant and terrible words: "God forgive me for ever putting on any other!" That country which he forswore in the hour of its direst need can surely afford to forgive Benedict Arnold as well. Grown the greatest republic of which history keeps any record, America need not find it difficult both to forget the wretched frailties of this, her grossly misguided son, and at the same time to remember what services he performed for her while as yet his baleful qualities had not swept beyond all bounds of restraint.[Back to Contents]

NATHAN HALE[2]
By Rev. Edward Everett Hale
(1755-1776)

Nathan Hale, a martyr soldier of the American Revolution, was born in Coventry, Conn., on June 6, 1755. When but little more than twenty-one years old he was hanged, by order of General William Howe, as a spy, in the city of New York, on September 22, 1776.

At the great centennial celebration of the Revolution, and the part which the State of Connecticut bore in it, an immense assembly of the people of Connecticut, on the heights of Groton, took measures for the erection of a statue in Hale's honor. Their wish has been carried out by their agents in the government of the State. A bronze statue of Hale is in the State Capitol. Another bronze statue of him has been erected in the front of the Wadsworth Athenæum in Hartford. Another is in the city of New York.

Nathan Hale's father was Richard Hale, who had emigrated to Coventry, from Newbury, Mass., in 1746, and had married Elizabeth, the daughter of Joseph Strong. By her he had twelve children, of whom Nathan was the sixth.

Richard Hale was a prosperous and successful farmer. He sent to Yale College at one time his two sons, Enoch and Nathan, who had been born within two years of each other. This college was then under the direction of Dr. Daggett. Both the young men enjoyed study, and Nathan Hale, at the exercises of Commencement Day took what is called a part, which shows that he was among the thirteen scholars of highest rank in his class.

From the record of the college society to which he belonged, it appears that he was interested in their theatrical performances. These were not discouraged by the college government, and made a recognized part of the amusements of the college and the town. Many of the lighter plays brought forward on the English stage were thus produced by the pupils of Yale College for the entertainment of the people of New Haven.

When he graduated, at the age of eighteen, he probably intended at some time to become a Christian minister, as his brother Enoch did. But, as was almost a custom of the time, he began his active life as a teacher in the public schools, and early in 1774 accepted an appointment as the teacher of the Union Grammar School, a school maintained by the gentlemen of New London, Conn., for the higher education of their children. Of thirty-two pupils, he says, "ten are Latiners and all but one of the rest are writers."

In his commencement address Hale had considered the question whether the higher education of women were not neglected. And, in the arrangement of the Union School at New London, it was determined that between the hours of five and seven in the morning, he should teach a class of "twenty young ladies" in the studies which occupied their brothers at a later hour.

He was thus engaged in the year 1774. The whole country was alive with the movements and discussions which came to a crisis in the battle of Lexington the next year. Hale, though not of age, was enrolled in the militia and was active in the military organization of the town.

So soon as the news of Lexington and Concord reached New London, a town-meeting was called. At this meeting, this young man, not yet of age, was one of the speakers. "Let us march immediately," he said, "and never lay down our arms until we obtain our independence." He assembled his school as usual the next day, but only to take leave of his scholars. "He gave them earnest counsel, prayed with them, shook each by the hand," and bade them farewell.

It is said that there is no other record so early as this in which the word "independence" was publicly spoken. It would seem as if the uncalculating courage of a boy of twenty were needed to break the spell which still gave dignity to colonial submission.

He was commissioned as First Lieutenant in the Seventh Connecticut regiment, and resigned his place as teacher. The first duty assigned to the regiment was in the neighborhood of New London, where, probably, they were perfecting their discipline. On September 14, 1775, they were ordered by Washington to Cambridge. There they were placed on the left wing of his army, and made their camp at the foot of Winter Hill. This was the post which commanded the passage from Charlestown, one of the only two roads by which the English could march out from Boston. Here they remained until the next spring. Hale himself gives the most interesting details of that great victory by which Washington and his officers changed that force of minute-men, by which they had overawed Boston in 1775, into a regular army. Hale re-enlisted as many of the old men as possible, and then went back to Coventry to engage, from his old school companions, soldiers for the war. After a month of such effort at home, he came back with a body of recruits to Roxbury.

On January 30th his regiment was removed to the right wing in Roxbury. Here they joined in the successful night enterprise of March 4th and 5th, by which the English troops were driven from Boston.

So soon as the English army had left the country, Washington knew that their next point of attack would be New York. Most of his army was, therefore, sent there, and Webb's regiment among the rest. They were at first assigned to the Canada army, but because they had a good many seafaring men, were reserved for service near New York, where their "web-footed" character served them well more than once that summer. Hale marched with the regiment to New London, whence they all went by water to New York. On that critical night, when the whole army was moved across to New York after the defeat at Brooklyn, the regiment rendered effective service.

It was at this period that Hale planned an attack, made by members of his own company, to set fire to the frigate Phœnix. The frigate was saved, but one of her tenders and four cannons and six swivels were taken. The men received the thanks, praises, and rewards of Washington, and the frigate, with her companions, not caring to risk such attacks again, retired to the Narrows. Soon after this little brush with the enemy, Colonel Knowlton, of one of the Connecticut regiments, organized a special corps, which was known as Knowlton's Rangers. On the rolls of their own regiments the officers and men are spoken of as "detached on command." They received their orders direct from Washington and Putnam, and were kept close in front of the enemy, watching his movements from the American line in Harlem. It was in this service, on September 15th, that Knowlton's Rangers, with three Virginia companies, drove the English troops from their position in an open fight. It was a spirited action, which was a real victory for the attacking force. Knowlton and Leitch, the leaders, were both killed. In his general orders Washington spoke of Knowlton as a gallant and brave officer who would have been an honor to any country.

But Hale, alas! was not fighting at Knowlton's side. He was indeed "detached for special service." Washington had been driven up the island of New York, and was holding his place with the utmost difficulty. On September 6th he wrote, "We have not been able to obtain the least information as to the enemy's plans." In sheer despair at the need of better information than the Tories of New York City would give him, the great commander consulted his council, and at their direction summoned Knowlton to ask for some volunteer of intelligence, who would find his way into the English lines, and bring back some tidings that could be relied upon. Knowlton summoned a number of officers, and stated to them the wishes of their great chief. The appeal was received with dead silence. It is said that Knowlton personally addressed a non-commissioned officer, a Frenchman, who was an old soldier. He did so only to receive the natural reply, "I am willing to be shot, but not to be hung." Knowlton felt that he must report his failure to Washington. But Nathan Hale, his youngest captain, broke the silence. "I will undertake it," he said. He had come late to the meeting. He was pale from recent sickness. But he saw an opportunity to serve, and he did the duty which came next his hand.

William Hull, afterward the major-general who commanded at Detroit, had been Hale's college classmate. He remonstrated with his friend on the danger of the task, and the ignominy which would attend its failure. "He said to him that it was not in the line of his duty, and that he was of too frank and open a temper to act successfully the part of a spy, or to face its dangers, which would probably lead to a disgraceful death." Hale replied, "I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to perform that service are imperious." These are the last words of his which can be cited until those which he spoke at the moment of his death. He promised Hull to take his arguments into consideration, but Hull never heard from him again.

In the second week of September he left the camp for Stamford with Stephen Hempstead, a sergeant in Webb's regiment, from whom we have the last direct account of his journey. With Hempstead and Asher Wright, who was his servant in camp, he left his uniform and some other articles of property. He crossed to Long Island in citizen's dress, and, as Hempstead thought, took with him his college diploma, meaning to assume the aspect of a Connecticut schoolmaster visiting New York in the hope to establish himself. He landed near Huntington, or Oyster Bay, and directed the boatman to return at a time fixed by him, the 20th of September. He made his way into New York, and there, for a week or more apparently, prosecuted his inquiries. He returned on the day fixed, and awaited his boat. It appeared, as he thought; and he made a signal from the shore. Alas! he had mistaken the boat. She was from an English frigate, which lay screened by a point of woods, and had come in for water. Hale attempted to retrace his steps, but was too late. He was seized and examined. Hidden in the soles of his shoes were his memoranda, in the Latin language. They compromised him at once. He was carried on board the frigate, and sent to New York the same day, well guarded.

It was at an unfortunate moment, if anyone expected tenderness from General Howe. Hale landed while the city was in the tenor of the great conflagration of September 21st. In that fire nearly a quarter of the town was burned down. The English supposed, rightly or not, that the fire had been begun by the Americans. The bells had been taken from the churches by order of the Provincial Congress. The fire-engines were out of order, and for a time it seemed impossible to check the flames. Two hundred persons were sent to jail upon the supposition that they were incendiaries. It is in the midst of such confusion that Hale is taken to General Howe's head-quarters, and there he meets his doom.

No testimony could be stronger against him than the papers on his person. He was not there to prevaricate, and he told them his rank and name. There was no trial, and Howe at once ordered that he should be hanged the next morning. Worse than this, had he known it, he was to be hanged by William Cunningham, the Provost-Major, a man whose brutality, through the war disgraced the British army. It is a satisfaction to know that Cunningham was hanged for his deserts in England, not many years after.[3]

Hale was confined for the night of September 21st in the greenhouse of the garden of Howe's head-quarters. This place was known as the Beckman Mansion, at Turtle Bay. This house was standing until within a few years.

Early the next day he was led to his death. "On the morning of the execution," said Captain Montresor, an English officer, "my station being near the fatal spot, I requested the Provost-Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him. He wrote two letters; one to his mother and one to a brother officer. The Provost-Marshal destroyed the letters, and assigned as a reason that the rebels should not know that they had a man in their army who could die with so much firmness."

Hale asked for a Bible, but his request was refused. He was marched out by a guard and hanged upon an apple-tree in Rutgers's orchard. The place was near the present intersection of East Broadway and Market Streets. Cunningham asked him to make his dying "speech and confession." "I only regret," he said, "that I have but one life to lose for my country."[Back to Contents]

THADDEUS KOSCIUSKO
(1746-1817)

Among the remarkable men of modern times there is perhaps none whose fame is purer from reproach than that of Thaddeus Kosciusko. His name is enshrined in the ruins of his unhappy country, which, with heroic bravery and devotion, he sought to defend against foreign oppression and foreign domination. Kosciusko was born at Warsaw about the year 1746. He was educated at the School of Cadets, in that city, where he distinguished himself so much in scientific studies as well as in drawing, that he was selected as one of four students of that institution who were sent to travel at the expense of the state, with a view of perfecting their talents. In this capacity he visited France, where he remained for several years, devoting himself to studies of various kinds. On his return to his own country he entered the army, and obtained the command of a company. But he was soon obliged to expatriate himself again, in order to fly from a violent but unrequited passion for the daughter of the Marshal of Lithuania, one of the first officers of state of the Polish court.

He bent his steps to that part of North America which was then waging its war of independence against England. Here he entered the army, and served with distinction as one of the adjutants of General Washington. While thus employed, he became acquainted with Lafayette, Lameth, and other distinguished Frenchmen serving in the same cause, and was honored by receiving the most flattering praises from Franklin, as well as the public thanks of the Congress of the United Provinces. He was also decorated with the new American order of Cincinnatus, being the only European, except Lafayette, to whom it was given.

At the termination of the war he returned to his own country, where he lived in retirement till the year 1789, at which period he was promoted by the Diet to the rank of major-general. That body was at this time endeavoring to place its military force upon a respectable footing, in the vain hope of restraining and diminishing the domineering influence of foreign powers in what still remained of Poland. It also occupied itself in changing the vicious constitution of that unfortunate and ill-governed country—in rendering the monarchy hereditary, in declaring universal toleration, and in preserving the privileges of the nobility, while at the same time it ameliorated the condition of the lower orders. In all these improvements Stanislas Poniatowski, the reigning king, readily concurred; though the avowed intention of the Diet was to render the crown hereditary in the Saxon family. The King of Prussia (Frederick William II.), who, from the time of the treaty of Cherson, in 1787, between Russia and Austria, had become hostile to the former power, also encouraged the Poles in their proceedings; and even gave them the most positive assurances of assisting them, in case the changes they were effecting occasioned any attacks from other sovereigns.

Russia at length, having made peace with the Turks, prepared to throw her sword into the scale. A formidable opposition to the measures of the Diet had arisen, even among the Poles themselves, and occasioned what was called the confederation of Targowicz, to which the Empress of Russia promised her assistance. The feeble Stanislas, who had proclaimed the new constitution in 1791, bound himself in 1792 to sanction the Diet of Grodno, which restored the ancient constitution, with all its vices and all its abuses. In the meanwhile Frederick William, King of Prussia, who had so mainly contributed to excite the Poles to their enterprises, basely deserted them, and refused to give them any assistance. On the contrary, he stood aloof from the contest, waiting for that share of the spoil which the haughty empress of the north might think proper to allot to him, as a reward of his non-interference.

But though thus betrayed on all sides, the Poles were not disposed to submit without a struggle. They flew to arms, and found in the nephew of their king, the Prince Joseph Poniatowski, a general worthy to conduct so glorious a cause. Under his command Kosciusko first became known in European warfare. He distinguished himself in the battle of Zielenec, and still more in that of Dubienska, which took place on June 18, 1792. Upon this latter occasion he defended for six hours, with only 4,000 men, against 15,000 Russians, a post which had been slightly fortified in twenty-four hours, and at last retired with inconsiderable loss.

But the contest was too unequal to last; the patriots were overwhelmed by enemies from without, and betrayed by traitors within, at the head of whom was their own sovereign. The Russians took possession of the country, and proceeded to appropriate those portions of Lithuania and Volhynia which suited their convenience; while Prussia, the friendly Prussia, invaded another part of the kingdom.

Under these circumstances the most distinguished officers in the Polish army retired from the service, and of this number was Kosciusko. Miserable at the fate of his unhappy country, and at the same time an object of suspicion to the ruling powers, he left his native land and retired to Leipsic, where he received intelligence of the honor which had been conferred upon him by the Legislative Assembly of France, who had invested him with the quality of a French citizen.

But his fellow-countrymen were still anxious to make another struggle for independence, and they unanimously selected Kosciusko as their chief and generalissimo. He obeyed the call, and found the patriots eager to combat under his orders. Even the noble Joseph Poniatowski, who had previously commanded in chief, returned from France, whither he had retired, and received from the hands of Kosciusko the charge of a portion of his army.

The patriots had risen in the north of Poland, to which part Kosciusko first directed his steps. Anxious to begin his campaign with an action of vigor, he marched rapidly toward Cracow, which town he entered triumphantly on March 24, 1794. He forthwith published a manifesto against the Russians; and then, at the head of only 5,000 men, he marched to meet their army. He encountered, on April 4th, 10,000 Russians at a place called Wraclawic, and entirely defeated them after a combat of four hours. He returned in triumph to Cracow, and shortly afterward marched along the left bank of the Vistula to Polaniec, where he established his head-quarters.

Meanwhile the inhabitants of Warsaw, animated by the recital of the heroic deeds of their countrymen, had also raised the standard of independence, and were successful in driving the Russians from the city, after a murderous conflict of three days. In Lithuania and Samogitia an equally successful revolution was effected before the end of April, while the Polish troops stationed in Volhynia and Podolia marched to the reinforcement of Kosciusko.

Thus far fortune seemed to smile upon the cause of Polish freedom—the scene was, however, about to change. The undaunted Kosciusko, having first organized a national council to conduct the affairs of government, once more advanced against the Russians. On his march he met a new enemy in the person of the faithless Frederick William, of Prussia, who, without having even gone through the preliminary of declaring war, had advanced into Poland at the head of 40,000 men.

Kosciusko, with but 13,000 men, attacked the Prussian army on June 8th, at Szcekociny. The battle was long and bloody; at length, overwhelmed by numbers, he was obliged to retreat toward Warsaw. This he effected in so able a manner that his enemies did not dare to harass him in his march; and he effectually covered the capital and maintained his position for two months against vigorous and continued attacks. Immediately after this reverse the Polish general, Zaionczeck, lost the battle of Chelm, and the Governor of Cracow had the baseness to deliver the town to the Prussians without attempting a defence.

These disasters occasioned disturbances among the disaffected at Warsaw, which, however, were put down by the vigor and firmness of Kosciusko. On July 13th the forces of the Prussians and Russians, amounting to 50,000 men, assembled under the walls of Warsaw, and commenced the siege of that city. After six weeks spent before the place, and a succession of bloody conflicts, the confederates were obliged to raise the siege; but this respite to the Poles was but of short duration.

Their enemies increased fearfully in number, while their own resources diminished. Austria now determined to assist in the annihilation of Poland, and caused a body of her troops to enter that kingdom. Nearly at the same moment the Russians ravaged Lithuania; and the two corps of the Russian army commanded by Suwarof and Fersen, effected their junction in spite of the battle of Krupezyce, which the Poles had ventured upon, with doubtful issue, against the first of these commanders, on September 16th.

Upon receiving intelligence of these events Kosciusko left Warsaw, and placed himself at the head of the Polish army. He was attacked by the very superior forces of the confederates on October 10, 1794, at a place called Macieiowice, and for many hours supported the combat against overwhelming odds. At length he was severely wounded, and as he fell, he uttered the prophetic words "Finis Poloniæ." It is asserted that he had exacted from his followers an oath, not to suffer him to fall alive into the hands of the Russians, and that in consequence the Polish cavalry, being unable to carry him off, inflicted some severe sabre wounds on him and left him for dead on the field; a savage fidelity, which we half admire even in condemning it. Be this as it may, he was recognized and delivered from the plunderers by some Cossack chiefs; and thus was saved from death to meet a scarcely less harsh fate—imprisonment in a Russian dungeon.

Thomas Wawrzecki became the successor of Kosciusko in the command of the army; but with the loss of their heroic leader all hope had deserted the breasts of the Poles. They still, however, fought with all the obstinacy of despair, and defended the suburb of Warsaw, called Praga, with great gallantry. At length this post was wrested from them. Warsaw itself capitulated on November 9, 1794; and this calamity was followed by the entire dissolution of the Polish army on the 18th of the same month.

During this time, Kosciusko remained in prison at St. Petersburg; but, at the end of two years, the death of his persecutress, the Empress Catharine, released him. One of the first acts of the Emperor Paul was to restore him to liberty, and to load him with various marks of his favor. Among other gifts of the autocrat was a pension, by which, however, the high-spirited patriot would never consent to profit. No sooner was he beyond the reach of Russian influence than he returned to the donor the instrument by which this humiliating favor was conferred. From this period the life of Kosciusko was passed in retirement. He went first to England, and then to the United States of America. He returned to the Old World in 1798, and took up his abode in France, where he divided his time between Paris and a country-house he had bought near Fontainebleau. While here he received the appropriate present of the sword of John Sobieski, which was sent to him by some of his countrymen serving in the French armies in Italy, who had found it in the shrine at Loretto.

Napoleon, when about to invade Poland in 1807, wished to use the name of Kosciusko in order to rally the people of the country round his standard. The patriot, aware that no real freedom was to be hoped for under such auspices, at once refused to lend himself to his wishes. Upon this the emperor forged Kosciusko's signature to an address to the Poles, which was distributed throughout the country. Nor would he permit the injured person to deny the authenticity of this act in any public manner. The real state of the case was, however, made known to many through the private representations of Kosciusko; but he was never able to publish a formal denial of the transaction till after the fall of Napoleon.

When the Russians, in 1814, had penetrated into Champagne, and were advancing toward Paris, they were astonished to hear that their former adversary was living in retirement in that part of the country. The circumstances of this discovery were striking. The commune in which Kosciusko lived was subjected to plunder, and among the troops thus engaged he observed a Polish regiment. Transported with anger, he rushed among them, and thus addressed the officers: "When I commanded brave soldiers they never pillaged; and I should have punished severely subalterns who allowed of disorders such as those which we see around. Still more severely should I have punished older officers, who authorized such conduct by their culpable neglect." "And who are you," was the general cry, "that you dare to speak with such boldness to us?" "I am Kosciusko." The effect was electric: the soldiery cast down their arms, prostrated themselves at his feet, and cast dust upon their heads according to a national usage, supplicating his forgiveness for the fault which they had committed. For twenty years the name of Kosciusko had not been heard in Poland save as that of an exile; yet it still retained its ancient power over Polish hearts; a power never used but for some good and generous end.

The Emperor Alexander honored him with a long interview, and offered him an asylum in his own country. But nothing could induce Kosciusko again to see his unfortunate native land. In 1815 he retired to Soleure, in Switzerland; where he died, October 16, 1817, in consequence of an injury received by a fall from his horse. Not long before he had abolished slavery upon his Polish estate, and declared all his serfs entirely free, by a deed registered and executed with every formality that could insure the full performance of his intention. The mortal remains of Kosciusko were removed to Poland at the expense of Alexander, and have found a fitting place of rest in the cathedral of Cracow, between those of his companions in arms, Joseph Poniatowski, and the greatest of Polish warriors, John Sobieski.[Back to Contents]

MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE[4]
By William F. Peck
(1757-1834)

Marie Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert Motier, Marquis de la Fayette,[5] one of the most celebrated men that France ever produced, was born at Chavaignac, in Auvergne, on September 6, 1757, of a noble family, with a long line of illustrious ancestors. Left an orphan at the age of thirteen, he married, three years later, his cousin Anastasie, Countess de Noailles. Inspired from the earliest age with a love of freedom and aversion to constraint, the impulses of childhood became the daydreams of youth and the realities of maturer life. Filled with enthusiastic sympathy for the struggling colonies of America in their contest with Great Britain, he offered his services to the United States, and, though his enterprise was forbidden by the French Government, hired a vessel, sailed for this country, landed at Charleston in April, 1777, and proceeded to Philadelphia. His advances having been treated by Congress with some coldness, by reason of the incessant application of other foreigners for commissions, he offered to serve as a volunteer and at his own expense. Congress may be excused for having taken him at his word; on July 31st it appointed him major-general, without pay the titular honor, which carried with it no command, being, perhaps, the highest ever given in America to a young man of nineteen years. Having accepted the cordial invitation of General Washington, the commander-in-chief, to live at his head-quarters and to serve on his staff, Lafayette was severely wounded in the leg at the battle of the Brandywine, on September 11th, and the intrepidity he displayed in that engagement was equalled by the fortitude that he evinced during the following winter, in which he shared the privations of the American army in the wretched camp at Valley Forge. His fidelity to Washington at this time, when the latter was maligned by secret foes and conspired against by Conway's cabal, cemented the friendship between those great men. Lafayette was soon afterward detached to take command of an expedition that was to set out from Albany, cross Lake Champlain on the ice, and invade Canada; but, on arriving at the intended starting-point, and finding that no adequate preparations had been made, he refused to repeat the unfortunate experiment of Montgomery and Arnold of two years before, and waited for suitable supplies to be sent to him before setting out. These came not, the ice melted in March, and he returned to Valley Forge, with the thanks of Congress for his forbearance in abstaining from risking the loss of an army in order to acquire personal glory. France having declared war against England, May 2, 1778, and at the same time effected an alliance with the colonies, Lafayette returned home in January, 1779; on his arrival at Paris he was lionized and fêted, and during his stay there he received from the United States Congress a sword with massive gold handle and mounting, presented to him in appreciation of his services and particularly of his gallantry at the battle of Monmouth, on June 28th, in the preceding year. The high reputation that he had acquired in America increased his influence at home to such a degree that he was able to accomplish the object of his mission and procure money and troops from the ministry of war. These followed him to this country in the following year, but little was accomplished thereby, D'Estaing, the commander of the fleet, being blockaded in the harbor of Newport, and Washington being unwilling to undertake the contemplated attack on New York, even with the assistance of the French military force, without naval co-operation. In February, 1781, Lafayette was sent with a division into Virginia, where he soon found himself arrayed against the British general, Lord Cornwallis. That distinguished officer, the best, perhaps, of all on that side of the conflict, expected to make short work of his youthful antagonist, but Lafayette, who had learned from Washington the art of skilful retreat combined with cautious advance, succeeded, after a long series of skirmishes, in shutting Cornwallis up in Yorktown. In September, the French fleet, under the Count de Grasse, appeared and landed a force of 3,000 men under the Marquis de St. Simon. Lafayette was urged to make the assault at once and gain the glory of an important capture, but a feeling of honor, combined possibly with prudential considerations, impelled him to wait for the arrival of the main allied army under Washington and Rochambeau. They came a fortnight later, the investment was regularly made, and on October 14th Lafayette successfully led the Americans to the assault of one of the redoubts, while another was taken by the French under the Baron de Viomesnil. The surrender of Cornwallis, with his army of 7,000, took place on the 19th, which ended, practically, the American war of independence, though the final treaty of peace was not signed till January 20, 1783, the first knowledge of which came to Congress by a letter from Lafayette, who had returned to Europe in the meantime. Revisiting the United States in 1784, he was treated with great consideration by his old comrades in arms, and the next year he travelled through Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in the last of which he attended the military reviews of Frederick the Great in company with that renowned soldier.

From this time Lafayette's history is bound up with that of his country. Beginning by formulating plans for meliorating the condition of the slaves on his plantation in French Guiana, his philanthropic thoughts soon turned homeward. He saw France groaning under oppression and the people suffering from a thousand antiquated abuses. Some of these he succeeded in mitigating, in his capacity of member of the Assembly of the Notables, in 1787, but, as nothing of permanent value was accomplished by that body, he urged the convocation of the States General. In this assemblage, which met at Versailles, on May 4, 1789, he sat at first among the nobility, but when the deputies of the people declared themselves to be the National Assembly—afterward called the Constituent Assembly—he was one of the earliest of his order to join them and was elected one of the vice-presidents. On July 14th the Bastille was taken by the mob, and on the following day Lafayette was chosen commandant of the National Guard of Paris; an irregular body, partly military, partly police, having no connection with the royal army and in full sympathy with the people, from which its ranks were filled. On the 17th King Louis XVI. came into the city, where he was received by the populace with the liveliest expressions of attachment and escorted to the Hôtel de Ville, where Lafayette and Mayor Bailly awaited him at the foot of the staircase, up which he passed under an arch of steel formed by the uplifted swords of the members of the Municipal Council. Bailly offered to the king a tricolor cockade, which had been recently adopted as the national emblem, Lafayette, in devising it, having added white, the Bourbon color, to the red and blue that were the colors of Paris, to show the fidelity of the people to the institution of royalty. The king accepted the badge, pinned it to his breast, appeared with it on the balcony before the vast throng, and returned to Versailles with the feeling, on his part and that of others, that the reconciliation between all parties was complete and that the era of popular government had begun. Instead of that, the troubles continually increased, and Lafayette was placed in a most trying position, equally opposed to the encroachments of the destructionists and to the intrigues of the court, and longing as eagerly for the retention of the monarchy as for the establishment of the constitution. The brutal murder of Foulon, the superintendent of the revenue, and of his son-in-law Berthier, who were torn in pieces by the enraged populace on the 22d, in spite of the commands, entreaties, and even tears of Lafayette, so disgusted him that he resigned his command, and resumed it only when the sixty districts of Paris agreed to support him in his efforts to maintain order. On October 5th a mob of several thousand women set out from Paris to march to Versailles, with vague ideas of extorting from the National Assembly the passage of laws that should remove all distresses, of obtaining in some way a supply of food that should relieve the immediate needs of the capital, and of bringing back with them the royal family. The National Guard were urgent to accompany the women, partly from a desire to protect them in case of a possible collision with the royal troops, but still more to bring on a conflict with a regiment lately brought from the frontier, and to exterminate the body-guard of the king, the members of which had, at a supper given a few nights before, been so indiscreet as to trample the tricolor under their feet and pin the white cockade to their lapels. Lafayette did all in his power to prevent the march of the National Guard, sitting on his horse for eight hours in their midst, and refusing all their entreaties to give the word of command, till the Municipal Council finally issued the order and the troops set forth. Arrived at Versailles he posted one of his regiments in different parts of the palace, to protect it in case it were really attacked by rioters, and then, in the early morning, repairing to his head-quarters in an adjoining street, he threw himself on a bed, for a short season of necessary repose. Monarchical writers generally have reproached him for this act, calling it his "fatal sleep," the source of unnumbered woes, the beginning of the downfall; but it is difficult to see wherein he can justly be blamed for yielding, wearied out with fatigue, to the imperative demand of nature, after providing as far as possible for the preservation of order. Awakened in a few minutes by the report that the worst had happened, he hurried to the scene and found that the mob, having broken down the iron railings of the courtyard, had invaded the palace and massacred two of the body-guard, and that the lives of the king and queen were in instant peril. With characteristic courage, activity, and address he prevented the further effusion of blood, and the entire royal family, together with the Assembly, migrated to Paris the same day, escorted by the citizen soldiers and a turbulent mob both male and female. July 14, 1790, was memorable for the Oath of Federation, taken in the Champ de Mars, with imposing ceremonies, upon a platform of earth raised by the voluntary labors of all the citizens. Lafayette, as representative of the nation, and particularly of the militia, was the first to take the oath to be faithful to the law and the king and to support the constitution then under consideration by the Assembly. With a shout of affirmation from all of the National Guard, the taking of the entire oath by the president of the Assembly and the king, followed by a roar of assent from nearly half a million of spectators, and the joyful spreading of the news throughout the country by prearranged signals, the dream of peace and harmony came back again, as bright and as fleeting as the year before. Three days later the National Guard of France, outside of the city, united in an address to Lafayette, expressive of their confidence in his ability and his patriotism, and regretting their inability to serve under him, for, by the terms of a law proposed by himself, the commander of the militia of Paris was to have no authority over other troops. In September the municipality made a strong appeal to him to revoke his declaration that he would accept no pay or salary or indemnity of any kind, but he refused fixedly, saying that his fortune was considerable, that it had sufficed for two revolutions and that it would be devoted to a third, if one should arise, for the benefit of the people. By the death of Mirabeau, April 2, 1791, the last chance of a compromise between the court party and the radicals was taken away. Two weeks later the royal family attempted to leave the Tuileries for St. Cloud, in order to pass the Easter holidays there and to hear mass in the royal chapel; but the populace blocked the way, and even a portion of the National Guard, in a state of semi-mutiny, threatened to interfere if the other battalions fired on the people. This, nevertheless, Lafayette offered to do, and to force a passage at all hazards, but the king positively forbade the shedding of blood on his account, and resumed his virtual imprisonment in the palace. Lafayette was so chagrined by the seditious behavior of his troops that he again threw down his commission, whereupon an extraordinary revulsion of feeling took place; the municipality and the citizens were terror-stricken lest universal anarchy should ensue, and even the National Guard, repentant of their disgraceful conduct, cast themselves at the feet of their general, joining their voices to those of others in entreating him to resume his office, which, after three days, he consented to do, upon promise of obedience in the future.

The Arch of Steel.

This was the meridian of Lafayette's career, when his popularity and his influence were at their height. Power we can hardly call it, for that implies some voluntary deed of assumption, and he always acted in obedience to others, to some authority constituted at least under the forms of law, or, in the absence of that, to the sovereign people. From this time difficulties thickened around him and he was constantly environed by suspicion and by intrigues of all kinds against his character and his life, but he never swerved from the line of his duty. Not one of the political parties gave him its entire confidence, and each in turn conspired against him, only to be baffled by the underlying conviction, on the part of the masses, of his supreme patriotism and integrity. After the flight of the king and his family, on June 20th, Lafayette was violently denounced in the Jacobin club as a friend to royalty, and accused of having assisted in the evasion; but the attempt to proscribe him in the Assembly failed utterly, and that body appointed six commissioners to protect him from the sudden fury of the people. The royal fugitives having been stopped at Varennes and brought back to the Tuileries on the 25th, he saved them, by his personal efforts, from being torn in pieces by the mob, but was compelled to guard them much more strictly than before. On July 17th a disorderly assemblage gathered in the Champ de Mars to petition for the overthrow of the monarchy, and, in the tumult that ensued on the appearance of the troops, Lafayette ordered a volley of musketry, whereby the rioters were dispersed with a loss of several killed and wounded, but whereby, also, while that act of firmness elicited commendation from all lovers of order, occasion was given for further intrigues on the part of his enemies and the shattering of his influence among the lower classes. A momentary gleam of sunshine broke forth in September, when, the king having accepted the new constitution, Lafayette took advantage of the general state of good feeling thereby produced to propose a comprehensive act of amnesty for all offences committed on either side during the revolution, which was passed by the Constituent Assembly just before its final adjournment on the 30th. On that day he resigned, permanently, the command of the National Guard, and retired to his estate at Chavaignac, being followed by the most gratifying testimonials of public regard, among them a sword and a marble statue of Washington, presented by the city of Paris, and a sword cast from one of the bolts of the Bastille, given by his old soldiers. Contrary to his personal wishes, his friends and his patriotism persuaded him, in November, to stand as a candidate for the mayoralty of Paris, with the result that might have been foreseen, for Pétion, being supported both by the Jacobins and by the court party, was elected by a large majority. This defeat did not prevent Lafayette's appointment, a month later, to the command of one of the three armies formed to defend the frontier against an expected invasion of the Austrians, the rank of lieutenant-general being given to him, with the exalted honor of marshal of France. War was declared against Austria, April 20, 1792, and hostilities began, but even the active service in which he was engaged could not keep his thoughts from the political condition of the country, and on June 16th he wrote to the Legislative Assembly, which had succeeded the Constituent in the previous autumn, a letter in which he pointed out the dangers that menaced the nation and denounced the Jacobins as the faction whose growing power was full of peril to the state. Four days later the mob invaded the Tuileries and passed riotously through all the rooms, insulting in the grossest manner the royal family, who were compelled to stand before them and undergo this humiliation for three hours. On hearing of this event Lafayette hurried from his camp and appeared before the Assembly, entreating the punishment of the instigators of the outrage. His sublime audacity in thus opposing his own personality to the machinations of his enemies, and that, too, before a body already irritated by his unasked advice, paralyzed the fury of his adversaries, while his eloquence charmed the hearts of his hearers; but all was in vain, and the only result of this heroic action was that a decree of accusation was brought in against him, which was rejected by a vote of 406 to 224. Upon the massacre of the Swiss Guards, on August 10th, followed by the actual deposition and imprisonment of the king, Lafayette sounded his army to ascertain if they would march to Paris in defence of constitutional government, but he found them vacillating and untrustworthy. His own dismissal from command came soon after: orders were sent for his arrest, and nothing remained for him but flight.

On August 19th he left the army and attempted to pass through Belgium on his way to England, but he was captured by Austrian soldiers near the frontier. He protested that he no longer held rank as an officer in the army and should be considered as a private citizen; but his rights were not respected in either capacity, for he was not treated as a prisoner of war neither was he arraigned as a criminal. On the contrary, without any charges being preferred against him, and without the formality of a trial of any kind, he was immediately thrown into prison and was detained in various Belgian, Prussian, and Austrian jails and fortresses for more than five years, the last three being passed in close confinement at Olmutz. An unsuccessful attempt at escape increased the severity of his detention, and he nearly lost his life through the hardships and privations that he endured, till his wife and daughters came, in 1795, and voluntarily shared his incarceration. The only reason for the savage treatment that he received, unjustified by any forms of international, of military, or of criminal law, seems to have lain in the fact that he had been a member of the National Assembly and prominent in the constitutional struggle for liberty. A feeling of revenge, as mean as it was groundless—for he had done everything in his power to protect the dignity as well as the life of Marie Antoinette, the sister of the Austrian emperor—joined with a fear that other peoples might follow the lead of the French and overthrow monarchical institutions unless deterred by some world-shocking example, formed the mainspring of this atrocious procedure. Efforts were made in this country and in England to procure the release of the prisoner, but no governmental action was taken in that direction, the United States Congress declining to pass a resolution to that effect, so that President Washington was left alone in his unceasing attempts, by instructions to our ministers abroad and by a personal letter to the emperor, to repay some of the debt that he and the whole country owed to our adopted citizen. It was not till the successes of the French republican armies enabled General Bonaparte, at the instance of the Directory, to insist upon the liberation of Lafayette as one of the conditions of the treaty of Campo Formio, that he was discharged on September 19, 1797, the Austrian Government pretending that this was done out of regard for the United States of America. Passing into Denmark and Holland he resided in those countries for two years, when he returned to France only to receive from Bonaparte a significant message recommending to him a very quiet life, a piece of advice which, as it accorded with his own desires, he followed, settling down at Lagrange, an estate inherited by his wife, as his own property had been confiscated by the National Convention, which had succeeded the Legislative Assembly. True to the principles that he had always entertained, he cast his vote, in 1802, with less than nine thousand others, and in opposition to the suffrages of more than three-and-a-half millions, against the decree to make Bonaparte consul for life, writing after his name on the polling register the statement that he could not vote for such a measure till public freedom was sufficiently guaranteed. This insured the continued displeasure of the military despot, who revenged himself by refusing to Lafayette's only son, George Washington, the promotion that he had earned by his brilliant exploits in the army. President Jefferson's offer in 1803, of the governorship of the province of Louisiana, just after its purchase from France, was rejected by Lafayette, who continued in his retirement through the time of the empire and after the first restoration of the Bourbons, till the return from Elba, in March, 1815, of Napoleon, who used every exertion to conciliate him and win his support. All these overtures he declined, but, on the other hand, accepted an election to the popular branch of the Legislature, of which he was chosen vice-president. After the battle of Waterloo, on June 18th, Napoleon returned to Paris and proposed to his council the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies and the assumption of absolutely dictatorial power; a desperate project which was frustrated only by the alertness, vigor, and energy of Lafayette, whose eloquent appeals induced the Legislature to compel the final abdication of the emperor, under the alternative threat of forfeiture and expulsion. Five commissioners, with Lafayette at the head, appointed by the chambers, proceeded to the head-quarters of the allied sovereigns, at Haguenau, to treat for peace; but, while negotiations were pending, the foreign armies pushed on toward the capital, and he returned on July 3d, to find that Paris had capitulated and was at the mercy of the conquerors, who dictated their own terms, forcibly dissolved the Corps Législatif, and replaced Louis XVIII. on the throne. Lafayette retired to Lagrange, but was again elected, in 1817, a deputy, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Government, and exerted his influence in favor of liberal measures, though with indifferent success. In 1824, on the invitation of President Monroe, he revisited this country, travelled through every State, was received with the highest honors by Congress (which voted him $200,000 and a township of land for his services), by legislatures, by colleges, by corporations of cities, by societies of all kinds by his surviving comrades of the revolution, and by the whole nation; took part in the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument June 17, 1825, and sailed for home in September, on the United States frigate Brandywine, which had been put at his disposal by the Government. Soon after his return to France he was re-elected to the Corps Législatif, and served as a member for most of the remainder of his life. The stupid tyranny of King Charles X. having caused an outbreak of the Parisians in July, 1830, Lafayette unhesitatingly espoused the popular cause, and, though nearly seventy-three years old, accepted the command of the National Guard; after a conflict of three days the royal troops gave way, the king abdicated, to be succeeded by the Duke of Orleans as King Louis Philippe, and Lafayette had the satisfaction of contributing largely to the establishment of what he had advocated so strongly forty years before—a constitutional monarchy. He died at his home, in the country, on May 20, 1834, but his remains were taken to Paris for interment, and as the funeral train passed through the streets the lamentations on every hand attested the affection and the sorrow of the people. Few men have lived who present a figure so attractive to the eye of the student; fewer still, so prominent on the theatre of history, who will bear, with so little possibility of censure, the closest scrutiny, the severest judgment. His actions were visible to all the world, his motives were transparent, his sentiments were unconcealed, his life was blameless. To the physical endowments of dignity of person and resistless charm of manner he added all desirable qualities of head and heart, a dauntless courage, an enthusiasm beautiful and yet consistent, a sublime patriotism, a disinterested generosity. If, with all these, he seems to have failed of achieving the highest success, it was because not of what he lacked but of what he possessed in the fullest degree, a lofty integrity that forbade him to pander to the passions of the mob, a supreme regard for the rights of the community and of the individual. He might have snatched the sovereign power, but in doing it he would have lost his self-respect. In place, then, of glittering success, he obtained the quiet admiration of mankind and the loving gratitude of two nations.[Back to Contents]

CHARLOTTE CORDAY[6]
By Oliver Optic
(1768-1793)

The despotism of Louis XIV. and the exhaustion of the finances by his wars and his reckless extravagance had reduced France to a very unhappy condition. His son, the Grand-Dauphin, died four years before his father, and his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, a year later. Louis the Great was therefore succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV. During this reign the nation continued on the decline. He was followed by his grandson, Louis XVI., a better man than his immediate predecessor, but too weak to carry out the reforms necessary to restore the prosperity of the nation. Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and many other writers, as well as the influence of the American Revolution, had fostered democratic ideas among the people, for the government was reeking with abuses.

The parliament had not assembled for three-quarters of a century; but representatives of the people met in 1789, in spite of the opposition of the king. The extreme of license followed the extreme of absolutism. The king opposed the Constituent Assembly, for this body changed its name several times, till the political conflict ended in the death by the guillotine of Louis XVI., and later by the execution of his queen, Marie Antoinette. For every two hundred and fifty of the gross population there was a member of the nobility who was exempted from the payment of any land tax, though this kind of property was almost exclusively in their possession, and from many other taxes and burdens, which all the more heavily weighed down the great body of the people. The latter had a long list of genuine grievances which the king and his advisers refused to remedy.

The revolution became an accomplished fact in the capture and destruction of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, which day is still celebrated as a national holiday in France. It had been for hundreds of years a prison for political offenders, and was regarded by the people as the principal emblem and instrument of tyranny. The population became as intemperate as their rulers had been, thousands perished by the guillotine, and the reign of terror was established. The National Convention proclaimed a republic; but this body was divided by conflicting opinions, and had not the power to inaugurate their ideal government. Blood flowed in rivers, and the reaction was infinitely more terrible than the tyranny which had produced it.

The Convention was divided into at least four parties, though the lines which separated them were not very clearly defined. The Jacobins were the most prominent, and the most radical. It had its origin in the Jacobin Club, formed in Versailles, taking its name from a convent in which it met. This organization soon spread through its branches all over France, and its party was the most violent and blood-thirsty in the convention. Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, and other desperate leaders were of this faction.

The Girondists were next in numbers and influence. They were the moderate republicans of the time, though at first they were inclined to accept the constitution, and favor a limited monarchy. Its name came from the earliest leaders of the party who were representatives from the department of the Gironde. Its members labored to check the violence and bloodshed of the times, and might be called the respectable party of the period. Unfortunately they were in the minority, and all the members of the party in the Convention who did not escape, were arrested, convicted, and guillotined.

The Montagnards (mountaineers) or Montagne (Mountain) was the term applied to the Democrats holding the most extreme views, though its members were also Jacobins and Cordeliers. Among them were the most blood-thirsty, unreasonable, and intolerant men of the time, for Danton, Robespierre, Marat, St. Just, and others of that stamp, affiliated with them. They took their name from the fact that they were grouped together in the uppermost seats of the chamber of the Convention. The Cordeliers was hardly more than another name for a club of the same men, so called from the chapel of a Franciscan monastery where they held their meetings.

Charlotte Corday and Marat.

Jean Paul Marat was one of the most prominent personages of the Revolution, whose infamy will continue to be perpetuated down to generations yet to come, with other of his red-handed associates. He was a Frenchman, though he spent considerable time in Holland and Great Britain, where he practised medicine, having studied the profession at Bordeaux. He made some reputation as a political writer, and in Edinburgh obtained a degree. It is believed that he was convicted for stealing, and sentenced to five years imprisonment at Oxford under several aliases. Perhaps he was sincere in his opinions, and he threw himself vigorously into the work of the Revolution in Paris, issuing inflammatory pamphlets, which he caused to be printed and circulated secretly. He established an infamous journal, attacking the king and all his supporters, and especially the Girondists, whose moderation disgusted him. His virulence caused him to be intensely hated, and twice he was compelled to flee to London, and once to hide in the sewers. In the latter he contracted a loathsome disease of the skin which soon began to eat away his life; and his sufferings from it intensified his zeal and his hatred.

Marat was elected to the Convention as a delegate from Paris. Perhaps he was to a greater degree responsible for the September massacre than any other man. While he was dying of his malady he was urging on his fanatical measures, and declared that most of the members of the Convention, Mirabeau first, ought to be executed. His most virulent hatred was directed against the Girondists, whose execution he advocated with all the venom of his nature. Though he could write only when seated in a bath, he continued to hurl his invectives against them, impatient for the guillotine to do its gory work upon them.

The avenger was at hand. Charlotte Corday d'Armont was the granddaughter of Corneille, the great tragic poet of France. Though of noble descent, she was born in a cottage, for her father was a country gentleman so poor that he could not support his family. His daughters worked in the fields like the peasants, till he was compelled to abandon them. Then they obtained admission to a convent in Caen, where they were received on account of their birth and their poverty. The library furnished Charlotte abundant reading matter, and she read works on philosophy, though she also rather inflated her imagination by the perusal of romances, which had some influence on her after life.

When monasteries and convents were abolished, she was turned loose upon the world; but her aunt, as poor almost as her father, took the young woman, now nineteen years old, to her home in Caen. Charlotte had developed into a beautiful girl, rather tall, honest, and innocent. She had imbibed republican sentiments from her father in spite of his nobility, and Caen was the head-quarters of the Girondists. She was familiar with the details of the struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondists, and they inspired her with an intense feeling against the persecutors of her people, as she regarded the latter. The members of that party who had been driven from Paris instructed her. She was a woman; but if she had been a queen she had the nerve to rule a nation and fight its battles.

A tremendous purpose took possession of her being. It was not prompted by the spirit of revenge. She was mistaken, but she believed that the removal of Marat was the remedy for the evils of the time; and this became the work of her life, upon which she entered, fully conscious that her path ended at an ignominious grave. She had an admirer in a young man by the name of Franquelin, and though she favored him she sacrificed her attachment to what she regarded as a lofty, even a sublime duty. She had the means to proceed to Paris and she went by the coach. She deceived her aunt, her father, and her sisters with the statement that she was going to England in search of remunerative employment. She went to a hotel in the great city which had been recommended to her in Caen.

A friend had given her a letter of recommendation to Duperret, a Girondist deputy, by the aid of which she hoped to get into the presence of Marat. She had arranged a plan for the assassination of the brawling fanatic, and it was to take place at the celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille, July 14th, on the Champ de Mars. She desired to do the deed as publicly as possible, not to make it sensational, but in order to produce the stronger impression upon the minds of the people. The postponement of the celebration, for the suppression of the rebellion among the Vendeans, prevented the execution of her first plan, and she then decided to strike down her victim in his seat at the "summit of the mountain," in the midst of the victim's accomplices. Then she learned that Marat was confined to his lodgings by his malady. She promptly determined to confront him in his own home.

She wrote a note to him, professing to be a sufferer at the hands of the Girondists, asking for an appointment at his house. He made it, but was unable to keep it. She wrote another note, and then went to the house in the Rue de l'École de Médecine, now a part of the Boulevard St. Germain. The woman with whom Marat lived refused to admit her, and she crowded up a short stairway. Her intended victim heard the altercation, and suspecting it was the person who had sent him two notes, he called out to Catherine Everard to admit her. Charlotte had visited the Palais Royal and purchased a knife, which was concealed in her bosom in readiness to do the deed.

Marat, though at the height of his pernicious influence, lived in mean and squalid apartments, in a sort of pride of poverty as "the friend of the people." In spite of his disease, which compelled him to work in a bath, he was always busy. The room was littered with papers and pamphlets. He was only five feet in height, with a naturally disagreeable face, increased by his malady. At the very time his visitor entered his den, he was making out on a board before him a list of Girondists to be executed. She would not look at him, but she told him a story she had invented, and gave him the names of Girondist refugees at Caen; to which he replied as he wrote them down, that "they should have the guillotine before they were a week older."

At these words, as though they had steeled her arm, she drew the knife from her bosom, and with superhuman power, plunged it to the hilt and to the heart of Marat. He called for help and then expired. Assistance came, and the house was thronged with National Guards and policemen. They were necessary to save the murderess from the fury of those who forced their way into the house. She was arrested, and conveyed in the same carriage in which she had come to the Conciergerie. All Paris groaned and howled.

She had the form of a trial, and the guillotine quickly followed it. Her fortitude did not forsake her at any time, and she died as firmly as any martyr ever went to the stake. Her beauty and her heroism excited the sympathy of the crowd, but they could not save her. She was a mistaken heroine, but her courage and fortitude were sublime.[Back to Contents]

MADAME ROLAND[7]
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1754-1793)

France has produced many remarkable women; perhaps no other country can boast such an array of illustrious names; they shine from the pages of French history like fixed stars from the firmament. Among them, down the long vista of a hundred years, brilliant and beautiful, shines the name of Madame Roland, the spirit of the great French Revolution personified.

Striking beauty, great genius, and wonderful courage in the hour of martyrdom, rendered this woman an unusual character in an unusual epoch. Surrounded by deceit, she was honest and fearless. In the midst of immorality and license, she was pure, and brave enough to resist temptation which came from without and from within, and she went to the scaffold with an untarnished name and soul.

Manon Philipon, as Madame Roland was known in her childhood, was born in Paris in the year 1754. Her father was a worker in enamel, who thrived well enough in his art when he was content to toil at it, but a restless spirit of speculation led him into ventures which brought him neither profit nor renown.

Manon's beauty was a direct inheritance from both father and mother. Gratien Philipon was a handsome man, and vain and frivolous as he was handsome; but his beautiful wife was serious-minded, and much the superior of her husband in intellect as well as morals. Of seven children born to this couple, only one lived—Manon, the subject of our sketch—who inherited the combined beauty of both parents, with the rectitude and high ideals of the mother. But there lies no explanation of inheritance from either father or mother to make us understand how the child of these common people became at nine years of age a student of Plutarch, Tasso, and Voltaire, and a philosopher at the age of eleven. It requires a deeper law than that of heredity to explain these things.

At ten, Manon developed a strongly religious tendency, which was fostered, no doubt, by daily studying the "Lives of the Saints." While reading the accounts of martyrs who had died at the stake rather than resign their faith, the child often regretted that she had not lived in those "good old days," so happy a thing it seemed to her to die for one's principles. This privilege was granted her in after-years, strangely enough; and she proved as courageous in reality as she had in childhood imagined herself capable of being under similar circumstances.

Manon's religious feelings were culminated by a request made to her mother, in a paroxysm of tears, that she might be placed in a convent to prepare herself for her first communion; accordingly, she was taken to the Convent of the "Sisters of the Congregation" in May, 1765, when she was eleven years old. Side by side with this nunnery, where the precocious child passed one of the happiest epochs of her life, stood the prison which was to immure her in later years. Should such a circumstance and situation be unfolded in the pages of fiction, we would call it strained and unnatural.

During the year Manon passed in the convent, she made the acquaintance of two sisters, Henrietta and Sophie Cannet, who were allied to the nobility; and she afterward attributed her facility in writing to the correspondence with the younger of these sisters, which continued without interruption over more than a decade of years. In her memoirs, written under the shadow of the guillotine, she says, "In the gloom of a prison, in the midst of political storms, how shall I recall to my mind, and how describe, the rapture, the tranquillity I enjoyed at that period; but when I review the events of my life, I find it difficult to assign to circumstances that variety and that plenitude of affection which have so strongly marked every point of its duration, and left me so clear a remembrance of every place at which I have been."

After she left the convent, she found her passion for reading unabated, and as her father's library was limited, she was obliged to borrow and hire books; from these she made copious extracts and abstracts which formed her valuable habit of reflection upon what she had read.

Her first feelings of contempt and bitterness toward the aristocrats were roused by the air of condescension which the Cannets exhibited to her in her occasional visits to Sophie. They were stupid and arrogant people, but they made her realize that the daughter of an artisan was not on equal footing with people allied to the nobility, albeit she was a prodigy of beauty, learning, and talent, and they the dullest of beings.

"I endeavored," she says, "to think with hope that everything was right, but my pride told me things were ordered better in a republic." So, as early as at the age of fourteen, we find this remarkable being philosophizing upon republics, and taking part in mind against the evils and injustice fostered by monarchies.

Madame Roland wandered from prescribed creeds, and became a liberal in her religious ideas. She has been called an Atheist, but every line she writes, and her life of self-sacrifice, disprove this assertion. Her "one prayer," to which she says she confined herself, is, to my mind, sublime with beautiful and practical religion.

"O Thou who hast placed me on the earth, enable me to fulfil my destination in the manner most conformable to the Divine will, and most beneficial to my fellow-creatures."

I can imagine no more perfect religious faith, no more complete submission to, and acknowledgment of, a Supreme Power than this prayer contains. It strikes me as far more devout and respectful than the prayers of many people who endeavor to dictate to God and direct Him what to do and what not to do, what to bestow and what to withhold.

She writes of her religious agitations with great reluctance to Sophie Cannet, fearful of disturbing the serenity of her friend's convictions; but she continued to conform to her mother's religious ideas during that good woman's life, and even afterward she kept up the forms of Catholicism for the sake of a valued family servant who was devoted to her.

This delicate consideration of the feelings of others has been mistaken by some bigoted minds for deceit or vacillation on the part of Madame Roland; as if such a being were capable of either.

We owe all our knowledge of her early private life to the voluminous correspondence between her and Sophie Cannet; to this friend she wrote those long, journal-like letters, in which one young girl often pours out the inmost secrets of her heart and soul to another; but, unlike the letters of the ordinary girl, Manon's contained criticisms of the books she had read, and discussions of philosophical subjects, which bear evidence to her wonderful precocity of thought and feeling in her "teens."

Originality, unselfishness, genius of the rarest order, are all displayed in these letters; already had her mind grasped some great truths which it requires the average philosopher half a century to discover, when at seventeen, she says, "Man is the epitome of the universe. The revolutions of the world without are an image of those which take place in his own soul."

Upon the news of the mortal illness of Louis XV., she writes to Sophie this strongly humanitarian passage: "Although the obscurity of my birth, name, and position seem to preclude me from taking any interest in the government, yet the common weal touches me in spite of it. My country is something to me, and the love I bear it is unquestionable. How could it be otherwise when nothing in the world is indifferent to me? A love of humanity unites me to everything that breathes. A Caribbean interests me; the fate of a Kaffir goes to my heart. Alexander wished for more worlds to conquer. I could wish for more to love."

In spite of her philosophy, her seriousness, and her learning, however, Manon Philipon was a girl, and a charming one; and we learn in her letters to Sophie how she was pestered with lovers of low and high degree, during her long maidenhood. I might better say with proposals for her hand, since, as we know, French custom does not permit the "love-making" which American girls consider their natural prerogative.

Manon was so beautiful, brilliant, and magnetic, that when she went out to promenade with her father, she was greeted with admiring glances and remarks; and from the fruit vender of whom she made occasional purchases, and the butcher who served the family with joints, to dancing and drawing masters, up along the line to merchants, professional, and literary men, she seemed to fascinate and attract with no effort on her own part.

Each one in turn asked for her hand and was rejected; and a host of others followed, to meet a similar fate, until her father threatened to marry her to the first stranger who crossed his portal, whether either one wished it or no. She says in her memoirs, "The respectable character of my mother, the appearance of some fortune, and my being an only child, made the project of matrimony a tempting one to a number of persons who were strangers to me. The greater part, finding it difficult to obtain an introduction, adopted the expedient of writing to my father. These letters were always shown to me. I wrote the answers, which my father faithfully copied. I was much amused at acting the part of my own father, and dismissed my suitors with dignity, leaving no room for resentment or hope. Here began to break out those dissensions with my father which lasted ever after. He loved and respected commerce, I despised it; and he was much concerned at my rejection of suitors who possessed any fortune."

After the death of Madame Philipon, which occurred in her daughter's twenty-first year, Manon's life at home became almost unbearable. Her extreme grief impaired her health, and anxiety and mortification were added by the excesses and frivolous extravagances into which her father plunged. He formed associations with people of bad character, and took to gambling. Manon strove to make herself an agreeable companion, and to entertain him at home, but the attempt was futile. She filled her lonely hours with study, and with writing letters to Sophie. One day a tall, thin gentleman, bald and yellow, past forty, and looking older, presented a letter of introduction from Miss Cannet.

It was M. Roland, an austere philosopher, of an ancient family, to whom Sophie had often referred. Manon admired his intellect and his respectability; and when, after some two or three years, he made an offer of marriage, she was ready to accept; but M. Philipon bluntly and insolently refused his consent, through a strong personal dislike which he had conceived for the severe moralist and philosopher.

Manon could not marry against her father's wishes, but she could leave the home now so distasteful to her. She had saved only a small sum from her mother's fortune, amounting to about one hundred dollars per year. With this, she retired to the Convent of the Congregation, and shut herself up with her books, and received only her old friends.

M. Roland, for whose sake she had taken so decisive a step, was far from an ardent lover in his conduct at this juncture. He wrote her affectionately, but he made no reference to his proposal of marriage until six months had passed. Then he came to Paris, had an interview through iron gratings, and expressed himself determined to make her his wife. Since she had left her father's roof, she was at liberty to accept his somewhat tardy proposal, and she emerged from the convent to become Madame Roland.

We have seen that M. Roland was not an ardent lover, and it is readily understood that this beautiful, intense girl, in the very prime of young womanhood, was not in love with him. She felt only esteem for his virtues, and admiration for his intellect. But she was twenty-five years old, and virtually homeless; of all the score of men who had sought her hand in marriage, no one had ever stirred her heart, and she married, believing, no doubt, that this cold regard and high admiration which the character of M. Roland elicited, was all that she could feel for any man.

It was not until the thunders of the Revolution shook the world, that her heart awoke to real passion; and even then, in a situation where hundreds of women who have professed greater religious fervor, have fallen, she conquered herself, and virtually died to protect her husband's life.

During the first year of their marriage, the Rolands lived in Paris. Manon had imagined a happy association with her friends, the Cannets; but her husband was morbidly jealous of these friends, and extracted a promise from her that she would see them as little as possible. She became his amanuensis and secretary, and scarcely ever left his side.

During the next ten years we find her passing the greater part of her time in the Clos de la Platière, an ancient and humble country-seat belonging to the Roland family. Here, with her taxing domestic duties, the exactions of her husband, the care of her child Eudora, the tyrannies of her aged mother-in-law, this wonderful woman had little opportunity for the exercise of her talents.

It seems strange to think of this beautiful martyr, whose name is a synonym for all that is grand and heroic, passing the best years of her womanhood in preparing dishes for the appetite of a dyspeptic husband, in looking after house-linen, and arranging lessons for a child. Matilda Blind says "This affects one with something of the ludicrous disproportion of making use of the fires of Etna to fry one's eggs by."

Yet Madame Roland performed these and less agreeable duties as cheerfully and as perfectly as she had performed her chosen tasks in the convent years before. Women doctors were not known in those days, but the genius of Madame Roland embraced a knowledge of medicine with other things; and she often went three leagues to relieve a sick peasant, and was ever ready to sacrifice herself for the good of others.

There was very little happiness for her in the companionship of her husband. He was twenty-two years her senior, and possessed an imperious temper and an exacting nature. But the most ardent wife could not have better performed her duty to the most lovable of husbands.

Naturally democratic in her feelings and sympathies, Madame Roland took the keenest interest in the progress of the Revolution; from her quiet retreat she studied its leading members, and when, in 1791, her husband was chosen deputy to the Constituent Assembly, she accompanied him to Paris, and their apartments became the rendezvous for such men as Brissot, Buzot, Danton, Robespierre, Pétion, and many more, who met to confer with one another and to exchange ideas and suggestions. Madame Roland sat apart with her embroidery and listened. Of these meetings she speaks thus in her "Memoirs": "Good ideas were started and excellent principles maintained; but there was no path marked out, no determinate point toward which each person should direct his views. Sometimes for very vexation, I could have boxed the ears of these philosophers."

Had not her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius, perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that she might not have averted the disasters which befell the party through its dissensions.

In March, 1792, Roland was elected minister of the interior; and Madame Roland presided over the establishment that had been sumptuously fitted up for Madame Necker. Roland became the idol of the patriotic party, and was enchanted with his excellent position. He urged upon King Louis XVI., in whom he reposed great faith, the necessity of a decree against the priesthood, and the establishment of a camp in the suburbs of Paris. Louis demurred, Roland insisted in the famous letter written by his wife, and placed in the king's hands June 11th. This letter became immensely popular. The Assembly ordered it to be printed and copies sent to all departments, together with expressions of national regret at the discharge of Roland and his friends, which the letter caused. But they were recalled to office after the dreadful August 10th.

Twice a week Madame Roland gave a dinner to fifteen of her husband's colleagues, with whom he wished to converse. No other lady was present. The Girondists were at the apex of society, and Madame Roland was the life and impetus of the party. She endeavored to infuse its members with her hatred of false pride and old prejudices, and with her desire to establish a liberal democracy. Always enthusiastic, and vexed with the lack of unity and direct purpose in the Assembly, she was over-zealous in some of her suggestions.

Among the brilliant men whom she entertained at these dinners, was one, young, handsome, elegant, and refined, whose many manly qualities woke in her heart that long-delayed passion which a nature so ardent must sometime feel. This man was Buzot; and he was as irresistibly drawn to this beautiful, brilliant woman as the magnet to the steel.

Madame Roland was at this time thirty-eight years old; her brilliant color and her open expression made her look much younger, and her tall, finely developed form, her splendid eyes and engaging smile, charmed and attracted all who came near her. But though domestic life and morality were held at the lowest possible value in those chaotic days, and each man made a law for himself, Madame Roland never wavered in her loyalty and devotion to the man whose name she bore. Only through her remarkable letters written to Buzot from her prison cell, and never made public till 1863, does the glory and intensity of her hopeless passion display itself.

From the very first, Madame Roland had distrusted Danton. It was not long before her intuitions proved correct, for Danton soon showed his jealousy and dislike of the minister, whom he found too honest to tamper with. He feared, too, the penetration, frankness, and genius of Roland's wife. Men who saw the insidious, selfish qualities of Danton, began to cultivate and conciliate him out of fear of his enmity.

Robespierre, whom Madame Roland had at first believed in as an honest friend to liberty, became an ally of Danton and Marat, and Roland soon realized that it was not the monarchists he had to contend against, but the new party headed by these dissenting Girondists, who were savage with a thirst for human blood.

The Rolands were accused of trying to establish an aristocracy of talent on the ruins of a monarchical aristocracy; their semi-weekly dinners were represented as sumptuous feasts where, like a new Circe, Madame Roland strove to corrupt the unfortunates who partook of her banquets.

She was called before the Convention December 7th, to listen to the charges against her; her eloquence won the admiration of even her enemies. But her safety was in danger, and she was obliged to sleep with a pistol under her pillow for fear of the outrages of desperadoes who lurked about her house.

The strife between the two parties grew more bitter, and the downfall of Roland had been determined upon by his savage opponents, once his fawning friends and colleagues. An attempt was made to arrest Roland by six armed men, deputies of the Insurrectionists. He replied that he did not recognize their authority, and refused to follow them. Madame Roland at once set off for the Tuileries, where the Insurrectionists, more cruel and blood-thirsty than the deposed Monarchists, were in session. At the door the sentinels forbade her to enter. Obliged to return home without having been enabled to address the Convention, as she hoped to do, she found that her husband had taken refuge in the house of a friend.

She sought him out, embraced him, and returned once more to the Tuileries in another vain hope of arousing their former friends to resolute action. But she was obliged to return to her apartment in the evening, without having accomplished anything. Late that night she was torn from her child and her home, and cast into the Prison of the Abbaye, from which she was set at liberty a month later, and wild with happiness, allowed to reach her own door; but as she attempted to enter she was again seized and conveyed to the Prison of Sainte Pélagie. The respite had only been given in malice to render her second incarceration more bitter.

Under the same roof were murderers and women of the town; and in the morning, when the cell-doors were opened, the scum of the earth, as one authority tells us, collected in the corridor. On each side of this corridor (the only place where the prisoners could take exercise) were small cells, and one of these, separated only by thin walls from the most depraved beings, whose vile language was constantly audible to her ears, this refined and elegant woman was forced to occupy. She suffered acutely from this proximity to depravity and vulgarity at first; but ere long she transformed the vicinity in which her cell was situated "from an inferno to an oasis of peace." When she walked in the corridor, where at first she was pointed at, abused and reviled, she was now surrounded by wretched beings who clung to her skirts and regarded her as a divinity. Her sweet voice soothed brawls, her words of courage inspired the most hopeless. Everybody loved her, everybody desired her acquittal.

Meantime she was writing her famous "Memoirs," and the touching letters to her husband, her child, and to Buzot. After an imprisonment of more than six months, she was finally called before the judge and the prosecution, and accused of being the wife of Roland, the conspirator, the friend of his accomplices. Twenty-one Girondists had already been executed, and she could not hope to escape. She was condemned to death as guilty of traitorous relations with conspirators. She heard the sentence proudly, and replied, "You consider me worthy to share the fate of the great men whom you have assassinated. I shall try to carry to the scaffold the courage they have shown."

Robespierre signed her death-warrant. He had been her friend, guest, and correspondent. She had helped him when he was unknown, defended him when he was in need of a defender. But he sent her to the scaffold; and on November 9, 1793, the tumbril came to convey her to the guillotine. It had taken many others on that same day; and now her only companion on that fatal ride was a trembling old man named La Marche. He wept bitterly, but Madame Roland cheered him with words of courage and strength.

When they arrived at the Place de la Concorde, she begged the executioner to permit the "etiquette of the scaffold" to be waived, and to allow La Marche to die first, that the sight of her death might not accentuate his fear and misery. So to the last moment of her life she was true to her religion of thoughtfulness for others.

Beautiful, self-possessed, and calm, she stood upon the scaffold in the pride of her womanhood, and spoke those last immortal words as she lifted her eyes to the statue of Liberty, "O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name."

Then the axe fell, and the assassins of the Revolution had added another victim to their list. Seven days after this event, M. Roland committed suicide by stabbing himself through the heart.[Back to Contents]

MARIE ANTOINETTE
By Mrs. Octavius Freire Owen
(1755-1793)

Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria, was not highly educated; and she was incapable of directing the studies of her children, although by precept and example she laid the foundation of characters, all of which became more or less remarkable. Marie Antoinette, her youngest child, was perhaps the most neglected. She once innocently caused the dismissal of her governess, through a confession that all the letters and drawings shown to her mother, in proof of her improvement, had been previously traced with a pencil. At fifteen her knowledge of Italian, studied under Metastasio, was the only branch of her education which had been fairly attended to, if we except considerable conversance with the "Lives of the Saints" and other legendary lore, the favorite fictions of monastic compilers. Nature had, nevertheless, done much for the young archduchess; she possessed great facility for learning, and was not slow in taking advantage of opportunities for improvement when they were afforded. In person she was most attractive. "Beaming with freshness," says Madame Campan, "she appeared to all eyes more than beautiful. Her walk partook at once of the noble character of the princesses of her house and of the graces of the French; her eyes were mild, her smile lovely. It was impossible to refrain from admiring her aërial deportment; her smile was sufficient to win the heart; and in this enchanting being, in whom the splendor of French gayety shone forth, an indescribable but august serenity—perhaps, also, the somewhat proud position of her head and shoulders—betrayed the daughter of the Cæsars." Such, according to her affectionate chronicler, appeared Marie Antoinette, when her nuptials were celebrated at Versailles with the Dauphin of France.

Superstitious minds discovered fatal omens from the earliest years of the hapless dauphiness. She had begun ill by first drawing breath upon the very day of the earthquake of Lisbon; this made a great impression on the mother, and later upon the child also. Another incident was not less discouraging: the empress had "protected a person named Gassner," who fancied himself inspired, and affected to predict events. "Tell me," she said to him one day, "whether my Antoinette will be happy?" At first Gassner turned pale and remained silent, but, urged by the empress, and dreading to distress her by his own fancies, he said, equivocally, "Madame, there are crosses for all shoulders." Goethe notices that a pavilion erected to receive Marie Antoinette and her suite in the neighborhood of Strasburg was lined with tapestry depicting the story of Jason, "the most fatal union" on record; and a few days later, when the young queen arrived from Versailles to witness the rejoicings of the people upon her marriage, she was compelled to fly, terrified, from a scene remarkable not for festivity and happiness, but for the variety and horror of its accidents. These circumstances threw a gloom over the prospective triumphs of the impressionable bride; but her nature and age were alike favorable to vivacity, and she shook off the morbid influence.

Something of her mother's wise advice to her as to the course she should follow in her new position has been preserved in the following letter:

"My Dear Daughter:

"... Do not take any recommendations; listen to no one, if you would be at peace. Have no curiosity,—this is a fault which I fear greatly for you; avoid all familiarity with your inferiors. Ask of Monsieur and Madame de Noailles, and even exact of them, under all circumstances, advice as to what, as a foreigner and being desirous of pleasing the nation, you should do, and that they should tell you frankly if there be anything in your bearing, discourse, or any point which you should correct. Reply amiably to every one, and with grace and dignity; you can if you will. You must learn to refuse.... After Strasburg you must accept nothing without taking counsel of Monsieur and Madame de Noailles; and you should refer to them every one who would speak to you of his personal affairs, saying frankly that being a stranger yourself, you cannot undertake to recommend any one to the king. If you wish you may add, in order to make your reply more emphatic, 'The empress, my mother, has expressly forbidden me to undertake any recommendations.' Do not be ashamed to ask advice of any one, and do nothing on your own responsibility.... In the king you will find a tender father who will also be your friend if you deserve it. Put entire confidence in him; you will run no risk. Love him, obey him, seek to divine his thoughts; you cannot do enough on this moment when I am losing you.... Concerning the dauphin I shall say nothing; you know my delicacy on this point. A wife should be submissive in everything to her husband, and should have no thought but to please him and do his will.... The only true happiness in this world lies in a happy marriage; I know whereof I speak. Everything depends on the wife if she be yielding, sweet, and amusing.... I counsel you, my dear daughter, to reread this letter on the twenty-first of every month. I beg you to be true to me on this point. My only fear for you is negligence in your prayers and studies; and lukewarmness succeeds negligence. Fight against it, for it is more dangerous than a more reprehensible, even wicked state; one can conquer that more easily. Love your family; be affectionate to them—to your aunts as well as to your brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. Suffer no evil-speaking; you must either silence the persons, or escape it by withdrawing from them. If you value your peace of mind, you must from the start avoid this pitfall, which I greatly fear for you knowing your curiosity....

"Your mother,
"Maria-Theresa."

The grand annoyance Marie Antoinette experienced upon her entrance into the French Court, was the necessity of observing a system of etiquette to which she had been unaccustomed, and soon pronounced, with girlish vehemence, insupportable. Barrière copies a ridiculous anecdote in illustration of this from the manuscript fragments of Madame Campan: "Madame de Noailles" (this was the first lady of honor to the dauphiness) "abounded in virtues; I cannot pretend to deny it. Her piety, charity, and irreproachable morals rendered her worthy of praise, but etiquette was to her a sort of atmosphere; at the slightest derangement of the consecrated order, one would have thought she would have been stifled, and that life would forsake her frame. One day I unintentionally threw this poor lady into a terrible agony. The queen was receiving I know not whom—some persons just presented, I believe; the lady of honor, the queen's tire-woman, and the ladies of the bed-chamber were behind the queen. I was near the throne with the two women on duty. All was right; at least, I thought so. Suddenly I perceived the eyes of Madame de Noailles fixed on mine. She made a sign with her head, and then raised her eyebrows to the top of her forehead, lowered them, raised them again, then began to make little signs with her hand. From all this pantomime, I could easily perceive that something was not as it should be; as I looked about on all sides to find out what it was, the agitation of the countess kept increasing. The queen, who perceived all this, looked at me with a smile. I found means to approach her Majesty, who said to me in a whisper: 'Let down your lappets, or the countess will expire.' All this bustle arose from two unlucky pins, which fastened up my lappets, while the etiquette of costume said 'Lappets hanging down.'"

To the Countess de Noailles Marie Antoinette speedily gave the name of Madame l'Étiquette; this pleasantry the object of it could pardon, not so the French nation. The avowed dislike to ceremony manifested by the lively little dauphiness, her desire to substitute the simple manners of her native Vienna for the stately formality of Versailles, displeased more than her genuine condescension and affability attracted. Early also in her married life, to beguile the heavy tedium of their evenings, she instituted a variety of childish games which became talked of and condemned; she liked theatrical representations, and persuaded her two young brothers-in-law, with the princesses, to join her in performing plays, and though they were kept secret for a time, she suffered for her innocent contrivances in public opinion. It must be remembered that Marie Antoinette had no sincere friends upon her arrival in France, except the Duc de Choiseul and his party, and his disgrace prevented her deriving much benefit from the man who had first negotiated her marriage. The house of Austria was looked upon with dislike and doubt; nor were these, even in the case of the young dauphin's aunt, Madame Adelaide, made a matter of concealment. Thus, at her entrance upon public life, Antoinette was met with cynicism and prejudice, and unfortunately her own conduct rather increased than quieted the insidious voice—the "bruit sourd"—of both.

Louis XV. had manifested from the first great pleasure in the society of his grandson's bride. After dining in his apartment at the Tuileries, upon her arrival at Paris, she was obliged to acknowledge the shouts of the multitude, which filled the garden below, by presenting herself on the balcony. The Governor of Paris had told her politely at the time, that "these were so many lovers." Little did she think that at the very moment a strong party around her was planning her divorce, under the supposition that the dauphin's coldness to his bride proceeded from dislike. Louis was a timid, though rough, youth at the time, and for a considerable period treated the attractions which the courtiers so highly extolled, with churlish indifference. The French king, indeed, did his best to promote a better understanding, and when the reserve of the dauphin once thawed, the latter became tenderly attached to her, and greatly improved by her influence and society.

An interesting trait of this youthful pair is told, as occurring at the moment when they might have been excused for entertaining other and more selfish thoughts. They were expecting the intelligence of the death of Louis XV. It had been agreed, as the disorder was one frightfully contagious, that the court should depart immediately upon learning it could be of no further assistance, and that a lighted taper, placed in the window of the dying monarch's chamber, should form a signal for the cavalcade to prepare for the journey. The taper was extinguished; a tumult of voices and advancing feet were heard in the outer apartment. "It was the crowd of courtiers deserting the dead sovereign's ante-chamber, to come and bow to the new power of Louis XVI." With a spontaneous impulse the dauphin and his bride threw themselves upon their knees, and shedding a torrent of tears, exclaimed, "O God! guide us, protect us; we are too young to govern." Thus the Countess de Noailles found them as she entered, the first to salute Marie Antoinette as Queen of France.

Marie Antoinette.

For some time the young queen's liking for children was ungratified by the possession of any of her own, and this gave rise to an amusing attempt to adopt one belonging to others. One day, when she was driving near Luciennes, a little peasant boy fell under the horses' feet, and might have been killed. The queen took him to Versailles, appointed him a nurse, and installed him in the royal apartments, constantly seating him in her lap at breakfast and dinner. This child afterward grew up a most sanguinary revolutionist! It was nine years before Marie Antoinette had the blessing of any offspring; four children were after that interval, born to her, two of whom died in their infancy, and two survived to share their parent's subsequent imprisonment. The sad history of her son's fate, a promising and attractive boy, is well known.

We have seen the Austrian princess was no favorite with her husband's nation. After a time accusations as unjust as serious assailed her, and in the horrors of the succeeding revolution the popular feeling evinced itself in a hundred frightful ways. Louis XVI., a mild prince, averse to violence or bloodshed, was unfit to stem the tide of opposition; had he possessed the energy of his queen, the Reign of Terror had perhaps never existed. Throughout her misfortunes, in every scene of flight, of opprobrium, and desolation, her magnanimity and courage won, even from the ruffians around, occasional expressions of sympathy. A harrowing and melancholy history is hers, and one which has been often vividly narrated; its details, also, are sufficiently recent to be still fresh within the recollection of many. For these reasons, and further because it seems to us a repellent, if not a mischievous, act to amplify such records before advancing age shall have invested them to the mind with deeper significance, we gladly pass over the picture suggested by this dark historical page, and, resuming the narrative where Madame de Campan drops it, content ourselves with a description of the last scene in the terrible drama.

When this devoted woman left her royal mistress in the miserable cell at the Convent of the Feuillans, she never again saw her. Imprisonment, and the intense grief she experienced, more for others than for herself, completely transformed the once beautiful queen; her hair was prematurely silvered, like that of Mary Stuart, her figure bowed, her voice low and tremulous. Then came the separation from the king. Once more only did her eyes again behold him, and after the parting between the dethroned monarch and his adoring family, he might indeed have been able to say, "The bitterness of death was passed." However weak at intervals, the unhappy Louis met his death heroically. The sufferings of his wife at the time when the guns boomed out the fearful catastrophe, may be supposed to have been as great as the human frame has power to endure. Shortly after, she was separated from her children and conveyed to the prison of the Conciergerie, a damp and loathsome place, whence she was summoned one morning in October to receive a sentence for which it is probable she ardently longed. Let us look at her through the bars of her prison upon her return thither after it was pronounced.

It is four o'clock in the morning. The widowed Queen of France stands calm and resigned in her cell, listening with a melancholy smile to the tumult of the mob outside. A faint illumination announces the approach of day; it is the last she has to live! Seating herself at a table she writes, with hurried hand, a last letter of ardent tenderness to the sister of her husband, the pious Madame Elizabeth, and to her children; and now she passionately presses the insensible paper to her lips, as the sole remaining link between those dear ones and herself. She stops, sighs, and throws herself upon her miserable pallet. What! in such an hour as this can the queen sleep? Even so!

And now look up, daughter of the Cæsars! Thou art waked from dreams of hope and light, from the imaged embrace of thy beloved Louis, thy tender infants, by a kind voice, choked by tears. Arise! emancipated one, thy prison doors are open. Freedom, freedom is at hand!

Immediately in front of the palace of the Tuileries—scene of the short months of her wedded happiness—there rises a dark, ominous mass. Around is a sea of human faces; above, the cold frown of a winter's sky. With a firm step the victim ascends the stairs of the scaffold, her white garments wave in the chill breeze, a black ribbon by which her cap is confined beats to and fro against her pale cheeks. You may see that she is unmindful of her executioners—she glances, nay, almost smiles, at the sharp edge of the guillotine, and then turning her eyes toward the Temple, utters, in a few agitated words, her last earthly farewell to Louis and her children. There is a hush—a stillness of the grave—for the very headsman trembles as the horrible blade falls—anon, a moment's delay. And now, look! No, rather veil your eyes from the dreadful sight; close your ears to that fiendish shout—Vive la République! It is over! the sacrifice is accomplished! the weary spirit is at rest!

Let us dwell upon this last mournful pageant only sufficiently far as to imitate the virtues, and emulate the firmness and resignation with which she met her doom. Nothing is permitted without a meaning, all is for either warning or example; and while breathing a prayer that Heaven may avert a recurrence of such outrages, let us remember that moral indecision, the undue love of pleasure, and an aimless, profitless mode of life, as surely, and not less fatally, may raise the surging tide of events no human skill can quell, as the most selfish abandonment to uncontrolled desires.[Back to Contents]

ANDREAS HOFER
(1767-1810)

Andreas Hofer, a native of the village of St. Leonard, in the valley of Passeyr, was born on November 22, 1767. During the greater part of his life he resided peaceably in his own neighborhood, where he kept an inn, and increased his profits by dealing in wine, corn, and cattle. About his neck he wore at all times a small crucifix and a medal of St. George. He never held any rank in the Austrian army; but he had formed a secret connection with the Archduke John, when that prince had passed a few weeks in the Tyrol making scientific researches. In November, 1805, Hofer was appointed deputy from his native valley at the conference of Brunnecken, and again at a second conference, held at Vienna, in January, 1809.

The Tyrol had for many years been an appendage of the Austrian states, and the inhabitants had become devoted to that government; so that when, by the treaty of Presburg, the province was transferred to the rule of the King of Bavaria, then the ally of Napoleon I., the peasants were greatly irritated, and their discontent was further provoked by the large and frequent exactions which the continual wars obliged the new government to levy on the Tyrolese. The consequence was, that when their own neighborhood became the theatre of military operations between Austria and France, in the spring of 1809, a general insurrection broke out in the Tyrol. His resolution of character, natural eloquence, and private influence as a wealthy citizen, joined to a figure of great stature and strength, pointed out Andreas Hofer to his countrymen as the leader of this revolt; and with him were united Spechbacher, Joseph Haspinger, and Martin Teimer, whose names have all become historical. A perfect understanding was maintained between the insurgents and their late masters, and the signal of the insurrection was given by the Archduke John in a proclamation from his head-quarters at Klagenfurth. An Austrian army of 10,000 men, commanded by the Marquis Castellar, was directed to enter the Tyrol and support the insurrection, which broke out in every quarter on the night of April 8, 1809. The Austrian general himself crossed the frontier at daybreak on the 9th. On their side the Bavarians marched an army of 25,000 men into the province to quell the revolt. Hofer and his band of armed peasantry fell upon the Bavarians while entangled in the narrow glens, and on April 10th defeated Besson and Lemoine at the Sterzinger Moos. The next day a troop of peasants under Teimer took possession of Innsbrück. On the 12th Besson surrendered with his division of 3,000 men. In a single week all the fortresses were recovered, nearly 10,000 troops of the enemy were destroyed, and the whole province was redeemed.

Incensed by this interruption of his plans, Napoleon despatched three armies almost simultaneously to assail the province at three different points. One of these forces was under the command of Marshal Lefebvre, who, on May 12th, defeated the united army of the Austrian soldiers, under Castellar, and the Tyrolese peasantry, under Haspinger and Spechbacher, at Feuer Singer. The troops made a bad use of their victory, slaughtering the inhabitants of the villages on their route, without distinction of age or sex. The Bavarian and French officers encouraged and took part in the excesses of the soldiers; while the insurgents, far from retaliating, refrained from every species of license, and nursed their wounded prisoners with the same care as their own friends. Hofer himself was not always present in action, his talent consisting rather in stimulating his countrymen than in actual fighting; but at the battle of Innsbrück (May 28, 1809), he led the Tyrolese, exhibited both skill and daring, and defeated the Bavarians with a loss of 4,000 men. The whole of the Tyrol was delivered a second time. But after the battle of Wagram (July 6th), and the armistice of Znaim which immediately followed, the Austrian army was obliged to evacuate the Tyrol, leaving the helpless insurgents to the mercy of an exasperated enemy. Marshal Lefebvre now invaded the province a second time, and entered it by the road from Salzburg, with an army of 21,000 troops, while Beaumont, having crossed the ridge of Schnartz with a force 10,000 strong, threatened Innsbrück from the north. On July 30th Innsbrück submitted. A series of desperate contests followed along the line of the Brenner, mostly with doubtful success, but in one the marshal was defeated, when twenty-five pieces of artillery and a quantity of ammunition fell into the hands of the Tyrolese. Again, on August 12th, Marshal Lefebvre, with an army of 25,000 Bavarian and French soldiers, 2,000 of whom were cavalry, was totally beaten by the Tyrolese army, consisting of 18,000 armed peasants. The battle, which was fought near Innsbrück, is said to have lasted from six in the morning until midnight. For a third time the Tyrol was free.

After this victory, entirely achieved by the peasantry themselves, Hofer became the absolute ruler of the country; coins were struck with his effigy, and proclamations issued in his name. His power, however, scarcely lasted two months, and became the cause of his ruin ultimately. Three veteran armies, comprising a force of nearly 50,000 French and Bavarian troops, were despatched in October to subdue the exhausted province; and, unable to make head against them, Hofer was obliged to take refuge in the mountains. Soon after, a price having been set on his head, a pretended friend (a priest named Donay) was induced to betray him, January 20, 1810. After his arrest he was conveyed to Mantua, and the intelligence having been communicated by telegraph to the French emperor, an order was instantly returned that he must be tried. This order was a sentence; and after a court-martial, at which, however, the majority were averse to a sentence of death, Hofer was condemned to be shot. His execution took place on February 20, 1810, his whole military career having occupied less than forty weeks. The Emperor Francis conferred a handsome pension upon the widow and family of Hofer, and created Hofer's son a noble. The Austrian government also raised a marble statue of heroic size in the cathedral of Innsbrück, where the body of the patriot was interred; while his own countrymen have commemorated his efforts by raising a small pyramid to mark the spot where he was taken.[Back to Contents]

Andreas Hofer led to Execution.

QUEEN LOUISE OF PRUSSIA
By Mrs. Francis G. Faithfull
(1776-1810)

There is at Paretz, near Potsdam, a flower-bordered walk leading from a grotto overlooking the Havel to an iron gate, above which is inscribed "May 20, 1810" and the letter "L." Within the grotto an iron table bears in golden characters, "Remember the Absent."

These words were engraved by order of Friedrich Wilhelm III. of Prussia; and the "absent" he would have remembered—"the star of his life, who had lighted him so truly on his darkened way"—was the wife who died of a broken heart before reaching middle age.

Louise Augusta Wilhelmina, third daughter of Duke Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was born on March 10, 1776, in the city of Hanover. Her mother died when she was six years old, and henceforth she and her sister Frederica lived with their grandmother, the Landgravine of Darmstadt, sometimes at the Burgfreiheit Palace, sometimes at a château in the Herrengarten, surrounded by formal gardens and orangeries. The girls were brought up simply, making their own clothes, and going much among the poor. Now and then they made expeditions to Strasburg or the Vosges Mountains; and, when the Emperor Leopold was crowned at Frankfort, the Frau von Goethe housed them hospitably, and was highly entertained by the glee with which they worked a quaint sculptured pump in her courtyard. Two years later the advance of French troops compelled them to seek refuge with their eldest sister, the reigning Duchess of Hildburghausen; and on their homeward way they visited the Prussian head-quarters, that the Landgravine might present them to the king. His sons were with him, and long afterward the Crown Prince told a friend, "I felt when I saw her, 'tis she or none on earth."

The wooing was short. On April 24, 1793, he exchanged betrothal rings with Louise, and then rejoined his regiment. Soon after, the Princesses of Mecklenburg went over to the camp, Louise appearing "a heavenly vision" in the eyes of Goethe, who saw her there.

In the December of that same year Berlin, gay with flags and ablaze with colored lamps, welcomed Duke Charles and his daughters; and on Christmas Eve the diamond crown of the Hohenzollerns was placed on her fair head, and in her glistening silver robe she took part in the solemn torch procession round the White Saloon.

Then her young husband took her home to their palace in the "Unter den Linden." They were very happy. In the sunshine of his wife's presence the prince's spirit, crushed in childhood by a harsh tutor, soon revived, while Louise, though the darling of the court, was always most content when alone with him.

"Thank God! you are my wife again," he exclaimed, one day, when she had laid aside her jewels.

"Am I not always your wife?" she asked, laughingly.

"Alas! no; too often you can be only the crown princess."

Her father-in-law never wearied of showering kindnesses on his "Princess of Princesses." On her eighteenth birthday he asked if she desired anything he could give. "A handful of gold for the Berlin poor," was the prompt petition.

"And how large a handful would the birthday child like?"

"As large as the heart of the kindest of kings."

The Castle of Charlottenberg, one of his many gifts to the young pair, proving too splendid for their simple tastes, he bought for them the Manor of Paretz, about two miles from Potsdam. There Louise busied herself with household affairs, while her husband gardened, strolled over his fields, or inspected his farm stock. They played and sang together, or read Shakespeare and Goethe, while to complete this home-life came two baby boys: Fritz, born in October, 1795, and Friedrich Wilhelm, in March, 1797. Someone once asked Louise if this country existence was not rather dull. "Oh! no," she exclaimed; "I am quite happy as the worthy lady of Paretz."

But in the late autumn of 1797 the king died, and the quiet freedom of Paretz had to be exchanged for the restraints of court life. Little as either of the two desired regal pomp, they played their new parts well. Friedrich Wilhelm, stately in bearing, and acknowledged as the handsomest man in his realm, looked every inch a king; and if his laconic speech and caustic criticisms sometimes gave offence, the winning gentleness of his beautiful wife more than made amends. Nobles and citizens, statesmen, soldiers, and savants were alike made welcome; and Louise knew instinctively how to make each show at his best. With eager interest she discussed Pestalozzi's ideas with his disciples; and when Gotlöeb Hiller, the poet-son of a miner, was presented to her, she led him aside, and by the friendly ease with which she talked of things familiar to him, speedily banished his shyness. Indeed, ready as she was to recognize high gifts and to learn from all able to teach, yet it was to the obscure and suffering that her tones were most soft and gracious. Even in trifles her thoughtfulness was unfailing. When a count and a shoemaker were announced at the same moment, she gave audience first to the shoemaker. "For time is more valuable to him."

Queen Louise visiting the Poor.

At Dantzic she constantly wore an amber necklace, because it had been the gift of the townsfolk. The voice which in childhood had pleaded for the panting footman running beside her grandmother's coach, might still be heard interceding, for when the royal carriage was overturned near Warsaw, and the Oberk of Messterin rated the servants, Louise interposed: "We are not hurt, and our people have assuredly been more alarmed than we."

Sometimes the midday meal was spread beneath a forest tree, and from far and near the peasants flocked to get "even a glimpse of her lovely face." They followed in crowds while she and the king climbed the Schneekoppe on foot, but loyal shouts died into awed silence when, at the summit, Friedrich Wilhelm bared his head, and the two standing side by side gazed at the glorious view. "That was one of the most blessed moments of my life," Louise said afterward; "we seemed lifted above this earth and nearer our God."

They entered the mines at Woldenberg by a swift-flowing stream, and twenty years afterward the steersman of their boat was fond of telling how, in the dark cavern—"The Foxes' Hole"—he saw her well by the torchlight. "In all my life I never saw such a face. She looked grand, as a queen should look, but gentle as a child. She gave me with her own hands two Holland ducats. My wife wears them when she goes to church, for what she touched is holy."

Louise had never meddled in foreign politics. She had been, she designed to be, only the "Landesmutter," and even when the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, seized on Prussian soil, aroused in Berlin a storm of indignation, in which she fully shared, she yet sympathized in the mental distress which found vent in her husband's often-repeated words, "I cannot decide for war."

At last he did decide. In October, 1805, Napoleon ordered Bernadotte to march his army corps through Anspach. This contemptuous comment on Prussia's ten-years' forbearance was too much for the king's pride. Armies were raised in Franconia, Saxony, Westphalia, and while the excitement was at fever point the czar came to Berlin. All his rare charm of manner was brought to bear, and at midnight, in the presence of Louise, the two monarchs, standing with clasped hands beside the tomb of the great Friedrich, solemnly pledged themselves to a close alliance.

Alexander departed to lead his Russians to Moravia, and Friedrich Wilhelm despatched a protest to the French camp; but the envoy, Haugwitz, arriving on the eve of Austerlitz, waited the issue of the battle, and then, withholding his packet, proposed to the victor a fresh treaty with Prussia. There was wrath in Berlin when his doings became known. The king at first disowned the disgraceful compact, but Austerlitz had just taught him what Napoleon's enemies might expect. French troops were already massing on his frontier, and in an evil hour he broke faith with the czar! To Louise, who neither feared foe nor deserted friend, that was a bitter time—doubly sad, indeed, since most of the long winter was spent by the dying bed of her youngest child. When she lost him her own strength broke down, and the doctors ordered her away to drink the Pyrmont waters. In the late summer she was able to rejoin her husband, and he had startling news to tell, for war with France was close at hand.

Since Haugwitz's fatal agreement Napoleon had heaped injuries on Prussia. Now, at least, king and people were of one mind. The young Prussian officers sharpened their swords on the French ambassador's window-sills, patriotic songs were hailed with thunders of applause in street and theatre, and when the queen, clad in the uniform of her own Hussars, rode at their head through the city, she was greeted with passionate loyalty.

Unhappily, Friedrich Wilhelm, hitherto too tardy, was now too precipitate. He had been passive while France crushed Austria, and Austria, suspicious and disabled, neither could nor would assist him. Russia, with better reason for distrust, responded generously to his appeal, but he did not wait for her promised aid. For all his haste, Napoleon, with 180,000 men, was nearing the Thuringian Forest before the Prussian troops left Berlin. They were very confident, those Prussian troops, and the shouting multitudes who watched the well-trained artillery and cavalry defiling by, hardly dreamed of disaster; yet it came almost at once. The Saxon corps, led by the king's cousin, Prince Louis, pushing on too fast, was surprised and surrounded, and the gallant young commander, the queen's dear friend, the idol of the army, fell while rallying his men.

Louise, who had hurriedly joined the king from Weimar, could hardly be persuaded to leave him, but on the evening of October 13th he confided her to a cavalry escort, promising speedy tidings of the coming battle. As she threaded the lonely passes of the Hartz Mountains she heard the distant cannonading, and a broken sentence now and again fell from her lips: "We know that all things work together for good." Late in the misty October twilight she drove into Brunswick. At Brandenburg a courier brought the news her trembling heart awaited. All was lost! Twenty thousand Prussians lay on the fields of Auerstadt and Jena, and the French were already in Weimar. The king was alive, but two horses had been killed under him. Grief-stricken, travel-worn as she was, Louise must not halt. Before she reached Berlin her children had been sent to Schwedt-on-Oder. She followed thither, almost terrifying them by her changed, despairing looks. As soon as she could check her weeping, she told her boys all she knew about Prince Louis's death. "Do not only grieve for him. Be ready for Prussia's sake to meet death as he met it," and then, in burning, never-forgotten words, she bade them one day free their country and break the power of France.

There seemed only a choice between utter destruction and utter submission, and yet when Napoleon demanded the cession of almost the whole kingdom, Friedrich Wilhelm and his wife agreed that "only determined resistance can save us." She was slowly rallying at Königsberg from a fever caught in the crowded city, when the cry was raised of the coming French. Propped by pillows, swathed in shawls, she drove through blinding sleet to Memel, the one fortress still left to the king. At her first halting-place the wind whistled in through a broken window, and the melting snow dripped from the roof on to her bed. Her companions trembled for her, but she, calm and trustful, hailed as a good omen the sunshine which welcomed them within the walls of Memel.

A week later Benningsen and his Russians, who had been wading knee-deep through Polish forests and fording swollen streams, always with 90,000 Frenchmen in hot pursuit, turned to bay amid the frozen lakes and drifted snows of Eylau. Next day those snows for miles around were red with blood. It was hard to tell with whom the costly victory lay, but Napoleon despatched Bertrand to the Russian outposts to propose an armistice, and Benningsen sent him on to Memel, reminding the Prussian king that it could not be their interest to grant what it was Napoleon's interest to ask. The terms were, indeed, far easier than those offered after June; but Friedrich Wilhelm, true to the ally who had held the field almost single-handed through that terrible winter, would make no separate agreement, nor did Louise receive more favorably a message to herself, conveying Napoleon's wish to pay his court to her in her own capital.

Though the piercing Baltic winds tried her strength greatly, she employed herself whenever able in reading and visiting the over-full hospitals. To a dear friend she said, "I can never be perfectly miserable while faith in God is open to me." "Only by patient perseverance," so she wrote to her father, "can we succeed. Sooner or later I know we shall do so."

It was not to be yet. On June 14, 1807, Napoleon annihilated the Russians at Friedland, and four days later Dantzic fell. Her tone grew sadder. "We are not yet bereft of peace. My great sorrow is being unable to hope."

As the czar could resist no longer and Napoleon desired peace, they met at Tilsit, and there, on a covered raft moored midway in the Niemen, arranged the outlines of a treaty. The next day Friedrich Wilhelm, yielding to stern necessity, accepted terms "to the last degree hard and overwhelming." The czar, believing that Louise might move even Napoleon to clemency, her husband begged her to join him at Tilsit. On reading this summons she burst into tears, declaring this the hardest task ever given her to do. "With my broken wing how can I succeed?" she pathetically asked.

Napoleon paid his respects soon after her arrival, and they met at the stairhead. Louise, for Prussia's sake, forced herself to utter courteous regrets that he should have to mount so steep a staircase. He answered blandly that no difficulties were feared when striving for a reward beyond. Then, touching her gauze robe, asked, "Is it crêpe?"

"Shall we speak of such trifles at such a time?" was her only reply.

He was silent; then demanded, "How could you make war on me?"

She told him that they had overrated their strength.

"And relying on the great Friedrich's fame you deceived yourselves."

Louise's clear eyes met his steadily. "Sire, resting on the great Friedrich's fame, we might naturally deceive ourselves, if, indeed, we wholly did so."

Then she told him that she had come to entreat him to be generous to Prussia. He answered respectfully, but made no promise. Again, with exceeding earnestness, she implored at least for Magdeburg, just then Friedrich Wilhelm entered, and Napoleon abruptly took leave.

"Sire," said Talleyrand warningly to him, when they were alone, "shall posterity say that you threw away your great conquest for the sake of a lovely woman?"

Louise meanwhile dwelt again and again on Napoleon's words, "You ask a great deal, but I will think about it." Yet her heart was heavy, and when arrayed for the evening banquet in the splendid attire so long unworn, she likened herself sadly to the old German victims decked for sacrifice. Napoleon said of her afterward, "I knew I should see a beautiful and dignified queen; I found the most interesting woman and admirable queen I had ever known."

The treaty of Tilsit restored to Friedrich Wilhelm a fragment of his kingdom, but even this was to be held by the French till after the payment of a huge indemnity. Napoleon's threat that he would make the Prussian nobles beg their bread had hardly been a vain one, for the unhappy Prussians had to feed, lodge, and clothe every French soldier quartered in their land. Dark as was the outlook, Louise was upheld by loving pride in her husband. "After Eylau he might have deserted a faithful ally. This he would not do. I believe his conduct will yet bring good fortune to Prussia."

To help forward that good fortune they sold most of the crown lands and the queen's jewels, and had the gold plate melted down. Amid their heavy anxieties and pains they were not wholly unhappy, these two, who loved each other so entirely. "My Louise," the king said to her one day, "you have grown yet dearer to me in this time of trouble, for I more fully know the treasure I possess."

She, too, could write of him, "The king is kinder to me than ever, a great joy and reward after a union of fourteen years." Still those about her told of sleepless nights when prayer was her only relief. Her eyes had lost their brightness, her cheeks were pale, her step languid. By the Christmas of 1808 the last French soldier had quitted Prussian soil; but it was not deemed safe for the royal family to return at once to Berlin, and they spent the summer at Hufen, near Königsberg. Parents and children were constantly together, and the mother taught herself to believe that the sharp trials of those years would tell for good on her boys and girls. "If they had been reared in luxury and prosperity they might think that so it must always be."

It was not till the end of 1809 that the exiles turned their faces homeward. They travelled slowly, for the queen was still feeble. Everywhere a glad welcome greeted them; and on December 23d, the day on which, sixteen years before, she had entered the capital a girl-bride, Louise drove through its familiar streets in a carriage presented to her by the rejoicing citizens. Her father was waiting at the palace gate. He helped her to alight and led her in. Three years had gone by since she last crossed the threshold of her home, and what years they had been! Nor was the return all joy, for she knew and dreaded the changes she would find there. Napoleon and his generals had not departed empty handed. They had stripped the rooms of paintings and statues, of manuscripts and antiquities.

As the doors closed a great shout arose from the vast crowd before the palace. Presently she appeared in the balcony, and all saw the traces of long anguish in the lovely face, now bright with grateful smiles.

After a solemn service in the Dom, the king and queen drove through the illuminated city to the opera-house. "The queen sat beside her husband"—so wrote Fouqué afterward—"and as she talked she often raised her eyes to him with a very touching expression.... Our beloved queen has thanked us with tears. Bonaparte has dimmed those heavenly eyes ... and we must do all we can to make them sparkle again."

The bare walls, the empty cabinets of the palace, accorded with the almost ascetic habits now maintained there. Self-denial was made easy by one belief, that Prussia would arise from her great suffering stronger than before. The king and queen were not left to work alone toward that high end. Able generals replaced those who, through treachery or faint-heartedness, had surrendered the fortresses. Stein, now chief minister, curtailed the rights of the nobles, and gave the serfs an interest in guarding the soil they tilled; while Scharnhorst, by an ingenious evasion of Napoleon's edict limiting the Prussian army, contrived to have 200,000 men rapidly drilled and trained. The universities founded at Berlin and Breslau became the head-quarters of secret societies for the deliverance of the Fatherland. Princes and professors, merchants ruined by the Berlin decrees, and peasants ground down by French exactions, joined the Jugendbund, and implicitly obeyed the orders of its unseen heads. Through town and country spread that vast brotherhood, fired by the songs of Tieck and Arnim to live or die for Prussia.

And Louise watched thankfully the dawning promise of better days, "though, alas! we may die before they come."

Perhaps that sad presentiment haunted her husband too. If she jested with her children he would say wistfully, "The queen is quite herself to-day. What a blessing it will be if her mind recovers its joyous tone!"

That spring Louise was attacked by spasms of the heart. They did not last long, and when the court moved to Potsdam she seemed to regain strength, and showed much interest in discussing with Bishop Eylert how best to train her boys so that they might serve their country. Though very weak, she accompanied her family to Hohengieritz, the king perforce returning to Berlin. The loving eyes that watched her saw signs of amendment, but early on Monday, July 16th, the spasms recurred. For hours no remedies availed. She could only gasp for "Air! air!" and when the sharp pain had passed lay exhausted, now murmuring a few words of some hymn learnt as a child, faintly thanking God for each solace sent her, or entreating her grandmother to rest. No complaint passed her lips; she was only "very, very weary."

They told her that couriers had been despatched for the king, and she asked anxiously, "Will he soon come?" Before dawn he came, bringing the two elder boys. For those who tried to cheer him he had only one mournful reply: "If she were not mine she might recover." A gleam of joy lighted her pale face when he came to her bedside, but perceiving his emotion she asked, "Am I then so very ill?" Unable to reply, he hurriedly left the room, and she said to those standing by, "His embrace was so wild, so fervent, that it seemed as though he would take leave of me. Tell him not to do that, or I shall die at once."

He returned bringing in the children.

"My Fritz! my Wilhelm!" She had only time for one long gaze, and then the agonizing pain came again. One of the doctors tried to raise her, but she sank back. "Only death can help me;" and as all watched in breathless silence, she leaned her head against the shoulder of a faithful attendant, murmured, "Lord Jesus, shorten it!" and with one deep-drawn breath passed away.[Back to Contents]

JAMES WATT
By John Times, F.S.A.
(1736-1819)

James Watt was born at Greenock, January 19, 1736. He was the fourth child in a family which, for a hundred years, had more or less professed mathematics and navigation. His constitution was delicate, and his mental powers were precocious. He was distinguished from an early age by his candor and truthfulness; and his father, to ascertain the cause of any of his boyish quarrels, used to say, "Let James speak; from him I always hear the truth." James also showed his constructive tastes equally early, experimenting on his playthings with a set of small carpenter's tools, which his father had given him. At six he was still at home. "Mr. Watt," said a friend to the father, "you ought to send that boy to school, and not let him trifle away his time at home." "Look what he is doing before you condemn him," was the reply. The visitor then observed the child had drawn mathematical lines and figures on the hearth, and was engaged in a process of calculation. On putting questions to him, he was astonished at his quickness and simplicity. "Forgive me," said he, "this child's education has not been neglected; this is no common child."

Watt discovering the Condensation of Steam.

Watt's cousin, Mrs. Marian Campbell, describes his inventive capacity as a story-teller, and details an incident of his occupying himself with the steam of a tea-kettle, and by means of a cup and a spoon making an early experiment in the condensation of steam. To this incident she probably attached more importance than was its due, from reverting to it when illustrated by her after-recollections. Out of this story, reliable or not in the sense ascribed to it, M. Arago obtained an oratorical point for an éloge, which he delivered to the French Institute. Watt may or may not have been occupied as a boy with the study of the condensation of steam while he was playing with the kettle. The story suggests a possibility, nothing more; though it has been made the foundation of a grave announcement, the subject of a pretty picture, and will ever remain a basis for suggestive speculation.

Watt was sent to a commercial school, where he was provided with a fair outfit of Latin and with some elements of Greek; but mathematics he studied with greater zest, and with proportionate success. By the time he was fifteen, he had read twice, with grave attention, Gravesande's "Elements of Natural Philosophy;" and "while under his father's roof he went on with various chemical experiments, repeating them again and again, until satisfied of their accuracy from his own observations." He even made himself a small electrical machine, about 1750-53; no mean performance at that date, since, according to Priestley's "History of Electricity," the Leyden phial itself was not invented until the years 1745-46.

His pastime lay chiefly in his father's marine store, among the sails and ropes, the blocks and tackle: or by the old gray gateway of the Mansion House on the hill above Greenock, where he would loiter away hours by day, and at night lie down on his back and watch the stars through the trees.

At this early age Watt suffered from continual and violent headaches, which often affected his nervous system for many days, even weeks; and he was similarly afflicted throughout his long life. He seldom rose early, but accomplished more in a few hours' study than ordinary minds do in many days. He was never in a hurry, and always had leisure to give to his friends, to poetry, romance, and the publications of the day; he read indiscriminately almost every new book he could procure. He assisted his father in his business, and soon learned to construct with his own hands several of the articles required in the way of his parent's trade; and by means of a small forge, set up for his own use, he repaired and made various kinds of instruments, and converted, by the way, a large silver coin into a punch-ladle, as a trophy of his early skill as a metal-smith. From this aptitude for ingenious handiwork, and in accordance with his own deliberate choice, it was decided that he should proceed to qualify himself for following the trade of a mathematical instrument maker. He accordingly went to Glasgow, in June, 1754, and from there, after a year's stay, he proceeded for better instruction to London.

On Watt's arrival in the metropolis, he sought a situation, but in vain, and he was beginning to despond, when he obtained work with one John Morgan, an instrument-maker, in Finch Lane, Cornhill. Here he gradually became proficient in making quadrants, parallel rulers, compasses, theodolites, etc., until, at the end of a year's practice, he could make "a brass sector with a French joint, which is reckoned as nice a piece of framing work as is in the trade." During this interval he contrived to live upon eight shillings a week, exclusive of his lodging. His fear of the press-gang and his bodily ailments, however, led to his quitting London in August, 1756, and returning to Scotland, after investing twenty guineas in additional tools.

At Glasgow, through the intervention of Dr. Dick, he was first employed in cleaning and repairing some of the instruments belonging to the college; and, after some difficulty, he received permission to open a shop within the precincts as "mathematical instrument maker to the University." Here Watt prospered, pursuing alike his course of manual labor and of mental study, and especially extending his acquaintance with physics; endeavoring, as he said, "to find out the weak side of nature, and to vanquish her." About this time he contrived an ingenious machine for drawing in perspective; and from fifty to eighty of these instruments, manufactured by him, were sent to different parts of the world. He had now procured the friendship of Dr. Black and another University worthy, John Robison, who, in stating the circumstances of his first introduction to Watt, says: "I saw a workman, and expected no more; but was surprised to find a philosopher as young as myself, and always ready to instruct me."

It was some time in 1764 that the professor of natural philosophy in the University desired Watt to repair a pretty model of Newcomen's steam-engine. Like everything which came into Watt's hands, it soon became an object of most serious study.

The interesting little model, as altered by the hand of Watt, was long placed beside the noble statue of the engineer in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. Watt himself, when he had got the bearings of his invention, could think of nothing else but his machine, and addressed himself to Dr. Roebuck, of the Carron Iron-works, with the view of its practical introduction to the world. A partnership ensued, but the connection did not prove satisfactory. Watt went on with his experiments, and in September, 1766, wrote to a friend: "I think I have laid up a stock of experience that will soon pay me for the trouble it has cost me." Yet it was between eight and nine years before that invaluable experience was made available, so as either to benefit the public or repay the inventor; and a much longer term elapsed before it was possible for that repayment to be reckoned in the form of substantial profit.

Watt now began to practise as a land-surveyor and civil engineer. His first engineering work was a survey for a canal to unite the Forth and Clyde, in furtherance of which he had to appear before the House of Commons. His consequent journey to London was still more important, for then it was that he saw for the first time the great manufactory which Boulton had established at Soho, and of which he was afterward himself to be the guiding intelligence. In the meantime, among his other performances, he invented a micrometer for measuring distances; and, what is still more remarkable, he entertained the idea of moving canal-boats by the steam-engine through the instrumentality of a spiral oar, which as nearly as possible coincides with the screw-propeller of our day.

Watt's negotiations for partnership with Boulton were long and tedious. Dr. Roebuck's creditors concurred because, curiously enough, none of them valued Watt's engine at a farthing. Watt himself now began to despair, and his health failed; yet in 1774, when he had removed to Birmingham, he wrote to his father: "The fire-engine I have invented is now going, and answers much better than any other that has yet been made; and I expect that the invention will be very beneficial to me."

A long series of experimental trials was, nevertheless, requisite before the engine could be brought to such perfection as to render it generally available to the public, and therefore profitable to its manufacturers. In January, 1775, six years of the patent had elapsed, and there seemed some probability of the remaining eight running out as fruitlessly. An application which was made for the extension of its term was unexpectedly opposed by the eloquence of Burke; but the orator and his associates failed, and the extension was accorded by Act of Parliament.

The first practical employment of Watt's engines to any considerable extent was in the mining districts of Cornwall, where he himself was, in consequence, compelled to spend much of his time subsequent to 1775. Here he had to contend not only with natural obstacles in the dark abysses of deeply flooded mines, but with a rude and obstinate class of men as deeply flooded by inveterate prejudices. The result in the way of profit was not, however, satisfactory, notwithstanding the service to the mining interest was enormous. "It appears," says Watt, in 1780, "by our books, that Cornwall has hitherto eat up all the profits we have drawn from it, and all we have got by other places, and a good sum of our own money to the bargain."

At this stage Watt himself was more fertile in mechanical inventions than in any other portion of his busy life. Taking his patents in their chronological order, the first (subsequent to that of 1769) was "For a new method of copying letters and other writings expeditiously," by means of copying presses. Of the same date was his invention of a machine "for drying linen and muslin by steam." On October 25, 1781, he took out his third patent (the second of the steam-engine series), "for certain new methods of applying the vibrating or reciprocating motion of steam or fire engines, to produce a continued rotative motion round an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines." One of these methods was that commonly known as the sun-and-planet wheels; they were five in all. A favorite employment of his in the workshops at Soho, in the later months of 1783 and earlier ones of 1784, was to teach his steam-engine, now become nearly as docile as it was powerful, to work a tilt-hammer for forging iron and making steel. "Three hundred blows per minute—a thing never done before," filled him, as his biographer says, with feelings of excusable pride. Another patent in the steam-engine series, taken out in 1784, contained, besides other methods of converting a circular or angular motion into a perpendicular or rectilineal motion, the well-known and much-admired parallel motion, and the application of the steam-engine to give motion to wheel-carriages for carrying persons and goods. To ascertain the exact number of strokes made by an engine during a given time, and thereby to check the cheats of the Cornish miners, Watt also invented the "Counter," with its several indexes. Among his leading improvements, introduced at various periods, were the throttle-valve, the application of the governor, the barometer or float, the steam-gauge, and the indicator. The term during which he seems to have thus combined the greatest maturity with the greatest activity of intellect, and the portion of his life which they comprehended, was from his fortieth to his fiftieth year. Yet it was a term of increased suffering from his acute sick-headaches, and remarkable for the infirmities over which he triumphed; notwithstanding, he himself complained of his "stupidity and want of the inventive faculty."

Watt's chemical studies in 1783, and the calculations they involved from experiments made by foreign chemists, induced him to make a proposal for a philosophical uniformity of weights and measures; and he discussed this proposal with Priestley and Magellan. While Watt was examining the constituent parts of water, he had opportunities of familiar intercourse not only with Priestley, but with Withering, Keir, Edgeworth, Galton, Darwin, and his own partner, Boulton—all men above the average for their common interest in scientific inquiries. Dr. Parr frequently attended their meetings, and they kept up a correspondence with Sir William Herschel, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Afzelius. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, who was greatly given to physiognomical studies, has left us this picture of Watt at this period.

"Mr. Boulton was a man to rule society with dignity; Mr. Watt, to lead the contemplative life of a deeply introverted and patiently observant philosopher. He was one of the most complete specimens of the melancholic temperament. His head was generally bent forward, or leaning on his hand in meditation; his shoulders stooping, and his chest falling in; his limbs lank and unmuscular, and his complexion sallow. His intellectual development was magnificent; comparison and causality immense, with large ideality and constructiveness, individuality, an enormous concentrativeness and caution.

"He had a broad Scottish accent; gentle, modest, and unassuming manners; yet, when he entered a room, men of letters, men of science, nay, military men, artists, ladies, even little children, thronged round him. Ladies would appeal to him on the best means of devising grates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, and obtaining fast colors. I can speak from experience of his teaching me how to make a dulcimer and improve a Jew's harp."

In the year 1786, Watt and Boulton visited Paris, on the invitation of the French Government, to superintend the erection of certain steam-engines, and especially to suggest improvements in the great hydraulic machine of Marly, which Watt himself designates a "venerable" work. In Paris Watt made many acquaintances, including Lavoisier, Laplace, Fourcroy, and others scarcely less eminent; and while here he discussed with Berthollet a new method of bleaching by chlorides, an invention of the latter which Watt subsequently introduced into England.

Meanwhile Watt had vigilantly to defend his patents at home, which were assailed by unworthy and surreptitious rivals as soon as it was proved that they were pecuniarily valuable. Some of the competing engines, as Watt himself described them, were simply asthmatic. "Hornblower's, at Radstock, was obliged to stand still once every ten minutes to snore and snort." "Some were like Evan's mill, which was a gentlemanly mill; it would go when it had nothing to do, but it refused to work." The legal proceedings, both in equity and at common law, which now became necessary, were numerous. One bill of costs, from 1796 to 1800, amounted to between £5,000 and £6,000; and the mental and bodily labor, the anxiety and vexation, which were superadded, involved a fearful tax on the province of Watt's discoveries.

With the year 1800 came the expiration of the privilege of the patent of 1769, as extended by the statute of 1775; and also the dissolution of the original copartnership of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, then of five-and-twenty years' duration. The contract was renewed by their sons, the business having become so profitable that Watt and his children were provided with a source of independent income; and at the age of sixty-four the great inventor had personally realized some of the benefits he contemplated.

Henceforth Watt's ingenuity became excursive, discretionary, almost capricious; but in every phase and form it continued to be beneficent. In 1808 he founded a prize in Glasgow College, as an acknowledgment of "the many favors that learned body had conferred upon him." In 1816 he made a donation to the town of Greenock, "to form the beginning of a scientific library" for the instruction of its young men. Nor, amid such donations, were others wanting on his part, such as true religion prescribes, to console the poor and relieve the suffering.

In 1816, on a visit to Greenock, Watt made a voyage in a steamboat to Rothsay and back again. In the course of this experimental trip he pointed out to the engineer of the boat the method of "backing" the engine. With a foot-rule he demonstrated to him what he meant. Not succeeding, however, he at last, under the impulse of the ruling passion (and we must remember he was then eighty), threw off his overcoat, and putting his hand to the engine himself, showed the practical application of his lecture. Previously to this, the "backstroke" of the steamboat engine was either unknown or not generally known. The practice was to stop the engine entirely a considerable time before the vessel reached the point of mooring, in order to allow for the gradual and natural diminution of her speed.

With regard to the application of steam power to locomotion on land, it is remarkable enough that, when Watt's attention was first directed, by his friend Robison, to the steam-engine, "he (Robison) at that time drew out an idea of applying the power to the moving of wheel-carriages." "But the scheme," adds Watt, "was not matured, and was soon abandoned on his going abroad."

In 1769, however, when he heard that a linen-draper, one Moore, had taken out a patent for moving wheel-carriages by steam, he replied: "If linen-draper Moore does not use my engine to drive his chaises, he can't drive them by steam." In the specification of his patent of 1784, he even described the principles and construction of "steam-engines which are applied to give motion to wheel-carriages for removing persons or goods, or other matters, from place to place," and in 1786, Watt himself had a steam-carriage "of some size under hand;" but his most developed plan was to move such carriages "on a hard smooth plane," and there is no evidence to show that he ever anticipated the union of the rail and wheel.

Among Watt's mechanical recreations, soon after the date of the last of his steam-engine patents, were four plans of making lamps, which he describes in a letter to Argand; and for a long time lamps were made at Soho upon his principles, which gave a light surpassing, both in steadiness and brilliancy, anything of the kind that had appeared. About a year after, in 1788, he made "a pretty instrument for determining the specific gravities of liquids," having, he says to Dr. Black, improved on a hint he had taken.

Watt also turned his "idle thoughts" toward the construction of an arithmetical machine, but he does not appear ever to have prosecuted this design further than by mentally considering the manner in which he could make it perform the processes of multiplication and division.

Early in the present century Watt devised, for the Glasgow water-works, to bring pure spring-water across the Clyde, an articulated suction-pipe, with joints formed on the principle of those in a lobster's tail, and so made capable of accommodating itself to all the actual and possible bendings at the bottom of the river. This pipe was, moreover, executed at Soho from his plans, and was found to succeed perfectly.

Watt describes, as his hobby, a machine to copy sculpture, suggested to him by an implement he had seen and admired in Paris in 1802, where it was used for tracing and multiplying the dies of medals. He foresaw the possibility of enlarging its powers so as to make it capable of working even on wood and marble, to do for solid masses and in hard materials what his copying machine of 1782 had already done for drawings and writings impressed upon flat surfaces of paper—to produce, in fact, a perfect fac-simile of the original model. He worked at this machine most assiduously, and his "likeness lathe," as he termed it, was set up in a garret, which, with all its mysterious contents, its tools, and models included, have been carefully preserved as he left them.

It is gratifying to find that the charm of Watt's presence was not dimmed by age. "His friends," says Lord Jeffrey, speaking of a visit which he paid to Scotland when upward of eighty, "in that part of the country never saw him more full of intellectual vigor and colloquial animation, never more delightful or more instructive." It was then also that Sir Walter Scott, meeting him "surrounded by a little band of northern literati," saw and heard what he felt he was never to see or hear again—"the alert, kind, benevolent old man, his talents and fancy overflowing on every subject, with his attention alive to everyone's question his information at everyone's command." Campbell, the poet, who saw him later, in the beginning of 1819 (he was then eighty-three), describes him as so full of anecdote, that he spent one of the most amusing days he had ever had with him. Lord Brougham, later still, in the summer of the same year, found his instructive conversation and his lively and even playful manner unchanged. But in the autumn of this year, on August 19th, he expired tranquilly at his house at Heathfield. He was buried at Handsworth. A tribute to his memory was but tardily rendered by the nation.

Jeffrey and Arago added more elaborate tributes to Watt's genius; and Wordsworth has declared that he looked upon him, considering his magnitude and universality, "as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this country has ever produced." His noblest monument is, however, his own work.[Back to Contents]

DR. EDWARD JENNER
By John Timbs, F.S.A.
(1749-1823)