Part 42

During this anxious interval two officers rode rapidly up on the road from Paris, and presented themselves before the king. They were aides-de-camp of General Lafayette, commander of the National Guard. One of them, Romeuf by name, handed Louis a decree of the assembly ordering pursuit and return of the king. It cited an act which forbade any public functionary to remove himself more than twenty leagues from his post.

"I never sanctioned that," cried the king, angrily, flinging the paper on the bed where the dauphin lay.

The queen snatched it up hastily, exclaiming that the bed of her children should not be soiled by such a document.

"Madame," said Romeuf, warningly, "do you wish that other eyes than mine should witness your anger?"

The queen blushed, and recovered with an effort the composure which she had suffered herself to lose.

A messenger now arrived from Bouille bringing word that the detachments he had posted were moving towards Varennes, and that he himself was on the way thither. But the tumult in the streets had grown hour by hour; the people were becoming furious at the delay; it seemed certain that the arrival of the troops would be the signal for a battle with the armed populace, who had strongly barricaded the town. Utterly disheartened, the king gave orders for the carriage; he had decided to return to Paris.

An hour afterwards Bouille, breathless from a long and hurried ride, arrived within sight of Varennes. Its barricades met his eyes. He was told that the king had set out on his return an hour before. The game was up; Louis had lost his last hope of escape; the loyal general took the road for Stenay, and that same evening crossed the French frontier.

The king's carriage made its way back to Paris through a throng that lined the roads, and which became dense when the city was reached. The National Guards held their arms reversed; none of the spectators uncovered their heads; the flight of the king had put an end to his authority and to the respect of the people. It was a sad procession that slowly made its way, in the evening light, along the boulevards towards the Tuileries. When the king and queen entered the palace the doors were closed behind them, and armed guards stationed to prevent egress. The palace had become a prison; Louis XVI. had ceased to reign; the National Assembly was now the governing power in France.

What followed a few words may tell. In the succeeding year the Reign of Terror began, and Louis was taken from the Tuileries to the Temple, a true prison. In December he was tried for treason and condemned to death, and on January 21, 1793, his head fell under the knife of the guillotine. In October of the same year his unhappy queen shared his fate.

THE END OF THE TERROR.

No period of equal length in the whole era of history yields us such a succession of exciting and startling events as those few years between the convening of the States-General in France and the rise of Napoleon to power, and particularly that portion of the Revolution known as the Reign of Terror. A volume of thrilling stories might have been made from its incidents alone; but it would have been a volume so full of tales of blood and woe, of misery and massacre, of the dominance of those wild-beast passions which civilization seeks to subdue in man, that we may well be spared the telling. As with the fall of the Bastille began the long dominion of the populace, so with the fall of Robespierre it ended, and civil order returned to unhappy France. We have told the story of the one; we shall conclude with that of the other.

Three men dominated the Terror,--Danton, Marat, and Robespierre; the first named best deserving the title of man, for he possessed certain qualities of manliness not shown by his brutal colleagues. As Lamartine says, "Nothing was wanting to make Danton a great man except virtue." He had too much manliness, as it seems, for the purposes of Robespierre, and was brought by him to the guillotine on April 5, 1794.

The triumvirate of the Reign of Terror was broken by his death and that of Marat, who had fallen under the avenging knife of Charlotte Corday in July, 1793. Robespierre was left sole director of the Revolution, being president of the Committee of Public Safety, leader of the Jacobin Club, favorite of the extreme terrorists, and lord and master of the Convention, whose members were held in subjection by his violence and their fears.

His dominion was not to be of long continuance. It was signalized by such a frightful activity of the guillotine, in which multitudes of innocent persons daily perished, that the terror which he produced was quickly followed by indignation, and a combination of many of the leading spirits of the Convention was formed against him. One after another he had vanquished all his enemies, and stood alone. But he stood on such a ghastly pyramid of the dead that he could not hope to maintain his dangerous elevation. The voice of vengeance, long choked by terror, at length began to rise against this wholesale executioner.

The outbreak was precipitated by a demand of Saint-Just, the most prominent supporter of Robespierre, that a dictatorship should be established in France, and that the "virtuous and inflexible, as well as incorruptible citizen," Robespierre, should be made Dictator. It was a declaration of war. Many of the members of the Convention knew that it meant their death. Once give their terrible foe the extreme power which this demand indicated, and every known enemy of Robespierre in France would be doomed. Yet to oppose it was to oppose the Jacobins and the revolutionary sections, the controlling powers in Paris. The boldest members of the Convention might well pause and tremble before assailing their seemingly impregnable foe. But the rule of Robespierre had been opposed in committee; it had ceased to be a secret that he had enemies in the Convention; as yet the sentiment against him had spoken only in the dark, but the time was rapidly approaching when an open struggle could no longer be avoided.

Robespierre himself began the battle. He said to a deputation from Aisne, "In the situation in which it now is, gangrened by corruption, and without power to remedy it, the Convention can no longer save the republic; both will perish together."

He repeated this accusation before the Convention itself, in a threatening speech, in which he declared that there was in its midst a conspiracy against public liberty; there were traitors in the national councils; the Convention must be purged and purified; the conspirators must be punished. His words were listened to in sullen silence. When he had ceased no word was spoken, except in whispers from member to member. The glove of defiance had been cast into their midst; were there none among them with the courage to take it up, or must they all yield themselves as the slaves or the victims of this merciless autocrat? No; there were men of courage and patriotism left. Three delegates rose simultaneously, three voices struggled for precedence in the right to attack the tyrant and dare the worst.

"The man who has made himself master of everything, the man who paralyzes our will, is he who has just spoken--Robespierre!" cried Cambon, in ringing tones of defiance.

"It is Robespierre! It is Robespierre," came from other unsealed voices. "Let him give an account of the crimes of the members whose death he demanded from the Jacobins."

The attack was so unexpected and so vehement that Robespierre hesitated to reply.

"You who pretend to have the courage of virtue, have the courage of truth," cried Charlier; "name the individuals you accuse."

Tumult and confusion followed these daring words. Robespierre, unable to gain the ear of the assembly, which now seemed filled with his enemies, and finding the feeling against him rapidly spreading, left the hall and took refuge with the Jacobins, where he repeated his address, this time to applauding hearers. Violent councils followed. Henriot, commandant of the troops, proposed to march on the Convention and put an end to its existence. "Name thy enemies," shouted the members to Robespierre; "we will deliver them to thee." Yet there was hesitation and doubt among the leaders; they feared the result of violent measures, and felt inclined to temporize and wait.

The Convention met the next day. It met inspired with a new spirit. Courage animated the members. They had crossed the Rubicon, and felt that there was no return. During the interval since the last session their forces had been organized, their plans considered. Saint-Just appeared and sought to speak. He was interrupted and his words drowned by the voices of indignant members.

"I see here," cried Billaud-Varennes, who stood beside him, "one of the men who yesterday, at the Jacobins, promised the massacre of the National Convention; let him be arrested."

The officers obeyed this order. Saint-Just was in custody. Billaud continued his remarks, declaring that the members were in danger of massacre, denouncing Robespierre and his supporters, bidding them to be firm and resolute. His boldness infected the assembly; the deputies stood up and waved their hats, shouting their approval. In the midst of this scene Robespierre appeared, livid with rage, his eyes flashing with the fury which inspired him.

"I demand liberty to speak," he exclaimed.

"Down with the tyrant!" rose in a roar from a hundred voices.

Tallien, the leader of the opposition, sprang into the tribune.