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THE 
 
 JBLOODY BUOY, 
 
 THROWN OUT AS A 
 
 Warning to the Political Pilots of America 5 
 
 OR, A 
 
 FAITHFUL RELATION 
 
 OF A 
 
 Multitude of Acts of Horrid Barbarity, 
 
 SUCH AS 
 
 The Eye never witnessed, the Tongue never expressed, 
 
 or the Imagination conceived, until the 
 
 Commencement of the 
 
 THE THIRD EDITION; 
 
 With additional Notes, and a copious Appendi;^. 
 
 BY PETER PORCUP][J>JE.j^oy7 J 
 
 The Annals of your boasted Revolution will serve as a Bloody 
 Buoyy warning the Nations of the Earth to keep aloof from the 
 mighty Ruin Abbe Maury's Speech to the J^Tational Assembly, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 Printed for, and sold by, P. M. Davis. 
 
 1823. 
 
-f^'f 
 
 
 / 
 
TABLE 
 
 QF SOME OP THE MOST STRIKING FACTS. 
 
 Massacre of six hundred persons in one day at Avignon. 
 
 A child brought by the murderers to see his father put to death. 
 
 A lad cuts a hole in the cheek of a priest, to hold up his head 
 
 by, while another cuts it off. 
 Horrid massacre of the priests at Paris. 
 A man tears out a woman's heart reeking, and bites it with his 
 
 teeth. 
 Women roasted alive, and their flesh cut off and presented to 
 
 men for food. 
 Phillipe cuts off the heads of his father and mother, and brings 
 
 them to his club, as a proof of his patriotism. 
 A father leads his son to death. 
 Two women tied naked to the guillotine, while their husbands 
 
 are executed. 
 Execution of Robespierre and Henriot. 
 Women make little guillotines as playthings for their children. 
 A child of ten years old accuses his mother, who is executed. 
 Sans-culotte oath. 
 Republican Marriages. 
 Carrier first satisfies his lust, and then guillotines the women 
 
 who were the objects of it. 
 Most brutal barbarity of some Negroes, and still more brutal of 
 
 some French soldiers. 
 An order for throwing forty women from the top of a rock into 
 
 the sea, which is executed. 
 Dreadful description of a prison, containing women and chil- 
 dren. 
 Shooting of women, stripped naked. 
 Decree, forbidding people to solicit the pardon of their friends. 
 
IV TABLE. 
 
 Drowning of priests. 
 
 Particular account of a drowning. 
 
 A great number of women, many of whom had children at their 
 
 breasts, drowned. 
 Sixty persons suffocated under the hatches of a drowning boat. 
 A man shoots at his father. 
 Seven thousand five hundred persons shot. 
 Shocking account of several hundreds of women and little chil- 
 dren, perishing in cold and filth. 
 Dead bodies on the banks of the river devoured by dogs, &c. 
 Murder of ninety priests. 
 Hands of the prisoners chopped off. 
 
 People bargain with the executioners for the clothes of the pri- 
 soners as they are going to be shot. 
 Women, and children of all ages shot. 
 A young lad chops off the head of a woman while he sings the 
 
 Carmagnole. 
 A woman lying dead and a child sucking at her breast. 
 A man shows his sabre and boasts that he had just cut off sixty 
 
 heads with it. 
 One invites another to taste the brains of an aristocrat. 
 O'Sullivan boasts of his adroitness at sticking people, and brags 
 
 of having led his brother to execution. 
 Goullin beats his own father on his death-bed, and says no man 
 
 ought to be accounted a good revolutionist who has not the 
 
 courage to drink a glass of human blood. 
 Children tied to the guillotine while the blood of their parents 
 
 run on their heads. 
 A cut-throat wears the ears of persons murdered pinned to his 
 
 national cockade. 
 The same carries about him the private parts of murdered men 
 
 which he shows to the women. 
 The women of Paris cut off the same from the Swiss-guards. 
 A general murders children at the breast, and offers to lie with 
 
 their mothers. 
 Women delivered in the mud and water, at the bottom of the 
 
 drowning boats. 
 A child torn from a woman's body, and stuck on a ba3'^onet, and 
 
 thus carried at the head of a number of persons going, to be 
 
 drowned. 
 
TABLE. V 
 
 Women with child ripped open, and the embryo stuck on pikes. 
 
 The Convention applauds the invention of the drowning boats, 
 as an honour to France. 
 
 A man's heart torn from his body and placed palpitating on a 
 table before the magistrates. 
 
 Murder of Mr. Mauduit : his entrails trailed along the street. 
 
 Most horrible murder of the Mayor of St. Denys. 
 
 Expulsion of a priest at Trois Rivieres, upwards of fourscore 
 years old. 
 
 A woman's breasts torn off, and thrown on the floor. 
 
 Gobet, the Constitutional Bishop of Paris, solemnly abdicates 
 the Christian Religion. 
 
 A month's guillotining. 
 
 A man cut to pieces in presence of his wife. 
 
 A man's feet burnt off. 
 
 Another's hair and eyebrows torn off. 
 
 A baker murdered, and his head carried and thrown down be- 
 fore his wife. 
 
 The most savage cruelty that the sun ever beheld. 
 
 , A 2 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 THE object of the following work was, and 
 isj to give the people of this happy land a striking 
 and experimental proof of the horrible eifects of 
 anarchy and infidelity. 
 
 The necessity of such an undertaking, at this 
 time, would have been, in a great measure, pre- 
 cluded, had our public prints been conducted with 
 that impartiality and undaunted adherence to 
 truth, which the interests of the community and 
 of suffering humanity demanded from them. But, 
 so far from this, the greatest part of those vehicles 
 of information have most industriously concealed, 
 or glossed over, the actions as well as the motives 
 of the ruling powers in France ; they have extenua- 
 ted all their unheard-of acts of tyranny, on the false 
 but specious pretence, that they were conducive 
 to the establishment of a free government; and, 
 one of the editors has not blushed to declare, that 
 " It would be an easy matter to apologize for all 
 " the massacres^ that have taken place in that 
 " country." 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 We have seen, indeed, some exceptions ; some 
 few prints that have not dishonoured themselves 
 by going this length ; but even these have observ- 
 ed a timid silence, and have avoided speaking of 
 the shocI^|ag barbarities of the French, with as 
 much caution as if we were to partake in the dis- 
 grace, and as if it was in our power to hide them 
 from the world and from posterity. If they have, 
 now and then, given way to a just indignation, 
 this has been done in such a manner, and has 
 been so timed, as to do them but little honour. 
 They have acted the part of the tyrannized peo- 
 ple of Paris : they have huzza'd every succeeding 
 tyrant, while on the theatre of power, and, the 
 instant he was transferred to a scaffold, they have 
 covered him with reproach. They have attribu- 
 ted to factions, to individuals, what was the work 
 ©f the national representatives, and of the nation 
 itself. They have, in short, inveighed against the 
 atrocities of the fallen assassins, while they have, 
 in the same breath, applauded the principles on 
 which they acted, and on which their survivors 
 and their partizans do still act. 
 
 Thus has the liberty of the press, a liberty of 
 which we so justly boast, been not only useless to 
 us, during this terrible convulsion of the civilized 
 world, but has been so perverted as to lead us 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 into errors, which had well nigh plunged us into 
 the situation of our distracted allies. Nor are we 
 yet secure. Disorganizing and blasphemous prin- 
 ciples have been disseminated among us with but 
 too much success ; and, unless we profit from the 
 awful example before us, we may yet experience 
 all the calamities that heaven and earth now call 
 on us to deplore. 
 
 Fully impressed with this persuasion, the au- 
 thor of these sheets ventured to undeceive the 
 misguided ; to tear aside the veil, and shew to a 
 yet happy people the dangers they had, and have 
 yet, to fear. With this object in view, he made 
 sure of meeting with the approbation of all good 
 men, and, if any judgment is to be formed from 
 the rapid sale of the work, he was not deceived. 
 
 He foresaw, that the work would be attacked 
 as a fabrication ; but, he now repeats, that the 
 materials were collected from the works referred 
 to, all of which were written by Frenchmen, and 
 all, except one, from which only a few extracts 
 are made, printed at Paris ; and he begs leave to 
 add here, that the original French books were 
 read by Mr. Benjamin Davies and others in this 
 city, before the translation was made. In short, 
 the author solemnly declares, that he has related 
 the facts as he found them ; he has named the 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 book, and even the page, from which each fact 
 is taken ; and, as the advocates for French huma- 
 nity have as good an opportunity as he of coming 
 at those books, let them detect his errors, or, if 
 thej will, his falsehoods, and publish them to the 
 world : but let them not take up the book and 
 call it a bundle of falsehoods, without being able 
 to prove the falsity of one single sentence contain- 
 ed in it. The people of this country have now 
 their eyes open; they are no longer to be duped 
 or bullied out of the truth; and what is here re- 
 lated, they will most certainly believe, till they 
 see it opposed by something better than bare as- 
 sertion. 
 
THE 
 
 BLOODY BUOY, &c 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 Facts taken from Uhistoire du Clerge Francois, 
 or the History of the French Clergy, by the 
 Abbe BarrueL 
 
 IT will be recollected by the greatest part of 
 my readers, that, soon after the beginning of the 
 French Revolution, the National Assembly con- 
 ceived the plan of destroying the religion of their 
 forefathers. In order to effect this they separat- 
 ed the Gallican church from that of Rome, and 
 imposed an oath on the clergy, which they could 
 not take, without becoming apostates in the fullest 
 sense of the word. All the worthy and conscien- 
 tious part of that body refused of course, and this 
 refftsal was made a pretext to drive them from 
 their livings, and fill the vacancies with such as 
 had more pliant consciences, principles better 
 adapted to the impious system which the leaders 
 in the Assembly had prepared for their too credu- 
 lous countrymen. 
 
12 
 
 The ejectment of the priesthood was attended 
 with numberless acts of most atrocious and wan- 
 ton crueky : these have been recorded by the Abbe 
 Barruel^ in a work entitled, The History of the 
 French Clergy ; and, though what is here to be 
 found will dwindle into nothing, when compared 
 to what I have extracted from other works, yet 
 it could not be wholly omitted, without shewing 
 a degree of insensibility for the sufferings of these 
 men, that I am persuaded the reader would not 
 have excused. I shall therefore begin the relation 
 with some extracts from that work. 
 
 It will be observed, that these extracts, as well 
 as all those that compose this compilation, are an 
 abridged translation from the French : but, as far 
 as relates to those contained in this chapter, the 
 American reader may easily verify the translation 
 by examining the English edition of the Abbe 
 BarrueVs work, which is to be found in most parts 
 of the Union. 
 
 ■Page 104. 
 
 Soon after the first National Assembly had de- 
 creed, that the Comtat of Avignon belonged to the 
 French nation, an army of assassins, of whom one 
 Jourdan, sur-named the Cut-throat, was the com- 
 mander, took possession of the unfortunate city of 
 Avignon. The churches were immediately pil- 
 laged, the sacred vases profaned and carried off; 
 
IS 
 
 the altafs levelled to the ground. The prisons 
 were soon filled, and the unhappy victims were re- 
 leased only to suffer death. A deep pit was dug 
 to receive their dead bodies, six hundred of which 
 were thrown into it, mangled and distorted, before 
 ten o'clock the next day. Among them was Mr. 
 Nolhac, a priest, in the eightieth year of his age. 
 He had been thirty years rector of St. Symphorien, 
 a parish which he preferred to all others, and 
 which he could not be prevailed on to quit for a 
 more lucrative one, because he would not desert 
 the poor. During his rectorship he had been the 
 common father of his parishioners, the refuge of 
 the indigent, the comforter of the afflicted, and 
 the friend and counsellor of every honest man. 
 When the hour of danger approached, his friends 
 advised him to fly ; but no intreaties could pre- 
 vail on him to abandon his flock : " No," said the 
 good old man, "I have watched over them in the 
 " halcyon days of peace, and shall I now leave 
 " them midst storms and tempests, without a guide, 
 " without any one to comfort them in their last 
 " dreary moments ?" — Mr. Nolhac, who, till now;, 
 had been respected even by the Cut-throats, was 
 sent to the prison the evening before the execu- 
 tion. His appearance and his salutation, were 
 those of a consoling angel : " ] come my children, 
 '' to die with you : we shall soon appear in the 
 " presence of that God whom we serve, and who 
 " will not desert us in the hour of death." He 
 fortified their drooping courage, administered the 
 last consolatory pledges of his love, and the next 
 
14 
 
 day embraced and cheered each individual as he 
 was called forth by the murderers. 
 
 Two of these stood at the door with a bar of 
 iron in their hands, and as the prisoners advan- 
 ced knocked them down : the bodies were then 
 delivered over to the other ruffians, who hacked 
 and disfigured them with their sabres, before they 
 threw them into the pit, that they might not after- 
 wards be known by their friends and relations. 
 When the cut-throats were dispersed, every one 
 was anxious to find the body of Mr. Nolhac. It 
 was at last discovered by the cassock, and the 
 crucifix which he wore on his breast. That breast 
 had been pierced in fifty places, and the skull was 
 entirely mashed. 
 
 Page 210. 
 
 Several priests were conducted to Lagrave, 
 where they were told that they must take the 
 oath,^ or sufier death. Among them was a Sul- 
 pician of 98 years of age, and a young Abbe of 
 the name of Novi. The whole chose death, the 
 venerable Sulpician leading the way. The trial 
 of Mr. Novi was particularly severe : the ruffians 
 brought his father to the spot, and told him if he 
 
 * This oath amounted to neither more nor less than direct 
 perjury, since, by taking it, they must break the oath they had 
 made when they entered the priesthood. 
 
15 
 
 could persuade his son to swear, he should liv* 
 The tender old man, wavering, hesitating between 
 the feelings of nature and the duties of religion, at 
 last yields to parental fondness, throws his arms 
 round his child's neck, buries his face in his bosom, 
 and with tears and sobs presses his compliance. 
 " Oh ! my child, my child, spare the life of your 
 *« Father!"— ''My dearest Father !— My dearest 
 " Father," returned the Abbe, "I will do more, 
 " I will die worthy of you and my God. You 
 "educated me a Catholic: I am a priest, a servant 
 " of the Lord. It will be a greater comfort to you 
 " in your gray hairs, to have your son a mar- 
 " tyr than an apostate." — The villains tear them 
 asunder, and amidst the cries and lamentations of 
 the father, extend the son before him a bleeding 
 corpse. 
 
 Page 2U, 
 
 In the same town, and on the same day, the axe 
 was suspended over the head of Mr. Teron, when 
 the revolutionists bethought them that he had a 
 son. This son was about ten years of age, and, 
 in order to enjoy the father's torments and the 
 child's tears both at a time, he was brought to the 
 place of execution. His tears and cries gave a 
 relish to the ferocious banquet. After tiring them- 
 selves with the spectacle, they put the father to 
 death before the eyes of the child, whom they 
 besmeared with his blood. 
 
16 
 
 Page 217. 
 
 After having spoken of the conduct of the ma- 
 gistrates and mob at Bourdeaux, the historian 
 mentions the death of Mr. Langoiran and the 
 Abbe Dupuis, thus : 
 
 At the entrance of the court-house, the Abbe 
 Dupuis received a first wound ; others soon level- 
 led him to the ground. A young lad, of about 
 fifteen or sixteen, cut a hole in the cheek with a 
 knife, to hold up the head by, while others were 
 employed in haggling it from the body, which was 
 still in agonies. This operation not succeeding 
 in such a crowd, they took hold of the legs, and 
 dragged the carcass about the streets, and round 
 the ramparts. 
 
 Mr. Langoiran had but just set his foot on the 
 first step of the stairs, when he was knocked 
 down. His head was hacked oif in an instant, 
 and a ruffian held it up, crying aloud : "off with 
 " your hats ! long live the nation." The bareheaded 
 populace answered : " long live the nation." The 
 head was then carried round the town as a signal 
 of a triumph, gained by a tumultuous populace and 
 ten thousand soldiers under arms, over a poor de- 
 fenceless priest. 
 
17 
 
 Page 21S. 
 
 The 14th of July, so famous in the annals of 
 the Revolution, was this year celebrated at Limo- 
 ges, by the death of Mr. ChabroL He was a most 
 useful member of society ; distinguished round 
 his neighbourhood as a bone-setter ; he was at 
 once the surgeon and the pastor of his parishi- 
 oners ; and among his murderers were some of 
 those who owed to him the use of their limbs. 
 He was of a quick and impetuous temper, and 
 indued with uncommon bodily strength. His 
 death certainly was not that of a Christian mar- 
 tyr ; but it deserves particular notice, as a striking 
 proof of the cowardly ferocity of the French po- 
 pulace. 
 
 He had taken shelter at a magistrate's, and 
 begged leave to elude the mob by going out of 
 the house the back way ; but the magistrate durst 
 not comply. He was forced to face his blood- 
 thirsty pursuers. The indignant priest met them 
 at the door ; the attack instantly began. Without 
 a single weapon of defence, he had to encounter 
 hundreds of the mob, armed with clubs, guns, 
 sabres, and knives ; but, notwithstanding the ama- 
 zing inequality, he held them a long time at bay. 
 Some he felled to the ground, others ran from 
 him ; he tore a bayonet out of his flesh, and stab- 
 bing it into the breast of his adversary, sent him 
 to die among the crowd. At last, weakened with 
 
 6 /^ 
 
18 
 
 m 
 
 the loss of blood, he falls, and the base and mer- 
 ciless scoundrels cry : to (he lamp-post. The idea 
 of hanging reanimates the remaining drops in his 
 veins. He rises upon his legs for the last time ; 
 but numbers prevail ; again he falls, covered with 
 wounds, and expires. His last groan is followed 
 by the ferocious howl of victory : the dastardly 
 assassins set no bounds to their insults ; they cut 
 and hacked his body to pieces, and wrangled for 
 the property of his ragged and bloody cassock. 
 
 Page26S. 
 
 As soon as the unfortunate Louis XVI. had 
 been transferred from his throne to a loathsome 
 prison, the National Assembly formed a plan for 
 the total extirpation of the priests, and with them 
 the Christian religion. The ministers of the altar 
 w^ere seized and thrown into prison, or transport- 
 ed, from every part of the country. At Paris 
 about three hundred of them were shut up, in or- 
 der to be massacred, and were actually put to 
 death during the first and second weeks of Sep- 
 tember, 1792. 
 
 About one hundred and eighty of these unhap- 
 py men were confined in the convent of the Car- 
 melites. A troop of assassins commenced the 
 massacre in the garden, where the priests were 
 permitted to take the air; but while they were 
 proceeding, a commissary arrived, and informed 
 
19 
 
 them that the work was not to go on that way. 
 There Were now about a hundred left alive, 
 who were all ordered into the sanctuary of the 
 church ; but, to get thither, they had to pass 
 through a crowd of their murderers. One receiv- 
 ed a ball, another a blow, and another a stab : so 
 that, when arrived in the sanctuary, they present- 
 ed a scene the most heart-piercing that eyes ever 
 beheld. Some were dragged in wounded, others 
 quite dead. Even here, though surrounded by a 
 detachment of soldiers, the blood-thirsty mob 
 rushed in upon them, and murdered several at the 
 very altar's foot. The sanctuary of a Christian 
 church was, for the first time since the blessed 
 Redeemer appeared among men, filled with a 
 promiscuous group of the living, the dying, and 
 the dead. The marble pavement was covered with 
 dirt and gore and mangled carcasses, and the sides 
 of the altar splashed with blood and brains. 
 
 The soldiers had not been brought to save the 
 lives of the priests : the commissary who headed 
 them was to execute a plan of more deliberate 
 murder. The surviving priests were called out 
 two at a time, and murdered in the presence of 
 the commissary, who took their names down in 
 a book, as he was answerable for their assassina- 
 tion. Of all that were found here, only four or 
 five escaped. — The like undistinguished carnage 
 was exhibited at the other prisons. 
 
 Every one of these men might have saved his 
 
20 
 
 life by taking the proffered oath, yet not one of 
 them condescended to do it. Let the infidel show 
 us, if he can, any thing like this in the annals of 
 his impious sect. 
 
 Page 318. 
 
 At the gate of the prison of La Force, the as- 
 sassins were placed in two rows : the two ruffians, 
 called judges, who gave the signal of death, were 
 placed at the gate ; and as soon as the prisoner 
 passed them, the assassins dispatched him with 
 their knives or sabres, throwing the bodies in a 
 heap at the end of the line. At the foot of this tro- 
 phy of dead bodies, says the historian, we must 
 now exhibit a scene of a different kind, in the 
 murder of the princess of Lamballe. 
 
 She had retired in safety to London ; but her 
 attachment to the royal family would not suffer 
 her to remain in her asylum, while they were ex- 
 posed. Her fidelity was a crime that the per^ 
 fidy of her enemies could never forgive. 
 
 When this illustrious victim was brought forth, 
 she was asked to swear an eternal hatred to the 
 king, and the queen, and to royalty. '' The oath," 
 said she, "is foreign to the sentiments of my 
 *' lieart, and I will never take it." — She was in- 
 stantly delivered over to the ministers of death. 
 These ruffians pretend to caress her, stroke her 
 
21 
 
 cheeks with their hands yet reeking with human 
 blood, and thus conduct her along the line. 
 Amidst all these insults her courage never desert- 
 ed her. When arrived at the heap of dead bodies, 
 she was ordered to kneel, and ask pardon of the 
 nation : '' I have never injured the nation," she 
 replied, *' nor will I ask its pardon." — " Down," 
 said they, *' and ask pardon, if you wish to live." 
 " No," said she, " I scorn to ask pardon from as- 
 *' sassins that call themselves the nation: I will 
 *' never bend my knee, or accept of a favour at 
 " such hands." 
 
 Her soul was superior to fear. '* Kneel and 
 " ask pardon" was heard from a thousand voices, 
 but in vain. Two of the assassins now seized her 
 arms, and, pulling her from side to side, nearly 
 dislocated her shoulders. " Go on, scoundrels," 
 said the heroic princess, " I will ask no pardon." 
 In a rage to see themselves thus overcome by the 
 constancy of a woman, they dashed her down, 
 and rushed in upon her with their knives and 
 poignards. Her head soon appeared hoisted upon 
 a liberty pike, and her heart, after being hit by 
 one of the ruffians, was put into a bason. Both 
 were carried in triumph through the streets of 
 Paris. At last, after having feasted the eyes of 
 the multitude, the bearers took them to the Tem- 
 ple, now become a prison, where one of the two 
 commissaries that guarded the king, called him to 
 the window, that he might see it ; but his com- 
 panion, a little more humane, prevented the un- 
 
22 
 
 fortunate monarch from approaching.* A faulting 
 fit, from hearing of the event, fortunately saved 
 the queen from the heart-rending sight. 
 
 The bod J stripped naked and the bowels hang- 
 ing out, was exposed to view on the top of the 
 murdered victims, where it remained till the mas- 
 sacre was over. It was at last cut up like butch- 
 er's meat. 
 
 Page 327. 
 
 A great fire was made in the Place Dauphine, 
 at which many, both men and women were roast- 
 ed. The Countess of Perpignan, with her three 
 
 * The historian has here followed Doctor Moore ; but, Play- 
 fair relates this matter rather differently. " The head," says 
 he " was carried on a pole to the Temple, and exposed to the 
 " view of the royal prisoners, who expected the same fate. The 
 " king was compelled to approach the window and look at it : 
 " the queen and madame Elizabeth had fainted away." — Here 
 is a material difference. Perhaps one of the commissaries was 
 a friend of Doctor Moore, as the chief of the massacrers, Bris- 
 sot, was a friend of the Doctor's patron, Lord Lauderdale. 
 The Doctor is, indeed, rarely to be depended upon : a man 
 whose patron was the friend of the leading murderers was not 
 well calculated to give an account of their actions. 
 
 Flayfair adds, on this subject : " The Duke of Orleans gave 
 " a dinner to some English Democrats that day, and was gra- 
 " tified with the sight of this bloody trophy (the Princess' 
 " head) just before they sat down to dinner." — It is not impos- 
 sible but Doctor Moore and the Democratic Earl of Lauder- 
 dale might be of the party. 
 
2$ 
 
 daughters were dragged thither. They were strip- 
 ped, rubbed over with oil, and then put to the fire. 
 The eldest of the daughters, who was fifteen, 
 begged them to put an end to her torments, upon 
 which a young fellow shot her through the head. 
 The cannibals, who were shouting and dancing 
 round the fire, enraged to see themselves thus de- 
 prived of the pleasure of hearing her cries, seized 
 the too merciful murderer, and threw him into the 
 flames. 
 
 When the Countess was dead, they brought six 
 priests, and, cutting off some of the roasted flesh, 
 presented them each a piece to eat. They shut 
 their eyes, and made no answer. The oldest of 
 the priests was then stripped, and tied opposite 
 the fire. The mob told the others, that perhaps 
 they might prefer the relish of a priest's flesh to 
 that of a Countess ; but they suddenly rushed into 
 the flames. The barbarians tore them out to pro- 
 long their torments ; not, however, before they 
 were dead, and beyond the reach even of Parisian 
 cruelty. 
 
 Page 328e 
 
 On Monday, September 3, at ten o'clock in the 
 evening, a man, or rather a monster, named Phi- 
 lippe, living in the street of the Temple, came to 
 the Jacobin Club, of which he was a member; 
 and, with a box in his hand, mounted the tribune. 
 
24 
 
 Here he made a long speech on patriotism, con- 
 cluding bj a declaration, that he looked upon 
 every one who preferred the ties of blood and of 
 nature to that of patriotic duty, as an aristocrat 
 worthy of death ; and, to convince them of the 
 purity and sincerity of his own principles, he 
 opened the box, and held up by the gray hair, the 
 bloody and shrivelled heads of his father and mo- 
 ther, " which I have cut off," said the impious 
 wretch, " because they obstinately persisted in not 
 " hearing mass from a constitutional priest."* 
 The speech of this parricide received the loudest 
 applauses ; and the two heads were ordered to be 
 buried beneath the busts of Anker storm and Bru- 
 tus, behind the president's chair. "t 
 
 The last fact related, is of such a horrid nature 
 that, though so well authenticated, it would almost 
 stagger our belief, had we not proof of so many 
 others, which equal, if not surpass it. I shall here 
 extract one from La Conjuration de Maximilien 
 
 * That is, one of the apostates. 
 
 t According to Monsieur Peltier, in his picture of Paris, the 
 number of persons murdered in the different prisons of that 
 city, from Sunday the 2d to Friday the 7th of September 1792, 
 amounted to 1,005. To these, he says, should be added the 
 poor creatures who were put to death in the hospital of Bicetre, 
 and in the yards of la Salpetriere; those who were drowned ai 
 the hospital of la Force ; and all those who were dragged out 
 of the dungeons of the Conciergerie and the Chatelet, to be 
 butchered on the Pont-au-Change, which may be computed, 
 without exaggeration, at 8,000 individuals. 
 
25 
 
 Robespierre, a work published at Paris in tiie year 
 1795. 
 
 The author, after speaking of the unnatural fe- 
 rociousness which the revolution had produced in 
 the hearts of the people, says (page 162) 1 will 
 here give a proof, and a shocking one it is.— Gar- 
 nier of Orleans had a son, who had been intend- 
 ed for the priesthood, and had been initiated in 
 the subdeaconship ; consequently he was attached 
 to the Christian faith. His father one day seiz- 
 ed him by the throat and led him to the revolution- 
 ary tribunal, where he was instantly condemned ; 
 nor would the barbarous father quit his child till 
 he saw his head severed from his body. After 
 the execution was over, the tribunal, ever as ca- 
 pricious as bloody, feigned remorse, and were pro- 
 ceeding to condemn the father ; but the National 
 Convention, informed of the affair, annulled the 
 process, and publicly applauded the conduct of 
 the unnatural father, as an imitator of the repub- 
 lican Brutus. 
 
 In the extracts from the history of the French 
 clergy, the proposed limits of this work has obliged 
 me to forego the pleasure of mentioning a great 
 number of facts, which reflect mfinite honour on 
 that calumniated and unfortunate body of men, 
 as well as on the Christian religion. The follow- 
 ing trait, howeVer, I cannot prevail on myself to 
 omit. 
 
 C 
 
26 
 Page 341. 
 
 At Rheims lived a man, who, from the number 
 of his years, might be called the dean of Christen- 
 dom ; and, from the fame of his virtues, the priest, 
 by excellence. He had long been known by no other 
 name than that of the holy priest. This was Mr. 
 Pacquot, rector of St. John's. When the revolu- 
 tionary assassins broke into his oratory, they found 
 him on his knees. A true and faithful disciple of 
 Jesus Christ, heyielded himself into the hands of his 
 executioners without so much as a murmur, and 
 suffered himself to be led before the ferocious ma- 
 gistrate, as a lamb to the slaughter. He crossed 
 the street singing the psalms of David, while the 
 sanguinary ruffians that conducted him, endea- 
 voured to drown his voice by their blasphemies. 
 At the threshhold of the town-hall an attempt was 
 made to murder him, but the mayor interfered, 
 saying to the people, " What are you about ? this 
 *' old fellow is beneath notice. He is a fool : 
 *' fanaticism has turned his brain." — These words 
 roused the venerable old man. " No, Sir," says 
 he, "I am neither a fool nor a fanatic, nor shall 
 «' my life take refuge under such an ignominious 
 ' shelter. 1 wish you to know, that I was never 
 ^ more in my sober senses. These men have ten- 
 * dered me an oath, decreed by the National As- 
 ' sembly. 1 am well acquainted with the nature 
 ' of this oath : I know that it is impious, and sub- 
 ' versive of religion. They leave me the choice 
 " of the oath or death, and I choose the latter. 
 
27 
 
 " I hope, Sir, I have convinced you, that I am in 
 '' my senses, and know perfectly well what I am 
 "about." — The nettled magistrate immediately 
 abandoned him to the mob. " Which of you," 
 said the old man, ''is to have the patriotic hon- 
 " our of being my murderer ?" — " I am," says a 
 man who moved in a sphere that ought to have 
 distinguished him from a horde of ruffians. " Let 
 " me embrace you then," says Mr. Pacquot ; 
 which he actually did, and prayed to God to for- 
 give him. This done, the hard-hearted villain 
 gave him the first blow : his companions buried 
 their bayonets in his emaciated breast. 
 
 The reader's heart, I hope, will teach him the 
 love and veneration that every Christian ought to 
 feel for the memory of this evangelical old man. 
 
 If the death of all the murdered priests was 
 not marked with such unequivocal proofs of con- 
 stancy and fidelity as that of Mr. Pacquot, it was, 
 perhaps, because a like opportunity did not al- 
 ways present itself. One thing we know ; that, 
 by taking an oath contrary to their faith, they might 
 not only have escaped the knives of their assassins, 
 but might have enjoyed an annual income. Their 
 refusing to do this is an incontrov^ertible testimony, 
 that they were no impostors or hypocrites, but 
 sincere believers of the religion they taught, and 
 that they valued that religion more than life itself. 
 This is the best answer that can possibly be given 
 to all the scandalous and atrocious calumnies that 
 their enemies and the enemies of Christianity have 
 vomited forth against them. 
 
CHAP, 11. 
 
 Facts taken from La Relation des CruaiiteSy com- 
 raises dans Les Lyonnois, 
 
 THE next work that presents itself, fallowing 
 the cronological order, is La Relation des Cru- 
 autes^ commises dans Les Lyonnois, or, The Rela- 
 tion of the Cruelties, committed in the Lyonnese, 
 
 Page 37. 
 
 The grand scene of destruction and massacre 
 was opened, in the once flourishing and opulent 
 city of Lyons, by a public profanation of all those 
 things, that had been looked upon as sacred. The 
 murderers in chief, chosen from among the mem- 
 bers of the National Convention, were, a play-ac- 
 tor and a man who, under the old government, had 
 been a bum-bailiff. Their first step was to bruti- 
 fy the minds of the populace ; to extinguish the 
 remaining sparks of humanity and religion, by 
 teaching them to set heaven and an hereafter at 
 defiance ; in order to prepare them for the massa- 
 cres, which they were commissioned to execute. 
 
 A mock procession w^as formed in imitation of 
 those observed by the Catholic church. It was 
 
29 
 
 headed by a troop of men bearing in their hands 
 the chalices and other vases which had been taken 
 from the plundered churches. At the head of the 
 procession there was an Ass, dressed in the vest- 
 ments of the priests that the revolutionary army 
 had murdered in the neighbourhood of the city, 
 with a mitre on his head. This beast, a beast of 
 the same kind on which our Redeemer rode, now 
 bore a load of crucifixes, and other symbols of the 
 christian religion ; having the old and new testa- 
 ment tied to his tail. When this procession came 
 to the spot which had been fixed on for the pur- 
 pose, the bible was burnt, and the Ass given to 
 drink out of the sacramental cup, amidst the shouts 
 and rejoicing of the blasphemous assistants. 
 
 Such a beginning plainly foretold what was to 
 follow. An undistinguished butchery of all the 
 rich immediately commenced. Hundreds of per- 
 sons, women as well as men, were taken out of 
 the city at a time, tied to trees, shot to death, 
 stabbed, or else knocked on the head. In the city 
 the guillotine never ceased a moment ; it was 
 shifted three times ; holes were dug at each place 
 to receive the blood, and yet it ran in the gutters. 
 
 It were impossible to describe this scene of car- 
 nage, or to give an account of each act of the, till 
 now, unheard-of barbarity : two or three, however, 
 demand a particular mention. 
 
 Kj /ml 
 
30 
 
 Page 39. 
 
 Madame Lauras, hearing that her husband was 
 condemned, went, accompanied with her ten chil- 
 dren, and threw herself on her knees before the 
 ferocious Collot D'Herbois, one of the members 
 of the Convention ; but no mercy could be ex- 
 pected from a wretch whose business it was to 
 kill. She followed her beloved husband to the 
 place of execution, surrounded with her weeping 
 offspring. On seeing him fall, her cries and the 
 wildness of her looks but too plainly foretold her 
 approaching end. She was seized with the pains 
 of a premature child-birth, and was carried home 
 to her house, where a commissary soon after ar- 
 rived and drove her from her bed chamber and her 
 house, from the door of which she fell dead into 
 the street. 
 
 Page 41. 
 
 Two women, who had persisted in asking the 
 life of their husbands, were tied, during six hours, 
 to the posts of the guillotine. Their own hus- 
 bands were executed before their eyes, and their 
 blood sprinkled over them. 
 
 Page 42. 
 Miss Servan, a young lady of about eighteen. 
 
31 
 
 was put to death because she would not discover 
 the retreat of her father. 
 
 Page 47. 
 
 Madame Cochet was condemned for having 
 put the match to a cannon during the siege, and 
 for having assisted in her husband's escape. She 
 was declared, by two surgeons, to be with child; 
 but this was a reason of little weight with men 
 whom we shall by and by see murdering infants, 
 and even ripping them from the womb. She was 
 instantly executed. 
 
 Page 101. 
 
 To these facts I shall add the death of Mau- 
 petit. He v/as made prisoner during the siege, 
 buried alive up to his neck, and in this situation 
 had his head mashed to pieces with small cannon 
 balls, which his enemies tossed at it with all the 
 insulting grimaces of savages. 
 
 Page 104. 
 
 At Lyons the priests met with the same treat- 
 ment as at other places, and honoured their deaths 
 with the same unshaken fortitude. Twenty-seven 
 were executed at one time, not one of whom had 
 
32 
 
 condescended to accept of the shameful conditions 
 that were offered, nor even to solicit a pardon 
 from the vile and blasphemous assassins. 
 
 During this murderous work the city of Lyons 
 was struck with terror. The members of the 
 Convention stuck up a proclamation, declaring all 
 those, who should express the least symptoms of 
 pity, suspected persons. When the blood had in 
 some measure, ceased to flow, and the affrighted 
 inhabitants ventured out of their houses, they were 
 seen walking along the streets with their eyes 
 fixed on the ground : men no longer stopped, 
 shook hands, and gave each other good morrow. 
 The fear of death was stamped on every face : 
 children durst not ask after their parents, nor pa- 
 rents ask after their children. 
 
 The villages round about shared in the fate of 
 the city. An apostate priest conducted a gang 
 of ruffians, who carried fire and death before them 
 among those good people, whose only crime was 
 giving shelter to persons escaped from the mas- 
 sacre. The charitable host and his guest were 
 butchered together beneath the hospitable roof, 
 while the wives and daughters were reserved to 
 satisfy the brutal appetites of the murderers. 
 
 In vain should I attempt to give the reader an 
 adequate idea of the crimes, committed, by the 
 order of the Convention, in this part of France. 
 The author of La Conjuration de Robespierre 
 
S3 
 
 says (page 159,) that in the space of a few 
 months, the number of persons, who were mur- 
 dered in the Lyonnese and in the surrounding fo- 
 rests, amounted to two hundred thousand. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with a fact or two 
 taken from La Conjuration de Robespierre, 
 
 Page 210. 
 
 Though no torments could go beyond the 
 merits of Robespierre and his colleagues, yet, even 
 in the execution of these monsters, the Parisians 
 discovered such traits of ferociousness as fully 
 proved, that these grovelling tyrants had done no 
 more than what they themselves would have 
 done, had they been in their places. 
 
 Robespierre had been wounded in his head and 
 face; his jaws were held together with bandages. 
 The executioner, before he placed his neck under 
 the guillotine, suddenly tore off the bandages, let- 
 ting the under jaw fall, while the blood streamed 
 down his breast. The poor deserted wretch was 
 kept some time in this frightful state, while the 
 air resounded with the acclamations of the bar- 
 barous populace. 
 
 Page 209. 
 Henriot had no other clothes on but a shirt and 
 
34 
 
 a waistcoat, covered with dirt and blood. His 
 hair was clotted, aud his assassinating hands were 
 now stained with his own gore. He had been 
 w ounded all over, one eye he kept shut, while 
 the other was started from its socket, and held 
 only by the fibres. This horrid spectacle, from 
 which the imagination turns with disgust and af- 
 fright, excited joy, and even mirth among the 
 Parisians. *' Look at the scoundrel," said they, 
 '* just as he was when he assisted in murdering 
 *' the priests."* The people called on the carts 
 to stop, and a group of women performed a dance 
 round that in which the capital offenders rode. — 
 When Henriot was stepping from the cart to the 
 scaffold, one of the under-executioners, to divert 
 the spectators, tore out the eye that was already 
 loose. — What a hard-hearted wretch must he be 
 who could perform an action like this ? and to 
 what a degree of baseness and ferocity must that 
 people be arrived, who could thus be diverted ! 
 
 Page 163. 
 
 We shall not be surprised that this thirst for 
 human blood, and delight in beholding the tor- 
 ments of the dying, were become so prevalent, 
 when we know, that mock executions were be- 
 come a sport. The women suspended to the necks 
 of their sucking infants, corals, made in the 
 
 * As if they had not approved of murdering the priests ? 
 
shape of the guillotine ; which the child, by the 
 means of a spring, played as perfectly as the 
 bloody executioner himself. 
 
 Page 161. 
 
 What could be expected from an education like 
 this ? What could be expected from children who 
 were taught to use an instrument of ignominious 
 death as a play-thing ; who were taught to laugh 
 at the screams of the dying, and who, in a man- 
 ner, sucked in blood with their mothers' milk ? 
 When assassinations became the sports of childreuj 
 it was no wonder that the sentiments of nature 
 were extinguished, and that perfidy and inhuma- 
 nity took place of gratitude, filial piety, and all 
 the tender affections. 
 
 What I am now going to relate, the mothers of 
 future generations will hear with affright. — A 
 child of ten years of age had been scolded, per- 
 haps whipped, by his mother. He ran to the re- 
 volutionary tribunal, and accused her of being 
 still attached to the Catholic religion. The accu- 
 sation was admitted, the boy recompensed, and 
 the mother executed in a few hours afterwards. 
 
 Tell us, ye mothers, for you only can know, 
 what this poor creature must feel at seeing her- 
 self betrayed, and ready to be deprived of life, by 
 the child she had borne in her womb, who but 
 
56 
 
 the other day hung at her breast, and for whom 
 alone, perhaps, she wished to live. 
 
 Page 162. . ' 
 
 In short, says the author, men contracted such 
 a taste as excites horror even to believe it pos- 
 sible. God forbid that I should enter into par- 
 ticulars on this subject. The bowels of the rea- 
 der would not admit him to proceed. Suffice it 
 to say, that we have seen the time, when man 
 was becoming the food of man. Those who prac- 
 tised anatomy during the reign of terror, know 
 but too well what I could say here, if compassion 
 for the feelings of my readers did not prevent me. 
 
 I cannot quit these facts without once more re- 
 ferring the reader to the work, from which I have 
 selected them. I wish him not to depend on my 
 veracity for the truth of what he may find in a 
 book written on the scene. La Conjuration de 
 Robespierre is to be had almost any where : I 
 have seen above a dozen copies of it in the hands 
 of different persons. It was, as I have already 
 said, published at Paris, and, therefore, we may 
 rest assured, that the author has not exaggerated ; 
 but, on the contrary, we see by the last article 
 here quoted, that he was afraid to say all that 
 truth would have warranted. 
 
CHAP. III. 
 
 Facts selected from the Proces-Criminel des Mem- 
 bres du Comite Revolutionnaire de Nantes, et 
 du ci-devant Representant du peuple Carrier ; 
 or, Trial of the Members of the Revolutionary 
 Committee at Nantz, and of the Representative 
 Carrier. 
 
 THE work which we are now entering on was 
 published at Paris during the last year ; but, as 
 an introduction to the facts extracted from it, it 
 will be necessary to give the reader a concise 
 sketch of the progress of the Revolution down to 
 the epoch when the work was published. 
 
 The States-General, consisting of the three 
 orders, the Nobility, the Clergy, and the Tiers- 
 Etat, or commonalty, were assembled on the 4th 
 of May, 1789. The deputies were all furnished 
 with written instructions, in which they were po- 
 sitively enjoined to make no innovations as to the 
 form of government. Notwithstanding this, it is 
 well known, they framed a constitution by which 
 the government was totally changed, the nobility 
 abolished, and the church rent from that of Rome. 
 Their constitution, however, though established 
 at the expense of thousands of lives, and though 
 one of the most ridiculous systems of government 
 that ever was invented, did not fail to meet with 
 
 D 
 
38 
 
 partizans ; and we have heard it extolled, in this 
 country, as the master-piece of human wisdom. 
 
 The first Assembly, which has been common- 
 ly called the Constituent Assembly, ended its be- 
 neficent labours on the 30th of September, 1791, 
 and was immediately succeeded by another, which 
 took the name of Legislative Assembly. Most 
 men of sense foresaw that the second Assembly 
 would improve upon the plan of destruction mark- 
 ed out by the first. The Clergy and many men 
 of family and fortune had been already driven 
 from their homes and possessions, it remained for 
 the Legislative Assembly to finish the work by 
 seizing on their property and exposing it to sale : 
 this they failed not to do. Persecution and mas- 
 sacre increased daily ; but as the small remains of 
 power left in the hands of the king was still an 
 obstacle, or rather as the monarchy itself was an 
 obstacle, they were determined to get rid of it. 
 On the 10th of August, 1792, the king was de- 
 throned (his fate is well known) and the daggers 
 of the assassins were from that moment drawn, 
 never more to be sheathed, but in the heart of 
 some innocent victim. We have already seen 
 something of the massacres which followed this 
 event at Paris and other places ; but even these 
 are trifles to what was to follow. 
 
 On the 21st of September, 1792, the third As- 
 sembly, generally called the National Convention, 
 opened their session^ and though every individual 
 
39 
 
 member had repeatedly taken an oath to mamtam 
 the authority of the kmg, they at once declared 
 France to be a republic. 
 
 After the murder of the king, this Convention 
 declared war against a great part of the powers 
 of Europe ; and, in order to be in a situation to 
 make head against their enemies, seized on all the 
 precious metals in the country, or rather they en- 
 acted such laws as obliged the poor oppressed 
 people to bring it to their treasury, and receive in 
 exchange a vile and worthless paper money. The 
 churches were instantly pillaged, and no person 
 dared appear with a watch, or any other article 
 in gold or silver. 
 
 The violation of property was only a part of 
 their plan. The hearts of the lower orders of the 
 people were to be hardened ; they were to be ren- 
 dered brutal ; all fear of an hereafter was to be 
 rooted from their souls, before they could be fit 
 instruments in the hands of this hellish Assembly. 
 With this object in view, they declared our bless^ 
 ed Lord and redeemer to be an Impostor, forbade 
 the acknowledgment of him, and the exercise of 
 his worship. The churches were turned into pri- 
 sons, stables, &c. and over the gateways of the 
 burial grounds were written : '* This is the place 
 of eternal sleep, '''^ 
 
 Never surely was there a better plan for trans- 
 forming a civilized people into a horde of cut- 
 throats. It succeeded completely. The blood 
 
40 
 
 now flowed at Paris in an unceasing stream. A 
 permanent tribunal was established, whose only 
 business was to condemn, and certify to the Con- 
 vention that the executions went on according to 
 the lists sent from its committees. 
 
 Besides legions of executioners there were 
 others of assassins. The command of these latter 
 was given to those members of the Convention 
 who were sent into the different parts of the coun- 
 try. Terror preceded these harbingers of death 
 and their footsteps were marked with blood. The 
 sword, the fire, and the water, all became instru- 
 ments of destruction. 
 
 During this murdering time, which has justly 
 assumed the name of the reign of terror, the lea- 
 ders of several factions of the revolutionists them- 
 selves received their reward on a scaffold, and,, 
 among others, Robespierre and his accomplices. 
 When these men fell, the Convention, according 
 to its usual custom, ascribed all the cruelties, com- 
 mitted during sometime before their death, to them 
 alone, and the people, always eager for blood, 
 now demanded the heads of those whom they had 
 assisted in the murder of their countrymen. By 
 sacrificing these its instruments, the Convention 
 saw a fair opportunity of removing the infamy 
 fi'om itself, and of perpetuating its power. In con- 
 sequence, many of them were tried and executed, 
 among others Carrier (a member of the Conven- 
 tion) who had been stationed at Nantz, with the 
 members of the revolutionary committee of that 
 
41 
 
 unfortunate town. From the trial of these men 
 it is that I have selected the facts which are to 
 compose this chapter. The trial was before the 
 tribunal at Paris, to which place the accused were 
 carried from Nantz. 
 
 It has been repeatedly asserted, by those who 
 seem to have more attachment to the cause of the 
 French than to that of truth, that the barbarities 
 committed in that country, have been by the hands 
 of foreigners. Such a story is impossible, and even 
 ridiculous ; but, however, it has induced me to 
 insert here a list of the barbarous wretches who 
 were so long the scourge of the city of Nantz, 
 from which it will appear, that they were all 
 Frenchmen, born and bred. This is an act of jus- 
 tice due to other nations. 
 
 Member of the Convention on mission at Nantz. 
 
 Carrier, horn in Gascony, 
 Members of the Revolutionary Committee at 
 
 Nantz, 
 
 Goullin, 
 
 Chaux, 
 
 Grand-Maison, 
 
 Bachelier, 
 
 Perrochaux, 
 
 Mainguet, 
 
 Naud, 
 
 Gallen, 
 
 Durassier, 
 
 d2 
 
 > horn at Nantz, 
 
42 
 
 Leveque, horn at Mayenne. 
 Bolognie, horn at Paris, 
 Bataille, horn at Charite-sur- Loire. 
 Joly, born at Angerville-la-Martel. 
 Pinard, horn at Christophe-Duhois, 
 
 Carrier was the great mover, the assassin-ge- 
 neral ; the committee were his agents. Some of 
 them were always assembled in their hall, to give 
 directions to the under murderers, while the others 
 took repose, or were dispat( hed on important ex- 
 peditions, such as the shooting or drowning of 
 hundreds at a time. They stood in need, how- 
 ever, of subaltern cut-throats, more determined 
 and bloody than the people in general ; and there- 
 fore they raised a company, who took the title of 
 the company of Marat, composed of the vilest 
 wretches that were to be found. These being 
 assembled together, took the following oath be- 
 fore their employers. 
 
 Vol. IV. Page 203. 
 
 T swear to pursue unto death, all royalists^ fa- 
 natics (Christians*) gentlemen (the French word 
 is muscadim, which means a gentleman, or well- 
 dressed man) and moderates (moderate people) 
 under whatever colour, mask, or form, they may 
 appear. 
 
 * Fanatic is the name now given to all who remain attached 
 
 to the Christian Religion. 
 
48 
 
 1 swear, to spare neither parents nor relations; 
 to sacrifice my personal interests, and even friend- 
 ship itself; and to acknowledge for parents, bro- 
 thers and friends, nobody but the patriots, the ar- 
 dent defenders of the republic. 
 
 Pity with me, reader, the poor unhappy people 
 that were become the prey of a set of blood- 
 hounds like these. Pity the aged parents and the 
 helpless babes, that were to bleed beneath their 
 merciless sabres. If you are not endowed with 
 uncommon fortitude, I could almost advise you to 
 advance no further : fifty times has the pen drop- 
 ped from my trembling hand : Oh ! how I pity 
 the historian that is to hand these bloody deeds 
 down to our shuddering and indignant posterity ! 
 
 Vol L Page 66. 
 
 Tronjolly, a witness, informs the tribunal, that 
 the company of Marat was at first composed of 
 sixty persons ; that Goullin openly proposed that 
 none but the most infamous villains should be ad- 
 mitted into it ; and, at each nomination, cried out, 
 
 Is there no greater scoundrel to be found ?" 
 
 a 
 
 On the 24th of October, says the witness, I 
 heard Goullin and his colleagues say, that they 
 were going to give a great example ; that the pri- 
 soners should be all shot. I attest that this scene 
 
44 
 
 was still more horrible than that of the 22nd and 
 23rd of September. The company of Marat were 
 carousing round a table, and at the same time it 
 was deliberated whether the prisoners should not 
 be massacred by hundreds. In this deliberation, 
 Goullin was for indiscriminate death : and thus 
 were the prisoners, without ever being interroga- 
 ted, or heard, condemned to die. There existed 
 no proofs of guilt against these unfortunate pri- 
 soners ; they were what were called suspected 
 'persons ; the felons, and all real criminals were 
 set at liberty., 
 
 Carrier, in quality of member of the Conven- 
 tion, had placed a vile wretch at Pain-boeuf, 
 named Foucault, to whom he gave an absolute 
 power of life and death. 
 
 Vol L Page 68. 
 
 Old men, women with child, and children, were 
 drowned, no distinction. They were put on board 
 of lighters, which were railed round to keep the 
 prisoners from jumping over-board if they should 
 happen to disengage themselves. There were 
 plugs made in the bottom, or sides, which, being 
 pulled out, the lighter sunk, and all in it w^ere 
 drowned. These expeditions were first carried 
 on by night, but the sun soon beheld the murder- 
 ous work. At first the prisoners were drowned 
 in their clothes ; this, however, appeared too mer- 
 
45 
 
 ciful ; to expose the two sexes naked before each 
 other was a pleasure that the ruffians could not 
 forego. 
 
 I must now, says the witness, speak of a new 
 sort of cruelty. The young men and women were 
 picked out from among the mass of sufferers, 
 stripped naked, and tied together face to face. 
 After being kept in this situation about an hour, 
 they were put into an open lighter ; and, after 
 receiving several blows on the skull with the but 
 of a musket, thrown into the water. These were 
 called republican marriages. - 
 
 Vol, L Page 72. 
 
 On the 26th of October, Carrier, the member 
 of the Convention, ordered me (the witness was 
 a judge of some sort) to guillotine indiscriminate- 
 ly all the Vendeans who came to give themselves 
 up. I refused ; but the representative of the peo- 
 ple promised that his prey should not escape him 
 thus. In short, on the 29th, he had guillotined 
 twenty-seven Vendeans, among whom were chil- 
 dren of thirteen, fourteen and fifteen years of age, 
 and seven young women, the oldest of which was 
 not above twenty-nine. On the same day twenty 
 other persons were executed without trial. 
 
46 
 
 Vol IK Page 76. 
 
 Carrier, the bloodiest of the bloody, harangued 
 his agents sword in hand ; he ordered a woman 
 to be shot at her window, merely because she 
 looked at him ; he chose, from among the female 
 prisoners those whom he thought worthy of his 
 foul embraces ; and, after being satiated with 
 their charms, sent them to the guillotine. 
 
 Observe well, reader, that this was a member 
 of the National Convention^ a representative of 
 the people^ a law-giver. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 155. 
 
 I think it necessary to bring in here a deposi- 
 tion or two from the third and fourth volumes of 
 the trial, as they will show at once the pretended 
 and real motives of the member of the Convention 
 and his committee. 
 
 Jomard, a witness, declares that when the ge- 
 neral was beat at Nantz, and the seizure of sus- 
 pected persons began, nobody believed any thing 
 of a conspiration against the republic. As a clear 
 proof of this, adds Jomard^ Richard, one of- the 
 agents of the revolutionary committee, wrote to 
 Jiis friend Crespin, telling him that he had left the 
 company of Marat without arms ; but that means 
 
47 
 
 were found out to arm the patriots and disarm the 
 suspected. The general, adds Richard, is now 
 beating ; but do not frighten yourself : / will tell 
 you the reason of this at your return. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 58. 
 
 Latour, a witness, says, I was sick ; Dulny, 
 who was my doctor, informed me that Goudet, 
 public accuser, had let him into an important se- 
 cret ; which was, that Carrier and the revolution- 
 ary committee not knowing how to squeeze the 
 rich, had fell upon a plan to imprison them, while 
 they seized on their effects. In order to have a 
 pretext for doing this, said Goudet, we ^hall give 
 out, that there exists a conspiration against the 
 republic. I am to make the general beat early in 
 the morning. The sans-culottes,* informed be- 
 forehand, are to parade at their different posts ; 
 the rich, and the timid will, according to custom, 
 remain in their houses ; to these houses the sans- 
 culottes are to repair, pillage all they have, and 
 convey them to prison. 
 
 Notwithstanding my illness, I had no inclina- 
 tion to be found at home ; I therefore begged the 
 doctor to give me notice when the affair was to 
 
 * This degrading terra which is become the glory of modern 
 patriots, hterally means, men tvithout breeches ; but it was ever 
 used by the French to designate vile, rascally people, the dregs 
 of society 3 and as such we ought now to understand it. 
 
take place, which he promised to do. In three 
 days after he informed me that the general would 
 beat the next morning. In spite of my sickness 
 I went to my post. We were all the day under 
 arms, and a great number of rich people were 
 pillaged and imprisoned, some guillotined. 
 
 I attest, adds the witness, that there was not 
 the least appearance of any conspiration. All was 
 a dead calm ; terror and consternation alone 
 reigned in the city. More than three thousand 
 victims to lust and avarice were this day lodged 
 in loathsome dungeons, from whence they were 
 never to be released but to be led to slaughter. 
 
 I shall now insert an article or two that will 
 give the reader an idea of the manner of proceed- 
 ing of these sans-culottes. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 157. 
 
 One of the members of the revolutionary com- 
 mittee, with a company of armed ruffians, went 
 to the house of one Careil. They first examined 
 all the papers, took 5000 livres in paper money, 
 and 12 louis d'ors. They returned again in the 
 evening, says the witness, who it seems was mis- 
 tress of the house ; we, at first took them for 
 common thieves, and therefore our alarm ivas not 
 so great ; but, to our sorrow, we were soon con- 
 vinced by the voice of Pinard, that they were the 
 
49 
 
 patriots of the revolutionary committee. Our fa- 
 mily was composed of women and one old man. 
 There was myself; four sisters-in-law, formerly 
 nuns ; two old relations above eighty years of 
 age, and my husband. The house and yard were 
 stripped of every thing, and the ruffians were 
 talking of setting fire to the buildings. One of 
 my sisters had made shift to preserve 800 livres ^ 
 she offered them these to save the house ; they 
 accept the conditions, receive the money, and 
 then burn the house to the ground. 
 
 Our persons were now all that remained to be 
 disposed of. There was a one-horse chair ; but 
 which was too good for any of us ; it was fas- 
 tened to the tail of a cart into which we were put 
 (my husband, an old and infirm man being obliged 
 to walk in the rear) and thus we were dragged, 
 preceded by our plundered property, to that gang 
 of cut-throats, called the revolutionary committee. 
 Here our complaints were in a moment stifled. 
 Pinard said, that his orders were to burn all, and 
 kill all. The committee were astonished and of- 
 fended at his clemency, and reprimanded him se- 
 verely for not having murdered 4is according to 
 his orders. 
 
 I, my sisters, and our poor old relations were 
 sent to one prison, and my husband to another. 
 My husband died, and we are only left alive to 
 W€ep and starve. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 It is well worth the reader's while to hear what 
 this Pinard said in his defence, on this head. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 162. 
 
 We acted, says he, by the order of the Repre- 
 sentative of the People, Carrier. When I went, 
 at my return, to carry him the church-plate that 
 I had taken from the nuns, he would insist upon 
 my drinking out of the chalice (or sacramental 
 cup) and asked me why I had not killed all the 
 damned bitches. 
 
 I shall here observe, once for all, that these 
 volumes contain a series of robberies of this sort. 
 Sometimes the plunder was divided among the 
 plunderers, sometimes it was delivered to Carrier, 
 and at others it was deposited with the revoluti- 
 onary committee. These latter imposed immense 
 taxes, or rather contributions, on the people under 
 pretence of assisting the sans-culottes, but which 
 were applied to their own uses. It is just to ob- 
 serve also, that the tribunal at Paris, before which 
 they were brought to answer for their crimes, ap- 
 pears to have shown much more anxiety about 
 the gold and silver, than about the lives of the 
 murdered persons. 
 
51 
 
 Vol F. Page 15. 
 
 Mariotte, a witness, informs the tribunal that 
 he was detached on a party seven miles distant 
 from Nantz. The party, says the witness, went 
 into the neighbourhood of the forest of Prince, 
 and took up their quarters in a house occupied by 
 Mrs. Chauvette. Five days after our arrival, 
 came Pinard, about midnight, and told us that we 
 were in the house of an aristocrat. He bragged 
 of having that evening killed six women, and said 
 that Chauvette should make the seventh. He 
 threatened her, and, to add to her torment, told 
 her to comfort herself, for that her child should 
 die first. It is Pinard, adds he, that now speaks 
 to you ; Pinard, that carries on the war against 
 the female sex. I drew my sword, continues the 
 witness, and told Pinard that he should pass over 
 my dead body to come at the woman. 
 
 Commerais, w ho was another of this party, in- 
 forms the tribunal, that Pinard being thus stopped, 
 Aubinet, one of his companions said, stand aside 
 while I cut open the guts of that bitch. He did 
 not succeed, however, adds this witness. 
 
 Now Marieuil came up, and sWore he would 
 have her life ; but finding us in hi^ way, he said, 
 you look like a good b — ger enough ; I have a 
 word to say in your ear. — We only want, says he, 
 to know where she has hidden 60,000 livres be- 
 
52 
 
 longing to a gentleman in the neighbourhood, f 
 answered, give me your word not to hurt the wo- 
 man nor her child, and I will bring her forth. He 
 promised, and I brought them out. The woman, 
 seeing that she was conducted to a sort of cellar, 
 cried out, I know I am brought here to be mur- 
 dered, like the women whose throats were cut in 
 this place yesterday. All the favour I ask, said 
 she, is that you will kill me before you kill my 
 child. She was now questioned about the money ; 
 but she continued her protestations of knowing 
 nothing of it. Pinard and Aubinet prepared again 
 to assassinate her ; but they did not succeed for 
 this time. 
 
 Vol V. Page 16. 
 
 The same witness relates another adventure. 
 When we were going hence, says he, towards the 
 forest of Prince, we heard a man, in a little wood, 
 crying for help. We found Pinard, and two other 
 horsemen, each having a piece of linen under his 
 arm. We left them, and soon after saw two poor 
 peasants running away. In going along among 
 the brushwood, says the witness, I heard some- 
 thing rustle almost under my feet : I knocked the 
 bushes aside with my musket ; what should it be 
 but two children. I gave one of them who was 
 seven years old into the care of Cedre, and kept 
 the other, of l^ve years old, myself. They both 
 cried bitterly. Their cries brous^ht to us two wo- 
 
53 
 
 men, their mothers, who were also hid among the 
 bushes ; they threw themselves upon their knees, 
 and besought us not to kill their children. In 
 quitting the wood Pinard came up with us, he 
 had several women, whom I saw him chop down, 
 and murder with his sabre. What, says he to 
 me, are you going to do with those two children? 
 stand away, says he, till I blow out their brains. 
 I opposed him, and while we were in dispute, 
 two volunteers brought an old man, stone-blind. 
 This we now found was the grandfather of the 
 children. Pray, said the poor old man, take my 
 life, and preserve my little darlings. I told him 
 that we would take care of them : he wept and 
 squeezed my hand. This unfortunate old man, 
 adds the witness, was murdered as well as the 
 women. 
 
 Pinard quitted the high road in returning, for 
 no other purpose but that of murdering. He and 
 his companions killed all they came at, men, wo- 
 men and children of all ages. To justify his bar- 
 barity, he produced the decree that ordered him 
 to spare neither sex or age. 
 
 In this relation of Commerais there is such au 
 air of carelessness, that one is ready to believe 
 that he is giving an account of a hunt. He tells 
 us about their finding a couple of children in the 
 bushes, and about their mothers appearing upon 
 hearing their cries, with as little concern as if he 
 
 e2 
 
54 
 
 were talkiirg of foxes or beavers. So hard-heart- 
 ed do men become by a familiarity with cruelty. 
 
 My reader will recollect, that the National 
 Convention of France had abolished negro-slave- 
 ry ; and he will also recollect, that the humanity 
 of this measure has been much applauded by those 
 who have not penetration enough to see their mo- 
 tive in so doing. 
 
 We shall now see what advantage this liberty 
 procured to the unfortunate country people round 
 Nantz. This city, from its commercial relations 
 with the West-India islands, always contained a 
 number of blacks who came to wait on their mas- 
 ters, &c. As soon as the decree abolishing negro 
 slavery appeared, these people claimed their rights 
 as citizens ; and, having no employment, they were 
 taken into the service of the republic, and placed 
 under the order of the revolutionary committee. 
 A party of these citizens were sent to assist in 
 the murders round the city, and we shall see that 
 they were by no means wanting in obedience to 
 xheir employers. 
 
 Vol V. Page 90. 
 
 An officer, named Ormes came, says a witness, 
 to ask our assistance in favour of fi\e pretty wo- 
 men, whom the company of Americans (this was. 
 
56 
 
 1; 
 
 the word which had taken place of that of negroes f 
 because the Convention had forbidden any one to 
 call them negroes) had reserved for a purpose 
 easily to be guessed at. A party marched off, 
 and soon came to the house where the blacks had 
 lodged the women. The poor creatures were cry- 
 ing and groaning ; their shrieks were to be heard 
 at half a mile. The party ordered the door to 
 be opened, which was at last done. They then 
 demanded the women ; no, replied the blacks, 
 they are now our slaves ; we have earned them 
 dear enough, and you shall tear them away limb 
 by limb, if you have them. We told these men, 
 that, thanks to the salutary decrees of the Con- 
 vention, the French empire contained 7io slaves. 
 The brutality of the blacks would not permit them 
 to listen to the voice of reason ; they prepared for 
 the defence of their prey, when the party, always 
 guided by prudence, preferred retiring, to avoid 
 slaughter. 
 
 Two days after, continues the witness, the 
 Americans, satiated with their captives, left them. 
 One of these women, the handsomest in the eyes 
 of the blacks, had been obliged to endure the ap- 
 proaches of more than a hundred of them. She 
 was fallen into a kind of stupor, and was unable 
 to walk or to stand. The whole live were shot 
 soon after. 
 
 1 do not know which is most entitled to our 
 detestation here, the brutal negroes, or the pusil- 
 
66 
 
 lanimous rascally Frenchmen, who were the wit- 
 nesses of their horrid deeds. Prudence taught 
 these poltroons to retire, when they saw five of 
 their lovely country-women exposed to the nause* 
 ous embraces of a set of filthy merciless mon- 
 sters ! they saw them bathed in tears, heard their 
 supplicating cries, were shocked at a sight the 
 very idea of which rouses all the feelings of man- 
 hood ; but prudence taught them to retire !— Sa- 
 vage villains ! prudence never taught you to re- 
 tire from the burnings and shootings of poor 
 defenceless innocent priests, and women and 
 children ! It was not till the blacks prepared to 
 defend their prey that prudence taught you to re- 
 tire ! Such are the French, they who pretend to 
 adore the fair sex. 
 
 Some of the women, taken in the country, 
 were suffered to die, or rather to be murdered, in 
 a less shocking way. 
 
 Vol V. Page 35. 
 
 Nantz, 5th Ventose, second year of the French Re- 
 public, 
 
 Citizen Male is hereby ordered to conduct the 
 forty women, under his care, to the top of the 
 cliff Pierre-Moine, and there hurl them head fore- 
 most into the sea. 
 
 (Signed) Foucault. 
 
57 
 
 We now come to the deposition of George 
 Thomas^ a health officer, who is one among the 
 few, even of the witnesses, that appears to have 
 preserved some remains of humanity. He tells 
 such a tale of wo as I hope, and am persuaded, 
 the reader's heart will with difficulty support. 
 
 Vol IL Page 14T. 
 
 The revolutionary hospital, says the witness, 
 was totally unprovided with every necessary. The 
 jail-fever made terrible ravages in all the houses 
 of detention ; seventy five persons, or thereabout, 
 died daily in this hospital. There were nothing 
 but rotten matrasses, on each of which more than 
 fifty prisoners had breathed their last. 
 
 I went to Chaux, one of the committee, to ask 
 for relief for the unhappy wretches that remained 
 here. We cannot do any thing, said Chaux ; but, 
 if you will, you may contribute to the cause of 
 humanity by a way that I will point out to you. 
 That rascal Philippe has 200,000 livres in his 
 clutches which we cannot come at. Now, if you 
 will accuse him in form, and support your accu- 
 sation by witnesses that I will engage to furnish 
 you with, I will grant you, out of the sum, all 
 that you want for the revolutionary hospital. At 
 the very mention of humanity from Chaux I was 
 astonished : the latter part of his proposal, how- 
 
58 
 
 ever, brought me back to my man. I rejected it 
 with the indignation that it merited. 
 
 I attest, that the revolutionary committee of 
 Nantz seized and imprisoned ahuost all those w^ho 
 were esteemed rich, men of talents, virtue and 
 humanity. 
 
 I accuse this committee of having ordered, to 
 my knowledge, the shooting or drowning of be- 
 tween four and five hundred children, the oldest 
 of which were not more than fourteen years of 
 age. 
 
 Minguet, one of the committee, had given me 
 an order to choose two from among the children, 
 whom I intended to save from death and bring 
 up. I chose one of eleven years old, and another 
 of fourteen. The next day I went to the prison, 
 called the Entrepot, with several of my friends, 
 whom I had prevailed on to ask for some of these 
 children. When we came, we found the poor 
 little creatures stood no longer in need of our in- 
 terposition. They were all drowned. I attest, 
 that I saw in this prison, but the evening before, 
 more than four hundred. 
 
 Having received an order from the military 
 commissioners to go to the Entrepot, to certify as 
 to the pregnancy of a great number of women, I 
 found, in entering this horrible slaughter-house, a 
 great quantity of dead bodies, thrown here and. 
 
69 
 
 there. I saw several infants, some yet palpitatingjf 
 and others drowned in tubs of human excrement. 
 I hurried along through this scene of horror. My 
 aspect frightened the women : they had been ac- 
 customed to see none but their butchers. I en- 
 couraged them ; spoke to them the language of 
 humanity. I found that thirty of them were with 
 child ; several of them seven or eight months. 
 Some few days after I went again to see these 
 unhappy creatures, whose situation rendered them 
 objects of compassion and tenderness ; but — (adds 
 the witness with a faultering voice) shall I tell 
 you, they had been most inhumanly murdered. 
 
 The further I advanced, continues the witness, 
 the more was my heart appalled. There were 
 eight hundred women and as many children con- 
 fined in the Entrepot and in the Mariliere, There 
 were neither beds, straw, nor necessary vessels. 
 The prisoners were in want of every thing. Doc- 
 tor Rollin and myself saw fiYe children expire in 
 less than four minutes. They received no kind 
 of nourishment. — We asked the women in the 
 neighbourhood, if they could not lend them some 
 assistance. What would you have us do ? said 
 they, Grand-Maison arrests every one that at- 
 tempts to succour them. 
 
 Vol IL Page 156. 
 The same witness says, I accuse the commit- 
 
60 
 
 tee in general of the murder of seven prisoners, 
 whom, for the want of time to examine them, 
 they had hewn down with sabres under the win- 
 dow of their hall. 
 
 The witness adds. Carrier and the committee, 
 as well as their under-murderers, used to turn the 
 drownings into jests : they called them immer- 
 sions^ national baptisms, vertical transportations^ 
 bathings, ^c. I entered, says he, one day a pub- 
 lic house opposite the Bouffay, where I saw a 
 water-man, named Perdreau. He asked me for 
 a pinch of snuff: for, says the ruffian, I have 
 richly earned it; I have just helped to dispatch 
 seven or eight hundred. How, says I, do you 
 manage to make away with them so fast. Nothing 
 so easy, replied he ; when I have a bathing match, 
 I strip them naked, two men with their bayonets 
 push them tied two and two into my boat, whence 
 they go souse into the water, with a broken skull. 
 
 Vol IL Page 151. 
 
 Vaujois, a witness, says, I wrote ten times to 
 the administrators of the district, and went often 
 to the revolutionary committee to request, that 
 something should be done for the poor children 
 in prison ; but could obtain nothing. At last I 
 ventured to speak to Carrier, who replied, in a 
 passion ; You are a counter-revolutionist : no pity : 
 they are young vipers, that must be destroyed. — 
 
61 
 
 If I had acted of myself, says the witness, I should 
 have shared their fate. 
 
 One day in entering the Entrepot^ a citizen of 
 Nantz saw a great heap of corpses : they were 
 all of children : many were still palpitating and 
 struggling with death. The man looked at them 
 for some time, saw a child move its arm, he seiz- 
 ed it, ran home with it, and had the good luck to 
 save it from death and its more terrible ministers. 
 
 Here Thomas is again questioned, and he at- 
 tests, that the revolutionary committee issued an 
 order, commanding all those who had taken chil- 
 dren from the prisons, to carry them back again; 
 and this, adds the witness, for the pure pleasure 
 of having them murdered. 
 
 Vol IV, Page 245. 
 
 Cossirant, a witness, deposes, that it was pro- 
 posed to shoot some of the prisoners en masse ;* 
 but that the proposal was rejected. However, 
 says he, as I was returning home one evening, I 
 met Ramor, who told me that the shooting was 
 at that moment going on. As I heard no noise I 
 could not believe him ; but I was not suffered to 
 
 * The French expression is preserved here. It is to be 
 hoped that it will never be adopted in the language of any other 
 couijtry. Its meaning is, in multitudes^ 
 
 F 
 
62 
 
 remain long in doubt. A fellow came up to me 
 covered with blood : that is the way we knock 
 them off, my boy, says he. Seven hundred had 
 been shot that afternoon. 
 
 Vol IV, Page 256. 
 
 Debourges, a witness, says, I have seen, du- 
 ring six days, nothing but drownings, guillotinings 
 and shootings. Being once on guard, I command- 
 ed a detachment that conducted the fourth masse 
 of women to be shot at Gigan. When I arrived, 
 I found the dead bodies of seventy-five women 
 already stretched on the spot. They were quite 
 naked. I was informed that they were girls from 
 fifteen to eighteen years of age. When they had 
 the misfortune not to fall dead after the shot, they 
 were dispatched with sabres. 
 
 Vol IL Page 244. 
 
 Naud, one of the accused, says, I saw a red- 
 headed general, named Hector, at the head of a 
 detachment conducting prisoners to the meadow 
 of the Mauves. Castrie and I followed him. 
 When we came they were preparing to fire ; but 
 we made shift to save a few of the children. 
 
63 
 
 Fol I. Page 27. 
 
 Labenette, a witness, informs the tribunal, that 
 the rev^olutionary committee ordered to be Stuck 
 on all the walls of the city, a decree forbidding 
 all fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children, 
 relations, or friends, to solicit the pardon of any 
 prisoner whatever. 
 
 I was also witness of the drowning of ninety 
 priests, two of whom, who were decrepid old 
 men, by some accident or other escaped ; but 
 were retaken and murdered. Indeed, adds this 
 witness, I have been an eye witness of several 
 drownings of men, women with child, girls, boys, 
 infants, indiscriminately. I have also seen of all 
 these descriptions shot in the public square, and 
 at other places. The national guard of the city 
 was employed during six weeks in filling up the 
 ditches, into which the massacred persons were 
 thrown. I was doctor to one of the prisons, and 
 was like to be displaced, because I was too hu- 
 mane. 
 
 Vol L Page 60. 
 
 Carrier sent for the president of the military 
 commission. It is you then, says he, Mr. son of 
 a bitch, that has dared to give orders contrary to 
 mine. Mind ; if you have not emptied the En- 
 
64 
 
 irepot in two hours, I will have your head, and 
 the heads of all the commission. — It is not neces- 
 sary to add, that he was obeyed. 
 
 Vol L Page 103. 
 
 TronjoUy, a witness, says, that Chaux express- 
 <id his disapprobation of the law of the 14th of 
 September. It is a great pity, said he, it ever 
 was made ; without that, we would have reduced 
 the inhabitants of Nantz to a handful. — Carrier 
 was consulted, adds this witness, with respect to 
 receiving money to save the lives of the rich ; but 
 the merciful Representative of the people answer- 
 ed ; no compositions : the guillotine ; the guillo- 
 tine; and take their money afterwards. — Three 
 women, too charming certainly, since they at- 
 tracted the desires of the ferocious Carrier, had 
 the misfortune to be chosen for the tyger's plea- 
 sures. He first sacrificed them to his brutal lust, 
 and then sent them to augment the masse of a 
 massacre. 
 
 Vol 11. Page 175. 
 
 The widow Dumey, a witness says, that she 
 is the widow of the late keeper of the Entrepot ; 
 that she saw fifty priests brought there, and rob- 
 bed of all their money and effects ; and that they 
 were afterwards drowned, with some women and 
 
65 
 
 little children. She adds, twenty-four men and 
 four women were taken out one d^y, A child of 
 fourteen years was tied with others to be drown- 
 ed, his cries for his papa were enough to pierce 
 the heart of a tiger; Lambertye, tied him, how- 
 ever, and drowned him with the rest. 
 
 Fouquet, the companion of Lambertye, said on 
 this occasion, that he had already helped to dis- 
 patch nine thousand, and that if they would but 
 let him alone for twenty-four hours, he would 
 sweep all the prisons of Nantz. 
 
 Vol IL Page 186. 
 
 Lacaille^ keeper of another prison, called the 
 Bouffay, gives a circumstantial account of one of 
 the drownings. 
 
 The horrid night, says the witness, of the 23d 
 of October, two soldiers of the Company of Ma- 
 rat came to the Bouffay, each with a bundle of 
 cords. About nine o'clock they told me there 
 were one hundred and fifty-five prisoners, whom 
 they were to transfer to Belle-Isle, to work at a 
 fortress. About an hour after, arrived thirty or 
 forty more of these soldiers. An order from the 
 committee was produced for one hundred and 
 fifty-five of my prisoners. I observed to them, 
 that several of the prisoners on the list were now 
 at liberty or in the hospitals. 
 
 f2 
 
66 
 
 They now sat down to table, and after having 
 supped, and drunk heartily, they brought out 
 their cords, and diverted themselves a while in 
 tying each other, as they intended to tie the pri- 
 soners. 1 then conducted them to the rooms where 
 the prisoners were lodged. They instantly fell to 
 work tying the poor trembling wretches two and 
 two. 
 
 Grand-Maison now entered the court yard, and 
 hollowed out to them to dispatch. Goullin came 
 stamping and swearing, because the number on 
 the list could not be completed. There were so 
 many sick and dead that they could not well be 
 luade up. I sent you fifteen this evening, says 
 Goullin, what have you done with them ? 1 told 
 him they were up stairs. Down with them, says 
 he. I obeyed, and they were tied, like the rest. 
 Instead of one hundred and fifty -five, Goullin at 
 last consented to take one hundred and twenty- 
 nine ; but this number not being complete, the 
 equitable and tender-hearted Goullin ordered the 
 remainder to be taken from the prisoners indis- 
 tinctly ; and when this was done he marched off 
 at the head of the assassins to conduct them to 
 the river, where they were all drowned. 
 
 Vol IL Page 204. 
 
 The widow Mallet, who had first been robbed 
 of her property, and then imprisoned, gives an 
 account of the manner in which she and her com- 
 panions in captivity were treated. 
 
67 
 
 I complained, says this poor woman, to Per- 
 rocheaux of a violent sore throat. That's good, 
 said he, the guillotine will cure you of that. 
 
 One day Joly asked if I was not the widow 
 Mallet, and giving me a look, that makes me 
 tremble even now, aye, said he, she shall drink 
 cut of the great cup. 
 
 In the house where we were confined, there 
 were a great number of beautiful pictures. Some 
 men were sent one day to tear them to pieces, 
 which they did, leaving only one which repre- 
 sented deaths and jeering wdth savage irony, con- 
 template that image, said they, to cheer youF 
 hearts. 
 
 We were in want of every necessary. Seven 
 hundred of us were confined in this house, which, 
 even as a prison was too small for two hundred. 
 Forty were crammed into one little chamber. 
 During six or seven months we had no infirmary, 
 or rather each apartment was one. The sick 
 and dead were often extended on the floor among 
 the living. How many have I seen struggling in 
 the pangs of death by my side. 
 
 Grand-Maison told me one day of an old quar- 
 rel : times are altered, says he, now I have you 
 under my clutches. 
 
 Durassier came one day drunk, and began td 
 
68 
 
 make out a list for execution. His oaths and im- 
 precations made us tremble ; I was on the fatal 
 list, and I know not how I have escaped. 
 
 My old servant went to solicit for my removal, 
 representing me as dangerously ill. Perrocheaux 
 said to her : let her die, you silly bitch, and then 
 we shall have her house^ and you will fare better 
 with us than with her. 
 
 Vol IL Page 215. 
 
 Brejot, a witness, says, there were some wo- 
 men going to be shot; one of them had a child 
 of eleven months old at her breast, which the as- 
 sassins would have shot with its mother, had not 
 a soldier snatched it from her arms. The babe 
 was carried by a woman to Gourlay, a surgeon, 
 who had the compassion to take care of it. 
 
 Vol IL Page 217. 
 
 Fournies, a witness, says, that there were at 
 ©ne time, to his knowledge, ninety-six priests 
 drowned in the Loire. Adds he, four of them got 
 on board a Dutch sloop lying in the river; but 
 were retaken and drowned the next day. Fou- 
 cault, in boasting of the second drowning of these 
 priests, showed, in a company, where I was, a 
 pair of shoes he then wore, which he had taken 
 from the feet of one of them. 
 
69 
 
 Vol. IL Page 220. 
 
 Ja7ie Lallies, a young woman, confined on the 
 general accusation of being an aristocrat, informs 
 the tribunal, that she was made cook in the pri- 
 son. One night, says she, a number of the com- 
 pany of Marat came to the prison. One Girar- 
 deau conducted the troop. Come, my lads, says 
 he, I must go and see my birds in the cage. 
 Ducou, seeing some of the prisoners weep, what 
 the devil do you howl for, says he, we want pro- 
 visions here, and we are going to send you off to 
 get us some, that is all. 
 
 Crespin, said to me, in giving me several blows 
 with his naked sword : march, bitch, light us 
 along : we are masters now^ : your turn will soon 
 come, when there is no better game. 
 
 Come, come, my little singing birds, said Joly ; 
 out of your nests, and make up your packets, and 
 above all do not forget your pocket-books ; that 
 is the main point ; no cheating the nation. Ducou 
 said aside to Durassier ; are not they finely bit ? 
 Finding they did not prepare themselves quick 
 enough, he adds ; come, come, time to dress them, 
 time to shoot them, time to knock their brains out, 
 I think that is plenty of time for them. 
 
 Durassier kept bawling out, quick, b— gers, 
 march. To a sick man, who walked with a stick. 
 
70 
 
 he said : you want no stick ; march like the rest, 
 b — ger ; you shall soon have a stick, with the 
 devil to you. 
 
 Ducou, as he went away, said to the keeper, 
 good-bye for this time ; we shall come again soon 
 to ease you of the rest : I think we have a pretty 
 smart haul for once. — These poor souls were all 
 drowned. 
 
 Vol IL Page 222. 
 
 Mrs, Pichot, living by the water side at Nantz, 
 says, that she saw the carpenters busy construct- 
 ing the lighters for drowning the prisoners ; and 
 soon after, says the witness, I saw, brought to be 
 drowned at the Crepuscule, a great number of 
 women, many of whom had sucking children in 
 their arms. They screamed and cried most pite- 
 ously. Oh ! said they, must we be put to death 
 without being heard ! 
 
 Several poor women of the neighbourhood ran 
 and took a child a piece, and some two, from 
 them. Upon this the poor creatures shrieked and 
 tore their hair worse than before. — Oh ! my dear, 
 my love, my darling babe ! am I never to see your 
 dear face again ! Heavens protect my poor dear 
 little love ! — Such heart-piercing cries were sure- 
 ly never before heard ! yet these could not soften 
 the hell hounds that conducted them. 
 
71 
 
 Many of these women were far advanced with 
 child. All were taken into the boats ; a part were 
 immediately dispatched, and the rest put on board 
 the Dutch sloop, till the next day. 
 
 When the next day arrived, says the witness, 
 though we were all terror-struck, many had the 
 courage to ask for a child a piece of those that 
 were left alive ; but the hard-hearted villain, Fou- 
 quet, refused, pretending his orders were chang- 
 ed, and all that remained on board the sloop were 
 drowned. 
 
 Vol IL Page 223, 
 
 The same witness says, one day I saw seve- 
 ral prisoners, brought from the Entrepot, deposi- 
 ted in a lighter with a deck. They were fasten- 
 ed under hatches, where they were left for forty- 
 eight hours. When the hatches were opened, 
 there were sixty of them stifled. Other prisoners 
 that were now on board, were obliged to take out 
 the bodies. Robin stood on the deck with his 
 drawn sword in his hand, and superintended the 
 work. This done, all the prisoners on board 
 were stripped naked, men, women and children, 
 of all ages, from four-score to five ; their hands 
 were tied behind them, and they were thrown into 
 the river. 
 
T2 
 
 Here the judge, if we ought to call a sans-cu- 
 lotte ruffian a judge, asked the witness if this 
 drowning was performed by day, or by night. 
 By open day, answers the witness. She adds, I 
 observed that the drowners became very familiar 
 with the prettiest of the women ; and some few 
 of them were saved, if it can be called saving, to 
 endure the more than infernal embraces of these 
 monsters. 
 
 Vol IL Page 227. 
 
 Delamarre, informs the tribunal, that there was 
 a heap formed of the bodies of the women, who 
 had been shot, and that the soldiers, laughing, cal- 
 led this horrible spectacle the mountain, alluding 
 to the mountain of the National Convention. 
 
 Vol IL Page 231. 
 
 Foucault having said one day to Bachelier, 
 that he had two cargoes to dispatch that night, 
 Bachelier flings his arms round his neck, saying, 
 you are a brave fellow, the best revolutionist I 
 know among them all. 
 
 This same Foucault fired at his father with a 
 pistol ; and was looked upon as the inventor of 
 the plugged lighters for drowning the prisoners. 
 
7 
 
 o 
 
 Delassal, who appears to have been an officer 
 of police, tells the tribunal, that one day, he had 
 taken up a woman of bad fame, who lived with 
 Lambertye, one of the chief drowners. He 
 came to my house, says the witness, in a rage, 
 abused my wife, and casting a ferocious look at 
 my children : poor little b — gers, says he, I pity 
 you ; to-morrow you will be fatherless. 
 
 Vol IL Page 252. 
 
 Coron, one of the company of Marat, informs 
 the tribunal, that he had seen seven thousand five 
 hundred persons shot at the Gigan, and four 
 thousand he had assisted to drown. 
 
 Vol. 11. Page 254. 
 
 Sophy Bretonville, a witness, attests, that Per- 
 rocheaux came several times to her father's, under 
 pretence of speaking to her mother about the re- 
 lease of her husband ; but that his real business 
 was to make indecent offers to herself. In short, 
 says the witness, he made me an offer to release 
 my father, if I would satisfy his lustful desires ; 
 but, as I refused, very well, said he at last, I shall 
 go and do his business for him in an instant. 
 
 Vol. IL Page 258. 
 
 A house was wanted for some purpose by the 
 committee. Chaux was told that there was one 
 
 G 
 
74 
 
 in the neighbourhood ; but that it was occupied 
 by the owner. A pretty story, says he ; in with 
 the b — ger into prison, and he will be glad to 
 purchase his life at the expense of his house. 
 
 When the horrible situation of the prisoners 
 was represented to the committee, Goullin and 
 Chaux replied : so much the better ; let them 
 die ; it will be so much clear gain to the nation. 
 
 Vol IL Page 284. 
 
 Jane Lavigne, informs the tribunal, that, one 
 night, Carrier came with Phillippe to sup at her 
 house. They were talking, says the witness, of 
 the measures to be pursued. You are a parcel of 
 whining b — gers of judges, said Carrier : you 
 Want proofs to guillotine a man ; into the river 
 with the b— gers, says the Representative of the 
 people, into the river with them ; that is the 
 shortest way. 
 
 Vol III. Page IS. 
 
 Mary Hemu, informs the tribunal, that she got 
 admittance one day into a prison where there 
 were a great many women confined, several hun- 
 dreds. I saw one amongst them, adds the wit- 
 ness, that was taking in labour ; she was, how- 
 ever, standing up. Such an object I never saw ; 
 she was crawling with vermin ; her lips were 
 

 blue ; death had akeady seized her,— To bear the 
 smell, in this infected abode, I was obliged to 
 have the smelling-bottle continually at my nose. 
 
 In consequence of the permission granted me 
 to choose a child out of this prison, I went to a 
 room where there were three hundred, or there 
 abouts, all of whom appeared dying or dead. I 
 stopped at the door (for the stink was such that I 
 durst advance no further) and called the children 
 to me. Some of the little innocents raised their 
 hands, and others their heads ; but only six were 
 able to get to me. I took one of them, and was 
 also allowed to take a poor w^oman, whose situa- 
 tion and piteous moans moved me to the soul. I 
 gave them an asylum at my house, till the issuing 
 of the inhuman decree, which obliged me to re- 
 turn them into the clutches of the tigers. When 
 this decree came out, I applied to the wife of 
 Gallon, one of the committee, begging her to 
 intercede with her husband for the preservation 
 of the woman and child I had taken : I will do 
 no such thing, said she : and, if you will be ad- 
 vised by a friend, you will not trouble your head 
 about them. — They w^ere re-imprisoned, and I 
 never heard of them more. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 14. 
 
 Mrs. LaiUet informs the tribunal, that six 
 young ladies, of the name of Lameterye, were 
 sent to the Bouffay. Carrier, says she, sent an 
 
T6 
 
 order to put them instantly to death. The keep- 
 er of the prison commissioned me to communi- 
 cate to them the fatal tidings. I called them into 
 a room apart, and told them that the Representa- 
 tive of the people had ordered their execution. 
 
 . The youngest of them gave me this ring (here 
 she showed the ring ;) they threw themselves on 
 their knees, and called on the name of Jesus 
 Christ. From this posture the ruffians roused 
 them to conduct them to the place of death. 
 They were executed, without ever being tried. 
 While they were dispatching, twenty-seven men 
 awaited the fatal stroke at the foot of the Guillo- 
 tine. 
 
 It is said, to the honour of the executioner, that 
 his remorse for having executed these young ladies 
 was so great, that he died in a few days after- 
 wards. 
 
 I attest, adds this witness, that I have seen 
 numbers of naked bodies of women, lying by the 
 side of the Loire, thrown up by the tide. I have 
 seen heaps of human bodies, gnawed, and partly 
 devoured by the dogs and birds of prey ; which 
 latter were continually hovering over the city, 
 and particularly near the water side. I have 
 seen numbers of carcasses in the bottoms of the 
 lighters, partly covered with water. 
 
 VoL III, Page 23. 
 
 Renaudot informs the tribunal, that he saw a 
 number of men conducted to the meadow, called 
 
77 
 
 the Mauves, and shot. Some of them who were 
 not killed by the fusils, says the witness, were 
 dispatched with the sabre. A cannoneer, named 
 Jacob, came up to me, and said that it was he 
 who had finished those who escaped the balls. 
 Their necks, says this butcher, were just the 
 tiling to try my new sabre. 
 
 Vol, III, Page 24. 
 
 T accuse, says the same witness, the committee 
 of the murder of three nuns, with my children's 
 maid. They were conducted by Joly to the 
 committee to take the oath of apostacy. Shoot 
 no more, drown no more, said the nuns, and we 
 will even take this horrid oath. This amounted 
 to a refusal, and the consequence is too well 
 known. 
 
 Vol III. Page 25. 
 
 Captain Leroux attests, that the murder of the 
 ninety priests was a most w anton act of cruelty, 
 contrary to the professions of the committee it- 
 self; for that they were only to be sent, it was 
 said, into perpetual exile. He says he was order- 
 ed before the committee, and threatened with im- 
 prisonment for having permitted two of them to 
 get on board his vessel. 
 
 Captain Boulei, one day, in weighing his 
 
 g2 
 
78 
 
 anchor, saw four or ^ve hundred dead bodies 
 raised up by the cables ; and adds, that there 
 were one hundred and thirty women confined at 
 Mirabeau, who disappeared all at once. 
 
 Vol HI. Page 27. 
 
 Foucault, one of the accused, being asked by 
 the judge, what was become of the pillage of the 
 priests (for, as I have already observed, this 
 seemed to be the chief object of the trial.) Foii- 
 cault replied, that having consulted Carrier on 
 the subject, he answered, b — ger ! who should 
 have it but those that did the work ? — Foucault 
 declares that the effects of the priests were 
 lodged on board the covered lighter, whence the 
 priests had been precipitated into the water ; and 
 on board of which Lambertye, the chief in this 
 expedition, gave a great dinner the next day, 
 costing forty thousand livres. From other wit- 
 nesses, it appears that Carrier assisted at this re- 
 past, and that he even proposed dining on the 
 scaffold of the guillotine. 
 
 The following traits are well calculated to 
 show, what sort of treatment a people must ever 
 expect from the hands of base-born villains, when 
 they are suffered to seize the reigns of power. 
 
 Vol. IIL Page U. 
 
 I had a son and daughter, says a witness., 
 named Pusiurle ; Grand Maison had proposed a 
 
79 
 
 marriage between his son and my daughter, and 
 Goullin another between his daughter and my 
 son. Neither had my consent ; and to avenge 
 themselves, when they were in the committee, 
 they seized my wife and daughter, and all my 
 most valuable property. The former were drag- 
 ged to a loathsome prison ; the latter I have 
 never since seen or heard of. 
 
 Vol. III. Page 17. 
 
 A friend of Goullin had, as he j^retended, been 
 brought to punishment by the family of the two 
 young Toinettes. When they were brought be- 
 fore the committee, he told them of this. But, 
 said they, it could not be us. Goullin, like the 
 wolf in the fable, cried out, if it was not you, it 
 was your father. The two Toinettes were exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 Vol. III. Page 33. 
 
 My son-in-law, says a witness, named Yaile, 
 had been confined for no other specified crime 
 than that of being a ivell dressed man (muscadin.) 
 I went to Carrier and to the committee to solicit 
 his release, before the order was issued forbidding 
 all solicitations. There seemed to be some hopes 
 of succeeding ; but Chaux opposed my request, 
 and he alone. It was he who had ordered him 
 to be imprisoned, to be revenged on us, because 
 we refused to sell him a quantity of starch, that 
 he had a mind to. 
 
80 
 
 Vol IIL Page 38. 
 
 I was at a drowning, says Tabouret, on board 
 a lighter conducted by Affile. Come on, my lads, 
 said he, to the island of Topsy-turvy. Before we 
 got out to the sinking place, I heard the prisoners 
 make the most terrible lamentations. Save us ! 
 Oh ! save us ! cried they ; there is yet time ! Oh ! 
 pray, pray, save us ! Some of their hands w ere 
 untied, and they run them through the railing, 
 crying, mercy ! mercy! it was then that I saw the 
 villain, Grand-Maison, chop off their hands and 
 arms with his sabre. Ten minutes after, I heard 
 the carpenters, placed in the little boats, hammer- 
 ing at the sides of the lighter; and, directly, dowH 
 it went to the bottom. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 40. 
 
 Trappe, When the fifty-five priests were drown- 
 ed, 1 went to Carrier to ask him what should be 
 done with their money, gold and silver snuffboxes, 
 rings, &:c. Leave them nothing, says he. Embark 
 these b — gers, and let me hear no more of them, 
 says the representative of the people. 
 
 These priests, says the witness, had a great 
 number of valuable jewels, which were all de- 
 livered to Richard. Carrier, upon hearing that the 
 expedition was over, seemed angry ; blast it, says 
 he, I intended to reserve that job for Lambertye. 
 
81 
 
 The widow Dumey corroborates the evidence 
 of Trappe, and adds, after the priests were drown- 
 ed, Lambertye came to me, and pointing his sabre 
 to my breast, bitch, says he, you shall give me an 
 account of the spoils of those priests. — I attest, 
 says this witness, that Lambertye and Fouquet 
 were the favourites of the representative of the 
 people. 
 
 Vol III Page 43. 
 
 Naudiller, I was, one day, at Carrier's, with 
 Lambertye and several others. Carrier, in point- 
 ing to the river, said, we have already ducked two 
 thousand eight hundred of them there. One of 
 the strangers asked what he meant. — Yes, says 
 Carrier, two thousand eight hundred, in the na- 
 tional hath, 
 
 I myself saw, says the witness, while I was at 
 Nantz, which w^as not long, fi\e hundred men and 
 two hundred and fifty women, all tied, conducted 
 to the Loire by Lambertye and Fouquet. 
 
 Vol in. Page 50. 
 
 One time, says Affile, (he was one of the 
 drowners) Fouquet ordered me to go to Marie, to 
 bespeak the two lighters that were wanted for the 
 night, and to engage some carpenters. This done, 
 I went and got the cords, and the staples to fasten 
 the prisoners at the bottom of the lighter. — About 
 
nine o'clock nearly five hundred were put on 
 board. — These were pillaged and stripped in the 
 lighter, and Fouquet swore, if I did not obey his 
 requisitions (which were always made in the 
 name of the law,) he would drown me with the 
 rest. 
 
 Four little boats, continues Affile, attended each 
 lighter. When the plugs were pulled out the 
 prisoners cried mercy !— -There were some on the 
 half deck with their hands tied only, and these, 
 when they saw the lighter sinking, cried, let us 
 jump into their boats and drown them with our- 
 selves. But all that attempted it were hacked 
 down with sabres. 
 
 When the expedition was completed, w^e wont 
 to Thomas' hotel, where the eifects of the pri- 
 soners had been carried ; hence we went to Se- 
 cher's, where we divided the spoil. 
 
 The prisoners on their trial, having denied here, 
 that they had given orders for the drowning, 
 several of their orders were produced, and read. 
 It may not be amiss to insert two or three of 
 them. They will give the reader a perfect idea 
 of the murderer's style. 
 
 In the name of the Republic, The revolution- 
 ary committee authorise citizen Affile jun, to re- 
 quire the number of carpenters that he may find 
 necessary for the execution of the expedition he 
 is charged with. This citizen is required to use 
 
83 
 
 ail the dispatch in his power, and to give generous 
 wages to the workmen ; provided they work with 
 all the zeal and activity that the public service re- 
 quires. 
 
 (Signed) Goullin, 
 
 Bachelier, and others. 
 
 In the name of the Republic. The revolutionary 
 committee authorise citizen Colas, to take as 
 many lighters and small boats, as he shall judge 
 necessary, for the execution of the business that 
 the committee have entrusted to his zealous care. 
 
 (Signed) Naud, 
 
 BOLOGNIE, 
 
 Goullin, and others. 
 
 In the name of the Republic, Citizen Affile 
 jun. is required to pay attention to, and see ex- 
 ecuted, the order given to citizen Colas ; and all 
 watermen and others are required to aid and assist 
 in the public service^ and to obey the requisitions 
 of citizen Affile under pain of being deGlar€d had 
 citizens and suspected persons, 
 
 (Signed) Grand-Mai son, 
 Naud, and others^ 
 
 Vol III. Page (^S. 
 
 Bourdin, a witness, gives an account of seve- 
 ral shootings. The last that I saw, adds he, wajs 
 
84 
 
 of eighty women. They were first shot ; then 
 stripped, and left exposed on the spot during three 
 days. 
 
 I carried a young lad off from the Entrepot, 
 He was thirteen years of age. When the revo- 
 lutionary committee ordered all the children, thus 
 preserved, to be given up, Joly, who said he was 
 the judge of all the prisoners, permitted me to 
 keep this boy; but my neighbour Aignes, who 
 could not obtain a like favour, gave up a lad of 
 fourteen years of age, agreeably to the order of 
 the committee, and the next day we saw him 
 shot. 
 
 When the shooting en masse first began the 
 prisoners were suffered to retain their clothes till 
 they were dead. As they were conducted to the 
 place of execution, and even after they arrived on 
 the spot, the old -clothes dealers were seen bargain- 
 ing with the soldiers for their clothes. The poor 
 unfortunate creatures had the mortification to see 
 their own towns-men and women buying the 
 poor remains of their fortunes on their backs; 
 and, the instant they fell, the monsters rushed in, 
 tearing the new-acquired property from their 
 bodies, yet struggling in the pangs of death. — 
 But, the revolutionary butchers found that this 
 was but an unproductive sale : »he clothes being 
 shot through, sunk in their value ; and this cir- 
 cumstance determined them to strip the prisoners 
 naked before execution. 
 
86 
 
 Fol III. Page G6. 
 
 Lambert, another witness, informs^ the tribunal^ 
 that he has seen the banks of the Loire covered 
 with dead bodies ; among which were several old 
 men, little children of both sexes, and an infinite 
 number of women, all naked. One of the wo- 
 men, that he saw at one time, had an infant lock- 
 ed in her arms. She had been drowned at the 
 Crepuscule the day before with about two hun- 
 dred more. 
 
 Vol. III. Page 96. 
 
 A witness deposes that she saw Lebrun, one 
 of the company of Marat, jump and dance upon 
 the dead body of a child. 
 
 Vol III. Page 99. 
 
 Lamarie. I was one morning at breakfast with 
 Crucy, Leveque, and Perrocheaux, when the latter 
 told me, they were just going to take a young 
 girl out of prison to puj her in keeping for their 
 own use. 
 
 I was one day, says the witness, at the com- 
 mittee to ask the release of some children, and 
 I could not help being shocked at ther jocular 
 manner in which they proceeded and talked. 
 Chaux said to me here we are, you see, up to our 
 eyes among dead bodies and pretty girls. 
 
 H 
 
86 
 
 The criminals being asked what they had to 
 say concerning their having issued certain cruel 
 decrees, answeied that they were fathers of fa- 
 milies^ and that if they had disobeyed Carrier, 
 they feared he might not only destroy them, but 
 their wives and children also. 
 
 Now then, let us see how these affectionate, 
 tender-hearted fathers of families behaved to- 
 wards the wives and children of others. 
 
 ^ Vol III, Page 67. 
 
 As they had denied having issued the cruel or- 
 ders for imprisoning the children, the following 
 decrees were produced. 
 
 The revolutionary committee orders the hene- 
 mlent commissaries of the seventeenth section, as 
 well as all others who have prisoners in their 
 houses of detention, to deliver up to nobody any 
 child whatever, except it may be to the officers of 
 the ships of the Republic, and even they are to 
 take none under seventeen years of age. 
 
 (Signed) Goullin, 
 
 and others. 
 
 The citizen keeper of the Entrepot is ordered 
 to give in a list of all those, who, in obedience to 
 the order of the committee, have delivered up the 
 children they had taken from the prison. 
 
 (Signed) Chaux, 
 
 and others* 
 
87 
 
 Citizen Dumey is ordered to give in a list of 
 all the persons, with the streets and numbers of 
 the houses where they live, who have taken away 
 any of the prisoners. He will be particular in 
 the dwelling of the woman, who, in spite of the 
 decrees of the committee, has had the infamy to 
 take away seven young girls of fifteen or sixteen 
 years of a^e. 
 
 (Signed) Grand-Mai son, 
 
 and others. 
 
 When the blood-thirsty villains had thus col- 
 lected all the unhappy prisoners together, they 
 issued the following order. 
 
 In the name of the revolutionary committee of 
 Nantz, The commandant of the troops is re- 
 quired to furnish three hundred regulars. One 
 half of this detachment will march to the Bouffay, 
 and, taking the prisoners thence, will conduct 
 them bound, two and two, to the prison of the 
 Eperonniere. The other division will go to 
 Sainte-Claires, and conduct the prisoners from 
 thence to the Eperonniere. Then, all these pri- 
 soners, together with those confined in the prison 
 of the Eperonniere, are to be taken and shot, 
 ivithout distinction of age or sex, in the manner 
 that the commanding officer of the detociiment 
 ^nay judge most convenient. 
 
 (Signed) Grand-Mai son, 
 
 GOULLIN, 
 MiNGUET, 
 
 and others. 
 
88 
 
 In this place, it may not be amiss to let the 
 reader hear what these monsters had to say in 
 their defence. 
 
 Vol III. Page 35. 
 
 Goullin. They keep telling us of our terrific 
 measures ; I maintain that we made nobody trem- 
 ble but the misers, the rich, the hoarders of pro- 
 visions, the fanatics, and the aristocrats ; but as 
 to the true sans-culotts, they had nothing to fear. 
 
 Bachelier (Vol. III. Page 31.) All the rich 
 were suspected persons. We were obliged to 
 strike, not only them who did, but them who 
 could do h«rir.. However, very few natriots 
 were sacrificed ; we aimed principally at the 
 former nobility and clergy ; at those who hoard- 
 ed up provisions, and all such as possessed great 
 riches. The true and real sans-culottes were 
 spared. 
 
 Vol. III. Page 99. 
 
 One day, says a witness, I begged Bachelier to. 
 have mercy on the children. I pleaded their in- 
 nocence, and represented their infancy, and the 
 injustice of punishing them for the faults of their 
 parents. Bachelier answered coolly, if I did not 
 know you, I should take you for an aristocrat. 
 You do not perceive then, that these children have 
 sucked aristocratic n^iik ; that the blood that runs 
 
in their veins is impure, and incapable of being 
 changed into republican blood ? I compare them, 
 added he, to an oil-barrel, in spite of all the wash- 
 ing and scrubbing you can give it, it will for ever 
 retain its stink. It is j List so with these children. 
 They will always retain an attachment to the 
 kings and priests of their fathers. 
 
 Vol III. .Page 104. 
 
 Bachelier answers to this. With respect, says 
 he, to the children of the aristocrats, I own that 
 I said, they were hard to be made good republi- 
 cans ; and that it was much to be feared, that the 
 children of fanatics would one day resemble 
 their parents. Renard, mayor of Nantz, who is 
 known for a sound patriot and a humane man, 
 said on this subject, that the cats eat the young 
 rats, and that they were in the right of it ; for 
 it was the only way of destroying the breed. I 
 am persuaded, adds Bachelier, that no true repub- 
 lican will blame me for saying and thinking like 
 Renard, who was a most excellent patriot. 
 
 There was, it seems, another reason for mur- 
 dering the aristocrats ; for when the proposal 
 was made for killing them en masse, Robin said 
 (Vol. III. Page 85) the patriots are in want of 
 bread; it is just that those scoundrels should per- 
 ish, and not eat up our victuals from us. — Kermen 
 opposed this ; but Robin exclaimed, none of your 
 moderate propositions here. I say they are a 
 
 h2 
 
90 
 
 parcel of aristocrats that wish to overturn the 
 republic, therefore let them die. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 106. 
 
 Crespin, one of the company of Marat, in- 
 forms the tribunal, that he was at a drowning on 
 board a lighter, where the prisoners were fasten- 
 ed down under boards, nailed from side to side. 
 They uttered, says he, the most piteous cries. 
 Some of them put their hands, folded in a sup- 
 plicating posture, through the openings between 
 the boards ; and I saw the members of the com- 
 mittee chop off those hands and fingers. One 
 of them plunged his sabre down in amongst the 
 prisoners, and We heard a man cry out. Oh ! the 
 rascal ! he has stabbed me ! — Our ears, adds the 
 witness, were now stunned with the cry of, Oh ! 
 you rascally, brutal savages ! this is the mercy, 
 this the humanity of republicans ! 
 
 One day, continues this witness, we saw Car- 
 rier in a coach at the foot of the guillotine, en- 
 joying the spectacle, while about twenty persons 
 were beheaded. — Naud was with me, who went 
 up to Carrier and asked him, if he did not want 
 a Marat. Yes, b— ger, says Carrier. I am your 
 man then, said Naud. 
 
 The new Marat was dispatched to call the 
 judges to the representative of the people ; and 
 when Philippe vent?jred to tell him that, among 
 
91 
 
 those whom he had ordered to the guillotine from 
 the BoufFay, there were two children of fomteen 
 years of age, and two others of thirteen, Carrier 
 fell in a violent passion : damned b — gers, says 
 he, in what country am 1 got ? All milk-hearted 
 rascals alike! 
 
 The following traits will prove that a ferocious 
 cruelty had taken possession of the hearts of the 
 young as well as the old. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 65. 
 
 Lalloue, says Naud, offered himself as an ex- 
 press to fetch back the one hundred and thirty- 
 two persons that were sent off to Paris. This 
 he said he would do for the pleasure of seeing 
 them drowned. 
 
 This Lalloue, continues the witness, was a 
 judge, and the companion of the representative 
 of the people, although but nineteen years of age. 
 — He had been convicted of theft, and boasted of 
 being one of the murderers of the prisoners at 
 Paris, in the month of September 1792. — Ah ! 
 says he one day to his companions on the bench, 
 you should have seen us at Paris in the month of 
 September. There you would have learned how 
 to knock them off. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 111. 
 
 Lecocq. I saw several men and women chop- 
 ped down, on board a Dutch sloop that lay iji 
 
92 
 
 the river. I saw a young lad assisting to drown 
 the prisoners at the last drowning ; particularly 
 one whom he unmercifully seized by the leg, 
 dragged to the side of the lighter, and kicked 
 overboard. 
 
 Vol III, Page 126. 
 
 Lcdllet informs the tribunal, that she saw a 
 lad of about seventeen or eighteen years of age 
 hew down two prisoners, and hack them with 
 his sabre at the prison of the BoufFay. They 
 were afterwards, adds the witness, dragged to 
 the water-side. 
 
 Vol III, Page 111. 
 
 . Fontbonne informs the tribunal, that, at the 
 request of Delille, he went to the Entrepot to 
 endeavour to save an innocent and amiable fami- 
 ly of females, the youngest of whom was about 
 thirteen years of age. Delille went with me. 
 When we came to the prison, we were conducted 
 to a horrid stinking hole under a staircase. We 
 asked for a candle, and, after some time, we got 
 into this sort of dungeon. Here we found the 
 mother and four daughters lying close to each 
 other upon some wet and filthy straw ; and round 
 about them there were several dead women. The 
 youngest daughter, whom alone we had obtained 
 permission to take, was covered up in her mother's 
 
93 
 
 gown to keep her warm.— When we told the poor 
 mother our errand; no, said she, mj child shall 
 stay and die with myself; we have lived, and we 
 will die together.— We thought ourselves justi- 
 fied, adds the witness, in using force. When the 
 mother perceived our resolution, she uttered such 
 dreadful lamentations as are impossible to be de- 
 scribed. My child ! oh ! my dear, darling child ! 
 were the last words her daughter ever heard from 
 her. The child never recovered the stroke ; she 
 pined away about eight months, and then died. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 113. 
 
 ^ The same witness says, I saw a great number 
 of persons conducted from the place of Equality, 
 to be shot at the Mauves. There were women 
 and children of all ages amongst them. My 
 heart could not support this spectacle ; I ran home, 
 saddled my horse, and rode to the place of exe- 
 cution. When I arrived the poor creatures were 
 all on their knees, and the soldiers were prepar- 
 ing to fire. I rushed through them, and had the 
 good fortune to save eight of the children, the 
 oldest of which was twelve years of age, the 
 rest were shot with their fathers and mothers. 
 
 Vol IIL Page 114. 
 
 Laurency informs the tribunal, that he saw at 
 ©ne time, three hundred men conducted to the^ 
 
94 
 
 water. They were all naked, and had their hands 
 tied behind them. I saw too, adds the witness, 
 several women and girls murdered, on board a 
 barge in the river, two of whom, aged about 
 eighteen years, I saw a young lad behead with 
 his sabre, while he sung the Carmagnole. 
 
 Vol IIL PageUp, 
 
 Soiidroc, At a great dinner, to which Lam- 
 bertye, the chief murderer, invited Carrier, I wa^ 
 a witness of a most scandalous scene. After 
 the repast was over, and while the glass went 
 round, Jiambertye entertained us with along and 
 full account of a drowning he had performed the 
 night before, and boasted of the manner in which 
 he sabred the poor vv^retches that attempted to 
 escape. All, the convives, adds the witness, 
 honoured his valour with long and repeated 
 bur^sts of applause.— Carrier toasted the national 
 bath.-— This monster talked of nothing but deatk 
 and the guillotine. 
 
 Another witness says, (Vol. III. Page 123,) I 
 saw Carrier, with his drawn sword in his hand, 
 threatening to guillotine the first person, who 
 should dare to show the least pity for the prison- 
 ers that were conducted to execution. 
 
 And another (Vol. II.) says: Carrier came 
 one day to look at the lighters that were con- 
 structing for the drownings, and turning to Fou- 
 calt ? charmingly com.modious indeed ! says he. 
 
9^ 
 
 Do jou hear ? added he, pay these lads well for 
 their labour. 
 
 Vol III. Page 126. 
 
 An old man appeared at the bar. I attest, says 
 he, that I was ill treated by the revolutionary 
 committee, because I requested the release of a 
 young girl who was entirely innocent. The com- 
 mittee told me that I had no business to meddle 
 with any such people. My nephew and my son- 
 in-law were shot for no crime whatever ; and, adds 
 the old man, I had the grief to see my own chil- 
 dren dragged from my house to the fatal lighters. 
 One of them who made an attempt to escape from 
 the hands of his barbarous executioners, was 
 caught and shot. 
 
 I dare say the reader is ready to weep for this 
 poor distressed father ; but let him reserve his 
 tears for more worthy objects. This old man 
 was murderer like the rest, and his own family 
 had fallen into the pit he had dug for another. 
 Yes, reader, this grey headed, ferocious old tiger 
 who complains of the cruelties of others, ends his 
 evidence by accusing Carrier, even Carrier, of ha- 
 ving shown an act of mercy !— I accuse him, says 
 the hoary assassin (Page 26) of being no patriot^ 
 since he did not execute the wife of Temploirie? 
 whom I informed against as an emigrant. 
 
m 
 
 Vol IV. Page 148. 
 
 Juget, a judge at Nantz, reads, from the regis- 
 ter of his tribunal, an order of Carrier, to send 
 thirty-six men, twenty women, and four children 
 to be shot, without being heard or tried. This 
 was accordingly done. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 148. 
 
 Poupon deposes, that he was witness of a 
 drowning, when the Company of Marat went and 
 dragged sick persons from the hospital in order to 
 make up a lighter full.— -Some of these persons, 
 adds the witness, could scarcely crawl along, and 
 I saw these murderers beat them most cruelly with 
 great sticks, crying : along with you b — gers ! 
 march ! march ! we will give you sweet air 
 enough now. — Others they dragged along by the 
 hair of the head, till they got them on board of 
 the lighter. — All this time, says the witness, the 
 conductors of the expedition kept hollowing out 
 come, come, my lads, be quick! along with the 
 b— gers ! ihe tide falls apace : there is no time to 
 be lost. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 151. 
 Seguinel, one of the Company of Marat, in- 
 
97 
 
 forms the tribunal that Goullin and Chaux con- 
 ducted some of the company, one day, to the 
 house of Carrier. When we came, says this un- 
 der cut-throat, into the presence of the Represen- 
 tative of the people, our conductors told him we 
 were good lads, citizens on whom he might rely. 
 So much the better, says Carrier, adding, depend 
 on it, my boys, if you do your duty like good 
 b — gers, the Republic, which is never ungrateful, 
 will pay you well. 
 
 While we were there, says the witness, Lam- 
 bertye came, and went into another room with 
 Carrier. Goullin asked Grand Maison who that 
 man was. He is a second Marat, replied the latter ; 
 and is now, without doubt, receiving orders to 
 communicate to us. 
 
 Marat. 
 
 The name of Marat has been so often mention- 
 ed, it may not be improper, or out of place, to give 
 the reader here some account of that famous cut- 
 throat. 
 
 Before the Revolution, he was an obscure beg- 
 garly fellow, that was daily liable to be brought 
 before the officer of police to account of the manner 
 in which he got his bread. Biit, when this grand 
 event took place ; when murderers were wanted 
 in every quarter of the country, he began to cut a 
 figure on the scene. He published a gazette, in 
 
98 
 
 which he inculcated the necessity of lopping off 
 the heads of thousands at a time, and of watering, 
 as he called it, the tree of liberty with the blood 
 of the aristocrats, as the only means of rendering 
 it fruitful. 
 
 These, and such like sentiments, recommended 
 him to the notice of his countrymen : he obtained 
 their confidence, and was one of the organizers 
 (to use a French term) of the massacres of the 
 2d and 3d of September, 1792, of which I have 
 spoken in the first chapter of this work. On this 
 occasion he was an actor also, and is said to have 
 cut above fifty throats with his own hands. 
 
 It would have been something unjust if a man 
 like this had been forgotten, when the Convention 
 was to assemble. He was not. The people of 
 Paris, who had been eye witnesses of his merit, 
 chose him for one of their representatives ; and 
 he was faithful in the execution of his trust ; for 
 he never talked about any thing but of throats to 
 cut, stabbing and guillotining. 
 
 His career, however, was but short. His own 
 neck was not made of iron : a desperate woman, 
 who had adopted his principles, rushed into his 
 apartment, and delivered the world of one of the 
 greatest monsters that ever dishononoured it. 
 
 There was something horrible in the look of 
 this villain. He was very short and thick, had a 
 black beard ascending nearly to the extreme cor- 
 
99 
 
 uers of his eyes. This beard was usually long, 
 and his hair short, sticking up like bristles. He 
 had ever been dirty^ and it may be imagined, that 
 the fashions of a revolution which has made it a 
 crime to be well dressed^ had not improved his 
 appearance : in short, he was, at the very best, a 
 most disgusting mortal, and, therefore, when he 
 came out of the prison of La Force, all covered 
 with filth and gore, wielding a pistol in one hand 
 and a dagger in the other, no wonder that even 
 the sanguinary mob ran back for fear. 
 
 Charlotte Cor dee. 
 
 As I have entered on a digression, I will con- 
 tinue it a little longer, to give the reader an ac- 
 count of the execution of Charlotte Cordee, the 
 young woman that murdered Marat. 
 
 She was not what is commonly called an aris- 
 tocrat ; but a patriot of another faction than Marat. 
 She was, as it is said, employed by the party of 
 Brissot, who, from the accomplishments of Marat, 
 were afraid that he would totally engross the 
 favour and affections of the people. Poor Char- 
 lotte received her reward on the scaffold, and a 
 very just reward too ; but there is something so 
 shocking in the behaviour of her executioner, that 
 it ought not to be omitted in a collection of this 
 kind. 
 
 She was a beautiful young woman ; extremely 
 
100 
 
 fair; and, in any other country, would have 
 brought tears of compassion from the spectators. 
 The executioner, after having cut off her head, 
 seized it by the fine long hair, and, holding it up 
 by one hand, the brutal ruffian gave her a slap in 
 the face with the other. " The bitch blushes," 
 cried he, " at any rate." This trait of hangman 
 wut, excited the savage mirth of the populace.* 
 
 We must now return to Nantz, where we shall 
 find the revolutionary committee employed in 
 writing to their friends at Paris. 
 
 Before they began to drown and shoot by hun- 
 dreds, they had seized on the persons of one hun- 
 dred and thirty- two of the most opulent men in 
 the city, and sent them off to Paris to be tried as 
 suspected persons. It appears, from the whole 
 course of the evidence on this head, that the de- 
 tachment of patriots who conducted them, were, 
 if any pretence could be found, to murder them 
 all by the way. This, however, did not happen. 
 The prisoners arrived safe at Paris, and the com- 
 mittee were obliged to have recourse to other 
 means, to prevent their return. The one that 
 they adopted was to insure their guillotining at 
 Paris ; and, for thts purpose, they wrote to the 
 revolutionary committee of the section of Lepel- 
 
 * It is something very remarkable, that her face, severed 
 from the body, should blush ; but it is a real fact, as appears 
 from an essay lately published at Philadelphia, in Gatreau's 
 gazette. 
 
101 
 
 letier. — Their letter is, and 1 hope it ever will be, 
 a curiosity in this country. 1 shall give it a literal 
 translation, that the reader may be able to do 
 justice to the memory of the writers. 
 
 Vol IV. Fage 179. 
 
 Nmitz, this 5th of Pluviose.— Libert j. Equality^ 
 
 or Death, 
 
 Citizens, 
 
 . The people of Nantz, whom we have sent to 
 Paris, are big villains, all marked with the seal 
 of reprobation, and known for counter-revolution- 
 ists. We are collecting proofs against them, 
 which we vshall send, when the bundle is made 
 up, to the revolutionary judges. In the mean 
 time, we denounce to you. Julienne, who has 
 officiously taken upon him the defence of these 
 uncivic vermin. 
 
 Vol IV Page 280. 
 
 Fxom the moment the revolutionary committee 
 was installed, says Benety the imprisonments be- 
 ^an ; and they augmented daily. They were all 
 dictated by animosity, hatred, or avarice. To 
 such a degree did terror prevail, that every man 
 trembled for his life. 
 
 For my part, says the witness, my resolution 
 was taken* I always went with two loaded pis- 
 
 i2 
 
102 
 
 tols in my pockets : one for the villian that should 
 offer to seize me, and the other for myself. Cruel 
 expectation, for a man who had a small helpless 
 family. But, I had seen six hundred men at one 
 time plunged into the water, and had been a wit- 
 ness of shootings amounting to three thousand 
 six hundred persons at the Gigan : after this what 
 could any man hope for. 
 
 There is reason to believe, that Carrier meant 
 to murder the whole city ; for, before his jourmy 
 to Paris, he told one of the women whom he 
 kept, and whose husband he had put to death, 
 that he would make Nantz remember the name of 
 Carrier ; do not fear, my dear, said he, all my 
 friends shall follow me ; but as for the city it 
 shall be destroyed. (Page 219.) 
 
 I was, one day, adds the same witness, sent by 
 jBodin to see some bodies buried, that were left 
 on the public square. There were upwards of 
 thirty women, all naked, and exposed with the 
 most horrible indecency. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 206. 
 
 Fontaine, I went one day to a prison where 
 a great many women and children were confined* 
 My business was to deliver provisions ta these 
 people ; but I found neither fire, lights, nor any 
 thing else. I called for a candle in order to enter 
 this abode of horror. The prisoners were lying 
 
103 
 
 here and there on the bare boards, though it was 
 extremely cold. 
 
 In a second visit that I made here, I found the 
 poor unhappy creatures in a worse situation than 
 before ; I saw a woman lying dead, and a suck- 
 ling child, at a little distance from her, wallowing 
 about in the filth. Its little face was absolutely 
 covered with ordure. I gave the keeper ten livres 
 to take care of this helpless infant, till I could 
 iind a nurse ; but, when i came for it, it was 
 gone ; and Dumey told me, that the English 
 prisoners had taken the child^ with a promise to 
 do well by it. 
 
 It seems, from the evidence of several witness- 
 es, that, while these villains were butchering, or 
 stifling their own countrymen, they took care to 
 treat foreign prisoners with some sort of humani- 
 ty. This distinction fully proves, that they acted 
 by the authority of the Convention. But we 
 shall see this so incontestibly proved by-and-by^ 
 that the remark is hardly necessary here. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 210. 
 
 I saw, says the same witness, a man, named 
 Gorgo, come and ask for a little boy, that he said 
 he had obtained permission to take. The child 
 was found behind a bundle of stuff, where he had 
 run to hide upon hearing voices. Gorgo brought 
 him to the door-way, and made him dance and 
 sing. 
 
104 
 
 I have selected this last fact to show to what a 
 pitch of obduracy, of unfeeling indifference, these 
 people were arrived. A thousand volumes could 
 not paint their familiarity with scenes of horror 
 so well as this trifling circumstance of making a 
 child dance and sing, at the entrance of a cavern 
 of despair, a human slaughter house, where per- 
 haps his own parents were at that moment groan- 
 ing their last. 
 
 Vol, IV, Page 210. 
 
 Chaiix, one of the criminals, informs the tribu- 
 nal, that he was dispatched from Nantz to wait on 
 Carrier, during his stay at Paris. He told me, 
 says Chaux, that he did not like Philippes, and 
 that we should guillotine him, at my return. — I 
 have communicated, says Carrier, all our pro- 
 ceedings to the National Convention. — You must 
 not, adds he, try Lambertye ; he is too precious 
 a patriot. I intend to send for him here, and 
 present him to the committee of public preserva- 
 tion (salut public) who will not leave him unre- 
 compensed for his services. 
 
 Jicquieau says (Page 276,) that Lambertye 
 was the chief murderer, — This it was that made 
 him a precious patriot, and a man worthy of re- 
 ward from a committee of the National Conven- 
 tion. 
 
 This witness adds : when the committee of 
 
105 
 
 Naiitz was first installed, a deputation was seiit 
 to Carrier, to let him know that no proofs could 
 be made out against Jomard. The representative 
 of the people, seeing the deputation enter, cried 
 out, what are all these b — gers come here for ? 
 When he heard our business, to hell with yoti, 
 says he, you fool. But, seeming to grow a little 
 calm, he called me back into his room, and threat- 
 ened to throw me out of the window. At last, 
 says the witness, he told me there were other 
 means besides guillotining ; you have only, say§ 
 he, to send Jomard into the country, and have 
 him dispatched secretly. 
 
 Here we behold a member of the National 
 Convention of France ; one of those philosophi- 
 cal legislators, who call themselves the enlighten- 
 ers of the universe. This base, this cowardly 
 cut-throat, this assassin-general, is one of those 
 men, whom we have been told, are to regenerate 
 mankind, and to establish a system of universal 
 humanity ! 
 
 The following traits well depict the leaders in 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 Vol IV. Page 213. 
 
 Robin, says a witness, was one of the accom- 
 plices of Carrier. This Robin, one day, showed 
 his sabre, all stained with blood, saying at the 
 
106 
 
 same time, with this I chopped off sixty of the 
 heads of the aristocrats that we drowned last 
 night. 
 
 Vol IK Page 209. 
 
 Fontaine informs the tribunal, that he was one 
 night at the Entrepot, Here, says the witness, 
 I saw a little man (this afterwards appears to 
 have been Fouquet) wearing pantaloons, and a 
 liberty cap. It is I, said the little monster, who 
 conduct all the drownings ; it is I who give the 
 word of command to pull up the plugs ; nothing 
 is done without my orders. If you will come 
 along with me, continued he, I will show you 
 how to feed upon the flesh of an aristocrat ; I 
 will regale you wdth the brains of those rascals. 
 — I trembled, says the witness, and got away 
 from this cannibal as soon as I could. 
 
 Vol, IV, Page 276. 
 
 Fonthonne informs the tribunal, that he was 
 one day invited to a dinner, in a pleasure garden 
 belonging to Ducrois. Carrier and O'Sullivan 
 were of the party. The conversation turned on 
 the bodily strength of certain persons, when 
 O'Sullivan observed ; '' yes, there vi^as my bro- 
 ther, who was devilish strong, particularly in the 
 neck, for the executioner was obliged to give him 
 the second stroke with the national razor ^ before 
 he could get his head off." 
 
107 
 
 The witness adds : O'Sullivaii told us, that he 
 was going to drown a man much stronger than 
 himself; that the man resisted, but was knocked 
 down ; then, says O' Sullivan, 1 took my knife 
 and stuck him, as butchers do the sheep. 
 
 Guedon informs the tribunal (Vol. IV. Page 
 277) that he was at the same dinner, mentioned 
 by Fontbonne. I was seated, says this witness, 
 by the side of O' Sullivan ; and, during the re- 
 past, he held up his knife to me, and said, this is 
 excellent to cut a man's throat with ; adding, that 
 it had already done him good service in that way. 
 He called on Robin as a witness of his bravery, 
 and told us the manner in which he proceeded. — 
 I had remarked, says O'Sullivan, that the butch- 
 ers killed their sheep by plunging their knife in 
 underneath the ear ; so, when I had a mind to 
 kill a prisoner, I came up to him, and, clapping 
 him on the shoulder in a jocular way, pointed to 
 some object that he was obliged to turn his head 
 to see ; the moment he did this, I had my knife 
 through his neck. 
 
 This O' Sullivan, in his defence, says, that, as 
 to his brother, he was an enemy of the Republic. 
 When he saw, says this human butcher, that 
 there was no hope for him, he came and threw 
 himself into my arms ; but, like a good republi- 
 can^ I gave him up to the guillotine. 
 
 Vol IL Page 2S1. 
 A witness says, that Goullin beat his own 
 
108 
 
 father with a stick, when the old man was on his 
 death-bed ; and adds, that his father died in two 
 hours after. 
 
 This same Goullin (Vol. II. Page 253) said in 
 the tribune of his club, take care not to admit 
 among you moderate men, half patriots. Admit 
 none but real revolutionists ; none but patriots 
 who have the courage to drink a glass of human 
 blood, warm from the veins. 
 
 Goullin, so far from denying this, says before 
 the tribunal, (Page 254,) that he glories in think- 
 ing like Marat, who would willingly have quench- 
 ed his thirst with the blood of the aristocrats. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter, this frightful tra- 
 gedy exhibited at Nantz, with the relation of a 
 few traits of diabolical cruelty, which not only 
 surpass all that the imagination has hitherto 
 been able to conceive, but even all that has been 
 related in this volume. I have classed these facts 
 together, that the indignant reader may tear out 
 the leaf, and commit it to the flames. 
 
 Yes, (says the author of La Conjuration, page 
 160,) yes ; we have seen a representative of the 
 people, a member of the National Convention, tie 
 four children, the eldest of which was but sixteen 
 years of age, to the four posts of the guillotine, 
 while the blood of their father and mother stream- 
 ed on the scaffold, and even dropped on their 
 heads. 
 
109 
 
 I Vol V. Page 36. 
 
 Lailet deposes, that Deron came to the popu- 
 lar society with a man's ear, pinned to the na- 
 tional cockade, which he wore in his cap. He 
 went about, says the witness, with a pocket full 
 of these ears, which he made the female prison- 
 ers kiss. If I was not afraid, adds the witness, 
 of for ever blackening the page of our history, I 
 would here relate a fact, that calls down tenfold 
 vengeance on the head of this monster. 
 
 The witness is ordered to proceed. 
 
 This same Deron, adds the witness, carried 
 about him a handful of private parts, which he had 
 cut from the men whom he had murdered ; and 
 these he showed to the women, whenever an og- 
 casion offered. 
 
 This last trait, abominable as it is, might hav€ 
 been mentioned in a Paris tribunal, without that 
 ceremony which the witness made use of; for 
 even the ivomen of Paris had set Deron the ex- 
 ample. Their knives had been exercised on the 
 dead bodies of the Swisses, who were killed at the 
 king's castle, on the 10th of August, 1792. On 
 that very 10th of August, which has so often been 
 celebrated on this continent. 
 
 K 
 
110 
 
 Vol IL Page 267. 
 
 Many of the generals in La Vendee, says For- 
 get, made it their glory to imitate the horrid 
 butchers at Nantz. They committed unheard of 
 cruelties and indecencies. General Duquesnoy 
 murdered several infants at the breast, and after- 
 wards attempted to lie with the mothers ; but not 
 being able to succeed, , he had the operation per- 
 formed another way. This he called electrifying. 
 
 This is the infernal monster that styled himself 
 the butcher of the Convention, and that said, no- 
 thing hurt him so much as not being able to serve 
 them in the capacity of executioner. 
 
 Vol IL Page 12^. 
 
 I saw, says Girault, about three or four hun- 
 dred persons drowned. There were women of 
 all ages among them ; some were big with child, 
 and of these several were delivered in the very 
 lighters, among water and mud. This most 
 shocking circumstance, their groans, their heart- 
 piercing shrieks, excited no compassion. They, 
 Ivith the fruit of their conjugal love, went to the 
 bottom together. 
 
 Vol IL Page 153. 
 
 Coron, A woman going to be drowned, was 
 taken in child-birth ; she was in the act of de- 
 
Ill 
 
 livery, when the horrid villains tore the child from 
 her body, stuck it on the point of a bayonet, and 
 thus carried it to the river. 
 
 A fourth of these our representatives (says the 
 author of La Conjuration^ page 160,) a fourth, 
 (great God 1 my heart dies within me,) a fourth 
 ripped open the wombs of the mothers ; tore out 
 the palpitating embryo, to deck the point of a 
 pike of liberty and equality ! 
 
 The reader's curiosity may, perhaps, lead him 
 to wish to know the w hole number of persons put 
 to death at Nantz ; but, in this, it would be diffi- 
 cult to gratify him. I have been able to obtain 
 hxxt jive volumes of the trial, which makes only a 
 part of that work ; probably the last volume may 
 contain an exact account as to numbers. The 
 deaths must, hewever, have been immense, since 
 a witness deposes (Vol. III. Page 6b) to the 
 drowning of nine thousand persons ; and another 
 witness (Vol. II. Page 253) attests, that seven 
 thousand five hundred were shot en masse, 
 
 TJie number of bodies thrown into the river 
 Loire, which is half the width of the Delaware 
 at Philadelphia, was so considerable, that the 
 municipal officers found it necessary to issue a 
 proclamation (Vol. V. Page 70) forbidding the 
 use of its ivaters. 
 
 It has been generally computed that the num- 
 
112 
 
 ber of persons, belonging to this unfortunate 
 city and its environs, who were drowned, shot 
 en masse, guillotined, and stifled or starved in 
 prison, amounted to shout forty thousand. And, 
 this computation is corroborated by the author of 
 La Conjuration, who says, (Page 159 ;) the 
 number of persons murdered in the south of 
 France, during the space of a very few months, 
 is reckoned at a hundred thousand. The bodies 
 thrown into the Loire are innumerable. Carrier 
 alone put to death more than forty thousand, in- 
 cluding men, women and children. 
 
 It appears, then, that these bloody revolution- 
 ists, who styled themselves the friends of freedom 
 and of mankind, destroyed, in one city of France, 
 a population equal to that of the capital of the 
 United States. 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 Facts from several ivorks, proving that the cruel- 
 ties related in the preceding chapters, ivere au- 
 thorized, or approved of by the National As- 
 semblies, 
 
 After having led the reader through such 
 rivers of blood, it seems indispensably necessary 
 to insert a few facts, showing by whose authority 
 that blood was spilt ; for, it could answer no 
 
113 
 
 good purpose to excite his detestation, without 
 directing it towards the proper object. 
 
 When the French first began that career of 
 insurrection, robbery and murder, which assuni- 
 edthe name of a Revolution, the people of this 
 country, or at least the most numerous part of 
 them, felt uncommon anxiety for its success. The 
 people were deceived ; but the deception was an 
 agreeable one ; the word Revolution had of it- 
 self very great charms, but when that of Liberty 
 was added to it, it could not fail of exciting en- 
 thusiasm. This enthusiasm was, indeed, nearly 
 general ; and this alone was a sufficient induce- 
 ment for the public prints to become the parti- 
 zans of Condorcet and Mirabeau. All the ave- 
 nues to truth were at once barred up ; and, 
 though the revolutionists every day changed their 
 creed, though one revolving moon saw them make 
 and break their oaths, all was amply atoned for 
 by their being engaged in a Revolution. 
 
 As the Revolution advanced the enthusiasm 
 increased ; but from the moment that the French 
 nation declared itself a Republic^ this enthusiasm 
 was changed to madness. All the means by 
 which this change of government was accom- 
 plished were totally overlooked ; nothing was 
 talked or dreamed of but the enfranchisement of 
 the world ; the whole universe was to become a 
 republic, or be annihilated ; and happy was he 
 who could bawl loudest about a certain some- 
 thing, called liberty and equality. 
 
 k2 
 
114 
 
 During this political madness, however, now 
 and then a trait of shocking barbarity, in spite 
 of all the endeavours of the public papers, 
 burst in upon us, and produced a lucid interval ; 
 but these intervals have never yet been of long 
 duration ; because every subterfuge, that interest- 
 ed falsejiood can devise, has been made use of to 
 give our abhorrence a direction contrary to that 
 which it ought to have taken. We have heard 
 Brissot, Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, all ac- 
 cused in their turns of shedding innocent blood ; 
 but the National Assembly itself, they tell us, has 
 ever remained worthy of our admiration. The 
 poor unsuccessful agents of this terrible divan 
 have been devoted to execration, as tyrants, while 
 their employers have been, and are yet held up to 
 us, as the friends of liberty and the lovers of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Without further remark, I shall add such facts 
 as I imagine, will enable every reader to judge 
 for himself. 
 
 To begin wdth the constituent assembly ; one 
 proof of their approving of murder will suffice. 
 They honoured with the title of vanquishers, a 
 blood-thirsty mob, w^ho after having taken two 
 men prisoners, cruelly massacred them, and car- 
 ried their heads about the streets of Paris on a 
 pike. See Rabaud?s history of the French Revo- 
 lution, page 106. 
 
 The second Assembly, when they received ad- 
 
115 
 
 vices of the murders of Jaudon and his associates 
 at Avignon, as mentioned in the first chapter of 
 this work, threatened the member who communi- 
 cated the news, because he had called the murder- 
 ers brigands^ and not patriots. See La Gazette 
 Universelie for the month of May 1792. — And, 
 how did this Assembly behave, when informed of 
 the massacres in the prisons of Paris, during the 
 first days of September, 1792? Tallien (of whom 
 we have lately heard so much) came to the Na- 
 tional Assembly, and informed them of the murder- 
 ing in the following remarkable words: "The 
 commissaries have done all they could to prevent the 
 disorders (the massacreing the prisoners is what he 
 calls disorders) but they have not been able to 
 stop the, in some sort, just vengeance of the peo- 
 ple." — The Assembly heard this language very 
 quietly, and Dr. Moore, from whose journal (page 
 178) the fact is taken, makes an apology for the 
 Assembly, by saying that they were overaived ; 
 but it has since fully appeared, that the leading 
 members were the very persons who contrived 
 the massacre, with the aid of Petion, Manuel, 
 and Marat. — It is a well known fact, recorded by 
 the Abbe Barruel (page 334) that Louvet, one of 
 the members of the present Assembly, gave, the 
 day after the September massacre, an order on the 
 public treasury, in the following words: " On 
 sight, pay to the foun hearers each twelve livres, 
 for aiding in the dispatching of the priests at the 
 prison of St, Firminy — Louvet was, at the time 
 of writing this note on demand for murderer's 
 wages, a legislator; and I cannot help remarking 
 
lie 
 
 here, that a printer of a news-paper in the United 
 States, has lately boasted, that this Louvet, 
 " now president of the first Assembly on earth," 
 says our printer, was the editor of a gazette ! — 
 People should be cautious how they boast of re- 
 lationship with the legislators in that country of 
 equality. 
 
 As it will no longer be pretended, I suppose, 
 that this second Assembly disapproved of the 
 murders that were committed under their reign, 
 I will now turn to the third Assembly, which we 
 commonly call a Convention. And, not to tire 
 the reader with proofs of what is self evident, I 
 shall confine myself to an extract or two from 
 the trial of Carrier and the revolutionary commit- 
 tee of Nantz. 
 
 Vol K Page 49. 
 
 It is time, says Goullin, to tear aside the veil. 
 The representatives, Bourbotte and Bo, knew all 
 about the drownings and shootings ; and Bo even 
 said to Huchet, in speaking of the members of 
 the revolutionary committee, that it was not for 
 the murders that they were to be tried. 
 
 After this the counsellor for the committee, 
 asks this citizen Bo, what was the real motive 
 -for bringing the committee to trial ; and the other 
 confesses, that it was for their having misapplied 
 the treasures taken from the prisoners. He pre- 
 
117 
 
 tends (page 60) though he had taken the place of 
 Carrier at Nautz, and though the water of the 
 iiver could not be drank, on account of the dead 
 bodies that were floating on it ; though a hundred 
 or two of ditches had been dug to put the people 
 into that were shot, and though the city was filled 
 with cries and lamentations ; notwithstanding all 
 this, he pretends that he could say nothing, for 
 certain, about the murders. 
 
 This representative Bo (page 83,) is convicted 
 of having himself justified the conduct of the 
 committee and of Carrier. 
 
 Carrier, in his defence, says, that he had done 
 no more than his duty, and that the Convention 
 had been regularly informed of every thing. They 
 complain now, says he, (page 119) of shooting en 
 masse, as if the same had not been done at Angers, 
 Saumur, Laval, and every where else, 
 
 A witness (Vol. V. Page 60,) informs the tri- 
 bunal, that he, who was himself a member of the 
 Convention, had informed that body of all the 
 horrors that were committed at Nantz, and parti- 
 cularly of the massacres of women and children. 
 
 The author of La Conjuration, so often quoted 
 says (page 162 :) When the bloody Carrier wrote 
 to the Convention that he was dispatching hun- 
 dreds at a time by means of lighters with plugs 
 in the bottom. Carrier was not blamed ; on the 
 contrary, he was repeatedly applauded, as being 
 
118 
 
 the author of an invention that did honour to hi^ 
 country. 
 
 The following extract will show that the author 
 of the History of Jacobinism agrees with me in 
 opinion here. In speaking of the massacres of 
 Paris, he says : 
 
 " The revolution had now taken so horrible and 
 so decided a turn, the different rulers, whether 
 Girondists or Mountaineers, were all so evidently 
 culpable, and so deeply immersed in guilt, that 
 there is neither room nor occasion for any dispute 
 about the difference of culpability. It might do 
 for themselves to make distinctions and to claim 
 one action as patriotism, and blame another as 
 oppression and injustice; but we must confess 
 that, except to themselves, no such distinctions 
 are apparent. 
 
 " It would be useless to fatigue ourselves by 
 following out the manoeuvres of the leading par- 
 ties, in order to conceal their participation; that 
 would be supposing a possibility of doubt con- 
 cerning their guilt, when there can be none. All 
 that can be admitted is, that there were some in- 
 dividuals who co-operated more through fear than 
 through guilt ; but that there is any difference of 
 criminality amongst the leaders, we must absolute- 
 ly deny, when the public force was ten times 
 more than sufficient to have prevented the massa- 
 cres from beginning, or to have stopped them ia 
 the first hour when begun. 
 
119 
 
 " Let us turn away from these dreadful scenes 
 a moment, and consider the language of Roland, 
 who, as first minister, might have made an effort 
 to stop this bloody career. Roland was the chief 
 of the party, which affected to blame these ex- 
 cesses : from his letter we shall see that it was to 
 the continuation of insurrection and insubordina- 
 tion that he attributed all this. The whole of the 
 letter is long, and much of it consists of a profes- 
 sion of faith, and a regard to conscience, which 
 if it had spoke very loudly, would have told him 
 that he should have been protecting his fellow 
 creatures, and exacting obedience to the law, in 
 preference to writing long letters on the 4th of 
 September; but the following phrases are com- 
 plete, without any thing added or taken away 
 that may alter their meaning." 
 
 " I know that revolutions are not to be calcu- 
 lated by common rules ; but I know likewise, that 
 the power which makes them ought soon to ar- 
 range itself under obedience to the law, if total 
 destruction is not intended . The anger of the peo- 
 ple and the movement of insurrection are compar- 
 able to the action of a torrent, which overturns 
 obstacles which no other power is able to destroy, 
 but of which the overspreading will carry far and 
 wide the ravage and devastation, if it does not 
 soon return to its usual course. The day of the 
 1 0th of August, it is evident, was necessary ; with- 
 out it we should have been lost; the court had 
 prepared long before to complete its treasons, by 
 
120 
 
 spreading the standard of death over Paris, and to 
 reign by fear." 
 
 But, what need have we of these proofs ! What 
 other testimony do we want, than that contained 
 in their own murderous decrees ? Let any one cast 
 his eye on the opposite page ; let him there be- 
 hold the scene that was daily exhibited before the 
 windows of their hall, and then let him say whe- 
 ther they delighted in murder or not. Blood is 
 their element, as water is that of the finny race.* 
 
 One thing, however, remains to be accounted 
 for ; and that is, how so great a part of the nation 
 were led to butcher each other ; how they were 
 brought to that pitch of brutal sanguinary ferocity, 
 which we have seen so amply displayed in the 
 preceding chapters. This is what, with the rea- 
 der's indulgence, I shall now, agreeably to my 
 promise, endeavour to explain. 
 
 See the Appendix, No. L 
 
121 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 TTie horrors of the French Revolution traced to 
 their real causes, the licentious politics and in- 
 fidel philosophy of the present age. 
 
 That the French were an amiable people, the 
 whole civilized world has given abundant testi- 
 mony, by endeavouring to imitate them. There 
 was not a nation in Europe but had, in some de- 
 gree, adopted their language and their fashions : 
 and all those individuals, belonging even to their 
 haughty rival enemy, who travelled in their coun- 
 try, were led by an involuntary impulse into an 
 imitation of their manners. 
 
 The prominent feature in their national charac- 
 ter was, it is true, levity; but, though levity and 
 ferociousness may, and often do, meet in the same 
 person, no writer, that I recollect, had ever accus- 
 ed the French of being cruel. If we are to judge 
 of their disposition by their national sports and en- 
 tertainments, we shall find no room to draw a 
 conclusion against their humanity. Those cruel 
 diversions, where men become the bullies of brute 
 creatures, and laugh at seeing them goad, and bite, 
 and tear each other to pieces, were never known 
 in France. Even in their theatrical performances 
 a dead body was never exhibited on the scene : 
 such a spectacle was thought to be too much for 
 the feelings of the audience. The works of their 
 
122 
 
 favourite authors generally breathe the greatest 
 tenderness and humanity. The nation that could 
 produce, and admire, a Marmontel and a Racine, 
 could not be naturally bloody minded. 
 
 " To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, 
 I turn— and France displays her bright domain. 
 Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, 
 Pleas'd with thyself whom all the world can please : 
 How often have I led thy sportive choir, 
 With tuneless pipe beside the murm'ring Loire ! 
 Where shading elms along the margin grew, 
 And, freshen'd from the wave the zephyr flew ; 
 And haply, tho' my harsh touch, falt'ring still, 
 But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill, 
 Yet would the village praise my wound'rous pow'r, 
 And dance forgetful of the noon-tide hour ! 
 Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days 
 Have led their children thro' the mirthful maze 5 
 And the gay grand-sire, skilled in gestic lore, 
 Has frisk'd beneath the burden of three-score. 
 So blest a life these thoughtless realms display, 
 Thus idly busy rolls their world away : 
 Theirs are those arts which mind to mind endear ; 
 For honour forms the social temper here." 
 
 These verses, extracted from the most elegant 
 poems, dictated by the best of hearts, contain the 
 justest character of the French nation, that I have 
 ever yet seen. To this character I am ready to 
 subscribe : for, I too have been charmed with 
 their gentle manners and their social ease : I too 
 have felt the powder of those arts w^hich endear 
 mind to mind : I have been a witness of their ur- 
 
123 
 
 banity, their respectful deference and attention to 
 the softer sex, their paternal tenderness, and their 
 veneration for old age. 
 
 Whence, then, the mighty, the dreadful change ? 
 What is it that has transformed a great portion of 
 this airy humane people into a horde of sullen as- 
 sassins ? What is it that has converted these 
 thoughtless realms, this gay sprightly land of 
 mirth, this bright domain, into a gloomy wilder- 
 ness, watered with rivers of human blood ? This 
 ought to be the great object of our inquiries: this 
 ought to fix all our attention. Without determining 
 this point, we can draw no profit from the prece? 
 ding relation ; and, without attempting it, I should 
 have undertaken the unpleasant task of holding 
 the French people up to reproach and detestation, 
 to no manner of purpose. 
 
 It has been asserted, again and again, by the 
 partizans of the French revolution, that all the 
 crimes which have disgraced it, are to be ascribed 
 to the hostile operations of their enemies. They 
 have told us, that, had not the Austrians and Prus- 
 sians been on their march to Paris, the prisoners 
 would not have been massacred, on the 2d and 3d 
 of September, 1792. But, can we possibly con- 
 ceive how the murder of 8,000 poor prisoners, 
 locked up and bound, could be necessary to the 
 defence of a capital, containing a million of inha- 
 bitants ? Can we believe that the sabres of the 
 assassins would not have been more effectually 
 employed against the invaders, than against de- 
 
124 
 
 ^ 
 
 fenceless priests and women. The deluded popu- 
 lace were told not " to leave the wolves in the fold 
 while they went to attack those that were with- 
 out." But these wolves, if they were such, were 
 in prison ; were under a guard, a hundred thou- 
 sand times as strong as themselves, and could have 
 been destroyed at a moment's warning. There 
 is something so abominably cowardly in this jus- 
 tijfication, that it is even more base than the crime. 
 Suppose that a hundred thousand men had 
 marched from Paris, to make head against the 
 Austrians and Prussians, there were yet nine 
 hundred thousand left to guard the unhappy 
 wretches that were tied hand and foot. Where 
 could be the necessity of massacreing them ? 
 Where could be the necessity of hacking them to 
 pieces, tearing out their bowels, and biting their 
 hearts ? 
 
 Subsequent events have fully proved, that it 
 was not danger that produced these bloody mea- 
 sures : for, we have ever seen the revolutionists 
 most cruel in times of their greatest security. 
 Their butcheries at Lyons and in its neighbour- 
 hood, did not begin till they were completely tri- 
 umphant. It was then, at the moment when they 
 had no retaliation to fear, that they commenced 
 their bloody work. Carrier, lolling at his ease, 
 sent the victims to death by hundreds. The 
 blood never flowed from the guillotine in such tor- 
 rents, as at the very time when their armies were 
 driving their enemies before them in every direc- 
 tion. 
 
125 
 
 Charles Fox, (who, by the by, would not have 
 made a bad cut-throat general) had the folly and 
 impudence to say, in the British house of Com- 
 mons, that the massacres in France ought to be 
 attributed to the Allied Powers. " You hunt 
 them like wild beasts," said this humane and 
 honest swindler, " and then you complain of them 
 for being ferocious." How this hunting, as Fox 
 calls it, could drive the French to butcher one an- 
 other, I cannot see ; but, if it was a justifiable 
 reason for them, it might certainly be applied with 
 much more justice to their enemies ; for these 
 have been oftener obliged to fly than the French. 
 The revolutionary armies have overrun an extent 
 of territory equal to one third of their own coun- 
 try: the Savoyards, the Germans, the Flemings, 
 the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the English, have 
 been obliged to fly before them ; but we have 
 heard of no massacres among these people. The 
 French most unmercifully put to death eight thou= 
 sand of their country people, who were in the 
 prisons of Paris, and, as an excuse for this, they 
 tell us that the Duke of Brunswick had invaded 
 the province of Champagne ; but they them- 
 selves have overrun all the United Netherlands^ 
 and even taken possession of the capital ; and we 
 have not heard, that the Dutch have, as yet, been 
 guilty of a single massacre. They have found but 
 one place, in all their career, where the people 
 could be prevailed on to erect a guillotine, and 
 that was at Geneva. Here their army was more 
 numerous than the whole population of the state, 
 and therefore their system was fully adopted ; yet 
 
 L .2 
 
126 ^ 
 
 even here, among this little debased and tyran- 
 nized people, there were to be found no villains 
 infamous enough to imitate their masters in mur- 
 dering women and children. That was a species 
 of slaughter reserved for the French nation alone.* 
 
 The French revolution has been compared to 
 that of America, and I have heard some men, 
 calling themselves Americans, who have not been 
 ashamed to say, that as great cruelties were com- 
 mitted in this country as in that. I would now 
 ask these men, who are so anxious to be thought 
 as bloody as the sans-culotte French, if they can 
 give me one instance of the Americans murder- 
 ing their towns-men at the approach of the ene- 
 my ? When the British army succeeded that of 
 the Congress at Philadelphia, did the continental 
 troops murder all the tOries before they quitted 
 the city ? Can these generous friends of the 
 French revolution tell us of any massacres that 
 took place in this country ? Did they ever hear 
 of women and children being drowned and shot 
 hy hundreds ? Seven years of civil war desolated 
 these states, but the blood of one single woman 
 or child never stained the earth. 
 
 If the doctrine of the profligate Charles Fox 
 be admitted, if a people be justifiable in enter- 
 ing on a series of masacres, the instant they are 
 ,4)ressed by an enemy from without, what safety 
 can there be for any of us ? If a declaration of 
 
 See the Appendix, No. II. 
 
m 
 
 war is to unsheath the daggers of all the assas- 
 sins in the community, civil society is the great- 
 est curse that ever fell upon mankind. Much 
 better and safer were it for us to separate, and 
 prowl about like savages, nay, like beasts, than 
 to live thus, in continual trepidation, in continual 
 fear for our throats. 
 
 There is something so exceedingly cowardly 
 and ridiculous in this justification, that even 
 the French revolutionists are ashamed of it. 
 They have recourse to another, «till more dis- 
 honourable, it is true, but less cowardly. They 
 tell us, that all the assassins in France have been 
 in the pay of Great Britain ; or, to make use of 
 their own expression, have been excited to action 
 hy the " gold of Pitf^^ 
 
 As I wish to advance nothing without the best 
 possible authority, I shall here insert a passage 
 on this subject, taken from a Gazette published 
 at Philadelphia by one Gatreau, and at the press 
 of Moreau de St, Mery, who was a member of 
 the constituent assembly of France. 
 
 The intention of the piece evidently is to jus- 
 tify the French character, or rather the character 
 of the French revolutionists, by attributing the 
 horrid deeds these latter have committed, to some 
 cause other than their own dispositions and anar- 
 chical principles. To avoid all cavil with respect 
 to the authenticity of the extract, and the cor- 
 rectness of the translation, I will first give it in 
 
128 
 
 French, and then in English, observing, for the 
 further satisfaction of the reader, that he may 
 find the piece entire in the Gazette above mention- 
 ed, of the fourth of February, 1796. 
 
 '' Quel homme eclaire par Pexperience, nieroit 
 aujourd'hui, que, de la tete de Pitt sont sortis tous 
 les crimes qui fesoient abhorrer la Revolution 
 par ceux-la-meme qui en adoroient les principes ; 
 que, c'est au foyer de la jalousie et de la haine 
 Ailgloise, que s'allumerent les torches, que se 
 forgerent les poignards, qui ont fait un monceau 
 de cendres et de sang des plus belles possessions 
 du monde ? Quel genie malfaisant crea les fac- 
 tions impies, sanguinaires ou ambitieuses, qui de^ 
 voient aneantir la France, ou du moins la replacer 
 sous le joug, si la providence ne deconcertoit pas 
 toujours les complots de Piniquite ? — Le genie 
 infernal du ministre Anglois. — C'est avec I'or de 
 ses victimes de PInde qu'il payoit le sang Fran- 
 cois, verse a grand flots a Paris, dans les departe- 
 mens, aux frontieres et dans les colonies." 
 
 " What man, enlightened by experience, will 
 now deny, that, from the head of Pitt have come 
 all the crimes which have rendered the Revolution 
 detestable in the eyes of even those who adored 
 its principles ; that it was English jealousy and 
 hatred that lighted the flames, and sharpened the 
 poignards, which have reduced the finest posses- 
 sions in the world to a heap of ashes and blood ? 
 — What evil genius created the impious, sangui- 
 nary and ambitious factions, that were to annihi- 
 
129 
 
 late France ; or, at least, bend it again beneath 
 the yoke, if Providence had not disconcerted the 
 plans of iniquity ? — The infernal genius of the 
 English minister. It was with the gold, drawn from 
 his victims in India, that he paid for the French 
 blood, which has flowed in rivers at Paris, in the 
 departments, on the frontiers, and in the colo- 
 nies." 
 
 This is an important, and were it not so Very 
 hackneyed and thread -bare, I would call it a 
 ^'precious confessions^ Here we see a French- 
 man, a partizan of, and perhaps an actor in, the 
 revolution, endeavouring to wipe away the stain 
 on its principles, by ascribing all the horrors those 
 principles have produced, to the gold distributed 
 among the revolutionists by the English minister. 
 The cruelties that have been committed, were 
 not, then, necessary to the establishment of a 
 free government ; they were not the effect of ir- 
 ritation, of anarchial confusion, of vindictive re- 
 taliation ; they were not the natural consequence 
 of a long oppressed people's breaking their chains 
 and rising on their tyrants ; all these excuses 
 (which I must allow were silly enough) are at 
 once done away by this new justification ; for 
 we are here told, in so many words, that the 
 French people have shed rivers of each other's 
 blood, in every part of their dominions, purely 
 for the love — not of liberty, but of the gold of 
 Pitt 
 
 There is such a natural connection between 
 
130 
 
 the measures of the several National Assemblies 
 and the massacres that were the immediate con- 
 sequence of them, that it is impossible to effect a 
 separation without the utmost violence to all man- 
 ner of reasoning and truth. If it was the gold 
 of Pitt that paid for all the French blood that has 
 been spilled, it must have been that gold that paid 
 for the inhuman murder of Messrs. Launy and 
 Flessel, and it must have been that gold which 
 induced the constituent assembly to sanction the 
 murder, by giving the assassins of these gentle- 
 men the title of heroes and conquerors^ and by 
 instituting a national festival in their honour. 
 
 The Revolution was begun, ajid has hitherto 
 been maintained by the shedding of innocent 
 blood; therefore, if it was the gold of Pitt that 
 paid for that blood, it is to the gold of Pitt that 
 the revolution is to be ascribed, and not to that pa- 
 triotic spirit and love of liberty, with which we 
 have been so long amused. In the fourth chapter 
 of this work, it is incontestibly proved, that the 
 several National Assemblies authorized or ap- 
 proved of the massacres which have disgraced 
 their country ; if, then, these massacres were paid 
 for by Mr. Pitt, must we not inevitably conclude 
 that the National Assemblies were in the same 
 pay ! If Mr. Pitt paid for the blood of the family 
 of Bourbon, for that of the king's guards, of the 
 nobility, the clergy, the bankers, the merchants, 
 in short, of all the rich or aristocrats, as they are 
 called, it was Mr. Pitt who destroyed the monar- 
 chy : it was he who caused France to be called a 
 
131 
 
 Republic, and who gave rise to the doctrine of 
 equality. Those, therefore, who talk of the gold 
 of Pitt, must cease all their fulsome eulogiums on 
 these gallant republicans ; for, if they are to have 
 a republic, it will, according to their own confes- 
 sions, be the work of the English minister. 
 
 This vindication, throwing the blame on the 
 gold of Pitt, amply participates in the misfortune 
 of all the vindications that have lately appeared 
 amongst us ; that is, it takes up a bad cause, and 
 makes it worse. The reader will certainly feel, 
 with me, an inexpressible indignation at a people, 
 who^ because a hostile army was on their fron- 
 tiers, could be prevailed on to butcher thousands 
 upon thousands of their innocent countrymen ; 
 who could cut the throats of their fathers and mo- 
 thers, rip up the bowels of women with child, and 
 carry about the trophies of their base and savage 
 triumph on the points of their pikes and bayonets ; 
 but, what will be his feelings, what will contain 
 his swelling heart, when he is told, that all this 
 was undertaken and perpetuated for foreign gold ? 
 The revolutionists, by accusing Mr. Pitt of being 
 at the bottom of their massacres, do not perceive, 
 without doubt, that they are heaping ten times ten- 
 fold infamy on themselves and their nation. 
 
 By alleging this influence of British gold, the 
 writer I have above quoted reduces himself and 
 the partizans of the revolution to a most distres- 
 sing dilemma. He owns that rivers of French 
 blood have flowed at Paris, in the departments, 
 
132 
 
 on the frontiers, and in the colonies ; and he tells 
 us, that this blood was paid for with the gold of 
 Pitt. Now, admitting this to be true, this blood 
 has been shed, and this gold received, by French- 
 men, To what, then, will our author ascribe this 
 sanguinary avarice ? He must either ascribe it to 
 the natural disposition of his countrymen ; or, a 
 change in that natural disposition, produced by the 
 revolution. It is uncertain which of these he may 
 choose ; but it is very certain, choose which he 
 will, that he has held up the character of his na- 
 tion, or the principles of the revolution, to detesta- 
 tion and abhorrence. This is the way he has jus- 
 tified the French in the eyes of the people of this 
 country. Infinitely better were it for such justifiers 
 to suffer the press to rest in eternal inaction. All 
 that a good Frenchman can do, is, to weep over 
 the disgrace of his country ; for, so long as mur- 
 der, horrid, barbarous, savage murder, shall admit 
 of no excuse, so long shall the actions of the 
 French revolutionists remain unjustifiable. 
 
 It is more than probable, that a writer of this 
 stamp might be willing to allow, that his country- 
 men were always naturally ferocious and bloody- 
 minded, rather than confess that this disposition 
 has been produced by the principles of the revolu- 
 tion; for, patriots of this kind are ever ready to 
 sacrifice the honour of their country to the sup- 
 port of their systems. But justice demands from 
 us to reject, with disdain, every such conclusion. 
 We have seen the French people sprightly, bene- 
 ficent, humane and happy ; let us, now, follow 
 
133 
 
 them, step by step, into the awful opposite, and 
 see for ourselves, by what diabolical means the 
 change has been effected. 
 
 The first National Assembly had hardly assum- 
 ed that title, when they discovered an intention of 
 overturning the government, which they had been 
 called together, and which their constituents had 
 enjoined them, to support, and of levelling all 
 ranks and distinctions among the different orders 
 in the community. To this they were not led, as 
 it has been so falsely pretended, by their love of 
 liberty and desire of seeing their country happy ; 
 but by envy, cursed envy, that will never let the 
 fiery demagogue sleep in peace, while he sees a 
 greater or richer than himself. It has been ob- 
 jected to this, that there were among the revolu- 
 tionists men who already enjoyed distinguished 
 honours ; but it is forgotten, at the same time, 
 that ambition will be at the top, or no where ; 
 that it will destroy itself with the envied object, 
 rather than act a subaltern part. The motto of a 
 demagogue is that of Milton's Satan: ''rather 
 reign in hell than serve in heaven." 
 
 This task of destruction was, however, an ar- 
 duous one. To tear the complicated work of 
 fourteen centuries to pieces, at once, to render 
 honours dishonourable, and turn reverential awe 
 into contempt and mockery, was not to be ac- 
 complished but by extraordinary means. It was 
 evident that property must change hands, that the 
 best blood of the nation must flow in torrents, or 
 
 M 
 
134 
 
 the project must fail. The Assembly, to arm the 
 multitude on their side, broached the popular doc- 
 trine of equality. It was a necessary part of the 
 plan of these reformers to seduce the people to 
 their support : and such was the credulity of the 
 unfortunate French, that they soon began to look 
 on them as the oracles of virtue and wisdom, and 
 believed themselves raised, by one short sentence 
 issued by these ambitious impostors, from the 
 state of subjects to that of sovereigns,^ 
 
 " I punished" (says Solon, the Athenian law^- 
 giver) " I punished with death, all those aspiring 
 disturbers of the commonwealth, who, in order to 
 domineer themselves, and lead the vulgar in their 
 train, pretended that all men were equal, and 
 sought to confound the different ranks in society, 
 by preaching up a chimerical equality, that never 
 did or can exist." How happy would it have 
 been for France, had there been some Solon, 
 endued with wisdom and power enough to punish 
 the political mountebanks of the Constituent As- 
 sembly ! What dreadful carnage, what indelible 
 disgrace, the nation would have escaped ! Hardly 
 had the word equality been pronounced, when the 
 whole kingdom became a scene of anarchy and 
 confusion. The name of liberty (I say the name, 
 *^K:^oy the regenerated French have known nothing 
 of it but the name ;) the name of liberty had al- 
 ready half turned the heads of the people, and 
 that of equality finished the work. From the mo- 
 
 * See the Appendix, No. III. 
 
135 
 
 ment it sounded in their ears, all that had formerly 
 inspired respect, all that they had reverenced and 
 adored even, began to excite contempt and fury. 
 Birth, beauty, old age, all became the victims of 
 a destructive equality, erected into a law by aa 
 Assembly of ambitious tyrants, who were ready 
 to destroy every thing that crossed tlteir way to 
 absolute domination. 
 
 One of the immediate effects of the promulga- 
 tion of this doctrine was the murder of Monsieur 
 Foulon and his son-in-law Berthier, who, with- 
 out so much as being charged with any crime, 
 were taken by the people, conducted to Paris, 
 and cruelly massacred. I will say nothing (says 
 Du Gour, in his eloquent Memoire, page 35,) I 
 will say nothing of the savage cruelties committed 
 on Foulon and Berthier ; I will not represent the 
 bloody head of the father-in-law, offered to the 
 son to kiss, pressed against his lips, and after- 
 wards put under his feet ; 1 will not represent the 
 inhuman assassins rushing on Berthier, tearing 
 out his heart, and placing it, quivering and still 
 palpitating, on the table of the town-hall, before 
 the magistrates of the section.— After this, their 
 heads were stuck on pikes, and the heart of 
 Berthier on the point of a sword. In this man- 
 ner they were carried through the streets, followed 
 by the exulting populace. (See Rahaud?s History 
 of the French Revolution, page 117.) Nor let it 
 be pretended that the Assembly could not prevent 
 this shameful, this bloody deed. They had thfe 
 absolute command of Paris at the time, and had 
 
^36 
 
 two hundred thousand armed men ready to obey 
 then' nod. But the Assembly never opposed the 
 murder of those whom they looked upon as thek 
 enemies ; nay, Rabaud, their partial historian (who 
 was one of their body) even justifies the murder.* 
 
 When the word equality found its way to the 
 eolonies it was only a signal for assassination. At 
 Port-au-Prince, the Chevalier de Mauduit, a brave 
 and generous officer, who rendered essential ser- 
 vices to this country during the last war, was 
 murdered by his own soldiers. The villains had 
 the insolence to order him to kneel down before 
 them : *' No," said he, like a soldier as he was, 
 '*it shall never be said, that Thomas Mauduit bent 
 his knee before a set of scoundrels." — His head 
 was cut off ; he was torn limb from limb ; his 
 bowels were trailed along the street, as butchers 
 do those of beasts in a slaughter house. The 
 next morning the different members of his body, 
 and morsels of his flesh, were seen strewed about 
 opposite his house, and his bloody and ghastly 
 head placed on the step of the door way.— We 
 know, we have before our eyes the proofs of what 
 havoc, distress and destruction, this detestable 
 word has since produced in the unfortunate island 
 of St. Domingo. t 
 
 It was now that the sovereign people, entering 
 on their reign, first took the famous plundering 
 
 * See the Appendix, No. IV. 
 t See the Appendix, No. V, 
 
137 
 
 motto : ^^ La guerre aux chateaux et la paix aux 
 chaumieres ;" that is, war to the gentlemen? s 
 houses and peace to the cottage ; or, in other 
 words, war to all those who have any thing to 
 lose. This motto is extremely comprehensive ; 
 it includes the whole doctrine of equality. It 
 was not a vain declaration in France ; but was 
 put in practice with that patriotic zeal which has 
 marked the whole course of the revolution. To 
 be rich or of a good family became a crime, 
 which was often expiated by the loss of life. Men 
 took as much pains to be thought obscure vaga- 
 bonds, as they had formerly done to be thought 
 wealthy and of honest descent ; and, what dis- 
 tinguishes the French revolution from all others 
 in the world, to have a ragged pair of breeches, 
 or to be totally in want of that so necessary ar- 
 ticle of dress, was esteemed the surest mark of 
 pure patriotism, and was the greatest reconmien- 
 dation to public favour* 
 
 But the National Assembly, though heartily 
 seconded by myriads of ragged populace, knew, 
 however, that they could not long depend upon 
 such a promiscuous support. The citizens, were, 
 therefore, to be soldiers at the same time, and 
 placed under the command of the creatures of 
 the Assembly. To this end the teritory of the 
 nation underwent a new division, on the levelling 
 plan. The provinces of France were melted 
 down into a rude undigested mass of departments, 
 districts, and municipalities. All the old magis- 
 trates were replaced by the vilest wretches that 
 
 M 2 
 
138 
 
 could be found. There were forty-four thousand 
 municipalities, each of these had several muni- 
 cipal officers, and each of these latter, his troop 
 of revolutionary myrmidons. There could not 
 be less than three millions of men in arms, ready 
 to burn, cut and slay, at a moment's warning. 
 Nothing was to be seen or heard but the patrol- 
 ing of these sons of equality. The Assembly 
 pretended to hold out the olive branch, while they 
 were forming the nation into a camp. The peace- 
 able man trembled for his life. One must have 
 been an eye witness of the change produced by 
 these measures, to have the least idea of it. All 
 was suspicion and dread. The bell that had 
 never rung but to call the peaceful villagers to 
 the altar, was converted into a signal of approach- 
 ing danger, and the tree, beneath which they for- 
 irnerly danced, became an alarm post. The rag- 
 ged greasy magistrates, with their municipal 
 troops at their heels, were for ever prowling about 
 for their prey, the property of others. These 
 little platoons of cut-throats ranged the country 
 round, crying havoc, burning and laying waste 
 wherever they came. They had not yet begun 
 to murder frequently, but it was little consequence 
 to a man whether his brains were blowed out or 
 not, after having seen himself and family reduced, 
 in the space of a few hours, from affluence to 
 beggary. A band of these enlightened ruffians 
 went to the chateau^ or country house of a gen- 
 tlemen in Provence, and demanded that his per- 
 son should be delivered into their hands. The 
 servants defended the house for some time, but 
 
139 
 
 in vain'; they advanced to the front door, when 
 the lady of the house appeared with a child in 
 her arms, and endeavoured to pacify them, say- 
 ing, that her husband was gone out at the back 
 door. The ruffians instantly set fire to the house. 
 When the lady perceived this, she confessed that 
 her husband was hidden in one of the garrets. 
 The house was now on fire ; she left her child 
 and rushed through the flames to call her hus- 
 band from his retreat, but she was stifled in the 
 passage, and burnt to death, and her husband 
 shared in her fate, leaving a helpless infant to the 
 mercy of the murderers of its father and mother. 
 — A hundred volumes like this could not contain 
 the horrors that these revolutionary robbers com- 
 mitted in the name of liberty and equality,' 
 
 * 
 
 Let this, Americans, be a lesson to you, throw 
 from you the doctrine of equality, as you would 
 the poisoned chalice. Wherever this detestable 
 principle gains ground to any extent, ruin must 
 inevitably ensue. Would you stifle the noble 
 flame of emulation, and encourage ignorance and 
 idleness ? Would you inculcate defiance of the 
 laws ? Would you teach servants to be disobedi- 
 ent to their masters, and children to their parents ? 
 Would you sow the seeds of envy, hatred, rob» 
 bery, and murder ? Would you break all the bands 
 of society asunder, and turn a civilized people 
 into a horde of savages ? This is all done by the 
 comprehensive word equality. — But they tell us? 
 
 * See the Appendix, No. VI. 
 
140 
 
 we are not to take it in the unqualified sense. In 
 what sense are we to take it then ? Either it 
 means something more than liberty, or it means 
 nothing at all. The misconstruction of the word 
 liberty has done mischief enough in the world ; 
 to add to it a word of a still more dangerous ex- 
 tent, was to kindle a flame that never can be ex- 
 tinguished but by the total debasement, if not 
 destruction, of the society, who are silly or wicked 
 enough to adopt its use. We are told, that eve- 
 ry government receives with its existence the 
 latent disease that is one day to accomplish its 
 death ; but the government that is attacked with 
 this political apoplexy is annihilated in the twink- 
 ling of an eye. 
 
 The civil disorganization of the state was but 
 the fore-runner of those curses which the Assem- 
 bly had in store for their devoted country. They 
 plainly perceived, that they should never be able 
 to brutify the people to their wishes, without re- 
 moving the formidable barriers of religion and 
 morality. Their heads were turned, but it was 
 necessary to corrupt their hearts. 
 
 Besides this, the leaders in the assembly were 
 professed modern philosophers ; that is to say, 
 atheists or deists. Camus and Condorcet openly 
 taught atheism, and Ceruti said, with his last 
 breath, " the only regret I have in quitting the 
 worlds is J that 1 leave a religion on earth.^^ These 
 words, the blasphemy of an expiring demon, 
 were applauded by the assembled legislators. It 
 
141 
 
 was not to be wondered at, that the vanity of 
 such men should be flattered in the hope of chang- 
 ing the most christian country into the most infi- 
 del upon the face of the earth ; for, there is a 
 sort of fanaticism in irreligion, that leads the 
 profligate atheist to seek for proselytes with a 
 zeal that would do honour to a good cause, but 
 which, employed in a bad one, becomes the scourge 
 of society. 
 
 The zeal of these philosophers for extirpating 
 the truth, was as great at least, as that shown by 
 the primitive christians for its propagation. But 
 they proceeded in a very different manner. 
 
 At first some circumspection was necessary. 
 The more eflectually to destroy the christian reli- 
 gion altogether, they began by sapping the foun- 
 dations of the catholic faith, the only one that 
 the people had been taught to revere. They form- 
 ed a schism with the church of Rome, well know- 
 ing that the opinions of the vulgar, once set afloat, 
 were as likely to fix on atheism as on any other 
 system ; and more so, as being less opposed to 
 their levelling principles than the rigid though 
 simple morality of the gospel. A religion that 
 teaches obedience to the higher powers, inculcates 
 humility and peace, strictly forbids robbery and 
 murder, and, in short, enjoins on men to do as 
 they would be done unto, could by no means suit 
 the armed ruffians, who were to accomplish the 
 views of the French Assembly. 
 
14^ 
 
 The press, which was made free for the worst 
 of purposes, lent most powerful aid to these de- 
 structive reformers. While the catholic religion 
 was ridiculed and abused, no other christian sys- 
 tem was proposed in its stead; on the contrary, 
 the profligate wretches who conducted the public 
 prints, among whom were Mirabeau, Marat, Coh- 
 dorcet and Hebert, filled one half of their impi- 
 ous sheets with whatever could be thought of to 
 degrade all religion in general. The ministers of 
 divine worship, of every sect and denomination, 
 were represented as cheats, and as the avowed 
 enemies of the sublime and sentimental something, 
 which the Assembly had in store for the regene- 
 ration of the world. 
 
 Most of my readers must have heard of the 
 magnificent church of St. Genvieve, at Paris. It 
 was one of the most noble structures that the 
 world had ever seen, and had besides the honour 
 of being consecrated to the worship of Christ. 
 This edifice the blasphemers seized on as a re- 
 ceptacle for the remains of their ''great men,^^ 
 From a christian church, they changed it into a 
 pagan temple, and gave it the name of Pantheon, 
 Condorcet, pre-eminent in infamy, proposed the 
 decree, by which the name of God and that of 
 St. Genvieve, were ordered to be effaced from the 
 frontispiece. 
 
 To this Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire were 
 first transported, and the Assembly spent no less 
 than three days in determining whether those of 
 
143 
 
 Rousseau should not accompany them. This dis- 
 tinction paid to two of the most celebrated deists 
 of the age, was a full declaration of the principles 
 as well as the intentions of the majority of the 
 Assembly. 
 
 Those who have not had the patience to wade 
 through the lies and blasphemies of Voltaire, know 
 his principles from report. Rousseau is not so 
 well known ; and, as he was, and still continues 
 to be, the great oracle of the revolutionists, I am 
 persuaded a page or two on his character, and 
 that of his works, will not be lost here ; parti- 
 cularly as I have heard both mentioned with ap- 
 plause in this country, by persons apparently of 
 the best intentions. 
 
 The philosopher, Rousseau, the pagod of the 
 regenerated French, was born at Geneva ;* and, 
 at a proper age, bound an apprentice to an artist. 
 During his apprenticeship he frequently robbed his 
 master as well as other persons. Before his time 
 w as expired he decamped, fled into the dominions 
 of the king of Sardinia, where he changed the 
 presbyterian for the catholic religion. This be- 
 ginning seemed to promise fair for what followed. 
 By an unexpected turn of fortune he became a 
 footman, in which capacity he did not forget his 
 old habit of stealing. He is detected with the 
 stolen goods ; swears they were given him by a 
 
 * It is a fact, as singular as true, that this little pitiful Republic 
 has produced more infamous and dangerous characters than any 
 Empire in the world. 
 
144 
 
 maid servant of the house ; the girl is confronted 
 with him, she denies the fact, and weeping, presses 
 him to confess the truth ; but the young philoso- 
 pher still persists in the lie, and the poor girl is 
 driven from her place in disgrace. — Tired of be- 
 ing a serving-man, he went to throw himself on 
 the protection of a lady, whom he had seen once 
 before, and who he protests was the most virtuous 
 creature of her sex. This lady had so great a re- 
 gard for him, that she called him her little dar- 
 ling, and he called her mamma. Mamma had a foot- 
 man, who served her, besides, in another capacity, 
 very much resembling that of a husband ; but she 
 had a most tender affection for her adopted son 
 Rousseau, and, as she feared he was forming con- 
 nections with a certain lady that might spoil his 
 morals, she herself, out of pure virtue, took him 
 — to bed with her ! — This virtuous effort to pre- 
 serve the purity of Rousseau's heart, had a dread- 
 ful effect on the head of the poor footman, and so 
 he poisoned himself. — Rousseau fell sick, and 
 mamma was obliged to part with her little darling, 
 while he performed a journey to the south of 
 France, for the recovery of his health. On the 
 road he dines with a gentleman, and lies with his 
 wife. As he was returning back, he debated with 
 himself whether he should pay this lady a second 
 visit or not ; but, fearing he might be tempted to 
 seduce her daughter also, virtue got the better, 
 and determined the little darling to fly home into 
 the arms of his mamma; but, alas! those arms were 
 filled with another. Mammals virtue had prompted 
 Jier to take a substitute, whom she liked too well 
 
145 
 
 to part with, and our philosopher was obliged to 
 shift for himself. 
 
 I should have told the reader, that the little 
 darling, while he resided with his mamma, went 
 to make a tour with a young musician. Their 
 friendship was warm, like that of most young 
 men, and they were, besides, enjoined to take 
 particular care of each other during their travels. 
 They travelled on for some time, agreed perfectly 
 well, and vowed an everlasting friendship for 
 each other. But, the musician, being one day 
 taken in a fit, fell down in the street, which fur- 
 nished the faithful Rousseau with an opportunity 
 of slipping off with some of his things, and leav- 
 ing him to the mercy of the people, in a town 
 where he was a total stranger. 
 
 We seldom meet with so much villainy in a 
 youth. His manhood was worthy of it. He 
 turned apostate a second time, was driven from 
 within the walls of his native city of Geneva, as 
 an incendiary, and an apostle of anarchy and infi- 
 delity ; nor did he forget how to thieve. — At last 
 the philosopher marries ; but like a philosopher ; 
 that is, without going to church. He has a fami^ 
 ly of children, and, like a kind philosophical fa- 
 ther, for fear they should want after his death, he 
 sends them to the poor-house during his life-time! 
 To conclude, the philosopher dies, and leaves the 
 philosopheress, his wife, to the protection of a 
 friend ; she marries a footman, and gets turned 
 out into the street. 
 
 N 
 
146 
 
 This is a brief sketch of the life of Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau, the oracle of the regenerated French, a 
 thief, a whoremaster, an adulterer, a treacherous 
 friend, an unnatural father, and twice an apos- 
 tate. — There wants only about a hundred murders 
 to make him equal to the immortal Marat, whom 
 we have seen compared to Jesus Christ. This vile 
 wretch had the impudence to say, in the work that 
 contains a confession of these, his crimes, that no 
 man can come to the throne of God, and say, / am 
 a better man than Rousseau, 
 
 His writings, though they have very great lite- 
 rary merit, contain such principles as might be ex- 
 pected from such a man. He has exhausted all 
 the powers of his fascinating eloquence in the 
 cause of anarchy and irreligion. And his writings 
 are so much the more dangerous, as he winds him- 
 self into favour with the unwary, by an eternal 
 cant about virtue and liberty. He seems to have 
 assumed the mask of virtue for no other purpose 
 than that of propagating, with more certain suc- 
 cess, the blackest and most incorrigible vice.* 
 
 * Two philosophers can seldom agree more than two per-r 
 sons of any other profession ; so it happened with Voltaire and 
 Roi'sseau. The humorous prophetic critic of Rousseau's 
 romance, the New Eioisa^ is so well worthy of a place here, 
 that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of translating an extract 
 or two from it. 
 
 " In those days there will appear in France a wonderful man. 
 He will say unto the people, Behold ! I am possessed by the 
 demon of enthusiasm; I have received from heaven the gift of 
 paradoxical inconsistency ; and the hght-heeled muhitude will 
 dance after him and many will adore him. And he will say, 
 
147 
 
 This was the man and the writer that the Consti- 
 tuent Assembly held up to the imitation and even 
 adoration of the poor deluded French people. The 
 ashes of this thieving philosopher cost the nation 
 almost two thousand guineas in debates. 
 
 Those who know what power novelty has on 
 the French ; with what enthusiasm, or rather 
 fury, they adopt whatever is in vogue, may guess 
 at the effect that this philosophical canonization of 
 Rousseau produced. Every thing was a la Rous- 
 seau ; his works were hawked about, mouthed in 
 the National Assembly, (often by those who un- 
 derstood them not,) recommended in all the prints, 
 and spouted at the sans-culotte clubs. His old 
 boorish sayings became the liveliest traits of wit, 
 
 you are all rascals and prostitutes, and I detest rascals and pros- 
 titutes, and I come to live amongst you. And he will add, the 
 men and women are all jyirtuous in the republic of Geneva^ 
 where I was born, and I love virtuous men and won»en, and I 
 will not live in the country where I v^s born. — He will protest 
 that the play-house is a school of prostitution and corruption, 
 and he will write operas and plays. — He v/ill advise mankind 
 to go stark naked, and he will wear laced clothes, when given 
 unto him. — He will swear that romances corrupt the morals of 
 all who read thern, and he will compose a romance ; and 
 in this romance will be seen vice in deeds and virtue in words, 
 and the lovers will be mad with love and with philosophy ; and 
 this romance will teach how to seduce a young girl philosophi- 
 cally ; and the disciple will lose all shame and modesty : and 
 she will practise foolishness and raise maxims and paradoxes 
 with her master ; and she will kiss first, and ask him to lie with 
 her and she will become round and pregnant with metaphysics. 
 And this they will call philosophy and virtue, and they will 
 talk about philosophy and virtue, till no soul on earth knows 
 what philosophy and virtue is." 
 
148 
 
 all his manners were imitated ; to be crusty and 
 ill-bred, was like Jean Jaques, and, what was 
 particularly offensive to every just mind, his 
 loathsome, down-looking portrait, that portrait 
 which seems to be the chosen seat of guilt, was 
 seen at every corner, and in every hand. 
 
 Having thus prepared the public mind, the As- 
 sembly made a bold attack on the church. They 
 discovered, by the light of philosophy, that France 
 contained too many churches, and, of course, too 
 many pastors. Great part of them were, there- 
 fore, to be suppressed ; and to make the innova- 
 tion go down with the people, all tithes were to 
 be abolished. The measure succeeded ; but what 
 did the people gain by the abolition of the tithes ? 
 not a farthing ; for a tax of twenty per cent, was 
 immediately laid on the lands in consequence of 
 it. The cheat was not perceived till it was too 
 late. 
 
 But, the abolition of the tithes, the only motive 
 ef which was to debase the clergy in the opinions 
 of the people, was but a trifle to what was to fol- 
 low. The religious orders, that is to say, the 
 communities of monks and nuns, possessed im- 
 mense landed estates, and these the honest As- 
 sembly had marked for their own. As a pretext 
 for their seizure, they first decreed, that the wealth 
 of the religious orders belonged to the nation^ to 
 that indefinite being that exists every where and 
 no where, and that has devoured all, without re- 
 ceiving any thing. 
 
149 
 
 As this act of seizing the estates of the regu- 
 lar clergy, was one of those that gave a decisive 
 blow to property as well as religion in France, 
 and one that has received the greatest applauses 
 in this country, I shall enter a little at length into 
 the flagrant injustice of it. Nor is the subject 
 inapplicable to ourselves ; for, though there are 
 no religious orders in America, there are many 
 people of property, and it is of a violation of 
 property that I here charge the Assembly. 
 
 How the estates of the religious orders became 
 tlie property of a certain somebody called the 
 nation, in 1791, is to me wholly inconceivable; 
 seeing that there never was a time, when they 
 belonged to that society of men, now called the 
 French. Great part of the monasteries had been 
 founded five, six, seven hundred years, and some 
 above a thousand years before the most worthless 
 of the French took it into their heads to be so 
 many sovereigns. The founders were men of 
 pious and austere lives, who, wishing to retire 
 from the world, obtained grants of uncultivated 
 land, generally in some barren and solitary spot. 
 There they formed little miserable settlements, 
 which, by their frugality and labour, in time be- 
 came rich meadows, farms, and vineyards. A 
 French historian, speaking of St. Etienne, says : 
 ** In 1058, he retired to Citeaux, then a vast for- 
 est, inhabited only by wild beasts. Here, with 
 the help of his followers, he built a monastery of 
 the wood of the forest ; but, at first, it was no 
 more than a group of shabby huts. Every thing 
 
 n2 
 
^ 150 
 
 bore the marks of extreme poverty : the cross was 
 of wood, the censers of copper, and the candle- 
 sticks of iron. All the ornaments were of coarse 
 woolen or linen. Labour was the only means of 
 subsistence with the monks of Citeaux. For 
 many years, bread was their only food, and they 
 were often reduced to a scarcity of even that." 
 
 In time this forest became a cultivated and 
 flourishing estate, and the successors of the first 
 proprietors were not only at their ease, but even 
 rich. The monastery, which was, at first, but a 
 clump of ill-shaped huts, built with the limbs of 
 trees, bark and turf, was become a magnificent pile. 
 The church was beautiful beyond description. In- 
 stead of wood and copper and iron, the symbols of 
 religion and the sacred vases were now of gold, 
 silver and precious stones. This abbey, at the 
 time of the seizure by the Constituent Assembly, 
 had an annual revenue of 120,000 French livres, 
 or, about 6,000 pounds sterling. 
 
 Now, I ask any honest man ; was this the 
 property of the French nation or not ? By what 
 rule of right, by what principle of law or justice, 
 could this estate belong to any other than the laio- 
 ful successors of the first proprietors ; that is to 
 say, the possessors at the epoch of the seizure ? 
 No title ever framed by man could be so good as 
 theirs. The community at Citeaux had never 
 ceased to exist, nor for a single monient ceased to 
 keep possession of their abbey and its dependen- 
 cies. They had first obtained a lawful gra^t of 
 
151 
 
 the land, had cleared, cultivated, and enriched it; 
 and had enjoyed an uninterrupted possession dur- 
 ing the space of seven hundred and thirty-two 
 years ? but, at the end of the enlightened eigh- 
 teenth century, the Age of Reason^ up starts a 
 horde of lazy, worthless ruffians, calling them- 
 selves the nation, and lay claim to their estates ! 
 
 Bulteau, in speaking of St. Benedict, says : 
 " The bodily labour ordered by this wise founder, 
 was a source of peace and tranquility to the first 
 monks, and of opulence io their successors. The 
 monasteries were long an asylum to those chris- 
 tians, who had fled from the oppressions of the 
 Goths and Vandals. The little learning that re- 
 mained in the barbarous and dark ages, was pre- 
 served in the cloisters. It is to them we owe all 
 the most precious remains of antiquity, as well as 
 many modern inventions." — Indeed, under the 
 great disposer of al] events, it is to them we owe 
 that we are christians ; that we possess the word 
 of God, our guide to eternal life. They not only 
 preserved this inestimable volume, but spread it 
 in every country in the world. Without their 
 agency, our ancestors might have' continued pa- 
 gans ; nay, we, ourselves, perhaps, might now 
 have been sacrificing our children in the hollow 
 of a Wicker-Idol. — Every man of any reading 
 knows, that the" monasteries have continued to 
 enrich the world with learned and useful produc- 
 tions. Some of the writings that do the greatest 
 honour to the French nation, and to the human 
 mind, have issued from the cloister. And jet, 
 
152 
 
 we have seen these men robbed of their estates, 
 stripped of even their furniture and their vest- 
 ments, driven Irom beneath their roofs, hunted 
 like wild beasts, and, what I am ashamed to say, 
 many of us have had the folly, or rather baseness, 
 to applaud their unprincipled and blood-thirsty 
 pursuers.* 
 
 We are told that the monks were become too 
 rich. Indeed this was their great offence in the 
 eyes of the Assembly, whose motto was : ''War 
 to the rich and peace to the cottager." But we 
 have seen that the foundation of these riches was 
 laid by the labour of their predecessors, and we 
 
 * I cannot kelp observing here, that these unjust and inhuman 
 applauders have not always been confined to the mob. An 
 *^ Oration on the Progress of Reason,^^ delivered at a Public 
 Commencement in the university of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
 on the 18th of July, 1^92, contains a philippic against the in- 
 jured French monarch and clergy, the most illiberal that ever 
 disgraced the lips of a petulant self-sufficient pedant. The 
 Orator discovers but little knowledge of any branch of his sub- 
 ject, and more particularly of the character of Louis XVI. of 
 that of the French clergy, and of the nature of the old govern- 
 ment j against all which he runs on in a strain of invective, 
 more resembling the brutal abusiveness of Calvin, than any 
 thing we ought to expect to hear from the chair of a seminary, 
 at the close of the " enlightened eighteenth century." — Like 
 many others, this Orator looked upon the Prench Revolution 
 as happily terminated ; as the dawn of universal peace, liberty, 
 and virtue : he has since had time to see his error, to see the 
 effects of his " Progress of Reason," some of which I have 
 related in the former part of this volume j if he be candid, 
 therefore, he will publicly retract this error. If he should not 
 do this, I shall take the liberty, one of these days, of convin- 
 cing him that he has erred. 
 
153 
 
 may observe that they were augmented, not by 
 oppression, as has been falsely asserted, but by a 
 prudent management of their estates. Those 
 communities that cultivated their own lands, 
 were noted for the excellent manner of their cul- 
 tivation, and for the superior quality of their pro- 
 duce ; and those that rented out their farms, let 
 them at a low rate, so as to enable the farmer to 
 enrich the land at the same time that he enriched 
 himself. It was by such means that their estates 
 became the most valuable in the country, a cir- 
 cumstance that poor shallow-headed Paine has 
 brought against them as a heinous offence. They 
 were gentle humane masters and landlords ; a 
 man looked upon his fortune as made, when he 
 became the tenant of a religious order. 
 
 And how were these riches spent ? Not in 
 horses and coaches ; people shut up in a cloister 
 had no use for these. Not in balls and plays: 
 for there they could never appear. Not in rich 
 attire and costly repasts ; for the greatest part of 
 them were clothed worse than common beggars, 
 and were forbidden the use of meat, and even of 
 wine, the common drink of their country. Their 
 riches did not go to aggrandize their families ; 
 because, as no individual could possess any thing, 
 so he could bequeath or dispose of nothing. Who 
 then, profitted from these riches ? Go ask the poor, 
 who were happy in the neighbourhood of their 
 convents. Go ask the aged, the infirm, the widow 
 and the orphan. And, ask them, too, what aid 
 
154 
 
 and consolation they have received from the 
 thieving philosophers of the Revolution. 
 
 This charge of being too rich, is the most ab- 
 surd as well as the most vile that could possibly 
 be invented. Do we say to a man, who has ac- 
 quired an immense fortune by the labour of his 
 father, or by any other means ; you are too rich, 
 and therefore your property belongs to the na- 
 tion ! — There is a community at Bethlehem, very 
 much resembling those we have here been speaking 
 of. What should we think of a scoundrel legislator, 
 who should propose to strip these people of their 
 property, and turn them out to beg their bread, 
 merely" because the value of their lands is increas- 
 ed ? Such was he who first proposed the seizure 
 of the church lands in France. 
 
 Some of the Convents in France had been 
 founded by lay persons, upon such and such con- 
 ditions ; and, in case of failure on the part of 
 the community, the property was to revert to the 
 heirs of the donor. Foundations of this kind 
 were exactly resembling those we frequently see 
 among us, of hospitals, seminaries, &c. and the 
 deeds were still in existence at the time of the 
 seizure ; but an Assembly that paid no respect to 
 a right of prescription, founded on a thousand 
 jears of uninterrupted possession, could not be 
 expected to pay attention to the contents of a bit 
 of old parchment. 
 
 We ought not to be astonished at hearing the 
 
155 
 
 author of the Age of Reason, attempt to justify 
 this act of impudent fraud ; but let us see how his 
 doctrine would suit, if applied to ourselves ; for 
 this is the only way to determine on its merits. 
 Suppose (which God forbid!) the principles of the 
 French Revolution should be adopted by our fiC- 
 gislature, and they should declare all the meeting 
 houses, seminaries, hospitals, &c. together with 
 the estates which have been left for their support, 
 the property of the nation, how should we receive 
 this ? Suppose an army of cut-throats should be 
 sent to the Friend's meeting-house and thrust 
 them out with the points of their bayonets ; sup- 
 pose another should go to the Episcopal church, 
 drive the congregation from the altar, strip the 
 minister of his cassoc, seize on the sacramental 
 cup, and turn the church into a stable ? I ask, how 
 should we like this ? — But, we are told, there is a 
 vast difference ; that the monks were superstitious 
 drones, useless to society. — Ah ! let us beware. 
 Let us take care not to condemn, because we are 
 protestants, a religion that differs from our own 
 in form only ; a religion that has yet more votaries 
 than any other christian profession can boast of. 
 And, as to the religious orders being useless to 
 society, we have no proofs of this, but strong pre- 
 sumptive ones of the contrary ; for, we know, 
 that France was great and happy, that it had been 
 increasing in extent, wealth and population, since 
 the existence of these communities. However, I 
 by no means take upon me to prove the public 
 utility of the monastic life ; nor is it necessary ; 
 for, if no man is to possess property, unless he 
 
156 
 
 can prove his untility to society, I am afraid that 
 few of us would be secure. How many hundreds 
 of proprietors do we see, who are much worse 
 than useless to society ! Surely the public is as 
 much benefitted by a man who spends his life in a- 
 convent, as by one who spends it in a tavern, at a 
 billiard-table, or in a play-house. ' Thousands and 
 thousands there are who never worked a stroke, 
 nor studied a single hour; vegetating mortals, 
 who seem to live only to eat and drink, and be 
 carried about. Yet we have never thought of 
 seizing their estates. No : utility or inutility has 
 nothing to do with the matter ; the question be- 
 fore us is a simple question of right. Whether 
 monks were necessary or useful in France, or not, 
 we know there were such people, and that they 
 possessed property legally acquired ; and every 
 honest man, capable of distinguishing between 
 right and wrong, will hold in abhorrence the as- 
 sembly that dared to rob them of it. 
 
 When we hear of such crying acts of injustice 
 as this, we are naturally led to inquire who were 
 the first promoters of them. The reader will be 
 astonished to hear, that the decrees for this nation- 
 al robbery was first proposed by a bishop. Of a 
 hundred and thirty -eight French bishops, there 
 were only four to be found, who would give their 
 approbation to this deed, and one of these four 
 was he who proposed the decree. The Abbe 
 Barruel speaks of him in the following terms : — 
 " The Assembly thought it high time to consum- 
 mate their designs upon the church, by seizing 
 
15? 
 
 what still remained of its possessions. This mea- 
 sure was so evidently contrary to every principle 
 of justice and common honesty, that it was not 
 easy to find a man so totally lost to every senti- 
 ment of humanity, as to bring it forward. This 
 second Judas was at last found in the college of 
 the apostles. This was Taillerand Perigord, 
 bishop of Autun. — The Perigord possessed all the 
 baseness, all the vices of a Jew." — See Hist, of 
 the French clergy, page 15. 
 
 To obtain the sanction of the people to this act, 
 they were told, that the wealth of the church 
 would not only pay off the national debt, but ren- 
 der taxes in future, unnecessary. No deception 
 was ever so barefaced as this ; but even this was 
 not wanted ; for the people themselves had alrea- 
 dy begun to taste the sweets of plunder. Avarice 
 tempted the trading part of the nation to approve 
 of the measure. At the time of passing the decree 
 they were seen among the first to applaud it. 
 They saw an easy means of obtaining those fine 
 rich estates, the possession of which, they had, 
 perhaps, long coveted. In vain were they told, 
 that the purchaser would partake in the infamy of 
 the robbery ; that, if the title of the communities 
 could not render property secure, that same pro- 
 perty could never be secure under any title the 
 plunderers could give. In vain were they told, 
 that in sanctioning the seizure of the wealth of 
 others, they were sanctioning the seizure of their 
 own, whenever that all-devouring monster, the 
 sovereign people, should call on them for it. In 
 
 O 
 
158 
 
 vain were they told all this : thej purchased : thej 
 saw with pleasure the plundered clergy driven 
 from their dwellings ; but scarcely had they taken 
 possession of their ill-gotten wealth, when not 
 only that, but the remains of their other pro- 
 perty, were wrenched from them. Since that we 
 have seen decree upon decree launched forth 
 against the rich : their account books have been 
 submitted to public examination ; they have been 
 obliged to give draughts for the funds they pos- 
 sessed even in foreign countries ; all their letters 
 have been intercepted and read. How many hun- 
 dreds of them have we seen led to the scaffold, 
 merely because they were proprietors of what 
 their sovereign stood in need of ! these were acts 
 of unexampled tyranny; but, as they respected 
 the persons who applauded the seizure of the 
 estates of the church, they were perfectly just. 
 Several of these avaricious purch^asers have been 
 murdered within the walls of those buildings, 
 whence they had assisted to drive the lawful pro- 
 prietors : this was just : it was the measure they 
 had meted to others. They shared the fate of the 
 injured clergy, without sharing the pity which 
 that fate excited. When dragged forth to 
 slaughter in their turn, they were left without 
 even the right of complaining : the last stab of the 
 assassin was accompanied with the cutting reflec- 
 tion, that it was just. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer on this subject, as it is, 
 perhaps, the most striking and most awful ex- 
 ample of the consequences of a violation of pro- 
 
159 ' 
 
 perty, that the world ever saw. Let it serve to 
 warn all those who wish to raise their fortunes on 
 the ruin of other-s, that, sooner or later their own 
 turn must come. From this act of the Constitu- 
 ent Assembly, we may date the violation, in 
 France, of every right that men ought to hold 
 dear. Hence the seizure of all gold and silver as 
 the property of the nation : hence the law pre- 
 venting the son to claim the wealth of his father : 
 hence the abominable tyranny of requisitions ; 
 and hence thousands and thousands of the mur- 
 ders, that have disgraced unhappy France. 
 
 Since the seizure of the church estates, there 
 has not, in fact, been any such thing as private 
 property in France ; for, though the Constituent 
 Assembly did not pass a decree of this import, 
 they knevF perfectly well how to pass decrees and 
 establish regulations amounting to the same thing. 
 Some of the enormous contributions on the rich, 
 were called patriotic gifts ; but he who refused to 
 pay the gift inserted in the list, knew he had but 
 a few hours to live. The money and jewels de- 
 posited at the bar of the Assembly, and on the 
 aitar of the country, amounted to immense sums. 
 These were held out as a poof of a general appro- 
 bation of their measures ; but had the Assembly 
 been candid, they would have confessed, that 
 these offerings were the pure effect of fear, of a 
 panic that had seized all the proprietors in the 
 nation, and that each giver's hatred to their cause 
 might be measured by the sum he deposited. It 
 was not a grateful free-will offering, but a sacri- 
 
♦ 160 
 
 fice, that the trembling wretch came to offer at 
 the shrine of tyranny, in order to save his house 
 from the flames, or his own head, or that of some 
 dear relation or parent, from the scaffold. Could 
 a man, reduced to acts like this, be said to possess. 
 any thing ? 
 
 The successors of the Constituent Assembly 
 laid aside the mask, as no longer necessary. On 
 the 13th of March, 1794, all the merchants of 
 Bourdeaux (known for one of the most infamous- 
 ly patriotic towns in the kingdom) were arrested 
 in one day, and condemned, in presence of the 
 guillotine, to a fine of one hundred millions of 
 French livres, upwards of four millions sterling. 
 On the 18th of April, the rich banker. La Borde, 
 after having purchased his life eight times, was 
 ojuillotined. and the remainder of his riches con- 
 fiscated.* On the 10th of May, twenty- seven 
 rich Farmers-General were executed, because 
 they had amassed riches under the monarchy. 
 Finally, on the 27th of June, all property, of 
 whatever description, w^as decreed to belong to 
 the nation, and was put in a state of requisition 
 accordingly, as the persons of the whole of the 
 inhabitants had been before. 
 
 * " Did not Robespierre gratify the Parisian taste, by afford- 
 ing a public representation gratis every day, where blood was 
 shed, and where the nation had the double enjoyment of con- 
 templating the sufferings of the condemned^ and reflecting on 
 his forfeited riches, when the ragged sans-culotte, that honoura- 
 ble character, exulted in the double enjoyment of national ven- 
 geance, and of being one of the heirs of the condemned victim." 
 
 Playfair, page 52 1. 
 
161 
 
 The milk and water admirers of the Constitu- 
 ent Assembly pretend to be shocked at these mea- 
 sures ; but, what are these measures more than 
 an improvement on those of that Assembly ? The 
 progress was not only natural, but even necessary 
 to the support of the revolution. Had there been 
 still church-estates to seize, and monks to murder, 
 it is probable that the tyrants who have succeeded 
 the Constituent Assembly, would not have sur- 
 passed their predecessors ; but, that source being 
 exhausted, they were obliged to find out others, or 
 return to order and obedience.* And, I should 
 be glad to know, if the property of one individual 
 or one society, was become the property of the 
 sovereign people by virtue of a decree of one As- 
 sembly, why the same claim should not be made to 
 the property of other individuals, or other societies. 
 Nor can I believe, whatever atheists and deists 
 may say to the contrary, that it was any more un- 
 just to guillotine bankers and merchants, or even 
 members of the Constituent Assembly^ than to 
 guillotine or massacre poor, defenceless, friend- 
 less priests. There is such an intimate connec- 
 tion between the security of property, and that of 
 the person to whom that property belongs, that 
 one can never be said to be safe, while the other 
 is in danger. Tyrant princes, tyrant assemblies, 
 or tyrant mobs, when once they are suffered to 
 
 * Robespierre, when told of his severity to the rich, used to 
 say : Let me alone ; I am coining money. 
 
 Barrere, in one of his reports to the Convention, estimated 
 three strokes of the national die (the guillotine) upon one occa^ 
 sioji, at twenty-two millions of livres. 
 
 o 2 
 
162 
 
 take away with impunity the property of the in- 
 nocent man, will feel little scruple at taking away 
 his life also. Robbery and murder are the natu- 
 ral auxiliaries of each other, and, with a people 
 rendered ferocious and hardened by an infidel 
 system that removes all fear of a hereafter, they 
 must for ever be inseparable. 
 
 Before the decree was passed for the assump- 
 tion of the estates of the regular clergy, every 
 calumny that falsehood could invent, and every 
 vexation that tyranny could enforce, were em- 
 ployed to debase the whole body of the clergy 
 and the religion they taught. Songs and carica- 
 tures were sung, or hawked about, by shameless 
 strumpets in the pay of the Assembly. In these 
 not only the clerical functions and the lives of the 
 clergy were ridiculed, but even the life of Jesus 
 Christ and the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation 
 of our Saviour became the subject of a farce, in 
 the smutty language of Parisian hsh- women. Who 
 were the characters in this farce, I leave the shud- 
 dering reader to conceive. 
 
 A decree, in form of an invitation,'^ was issued 
 for bringing the gold and silver from the churches 
 to the mint. It was well known, that there were 
 
 * " Invitations from superiors," says some one, *^ savour 
 strongly of commands." This was so much the case in the pre- 
 sent instance, that the priest who dared to disobey, was sure to 
 expiate his disobedience with his Hfe. The magistrates often 
 entered the church, and seized tlie chalices on the altar, during 
 the celebration of the mass. Such are revolutionary invitations. 
 
none of these metals in the churches, except the 
 vases, the crucifixes, and other symbols, hitherto 
 held sacred. What an effect the coining up of 
 these must have on the minds of the giddy mul- 
 titude, is not difficult to imagine. Many, how^ 
 ever, even of the most depraved, felt a momentary 
 horror ; but this horror the Assembly knew how 
 to do away. Hundreds, I might say thousands, 
 of abandoned scribblers, were employed to propa- 
 gate the new principles. Their little filthy ditties 
 were spread through all the departments, at the 
 expense of the nation. Some of these were cate- 
 chisms in rhyme, in which the Constitution was 
 substituted for God, the Assembly for the saints, 
 and both recommended to the adoration of the 
 French patriots. The Journal, or Letter, as it 
 was called, of Pere du Chene, written by one 
 Hebert, and of which it is said fifty thousand 
 copies were struck off daily, was sent into the 
 towns and villages by the carriers of the decrees 
 of the Assembly. This Hebert, whose strumpet 
 has since been adored at Paris, as the goddess of 
 Reason, was a professed atheist; His journal 
 contained the most outrageous abuse of all that 
 was respectable and sacred, interlarded with oaths 
 and execrations without number. I have one now 
 before me, which has for title, *' Lettre du verita- 
 hie Pere du Chene, hougrement patriotic.'^'' In 
 English; "Letter of the true Father du Chene 
 b — gerly patriotic." I would here insert an ex- 
 tract from this letter ; but, I trust I shall be 
 believed, when I say, the contents are fully an- 
 swerable to the title. Such were the agents of 
 
164 
 
 Condorcet and his colleagues : thus did they cor- 
 rupt the morals of the people ; thus did they lead 
 them from one degree of vice to another ; thus 
 were they hardened up to rob and to murder ; and 
 thus did the boasted Constituent Assembly lay 
 the foundation of all those horrors we have since 
 heard of. 
 
 The magistrates in the different municipalities, 
 chosen from the scum of the nation, distributed 
 these infernal writings among the people in their 
 precincts, and particularly among the young peo- 
 ple. If, by chance, some magistrate was found, 
 too scrupulous to execute their will, means were 
 soon invented to get rid of him. Some pretext 
 or other was never wanting to excite the mob to 
 put an end to him and his resistance. Chatel, 
 Mayor of St. Denys, was one of this description. 
 The mob were told that this man was the cause 
 of the dearness of bread. They flew to his house, 
 and obliged him to reduce the price according to 
 their will ; though it was well known, that he had 
 not the power to reduce it at all unless at his own 
 expense. The rabble were dispersing ; but they 
 had not fulfilled the bloody wishes of the revolu- 
 tionary agents, who had nothing less in view than 
 the lowering the price of bread. They were in- 
 stigated to return to the unfortunate magistrate. 
 First, they attempted to hang him ; but, wearied 
 with his resistance, one of them took out his knife, 
 and cut his head partly off, while several others 
 pricked him with their bayonets. The unhappy 
 victim was still alive after the back of his neck 
 
165 
 
 Was cut asunder, and was heard to groan out : ^'for 
 heaven^s sake kill me ! kill me ! you make me 
 suffer too long /—The sanguinary villain, who had 
 begun to cut his head off, now threw away his 
 knife, and borrowed that of his comrade, with 
 which he finished the work. When he found that 
 his own knife was not sufficient, he said, with a 
 cool indifference : ''lend me your knife^for mine 
 is not worth a curse."^^ That which was lent him 
 was a little two-penny knife with a wooden han- 
 dle. — During this time, other assassins gave him 
 several stabs, with their knives, in the belly and 
 stomach ; one of them turned his knife slowly in 
 the flank of the dying man, and said to him, laugh- 
 ing : " Does that enter well f Don-t you find the 
 day-lighi peep into you .^" — He at last expired, 
 after the most inconceivable torments. His body 
 was dragged along the streets of St. Denys with 
 his head tied to his feet. — A resolution of the 
 town has since declared him innocent of any 
 offence whatever : he had given abundant assist- 
 ance to the poor the winter before : the diminu- 
 tion he had j ust made in the price of bread was 
 at his own expense ; and this barbarous punish- 
 ment was his recompense. His wife went dis- 
 tracted, and has ever since been in a mad-house. 
 His assassins obtained pardon from the Assembly, 
 a circumstance much less surprising, than that 
 they should think it necessary to ask it. See dm 
 Goii7'^s Memoire, page 67.* 
 
 * See the Appendix, No, VII. 
 
166 
 
 Examples of this kind, and such were wanting 
 in very few parts of the country, could not fail 
 to insure an implicit obedience on the part of the 
 magistrates. 
 
 The debasement of religion was nearly com- 
 pleted by the public sale of the suppressed church- 
 es and monasteries. The grossest indecency pre- 
 sided at all these demoniac scenes. When the 
 vile agent of the Assembly, hammer in hand, 
 had exhausted his auctioneer rhetoric, in recom- 
 mending a church as an excellent barn, stable, or 
 playhouse, it was knocked down to the base and 
 avaricious speculator, .while the hireling mob 
 shouted applause. The church of St. Aldegon- 
 de at St. Omors (1 love to cito instances) the 
 highest in that ancient town, and for hundreds 
 of years the pride of its inhabitants, was sold to 
 a Jew of Dunkirk, for the pitiful sum of 20,000 
 French livres in assignats, not more than 200 
 pounds sterling ; not half the cost of one of the 
 pillars. This beautiful edifice, by the spire of 
 which the town was known at a great distance, 
 had been chosen for destruction, that the humili- 
 ation of religion might be the more striking. It 
 met with such treatment as might be expected from 
 the hands of an infidel. Its lofty spire was tumbled 
 to the earth in less than a month : the body of 
 the church was turned into a rope-walk, and the 
 Jew proprietor, to complete the degradation of 
 Christianity, left a representation of the Lord's 
 Supper uneffaced in the chancel. What must be 
 the grief, what the indignation of the thinking 
 
167 
 
 . t . 
 and pious part of the inhabitants of St. Omers, 
 
 thus to see their favourite church, the sanctuary 
 of their God, and the God of their fathers, de- 
 livered, for a bundle of depreciated paper-money, 
 into the hands of a descendant of the murderers 
 of him, to whose worship it was consecrated ! 
 
 To give the reader a just idea of the ribaldry, 
 of the scenes of brutal impiety, exhibited at the 
 pillage of the convents, is totally impossible. A 
 dozen or two of carts, rattling along with a com- 
 missary at their head, followed by an escort of 
 ragamuf6ns, decorated with a bit of three colour- 
 ed ribbon, and armed with hammers, axes, crow- 
 bars, and spades, generally formed the corps for 
 such an expedition. Hardly were the doors open- 
 ed when the vaults rang with their hammering 
 and their oaths. In a few hours the whole was 
 gutted. The decorations of the altar, the priest's 
 vestments, statues, pictures, books, manuscripts, 
 the most precious pieces of antiquity, the pro- 
 ductions of long and laborious lives of study, 
 were hauled away as so much rubbish. The 
 paintings on the doors, walls, ceilings, and other 
 fixtures, were effaced or disfigured ; the fury of 
 the enlightened ruffians descended even to the 
 graves of the deceased fathers. 
 
 At the expulsion of the nuns, the conduct of 
 the revolutionists, was, if possible, still more 
 swinish and cruel. While the gibing commissary 
 pulled aside their veils to examine their faces, 
 his blackguard attendants congratulated them on 
 
168 
 
 the pleasures they v^e going to enjoy in the 
 world, and this in a language calculated to raise a 
 blush on the cheek of a common street-walker. 
 They seemed to enjoy their tears, and even to 
 make some sacrifices to augment them. Had 
 any one a piece of needle-work which she wished 
 to preserve, it was rent to pieces before her face. 
 A singing bird that had the* misfortune to have 
 been the companion of the solitary hours of its 
 mistress, was sure to be taken from her and killed. 
 To these dejected and defenceless females, every 
 insult and indignity was offered, not forgetting 
 the last of which beastly libertines can be guilty. 
 
 In a country where the crucifix was sent to the 
 mint ; where churches were put up at auction ; 
 where the half-worn cassoc, the surplice, and the 
 veil, made part of the assortment of a dealer in 
 old clothes, and were exposed to public sale on the 
 market-place ; where the ministers of the gospel 
 were scoffed at, reviled, and frequently murdered 
 with as little ceremony as one would kill a dog; 
 where the most daring blasphemies were uttered 
 and published and spread through the country, 
 not only wdth the permission of its governors, but 
 by their direction; in a country where all this 
 was practised, religion could not be of long dura- 
 tion. Religion, and even the Catholic religion, 
 did, however, still subsist in France, at least, in 
 form. The Assembly had^ as yet, passed no po- 
 sitive decree for its abolition. They had robbed 
 the church, had stripped its altars, and degraded 
 its ministers ; but still the most pious and active 
 
169 
 
 of those ministers were^eft in the exercise of 
 their functions. The parochial clergy, though 
 deprived of the tithes, had a stipend allowed 
 them. They yet remained with their parishion- 
 ers, many of whom, indeed, nearly all the elderly 
 and sober part of them, continued as firmly at- 
 tached to their pastors as at any former period. 
 
 Things were not suffered to remain long in this 
 state. The Constituent Assembly well knew, 
 that they and religion could never exist for any 
 length of time in the same country. The paro- 
 chial clergy were men of talents and industry. 
 They generally decided all the little disputes be- 
 tween their parishioners ; to which amicable ca- 
 pacity, they often joined that of physician or sur- 
 geon ; and these their beneficent services were 
 always rendered without fee or reward. Even 
 the atheists and deists themselves had repeatedly^ 
 acknowledged their virtuous modesty, and the 
 great utility they were of to the community at 
 large. Such a body of men, immoveably attach- 
 ed to the religion they taught, was truly formida- 
 ble to the new tyrants. Religion had received a 
 severe blow ; but if these men retained their 
 cures, it might recover. Nay, what was still 
 more dreadful, the monarchy itself might recover 
 along with it; and it is not difficult to conceive, 
 how an idea like this must haunt the minds of 
 the pupils of the savage and impious Diderot, 
 who hoped to see "the last of kings strangled 
 with the guts of the last of priests." In short, 
 the parochial clergy were the only men on earth 
 
 ? 
 
170 
 
 they had now to fear, and these they got rid of 
 by a stratagem worthy of an Assembly, the lea- 
 ders of which joined to the most hardened wick- 
 edness, the profoundest dissimulation. 
 
 They laid aside the Rights of Man, together 
 with the famous constitution, from which they 
 took the adjunct to their natie, and which we 
 have since seen burnt by the hands of the com- 
 mon hangman (or rather common guillotiner) in 
 that very city of Paris where it had been issued 
 amidst the applauses and even adorations of the 
 populace. They laid aside the discussion of this 
 instrument of short-lived and ridiculous memory, 
 to draw up another, which they were pleased to 
 call the *' Civil Constitution of the Clergy." 
 They were constitution mad, absolutely frantic. 
 
 It might be sufficient to say of this latter con- 
 stitution, that it was just as subversive of religion 
 as their other constitution was of every principle 
 of government and sound policy. They knew 
 it to be in direct opposition to the very nature of 
 the catholic religion : yet they had the assurance 
 to tell the people, that it was not ; they even 
 went so far as to protest, that they would live 
 and die in the religion of their forefathers, at^he 
 very moment when they were taking the surest 
 measure in the world for destroying it. They 
 were led to this hypocritical declaration, from a 
 fear that the body of the people were not yet ripe 
 for a total abolition of religion, and, as we shall 
 see in the sequel, this fear was not entirely un- 
 
171 
 
 founded. By persuading the people, that nothing 
 was intended against their faith, they had an ad- 
 ditional handle against the clergy, by representing 
 them as unfriendly to their " Civil Constitution," 
 merely because it was necessary to the support of 
 the Rights of Man, 
 
 This instrument did not, however, pass into a 
 law, without considerable resistance. There were 
 yet some honest and virtuous men, even among 
 the members of the Constituent Assembly. These 
 had remained with them, not to aid in overturn- 
 ing the government, and in effecting the dreadful 
 revolution that has since rendered the country a 
 slaughter-house, but to oppose the destructive 
 measures of the philosophers, and, if possible, 
 save the sinking state. At the head of these 
 was the learned and eloquent Abbe Maury. He 
 opposed this "• Civil Constitution," with all the 
 powers of reasoning and all the charms of elo- 
 quence : but it was casting pearls before swine. 
 When was an atheist open to conviction ? The 
 decree passed, and was soon after followed by 
 another, obliging the clergy to swear to observe 
 and maintain the '' Civil Constitution." This 
 oath they could not take, without breaking that 
 which they had taken at entering into the priest- 
 hood ; and that the Assembly had every reason 
 to suppose they would not do. Whether they 
 did or not, however, the end of their tyrants was 
 answered : if they refused, they were to be driven 
 from their livings ; if they complied, they must 
 be Ipoked upon as apostates, and be deserted by 
 
172 
 
 all those who were still attached to them. In 
 either case, the tottering remains of religion must 
 come to the ground. The clergy, and indeed the 
 whole nation, and all Europe,' saw the real ob- 
 ject of this inhuman and impious decree ; but 
 the Assembly, surrounded by their enlightened 
 myrmidons, the Parisian mob, bid defiance to 
 earth and heaven. 
 
 Generally speaking, the clergy were resolved 
 not to take the oath. " Lose no time," said the 
 Abbe Maury, " in the delivery of your challenge. 
 By shedding our blood you may ingratiate your- 
 selves with your constituents. Lose, then, not a 
 single moment. Your victims are here ; they 
 are ready. To their torments add not that of 
 suspense. Why not vote at once for our execu- 
 tion, glut your hatred, and quench for a little 
 your thirst for blood ? Hasten, I say, while the 
 power is in your hands ; for remember, I now- 
 foretel, your reign ivill be of short duration,^^* 
 
 * The Abbe Maury was not the only one, who had the cou- 
 rage to tell this Assembly what would be the consequences of 
 their proceedings. The famous Raynal wrote to them in 1791, 
 and concluded his letter, as near as I can recollect, in the fol- 
 lowing words : 
 
 " The consequence of these wild decrees will be, a continual 
 struggle between the king and the Assembly ; if the former tri- 
 umphs, he will be a despot ; if the latter triumphs, the king 
 will die on a scaffold : hence a regent ioithout and a 7ninor 
 ivithin, dreadful civil war or more dreadful anarchy y the end of 
 which no man living, perhaps, will ever see." 
 
 This was in 1791. The philosophers laughed at the old 
 Abbe. They called him a fool and a dotard. 
 
173 
 
 This prophetic address, which we have seen 
 so fully verified, served only to inflame. Eight 
 days only were given the clergy to determine on 
 compliance or refusal ; during which, no strata- 
 gem that base and degenerate tyranny could de* 
 vise, was left unessayed to intimidate them. This 
 was ever their practice, when they had an im- 
 portant blow to strike. Rochefoucauld, formerly 
 a duke, declared at the time the decree for the 
 seizure of the monasteries was under deliberation, 
 that ^'the lives of the bishops and priests^ in the 
 Assembly^ depended upon the passing of it ;" and, 
 in order to silence all those who opposed it, a list 
 of their names was stuck upon the walls, with a 
 promise of a reward of " twelve hundred livres 
 to any patriot, who icould assassinate them,^^ 
 According to this laudable custom, this instance 
 of French liberty, when the day for taking the 
 oath, or, as it was well termed, ** the for-swear- 
 ing day" arrived, the Assembly took care to call 
 in the aid of the fish- women and mob. " To the 
 lamp-post with the non-juring bishops and priestsP^ 
 was echoed from the streets and the galleries. 
 The ruffians were prepared for murder, and were 
 howling for their prey, like so many wolves 
 round a sheep fold. 
 
 Let the reader imagine himself in the situation 
 of one of these unfortunate clergymen : an oath 
 of apostacy before him, and a halter behind his 
 back, and then let him give me his opinion of the 
 rights of man, 
 
 p 2 
 
174 
 
 This did not intimidate the clergy, only thirty 
 of whom could be prevailed on to submit, and 
 these were already known to have abandoned 
 their religion. When the oath was tendered to 
 the bishop of Agen : " Gentlemen," says he, " I 
 lament not the loss of my fortune ; but there is 
 another loss which I should ever lament ; the loss 
 of your esteem and my faith. I could not fail to 
 lose both, if I took the oath now proposed to 
 me." The old bishop of Poitiers, fearing he 
 might lose so fair an opportunity of bearing testi- 
 mony of his sincerity, advanced to the tribune, 
 and calling on the president to command silence, 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " I am seventy years old ; 
 I have been thirty years a bishop : I will never 
 disgrace my gray hairs by an oath of apostacy." 
 Upon this manly declaration of the reverend old 
 prelate, the clergy rose from their seats, thanked 
 him for his example, and told the Assembly he 
 had expressed their unanimous sentiments. 
 
 Not being a Roman Catholic, I hope 1 shall be 
 excused, when I freely declare, that I much ques- 
 tion, whether the ministers of any protestant com- 
 munion, in a moment so terrible, surrounded with 
 assassins and without a single friend, would have 
 shown such a noble intrepidity. " They have 
 lost their money," said the profligate Mirabeau 
 on this occasion, " but they have saved thein ho- 
 nour. "^"^^ And, if this was the case, what had the 
 
 * Doctor Priestly (Fast Sermon of 1794, page 46,) says : 
 " When Twas myself in France, in 1774, 1 saw sufficient rea- 
 son to believe, that Aar«?Zy any person of eminence , in church 
 
175 
 
 Assembly done ? If, to preserve honour, it was 
 necessary to refuse an obedience to their decrees, 
 what sort of decrees must those be ? 
 
 or state^ and especially in the least degree eminent in pkiloso- 
 pliy, or literature, was a believer in Christianity ; and no person 
 will suppose, that there has been any change in favour of Chris- 
 tianity i/i the last twenty yearsP — The doctor will allow, I 
 suppose, that bishops are " persons of eminence in the church ;" 
 if he does, it will appear, that he knew but very little of those of 
 the French church, and that he formed a very rash opinion (to 
 say the best of it) concerning their belief in Christianity ; for, of 
 one hundred and thirty-eight bishops, only four, namely, 
 Taillerand, Brienne, Jarante, and Gobet, took the oath of 
 apostacy. But, he will say, I meant, " those eminent in jphilo- 
 sop Ay and literature." Ah! eminent m philosophy ! here he 
 is right. No, no ; not one of the philosophical divines believ- 
 ed in Christianity ; they looked upon Christ, as the Unitarians 
 do ; that is, as a sort of " teacher :" but, to the honour of the 
 French bishops, there were but four of these philosophers 
 amongst them. As to the other hundred and thirty-four, if 
 they have not given a proof of their belief, I should be glad to 
 know from the doctor, what proof he will please to be satisfied 
 with. Their refusal to take the oath could be dictated by no- 
 thing but their belief in Christianity, and their determination not 
 to dishonour it. Had not this been the case, they would have 
 taken the oath, and preserved their fortunes. They were in a 
 country where the mob do not, like those of Birmingham, con- 
 tent themselves with the execution of an effigy ; they execute 
 the person. Yet they remained at their post : they did not de- 
 camp in disguise. Even if they escaped the knives of the cut- 
 throats, they knew that poverty, beggary, a lingering existence, 
 must be the price of their refusal. They could not bring an 
 action against the city of Paris : no damages are granted by 
 a jury in that country. They could not preach and prate 
 against their government, with impunity! they could not 
 transfer their property, and emigrate in open day. There 
 are such things as national guards, municipalities, passports, 
 halters, daggers, knives, drowning boats, and the rights ofman^ 
 in France. We have since seen several of these bishops, or 
 men " of eminence in the church," refuse, with the bloody 
 
176 
 
 The Assembly were disconcerted by this firm 
 resistance on the part of the clergy. They knew 
 the clergy in general would never take the oath, 
 but they did not imagine that those amongst them- 
 selves, would, amidst the vociferations of their 
 cannibals, have the courage to give such a posi- 
 tive denial. For a moment they felt abashed : but 
 they were gone too far to think of retreating. The 
 apostate Abbe Gregoire, whom we have since 
 seen amongst the organizers of a pagan festival, 
 was, on this occasion, chosen to convince the cler- 
 gy, that the oath might be taken, without any vio- 
 lation of their faith. After this, in order to de- 
 prive the clergy of an opportunity of defending 
 their opinions in opposition to the oath, they were 
 ordered to advance and take it at once. This de- 
 cree had no effect, not a man advanced. Now 
 the matter was brought to a point : the decree for 
 enforcing the oath must be repealed, or the clergy 
 must be driven from their livings, and those in 
 the Assembly from their seats. It is hardly ne- 
 cessary to say that the latter was adopted : one 
 tyrannical measure is the natural and inevitable 
 consequence of another. 
 
 poignard at their breasts, to take this oath. Would they have 
 done this, had they been what doctor Priestley has represented 
 them to be ? would they have done this, had they been atheists, 
 or deists ? nay, would they have done this, had they been Uni' 
 tarians? If we are to judge from the conduct of the doctor, 
 they would not. I will not take upon me to say, that the phi- 
 losophical political divine meant to propagate an atrocious ca- 
 lumny by this sermon of his : I shall only observe, that the ser- 
 mon was preached long after the French bishops had given 
 these undeniable proofs of their faith and sincerity.- 
 
177 
 
 A decree was now passed for the expulsion of 
 all the non-juring bishops and priests, and for the 
 choosing of others in their stead. From this day, 
 it may be said, there was no such thing as an es- 
 tablished religion in France. The axe had long 
 been laid to the root of the tree ; it was ready to 
 fall, and this stroke levelled it with the earth. 
 
 Had the dispute been about this or that tenet ; 
 had the oath been imposed with an intention of 
 exchanging one religion for another, the case would 
 have been different ; the expulsion might have ta- 
 ken place without any very considerable injury to 
 the morals of the people. But, the struggle was 
 that of religion against irreligion, that of Chris- 
 tianity against atheism. 
 
 It was (I hope it is so no longer) the opinion 
 of Doctor Priestley, and many othev philosophical 
 divines, that any change whatever was preferable 
 to the continuation of the catholic religion in 
 France. There is a passage in Moor's journal, 
 which contains so complete an answer to every 
 thing these gentlemen have advanced on this sub- 
 ject, that I am surprised, considering the prin- 
 ciples of the journalist and his companion Lau- 
 derdale, that it ever found a place in that volume. 
 
 The Doctor, being at Abbeville, met with a 
 protestant clergyman, whom he congratulated on 
 the deliverance of himself and his brethren, from 
 the vexation of Romish persecution. The clergy- 
 man seemed to lament that along with the spirit 
 
178 
 
 of persecution, that of religion daily diminished. 
 " Upon which," says the Doctor, *' I observed 
 that, as nothing could be more opposite to true 
 religion than a spirit of persecution, the former, 
 it was to be hoped, would return without the lat- 
 ter ; but, in the mean time, the protestants were 
 happy in not only being tolerated in the exercise 
 of their religion, but also on being rendered capa- 
 ble of enjoying every privilege and advantage 
 which the catholics themselves enjoy. 
 
 " We are not allowed those advantages, re- 
 sumed the clergyman, from any regard they bear 
 to our religion, but from a total indifference for 
 their own. 
 
 " Whaterer may be the case, replied I, the 
 effect is the same with regard to you. 
 
 *' No, said he, the effect might be better, not 
 only with respect to us, but to all France ; for 
 the spirit of persecution might have disappeared, 
 without an indifference for all religion coming in 
 its place : and in that case there would have 
 been more probability of the true religion gaining 
 ground ; for it is easier to draw men from an 
 erroneous doctrine to a true one, than to impress 
 the truths of religion on minds which despise all 
 religion whatever. 
 
 " But, although you may not be able to make 
 converts of them, I replied, still you may live 
 happy among them, in the quiet possession of 
 your own religion and all your other advantages. 
 
179 
 
 " I doubt it much, resumed he ; being persuad- 
 ed that, in a country where religious sentiments 
 are effaced from the minds of the bulk of the peo- 
 ple, crimes of the deepest guilt will prevail in 
 spite of all the restraints of law." 
 
 How fully, alas ! has the opinion of this good 
 clergyman been confirmed ! here we see a man 
 living upon the spot, a Frenchman and a Protest- 
 ant, lamenting the decay of the catholic religion, 
 and trembling for the consequences. This man 
 plainly perceived the drift of the philosophical 
 legislators : he saw that the destruction of all re- 
 ligion was their object, while they pretended to 
 be correcting its abuses. Very far was he from 
 saying, with our zealous reformers, that "any 
 change was preferable to the continuation of 
 popery," and yet, I think, we ought to allow him 
 to be as much interested in a change, and as 
 good a judge of its conveniences and inconveni- 
 ences, as persons on this side the sea ; except, 
 indeed, that he might not be enlightened by the 
 rays of modern philosophy.* 
 
 * Some of the French Protestants, however, difiered widely 
 from this good man. The Caivinists of Nimes began massa- 
 creing the Catholics at an early period of the revolution, under 
 the pretext that they were aristocrats. About six hundred 
 persons, of both sexes and of all ages, were butchered in their 
 houses, in the streets and pul3lic squares, before they could even 
 suspect their danger. These monsters attacked the convent of 
 the Capuchins, forced it open, and pursued the venerable fathers 
 to their dormitories and cells. Five of them were left welter- 
 ing in their blood at the altar's foot. One of these, a very old 
 man, craved five minutes while he committed his soul to God, 
 
180 
 
 From this disgression we must return to the 
 expulsed clergy. The parish priests generally 
 followed the example of their bishops in refusing 
 to take the oath. Others were, of course, ap- 
 pointed to replace them. Taillerand Perigorde, 
 whom we have seen proposing the assumption of 
 the church-estates, was now become a sort of 
 pope to the modern church, and was busily em- 
 ployed, laying unholy hands on the heads of the 
 new bishops. Gobet, one of the four bishops 
 who had forsworn themselves, was rewarded for 
 his apostacy by the bishopric of Paris. Vaga- 
 bond philosophical abbes, who had never been 
 able to obtain admittance into the priesthood un- 
 der the old government, were now not only ac- 
 cepted, but sought after. To these were added 
 the secular priests and monks who had apostatized. 
 Even the wretches who had been expulsed from 
 their cures, or orders, for irregular or criminal 
 conduct, were now called in from Germany and 
 the low countries. What a sight it must be, to 
 those who yet preserved some respect for their 
 
 The cool and deliberate villains granted his request. The in- 
 tended butcher held a pistol in one hand and a watch in the 
 other, and, when the five minutes were expired, shot him 
 through the head. See Hist, of the French Clergy, page 71. 
 French edition. 
 
 This fact fully proves, that protestants can be as cruel as 
 catholics. Let us not, then imagine^ that we are secure from 
 events of this kind, merely because the Catholic religion is not 
 established here. It was not a zeal for the Calvinistical reli- 
 gion that led the protestants of Nimes to commit these acts of 
 barbarity : their knives were pointed, not against catholics, as 
 stich, but as aristocrats. 
 
181 
 
 religion and their country, to see these strollers, 
 with their strumpets at their heels, returning to 
 take on them the care of the morals and souls of 
 a numerous people ! After all, the number of 
 apostates was insufficient : a great many parishes 
 remained without any priest at all. 
 
 The installment of the new priests was com- 
 monly, not to say always, attended with tumult 
 and violence. Many of their predecessors were 
 knocked down, stabbed, or shot, at their church 
 doors, the day, or day after, they had refused to 
 conform. The priest of the village of Spet-Saux, 
 while he was explaining to his parishioners his 
 reasons for refusing to take the oath, received a 
 musket ball in his breast, and tumbled dead from 
 the pulpit into the aisle. 
 
 Where there was no resistance but on the part 
 of the priest, an assassination put an end to the 
 struggle ; but, in some places, the resistance was 
 more general. The parishoners were divided ; 
 one part were the champions of the apostate, and 
 the other, those of the old priest. Church time 
 was the moment for deciding these disputes, and 
 the Church-yard the field of action. These af- 
 frays were often bloody ; victory sometimes lean- 
 ed to the side of justice ; but, as the apostate 
 appeared in person at the head of his troops, as 
 he had the young people generally on his side, 
 and always the mob and municipal officers, with 
 their national guards, he seldom failed to keep 
 the field. Some of these wretches have been 
 
 Q 
 
182 
 
 seen conducted to the altar to the sound of drums 
 and trumpets, at the very moment when their 
 partizans were murdering on the outside of the 
 Church. 
 
 The expelling of the parochial clergy tried the 
 "real sentiments of the body of the French peo- I 
 pie more than any one act of their tyrants ever 
 did, before or since. Generally speaking, the 
 trial was honourable to them ; for, if we except 
 Paris, and some other places immediately under 
 the influence of the revolutionary clubs, they | 
 wished to retain their ancient pastors, and did 
 not scruple to declare that wish, notwithstanding 
 the vociferations of hundreds of mobs in the pay 
 of the Assembly ; notwithstanding all these petty 
 assemblies of subaltern tyrants, called municipal 
 officers, who came to order them to receive an 
 apostate, ifi the name of the law ; notwithstand- 
 ing thousands of spies and assassins, ever ready 
 to betray and murder them ; in spite of all these, 
 whole parishes flocked round their priests, pressed 
 them to continue, followed them to the fields, and 
 left the apostates to say mass to the bare walls. 
 Many of the latter, though they continued, to re- 
 ceive the revolutionary salary for upwards of two 
 years, never could boast of above three or four 
 voluntary hearers. 
 
 Wherever this obstinate attachment to religion 
 appeared, the Assembly knew how to make the 
 refractory feel their authority. True tyrants, 
 they suffered no one to thwart their will with 
 
183 
 
 impunity. Property, honour, conscience, all 
 must yield to their sultanic decrees ! 
 
 Condorcet, the atheist Condorcet, proposed 
 flagellation ; and this was pretty commonly in- 
 flicted on the women and children who assisted 
 at the masses of the non-juring clergy. The 
 Abbe Barruel (page 79 of the French edition) 
 tells us, that three sisters of one of the Charity- 
 houses at Paris, expired under the rods of the 
 assassins. Ungrateful monsters ! the lives of these 
 women had been totally devoted to the service 
 of the sick, the lame and the blind. By their 
 vow they were excluded from the pleasures of 
 the world, without being excluded from its pains. 
 They had made a voluntary surrender of all they 
 possessed, had assumed the garb, and submitted 
 to the austerities of the monastic life, in order to 
 devote themselves to the mournful occupation of 
 attending on the poor who laboured under infirm- 
 ities. It w^as said, they did this to secure them- 
 selves a place in heaven ; and most certainly they 
 took the surest way. I feel a reluctance to call 
 such people superstitious ; for, if they were so, 
 their superstition was of the most am^iable kind ; 
 and surely nothing short of the principles of this 
 hellish revolution could have hardened the hearts 
 of men to scourge them to death, and that merely 
 because they would not disgrace themselves by 
 receiving the sacrament from the contaminated 
 hands of an apostate. 
 
 It were endless to enumerate all the different 
 
184 
 
 sorts of persecution exercised against those who 
 remained attached to their religion. Little chil- 
 dren were beaten half to death ; the hair and ears 
 of women were cut off; thej were mounted on 
 asses, and led about in the most unseemly and 
 shocking guise. The instance of John Cantabel 
 deserves particular notice. Cantabel was an hon- 
 est peasant, sincerely attached to the religion of 
 his fathers. He happened to have a little cate- 
 chism which had been published by the non-ju- 
 ring clergy ; it was found in his house ; and this 
 was a sufficient crime. A committee of munici- 
 pal officers ordered the catechism to be burnt ; 
 a great fire was made ; Cantabel was brought 
 forth, and commanded to throw the book into it. 
 "No," says the heroic peasant, "it contains the 
 principles of my religion, it has been my guide and 
 my comfort, and it now gives me the courage to 
 tell you, that I will never commit it to the flames." 
 Upon this he was threatened, but still he remained 
 resolute. One of the ruffians seized a flaming 
 torch, and held it under his hand. " Burn on," 
 said he, "you may burn not only my hand, but 
 my whole body, before I will do any thing to dis- 
 honour my religion." He was afterwards mount- 
 ed on a horse, his back to the head, and the tait 
 in his hand, and was thus conducted about amidst 
 the shouts of the rabble. The vile wretches, 
 when tired with their sport, suffered him to creep 
 home, more dead than alive. — This is the liberty of 
 conscience in the " Age of Reason /" This is the 
 toleration we might expect from atheists, from 
 those infidel philosophers, who are continually ex- 
 
185 
 
 claiming against the prejudices of their forefa- 
 thers, and against the sad effects of bigotry and 
 religious zeal. In the cant of these enlightened 
 reformers, this peasant was a fanatic, an aristo- 
 crat, a rebel to the law, and, as such, they will 
 tell you that he was worthy of death. 
 
 Notwithstanding the partial opposition the 
 apostates met with, and the horror of their con- 
 duct, as well as their ministry, excited in all good 
 minds, they, at last, found themselves iii posses- 
 sion of the churches, to the exclusion of the an- 
 cient priests. Such of these latter as had escaped 
 death, were now bereft of all means of subsist- 
 ence ; they were, therefore, obliged to become a 
 charge to their faithful parishioners. Had there 
 been any such thing as toleration and liberty 
 under the Constituent Assembly, these unfortu- 
 nate men might still have found a retreat amongst 
 their wealthy neighbours, that would have left 
 them no reason to regret the loss of their salaries. 
 But the greatest part of their wealthy neighbours 
 were already reduced to their own situation, and 
 those who were not, knew that the reception of a 
 non-juring priest would amount to a proof of 
 aristocracy, sufficient to lead them to the guillo- 
 tine. The expulsed priests were, then, obliged 
 to take shelter in some obscure and miserable 
 cabin, and often was the terror so great, that, like 
 persons infected with the plague, no one would 
 admit them beneath his roof. 
 
 From such a state of miserv and humiliation, 
 
 q2 ' 
 
186 
 
 some fled in disguise to the countries surrounding 
 France ; some to recesses in the forests, whither 
 the peasants of the neighbourhood brought them 
 the means of existence. Numbers, however, still 
 remained in their towns and villages. Seeing the 
 whole country swarming with assassins, they 
 thought, perhaps, they might as well wait the stab 
 in their own parishes, as to seek it at a distance. 
 Many, too, from age and infirmity, were abso- 
 lutely incapable • of travelling ; and besides, the 
 small remainder of a life so full of bitterness, 
 could not, with such men, be an object of suffi- 
 cient importance to induce them to abandon those 
 of their parishioners who still sought their advice 
 and consolation.. Some were retained by their 
 affection to their relations, or their parents ; it is 
 so hard to break the bands of nature, to tear one's 
 self from all one holds dear, that the risk of death, 
 in competition with such a separation, loses half 
 its terrors. 
 
 The ancient priests who remained in their 
 parishes, or near them, though often obliged to 
 secrete themselves, and though, to appearances, 
 generally shunned, were resorted to by great num- 
 bers, particularly of the elderly people. 1 have 
 already observed, that, among the youth, there 
 w;as a pretty general bias towards the apostates. 
 Hence ensued such scenes of division and perse- 
 cution as no country on earth except France ever 
 witnessed. Friends were divided against friends ; 
 one branch of a family against another. It often 
 happened that the parents treated their children 
 
187 
 
 as apostates, and the children their parents as 
 aristocrats ; quarrels and bloodshed were as often 
 the consequences. We have seen (page 35 of 
 this volume) a son cut off the heads of his father 
 and mother, because they refused to attend at the 
 mass of an apostate, carry the heads to his club, 
 and receive applauses for the deed. Acts like 
 this v^^ere not frequent ; but others, very near ap- 
 proaching it, were not only frequent but general. 
 Sons, and even daughters, have been known to 
 beat and lacerate their parents in the most cruel 
 manner. Hundreds of both sexes have been led 
 to prison and publicly accused by their children.* 
 A man at Faulconberg in Artois, blew his wife's 
 brains out with his musket, and left her wallow- 
 ing in her blood on the hearth, with seven small 
 children crying round her ! 
 
 Can any man, with the common feelings of 
 humanity about his heart, contemplate such scenes 
 of horror, without execrating the revolution that 
 gave rise to them ?t 
 
 * See the Appendix, No. VIII. 
 
 t Many writers Tand aniong others Thomas Paine) have 
 remarked, that the French paid great respect, even a sort of 
 adoration, to old people : if this was the case, which I am by 
 no means inclined to deny, or doubt, what sort of a revolution 
 must that be, which has changed this respect and veneration, so 
 justly due to old age, into scorn and contempt, into a merciless 
 brutality, nay, into parricide ? Solon made no law to punish 
 sacrilege or parricide ; because, he observed, " the first was 
 as yet unknown in Athens, and the second was so directly 
 against all the feelings of nature, that he did not believe it could 
 ever be committed.''— Poor Solon did not live in the "€?t- 
 
188 
 
 The apostate priests failed not to fan the flames 
 of discord and division. To ingratiate themselves 
 with the young and ignorant, they mixed in all 
 their amusements and debauches, treated them at 
 their own houses, and instituted civic festivals for 
 the mob, with whom they were continually sur- 
 rounded. Their masses were sung midst the 
 shouts of robbers and murderers, and often inter- 
 rupted by the arrival of some innocent conscien- 
 tious person dragged into assist at what he looked 
 upon as a profanation. Their churches resembled 
 guard-houses, rather than places of divine wor- 
 ship. In proportion as they perceived themselves 
 neglected and despised, their wrath against their 
 unshaken predecessors increased. Vexed and 
 humiliated to find, that all the respectable part of 
 their parishioners took as much pains to avoid them, 
 as to seek a communication with their old pastors, 
 the whole weight of the vengeance fell on these lat- 
 ter. In their existence itself, they saw a memento of 
 their own infamy. There is not a species of cruelty, 
 that the most obdurate can devise, which they 
 left unessayed. They hunted them from their 
 retreats, from the houses of their friends, and re- 
 lations, from the woods and caverns, even to ex- 
 pose them to insult and murder. The infirmities 
 
 lightened eighteenth century," or he would never have talked 
 in this way. If he could but rise from the grave, and listen to 
 our philosophers, they would not only convince him that such 
 actions are possible, but they would tell him they were indis- 
 pensably necessary to the establishment of a free republican 
 government. Had Solon been at Paris, since the revolution, 
 he would have been guillotined for a rank aristocrat. 
 
189 
 
 of age, the tears of parents, nothing could soften 
 the hearts of these apostate wretches. We have 
 seen enough of the suifermgs of the old clergy, in 
 the first chapter of this work ; but there is yet 
 one instance which I must quote. "I was at 
 Trois Rivieres (says le voyageur de la Revolution) 
 a little village in Picardy. I saw several women 
 running by the inn where I had put up ; they all 
 seemed much alarmed. I asked the landlord 
 what was the matter : he told me that the revolu- 
 tionary priest, provoked to find that none of the 
 village attended at his mass, had been that morn- 
 ing to Ville D^Eu for a party of national guards, 
 to aid him in driving the former priest from a little 
 cottage, where he and his mother had taken shel- 
 ter. The man gave me a most affecting account 
 of this good priest, who was upwards of four- 
 score years of age, and who had been the rec- 
 tor of that place for more than fifty years. On 
 the day he was to deliver his cure into the hands 
 of the apostate, he summoned his little flock to 
 meet him in the church for the last time. Not a 
 soul was absent, old or young. The women car- 
 ried their infants in their arnls, and two old peo- 
 ple, not able to walk, were carried on couches. 
 My children^ says the old man, / have pressed 
 your tender hands on the baptismal font : I have 
 sung the requiem for the souls of your fathers : I 
 must now hid you an eternal farewell^ deprived of 
 the consolation of leaving my ashes amongst you* 
 — Here he ceased : tears stifled his voice ; the sobs 
 and cries of his audience rendered the scene too 
 much for him. — While the landlord was speakings 
 
190 
 
 we heard a discharge of muskets, and a loud 
 shriek of women. We ran to the spot. The 
 peasants of the village, about forty in number, 
 had assembled round the cottage, with clubs, to 
 defend their pastor ; but, the enemy having fire- 
 arms, they had been obliged to give way, leaving 
 two of their companions dead and several wound- 
 ed. I now beheld a sight sufficient to melt the 
 heart of a tiger. Two ruffians of the national 
 guard were dragging out this venerable old man 
 by the hair of his head, by those locks as white 
 as snow. He had received a wound in his cheek, 
 from which the blood ran down on his garments. 
 In this situation was he led off, bare-headed and 
 bare-footed, towards Ville D^Eu, while his poor 
 old parent, who had been many years blind and 
 dumb, remained on her bed, happily insensible of 
 the sorrows of her son. As the villains pulled 
 him along, all the words he was heard to utter, 
 were. My Mother ! Oh ! My Mother !--The wo- 
 men^and children of the village followed the es- 
 cort with cries and lamentations, till the savages 
 drove them back with the points of their bayo- 
 nets." 
 
 Nor were those of the laity spared, who re- 
 sorted to the old clergy for the exercise of the 
 rights which they looked upon as essential. A 
 new married couple having refused to have the 
 ceremony performed by one of the apostates, a 
 party of his myrmidons broke in upon them, the 
 wedding night. The husband made his escape : 
 the wife, in a swoon, became the prey of a party. 
 
191 
 
 They gratified their brutal passion, without gra- 
 tifying their ferocity. They tore off her breasts, 
 as a tiger might have done with his claws, and 
 threw them on the floor. They then left her to 
 wait till death relieved her from her horrible 
 situation.^ 
 
 I should have scrupled at inserting a fact like 
 this, though taken from so respectable a work, if 
 the former part of this volume did not contain 
 others, if possible, surpassing it: I srj if possi- 
 ble ; for I declare, I know not which is most 
 shocking, the tearing off a womans breasts, or 
 the ripping a child from her womb, and sticking 
 it on the point of the bayonet. Indeed, the great- 
 est part of the facts related here, are so much 
 more shocking and terrific than any thing we 
 have ever before had an idea of, that common 
 murders appear as trifling. t 
 
 By means like these, the old clergy and their 
 adherents were extirpated, and religion along with 
 them. The business of the new clergy (if the 
 
 * See Hist, of the French Clergy, page 138.~I cannot help 
 remarking here, that it is something wonderful this History is 
 not more known in America. — It is a proof, among hundreds, 
 how locked up we have been to every thing that might lead us 
 to a just estimation of the French Revolution. — It is true, the 
 greatest part of the News-papers have set their faces against 
 truth ; but surely, where the press is free, we ought not to suffer 
 ourselves to be kept in the dark by people who are, probably, 
 paid for so doing. 
 
 t See the Appendix, No. IX. 
 
192 
 
 wretches deserve the name) was not to establish 
 one church on the ruins of another : it would be 
 as preposterous to suppose that an assembly of 
 atheists and deists had any such intention, as to 
 suppose that a horde of apostates were calculated 
 for the work. These latter were, in fact, so many 
 missionaries of blasphemy and murder, sent into 
 the provinces purposely to destroy the ancient 
 priesthood. The Assembly foresaw that, when 
 that was done, their new priests would at any 
 time become the apostles of infidelity. 
 
 It must be confessed that these legislators did • 
 not want for cunning : an elegant writer has lately 
 called them " architects of ruin ;" and, indeed, 
 they possessed the art of destroying in its utmost 
 perfection. Their calculations with respect to 
 their new priests were extremely just ; they came 
 out to an unit. When they had annihilated their 
 predecessors, they were not only ready to second 
 the decrees for the abolition of Christianity alto- 
 gether ; they were not only instrumental therein ; 
 but they had led the way. Several began to 
 teach the religion of Reason in the Jacobin clubs, 
 of which they were all members, and even in the 
 pulpit. The garb of a priest itself, became a 
 burthen to them, and they humbly asked leave to 
 quit it for the more honourable one of the national 
 guard. The apostate bishop of Moulin, who had 
 been consecrated by the unhallowed hands of 
 Taillerand, wrote to the Convention that he offi- 
 ciated with a pike and liberty cap, instead of the 
 croiser and the mitre. It was this vile wretch, 
 
198 
 
 who first caused to be written on the gate of the 
 burying ground: '' This is the place of everlast- 
 ing sleep, '''^ 
 
 Three weeks after this communication of the 
 bishop of Moulin, Gobet, the new bishop of Pa- 
 ris, with his Grand-Vicars and three rcT^olution- 
 arj priests, came to the hall of the legislators 
 and there abdicated Christianity in form. They 
 begged pardon of the injured nation for having 
 so long kept them in the dark, by duping them 
 into a belief of the divinity of an Impostor, whose 
 religion they now threw off with abhorrence, re- 
 solved in future, to acknowledge no other deity 
 than Reason alone ! 
 
 It was not more than four days after this that 
 a pagan festival was held in the Cathedral church 
 of Paris. A woman named Memoro, the wife 
 of another man, but the strumpet of the vile 
 Hebert, alias Father du Chene, was dressed up 
 as the goddess of Reason, Her throne was of 
 green turf; an altar was erected at some distance, 
 on which the priests burnt incense, while the 
 legislators, and the brutified Parisian herd were 
 prostrated before the throne of the goddess Rea^ 
 son, alias Memoro, alias du Chene. 
 
 About this epoch appeared the paganish repub- 
 lican calendar, with a decree ordering its adop- 
 tion. This was intended to root from the poor 
 tyrannized people, the very memory of religion ; 
 to dry up the only source of comfort they had left. 
 
 R 
 
194 
 
 They had been robbed of all they possessed in 
 this world, and their inexorable tyrants wished to 
 rob them of every hope in the next. Some say 
 that this calendar itself was composed by an apos- 
 tate priest; others, that it was the work of a 
 writer of farces, named Des Moulins. Whoever 
 may be author, we know who has the honour of 
 re-printing it, and retailing it in this country. 
 
 It is true, the last mentioned acts, the consum- 
 mation of the most horrid blasphemy that ever 
 man was witness of, took place under the Con- 
 vention ; but what were they more than a neces- 
 sary consequence of the measures of the Con- 
 stituent Assembly ? nay, the leaders in that As- 
 sembly boasted, when they had obtained the de- 
 cree against the non-juring priests, that they had 
 tricked the people out of their religion, before 
 they perceived it. Nor is there at this time one 
 of those who voted for that decree, who will not 
 tell you, that Christianity is a farce, fit only for 
 the amusement of old folks, and that he rejoices 
 in its abolition in France. This is not mere sur- 
 mise. 
 
 Indeed, that their successors have only fulfilled 
 their wishes, in this respect, there can be no doubt, 
 if any judgment of the wishes of men is to be 
 formed from their principles, their words and 
 their actions. Who, I ask, that wished to pre- 
 serve religion, would have passed a decree for the 
 expulsion of every priest that refused to forswear 
 himself? who, that did not wish to destroy re- 
 
195 
 
 iigion, would have passed a decree for committing 
 it to the care of apostates ? Was it not clear, that 
 such men would stick at nothing ? That at the 
 nod of their masters, they would at any time be 
 ready to blaspheme the God they pretended to 
 adore ? On the contrary, the Assembly knew that 
 there was no hope of their system taking root, 
 while the ancient clergy remained in their cures. 
 Among men, who gave up their all, and exposed 
 themselves to almost certain death, rather than 
 falsify their faith, they could not hope to find a 
 Gobet. They could not hope to find supple vil- 
 lains that would voluntarily depose the emblems 
 of their religion. on the altar of a strumpet, and 
 confess themselves to have been the crafty minis- 
 ters of an arch impostor. 
 
 The oath tendered to the clergy was the touch- 
 stone ; it was to prove them ; to know whom the 
 Assembly could depend on for the accomplish- 
 ment of their projects, and whom they could not 
 depend on. The enforcing of the oath was the 
 last blow to public religion in France, and there- 
 fore the destruction of that religion, with all its 
 immoral and murderous consequences, is due to 
 the Constitusnt Assembly, and to them alone. It 
 is as nonsensical as unjust to accuse this or that 
 faction, or even the Convention itself, of exchang- 
 ing Christianity for a system of paganism ; in- 
 fidels who adore an idol are as good as infidels 
 who adore none ; and where is the difference, 
 whether the adored idol be Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
 or Madame Memoro ? An adulteress is as good a 
 goddess as an adulterer is a god, at any time. 
 
196 
 
 Let the reader now look back, and he will 
 easily trace all the horrors of the French Revo- 
 lution to the decrees of the Constituent Assembly. 
 It was they that rent the government to pieces ; 
 it was they that first broached the destructive doc- 
 trine of equality ; it was they that destroyed all 
 ideas of private property; and, finally, it was they 
 that rendered the people hardened, by effacing 
 from their minds every principle of the only re- 
 ligion capable of keeping mankind within the 
 bounds of justice and humanity. Look also at 
 their particular actions, and you will see them 
 breaking their oaths to their constituents and to 
 their king ; you will see their agents driving peo- 
 ple from their estates, beating and killing them ; 
 you will see them surrounded with a set of hire- 
 ling writers and assassins, employed to degrade 
 and murder peaceable people, attached to the re- 
 ligion of their forefathers; and you will see them 
 not only pardoning murderers in spite of theii* 
 poor humiliated monarch, but even receiving the 
 assassins at their bar, covering them with ap- 
 plauses, and instituting festivals in their honour. 
 What have the members of the Convention and 
 their agents done more than this ? They have 
 murdered in greater numbers. True ; but what 
 have numbers to do with the matter ? The prin- 
 ciple on which those murders were committed, 
 was ever the same ; it was more or less active as 
 occasion required. The wants of the Conven- 
 tion were more pressing than those of the Con- 
 stituent Assembly. The Assembly were not driven 
 to the expedient of requisitions, nor was the hour 
 
197 
 
 jet arrived for the promulgation of the paganish 
 calendar. Consequently, they met with less op- 
 position, and therefore less murders were neces- 
 sary ; but, had they continued their sittings to 
 this day, the devastation of every kind would 
 liave been the same that it has been. 
 
 The whole history of the revolution presents 
 us with nothing but a regular progress in robbery 
 and murder. The first Assembly, for instance, 
 begin by flattering the mob, wheedling their king 
 out of his title and his power ; they then set him 
 at defiance, proscribe or put to death his friends ; 
 and then shut him up in his palace, as a wild 
 beast in a cage. The second Assembly send a 
 gang of ruffians to insult and revile him, and then 
 they hurl him from his throne. The third Assem- 
 bly cut his throat.* What is there in all this, 
 but a regular and natural progression from bad 
 to worse. And so with the rest of their abomi- 
 nable actions. 
 
 To throw the blame on the successors of the 
 
 * List of the philosophers icho signed the order for the execu- 
 tion of Louis the XVI. 
 
 Roland, since cut his throat on the high road, his chattering 
 
 political wife guillotined. 
 Servan, guillotined. 
 Le Brun^ guillotined. 
 Claviere, (a Genevese) cut his throat in prison, and his wife 
 
 took poison. 
 There are two others, Bournonville and PacJce, who are not 
 yet execute^. Robespierre died a little too soon for these. 
 
 r2 
 
198 
 
 first despotic Assembly, is such a perversion of 
 reason, such an abandonment of truth, that no 
 man, who has a single grain of sense, can hear 
 of with patience. As well might we ascribe all 
 the murders committed at Nantz to the under 
 cut-throats, by whom they were perpetrated, and 
 not to the Convention by whose order, and under 
 whose protection, these cut-throats acted. The 
 Constituent Assembly knew the consequences of 
 their decrees, as well as Foucault (see page 89) 
 knew the consequence of his order for throwing 
 forty women from the cliff Pierre-moine into the 
 sea ; and it is full as ridiculous to hear them pre- 
 tend, that they did not wish those consequences 
 to follow, as it would be to hear Foucault pre- 
 tend, that he did not wish the forty women should 
 be drowned. True, the Convention are guilty of 
 every crime under heaven : assassins and blas- 
 phemers must ever merit detestation and abhor- 
 rence, from whatever motive they may act, or by 
 whomsoever taught and instigated ; but still the 
 pre-eminence in infamy is due to their teachers 
 and instigators : the Convention is, in relation to 
 the Constituent Assembly, what the ignorant, 
 desperate bravo is, in relation to his crafty and 
 skulking employer." 
 
 * " Though the heroes who first strutted upon the stage, have 
 been since then massacred, guillotined, put to flight, or have 
 perished by their own hands, that does not prove that they 
 were not exactly of the same i)and with those who have guillo- 
 tined them or put them to flight : and in following them through 
 their different windings, we shall see that they were all intrin- 
 sically the same / that private interest and particular circum- 
 
199 
 
 Before I conclude, it may not be improper, as 
 I have hitherto spoken of the Constituent Assem- 
 bly in a general way, to make some distinctions 
 with respect to the persons who composed it. I 
 am very far from holding them all up as objects 
 of abhorrence, or even of censure. There were 
 many, very many, men of great wisdom and vir- 
 tue, who were elected to the States-General, and 
 even who joined the Assembly, after it assumed 
 the epithet National, It would be the height of 
 injustice to reproach these men with the conse- 
 quences of measures, which they opposed with 
 such uncommon eloquence and courage. History 
 will make honourable mention of their names, 
 when the epitome 1 have here attempted will be 
 h)st and forgotten. Suffice it then to say, that 
 the weight of our censure, of the censure of all 
 just and good men, ought to fall on those licen- 
 tious politicans and inhdel philosophers alone, 
 who sanctioned the decree for the annihilation of 
 property and religion. 
 
 Here, too, we ought to divest ourselves of eve- 
 ry thing of a personal or party nature, and direct 
 our abhorrence to principles alone. As to the 
 actors, they have, in general, already expiated 
 their wickedness or folly by the loss of their lives. 
 
 stances only have made a difference ; that the same man assumf* 
 ed the guise of a philosopher or an assassin, according to occa- 
 sion ; and that the principle laid down by the first innovators, 
 in the first moments of their power, led to the last and greatest 
 crhnes of which the most bloody have been guilty." 
 
 PiAYFAiR, page 83. 
 
200 
 
 We have seen the Atheist Condorcet obliged to 
 fly in disguise front the capital, the inhabitants of 
 which he had corrupted, and by whom he had 
 been adored as the great luminary of the age : 
 we have seen him assume the garb and the sup- 
 plicating tone of a common beggar, lurking in 
 the lanes and woods, like a houseless thief, and, 
 at last, literally dying in a ditch, leaving his car- 
 case a prey to the fowls of the air, and his me- 
 mory as a lesson to future apostles of anarchy and 
 blasphemy.* Scores, not to say hundreds, of his 
 coadjutors have shared a fate little different from 
 his own ; and those who have not, can have little 
 reason to congratulate themselves on their escape. 
 The tornado they had raised for the destruction 
 of others, has swept them from the seat of their 
 tyranny, and scattered them over every corner of 
 the earth. Those haughty usurpers who refused 
 the precedence to the successors of Charle- 
 magne, are now obliged to yield to a peasant or 
 a porter. They who decreed that the '^ Folding- 
 Doors of the Louvre should fly open at their ap- 
 proach," are now glad to lift the latch of a wick- 
 et, and bend their heads beneath the thatch of a 
 cabin. And, what language can express the vex- 
 ation, the anguish, the cutting reflexions, that 
 must be the companions of their obscurity ! When 
 they look back on their distracted country, when 
 they behold the widows, the orphans, the thou- 
 sands and hundreds of thousands of murdered 
 victims, that it presents ; when they behold the 
 
 * See the Appendix, No. X% 
 
201 
 
 frantic people carrying the dagger to the hearts 
 of their parents, nay, digging their forefathers 
 from their graves, and throwing their ashes to the 
 winds ; when they behold* all this, and reflect 
 that it is the work of their own hands, well might 
 they call on the hills to hide them. The torments 
 of such an existence who can bear ? Next to the 
 Wrath of heaven, the malediction of one's country 
 is surely the most tremendous and insupportable. 
 
 Now, what is the advantage we ought to de- 
 rive from the aw^ful example before us ? — It ought 
 to produce in us a v/atchfulness, and a steady 
 resolution to oppose the advances of disorganizing 
 and infidel principles. T am aware that it will 
 be said by some, that all fear of the progress of 
 these principles is imaginary ; but, constant ob- 
 servation assures me, that it is but too well found- 
 ed. Let any man examine the change in politi- 
 cal and religious opinions, since the establishment 
 of the general government, and particularly the 
 change crept in along with our silly admiration 
 of the French Revolution, and see if the result 
 of his inquiries does not justify a fear of our 
 falling under the scourge, that has brought a hap- 
 py and gallant people on their knees, and left 
 them bleeding at every pore. 
 
 Unfortunatelv for America, Great Britain has 
 thrown from her the principles of the French 
 revolutionists with indignation and abhorrence. 
 This, which one would imagine should have had 
 
202 
 
 little or no influence on us, has served, in some 
 measure, as a guide to our opinions, and has been 
 one of the principle motives for our actions. A 
 combination of circumstances, such as, perhaps, 
 never before met together, has so soured the 
 minds of the great mass of the people in this 
 country, has worked up their hatred against Great 
 Britain to such a pitch, that the instant that na- 
 tion is named, they lose not only their temper 
 but their reason also. The dictates of nature 
 and the exercise of judgment are thrown aside : 
 whatever the British adopt must be rejected, and 
 whatever they reject must be adopted. Hence 
 it is, that all the execrable acts of the French 
 legislators, not forgetting their murders and their 
 blasphemy, have met with the most unqualified 
 applauses, merely because they were execrated 
 in the island of Britain. 
 
 The word Republic has also done a great deal. 
 France is a Republic^ and the decrees of the legis- 
 lators vvere necessary to maintain it a Republic. 
 This word outweighs, in the estimation of some 
 persons, (I wish I could say they are few in 
 number) all the horrors that have been, and 
 that can be, committed in that country. One 
 of these modern republicans will tell you that 
 he does not deny, that hundreds of thousands 
 of innocent persons have been murdered in 
 France ; that the people have neither reli- 
 gion nor morals ; that all the ties of nature are 
 rent asunder ; that the rising generation will be 
 a race of cut-throats ; that poverty and famine 
 
2oa 
 
 S'talk forth at large ; that the nation is half dep©- 
 pulated ; that its riches, along with millions of 
 the best of the people, are gone to enrich and 
 aggrandize its enemies ; that its commerce, its 
 manufactures, its sciences, its arts, and its honour, 
 are no more ; but at the end of all this, he will 
 tell jou that it must be happy, because it is a Re- 
 public, I have heard more than one of these re- 
 publican zealots declare, that he would sooner see 
 the last of the French extirminated, than see them 
 adopt any other form of government. Such a 
 sentiment is characteristic of a mind locked up in 
 savage ignorance ; and 1 would no more trust my 
 throat within the reach of such a republican, than 
 I w^ould within that of a Louvet, a Gregoire, or 
 any of their colleagues. 
 
 Our enlightened philosophers run on in a fine 
 canting strain about the bigotry and ignorance of 
 their ancestors ; but I would ask them, what 
 more stupid, doltish bigotry can there be, than to 
 make the sound of a word the standard of good 
 or bad government ? what is there in the combina- 
 tion of the letters which make up the word Re- 
 public? what is there in the sound they produce, 
 that the bellowing of it forth should compensate 
 for the want of every virtue, and even for common 
 sense and common honesty ? — It is synonymous 
 with liberty. — Fatal error ! In the mouth of a tur- 
 bulent demagogue, it is synonymous with liberty, 
 and with every thing else that will please his 
 hearers; but, with the man of virtue and sense, 
 it has no more than its literal value ; that is, it 
 
204 
 
 means, of itsetT, neither good nor evil. If we call 
 our own government that of a Republic^ and judge 
 of the meaning of the word by the effects of that 
 government, it will admit of a most amiable in- 
 terpretation ; but, if we are to judge of it bj what 
 it has produced in France, it means all that is ru- 
 inous, tyrannical, blasphemous and bloody. Last 
 winter, one of these republican heroes in Con- 
 gress, accused a gentleman from New England, 
 of having adopted anti-repubhcan principles, be- 
 cause he proposed something that seemed to mili- 
 tate agaifist negro slavery I Thus, then, republi- 
 canism did not mean liberty. In short, it means 
 any thing : it is a watch word of faction, and if 
 ever our happy and excellently constituted repub- 
 lic should be overturned, it will be done under the 
 mask of republicanism. 
 
 Let us, then, be upon our guard ; let us look 
 to the characters and actions of men, and not to 
 their professions ; let us attach ourselves to things 
 and not to words ; to sense and not to sound. 
 Should the day of requisition and murder arrive, 
 our tyrants calling themselves republicans will 
 be but a poor consolation to us. The loss of 
 property, the pressure of want, beggary, will not 
 be less real because flowing from republican de- 
 crees. Hunger pinches the republican, the cold 
 blast cramps his joints as well as those of other 
 men. This word does not soften the pangs of 
 death. The keen knife will not produce a delec- 
 table sensation because drawn across the throat 
 Iby a republican ; nor will the word republican * 
 
205 
 
 parry a bullet, or render a flaming fire a bed of 
 down. When Monsieur Berthier had the ghastly 
 head of his father pressed against his lips, when 
 his own heart was afterwards torn from his living 
 body, and placed, all reeking and palpitating, on 
 a table before a committee of magistrates, the 
 agonies of his mind and of his mangled carcass 
 were not assuaged by the shouts of his republi- 
 can murderers. 
 
 Shall we say that these things never can take 
 place among us ? Because we have hitherto pre» 
 served the character of a pacific and humane peo« 
 pie, shall we set danger at defiance ? Though we 
 are not Frenchmen, we are men as well as they, 
 and consequently are liable to be misled, and even 
 to be sunk to the lowest degree of brutality, as 
 they have been. They, too, had an amiable cha- 
 racter : what character have they now ? The same 
 principles brought into action among us would 
 produce the same degradation. I repeat, we are 
 not what we were before the French Revolution. 
 Political projectors from every corner of Europe, 
 troublers of society of every description, from the 
 whining philosophical hypocrite to the daring 
 rebel and more daring blasphemer, have taken 
 shelter in these States. Will it be pretended 
 that the principles and passions of these men 
 have changed with the change of air ? it would 
 be folly to suppose it. 
 
 Nor are men of the same stamp wanting among 
 the native Americans. There is not a single ac- 
 
 S 
 
206 
 
 tion of the French revolutionists, but has been 
 justified and applauded in our public papers, and 
 many of them in our public assemblies. Anar- 
 chy has its open advocates. The divine author 
 of our religion has been put upon a level with 
 the infamous Marat. We have seen a clergyman 
 of the episcopal church publicly abused, because 
 he had recommended to his congregation to be- 
 ware of the atheistical principles of the French. 
 Even their calender, the frivolous offspring of in- 
 fidelity is proposed for our imitation. Where 
 persons, whose livelihood depends on their daily 
 publications, are to be found, who are ever ready 
 to publish articles of this nature, it were the 
 grossest folly not to believe, that there are hun- 
 dreds and thousands to whom they give plea- 
 sure.* But, we are not left to mere surmise 
 here. How many numerous companies have is- 
 sued under the form of toasts, sentiments offen- 
 sive to humanity and disgraceful to our national 
 character ? We have seen the guillotine toasted 
 to three times three cheers, and even under the 
 discharge of cannon. If drunken men, as is 
 usually the case, speak from the bottom of their 
 hearts, what quarter should we have to expect 
 from wretches like these. It must be allowed, 
 
 * It is a truth that no one will deny, that the News-papers of 
 this country have become its scourge. I speak with a few ex- 
 ceptions. It is said that they enlighten the people 5 but their 
 light is like the torch of an incendiary, and the one has the same 
 destructive effect on mind as the other has on matter. The 
 whole study of the editors seem to be to deceive and confound. 
 One would think they were hired by some malicious dettion, to 
 turn the brains and ccrrupt the hearts of theij: readers. 
 
207 
 
 too, that where the cannons were fired to give 
 eclat to such a sentiment, the convives were not 
 of the most despicable class. And, what would 
 the reader say, were 1 to tell him of a member of 
 Congress, who wished to see one of those mur- 
 derous machines, employed for lopping oif the 
 heads of aristocrats^ permanent in the State- 
 House yard of the City of Philadelphia ? 
 
 If these men of blood had succeeded in plung- 
 ing us into a war ; if they had once got the sword 
 into their hands, they would have mowed us down 
 like stubble. The w ord aristocrat would have 
 been employed to as good account here, as ever 
 it has been in France. We might, ere this, have 
 seen our places of worship turned into stables ; 
 we might have seen the banks of the Delaware, 
 like those of the Loire, covered with human car- 
 casses, and its waters tinged with blood : ere this 
 we might have seen our parents butchered, and 
 even the head of our admired and beloved Presi- 
 dent rolling on a scaffold. 
 
 I know the reader will start back with horror. 
 His heart will tell him, that it is impossible. But, 
 once more, let him look at the example before us. 
 The man who, in 1788, should have predicted 
 the fate of the last humane and truly patriotic 
 Louis, would have been treated as a wretch or a 
 madman. The attacks on the character and con- 
 duct of the irreproachable Washington^ have been 
 as bold if not bolder, than those which led to the 
 downfall of the unfortunate French monarch. 
 
208 
 
 His impudent and unprincipled enemies have re- 
 presented him as cankered with every vice that 
 mark a worthless tyrant ; they have called him 
 the betrayer of the liberties of his country, and 
 have even drawn up and published articles of ac- 
 cusation against him ! Can it then be imagined, 
 that, had they possessed the power, they w anted 
 the will to dip their hands in his blood ? I am fully 
 assured, that these wretches do not make an 
 hundred thousandth part of the people of the 
 Union : the name of Washington is as dear and 
 dearer, to all good men, than it ever was. But, 
 of what consequence is their affection to him, of 
 what avail to themselves, if they suffer him to be 
 thus treated, without making one single effort to 
 defeat the projects of his infamous traducers ? It 
 is not for me to dictate the method of doing this ; 
 but sure I am, that had the friends of virtue and 
 order shown only a hundredth part of the zeal n 
 the cause of their own country, as the enemies of 
 both have done in the cause of France, we should 
 not now havef to lament the existence of a hard- 
 ened and impious faction, whose destructive prin- 
 ciples, if not timely and firmly opposed, may one 
 day render the annals of America as disgraceful 
 as those of the French Revolution. 
 
ri> fej 
 
 Q) 
 
 THE greatest part of the following facts 
 are taken from Playf air's History of J4,- 
 
 COBINISMe 
 
 s 2 
 
210 
 No I. 
 
 ^vcuuni i 
 
 jf me JLiX 
 
 ecuiions m ± 
 
 ^ans om 
 
 iy, during 
 
 
 the month of July ^ 
 
 1794. 
 
 
 
 Clerg-y, 
 
 Nobles. 
 
 People. 
 
 Total. 
 
 1st July. 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 22 
 
 30 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 21 
 
 26 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 18 
 
 28 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 40 
 
 23 
 
 68 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 22 
 
 6 
 
 30 
 
 9 
 
 6 
 
 21 
 
 32 
 
 59 
 
 10 
 
 . 7 
 
 14 
 
 *23 
 
 44 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 22 
 
 28 
 
 13 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 22 
 
 38 
 
 15 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 19 
 
 30 
 
 16 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 21 
 
 31 
 
 17 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 38 
 
 40 
 
 19 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 15 
 
 29 
 
 20 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 14 
 
 21 
 
 4 
 
 11 
 
 14 
 
 29 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 20 
 
 46 
 
 23 
 
 10 
 
 21 
 
 24 
 
 55 
 
 24 
 
 ^ 
 
 18 
 
 12 
 
 36 
 
 25 
 
 8 
 
 23 
 
 6 
 
 37 
 
 26 
 
 9 
 
 30 
 
 14 
 
 53 
 
 27 
 
 3 
 
 16 
 
 25 
 
 44 
 
 28 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 25 
 
 29 
 
 
 
 
 
 71 
 
 71 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 12 
 
 
 88 
 
 305 
 
 530 
 
 923 
 
 This list is taken from Plat/fair^ who seems to have had the 
 most minute information on every subject. The numbers for 
 the three last days are taken from the written account, in which 
 
211 
 
 the rank of the sufferers is not specified ; they are, therefore, 
 all brought under the head of people. 
 
 This list resembles a return of cattle for the slaughter houses ; 
 and, indeed, Flayfair observes in one place, that the number 
 of persons guillotined exceeded that of the oxen killed in the 
 city of Paris, for a considerable time. 
 
 What honour does a list like this reflect on the " enlightened 
 eighteenth century /" How far does it surpass the tables of 
 Euclid and other old fools of times past ! When any impudent 
 democrat talks about the excellence of his liberty and equality, 
 the reader will do well to hold up this butcher's bill to him. 
 There ! sans-culotte, wipe off that score, and then I'll listen to 
 you. 
 
 If any proof were yet wanting of the horrid murders at 
 Nantz being agreeable to the will of the Convention, we have it 
 in the following fact : the members of the bloody committee at 
 Nantz, Goullin, Pinard, Grand Maison, Sj'c. are now living ; 
 all except Grand Maison, were at Nantz when the last letters 
 came away. This last named monster was at Rennes. — The 
 trial at Paris was a mere mockery, in order to amuse the poor 
 brutiiied populace. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 It is known, that a foolish girl, by some indiscreet questions 
 put to a sentinel at Robespierre's door, rendered herself sus- 
 pected of an intention to kill this monster, as Charlotte Cordee 
 had another. The British government was declared her ac- 
 complice in the plot against his '^precious life," and it was 
 decreed that no quarter should be given to English or Han- 
 overian prisoners. 
 
 The slavish herd of Paris came crowding to the tyrant with 
 addresses on his escape. Robespierre now thought fit to make 
 a speech, setting forth that there was a God, and a decree was 
 passed, ordering a festival to his honour. That sacrifices might 
 not be wanting, the tyrant and his colleagues (aZ/ the Conven- 
 tion) ordered a grand guillotining. The whole family of the 
 poor girl, her father, brother, uncles, aunts, all were sent to the 
 place of execution : so that, as a sort of atonement for the deed 
 intended, seventy -tivo victims mounted the scaffold, amongst 
 whom were twenty-one ancient judges of the Parliament of 
 Thoulouse. 
 
212 
 
 It has appeared since, by the declaration of Fouquier Tin- 
 ville, who was public accuser at this time, that Robespierre 
 wished more people to be executed on this occasion, in order 
 to give the affair greater eclat. The victims were treated with 
 particular marks of infamy, each had on a red shirt in sign of 
 assassination. 
 
 This was not more than sixty days before the tyrant himself, 
 mounted the scaffold, and was executed amidst the joyous ac- 
 clamations of the base and infamous populace that had congra- 
 tulated him on the preservation of his " precious lifeP Pari' 
 sian and base bloody monster^ will ever be synonymous. 
 
 No. III. 
 
 On many of the public roads the passengers stopped the 
 Diligence, in order to sleep all night, when they pleased ; and 
 what was more, proved to the magistrates of the town where 
 they stopped, that as they paid, there was no reason why they 
 should submit to the arbitrary orders of a conductor. It was 
 the people, a part of the Sovereign, that was in the Diligence, 
 and the magistrates were glad, as well as inclined, to decide in 
 favour of the Sovereign against the poor humiliated public func- 
 tionary, who conducted this unruly portion of multifarious ma- 
 jesty. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 I have already observed, that Barnave justified this murder 
 in the Assembly, when he was not only not reproved, but ap- 
 plauded. 
 
 Let us now see, according to Playfair, (page 200) what the 
 magistrates and commandant of the forces did to prevent these 
 murders. 
 
 Foulon was first carried to the Hotel de Ville, and from 
 thence sent by Mr. de la Fayette, who commanded the national 
 troops, under a feeble escort, to prison ; but there were men 
 among the crowd whose purpose was to prevent his arriving 
 there. 
 
 The mob were debating about murdering Berthier before he 
 should enter the town-house ; this, however, was difficult to 
 do, for there were more than twenty thousand national guards 
 present. The general, La Fayette, with all the cool delibera- 
 
213 
 
 tion of a philosophical republican hero, soon settled the difficul- 
 ty. About five hours before, he had seen the miserable end of 
 Foulon, whom he had sent to prison in broad day, yet he sent 
 Berthier in the night to prison, with a small guard only, and 
 with orders to that guard, to do no violence to the people. 
 
 No. V. 
 
 The insurrections, massacres, and cruelties, of St. Domingo, 
 would make a large volume, says Flay fair, \^ere they to be 
 detailed. The Abbe Gregoire and Brissot, were two of the 
 most active instigators of the revolt of the negroes and mulat- 
 toes. Gregoire, who was a member of the Assembly, when he 
 heard of a massacre, in which the negroes had for their standard 
 a white infant impalled on a spear, declared it was " le plus 
 heaujour de sa vie^'' (the happiest day of his life.) This phi- 
 losophic cannibal was at supper when the news was brought, 
 and he and his friends finished the evening with mutual con- 
 gratulations and joy on the success of their plans. 
 
 Some few days after the destruction of Cape Franpois, 
 whence a great number of Whites had fled to the country 
 places round, about forty women, but a ievf days before ladies 
 of the first rank, had taken shelter in the buildings of a plan- 
 tation. The blacks came, some they killed, others tliey treat- 
 ed still more cruelly ; some few were accidentally spared. 
 The indecencies ofiered to these ladies will not admit of de- 
 scription. Let any woman, let any mother conceive their sit- 
 uation by the following fact. — A lady who had a child with 
 her of about two years old, tied it round her waist, and jumped 
 into a reservoir near the building, where she found in death a 
 happy refuge from democratic brutality. 
 
 These facts the compiler had from a French lady now in 
 Philadelphia : one of the three who had the good fortune to 
 escape. 
 
 At a plantation on the plain of Cape Francois, the mulattoes 
 put several persons between boards, tied fast together, and thus 
 sawed them across.— I am at a loss to discover which is worst, 
 French or African barbarity. 
 
 No. VI. 
 
 The nobles and clergy who could not be expected to be 
 
214 
 
 Inends of a revolution that had robbed and ruined them, were 
 fixed upon as the ktent cause of the public misfortunes; and 
 this belief, hke many others, became general, not because it 
 was well supported by facts, but, because it became general, 
 seemed to need no facts to support it. In the National Assem- 
 bly, in all the democratical papers and clubs, the nobles and 
 clergy were accused without proofs, as being a matter of course, 
 and that needed none ; at the same time, when any circum- 
 stance that could be construed unfavourably for them took 
 place, it was employed to augment the general fury. Of this 
 species was an unfortunate explosion of powder at the house 
 of a member of the parliament of Besanpon, whilst he was 
 giving a feast to a number of his neighbours. It was immedi- 
 ately reported that this unfortunate man had blown up his house 
 with design, and a banditti of patriots vented their revenge for 
 this supposed treason by actually burning and pillaging a num- 
 ber of gentlemen's country seats, not one of whom met with 
 either protection or indemnification from the Assembly ; from 
 the leaders of that happy, that glorious government, which 
 Doctor Priestly and his friends prefer to that of England, un- 
 der which they obtained both. 
 
 Though the barbarities at that time exercised are now almost 
 forgotten on account of that terrible Series of crimes with 
 which they have been followed 5 they are, nevertheless, good 
 specimens of democracy in its moderate moments. A few 
 of these first essays may not be useless. They are taken from 
 the news-papers published at the time, and some of them from 
 reports laid before the National Assembly, and they are all of 
 them to be found in the Memoire de M. Lally Tollendal, who 
 was himself a friend to the revolution. 
 
 In Languedoc, M. de Barras was cut to pieces in the pre- 
 sence of his wife, who was far advanced in her pregnancy, and 
 died with the fright.* 
 
 At Mans, Mr. de Montesson was shot, after witnessing the 
 murder of his father-in-law. 
 
 Madame de Battenay was forced to give up the title' deeds 
 of her estates, by an enraged mob, who menaced her with im- 
 mediate death, and held an axe over her head. 
 
 * This refinement in cruelty, is a certain proof that the French 
 delight in blood. Men who kill their enemies, as such, are content 
 to dispatch them out of the way. Savages only take pleasure in 
 their agonies. .^ 
 
215 
 
 The title deeds of a gentleman were demanded of his stew- 
 ard, who refusing to deliver them, was carried to a fire, ^d his 
 feet were burnt off to oblige him to give them up. 
 
 The Chevalier d'Ambli, was taken from his house, dragged 
 naked through the village, his hair and eye-brows we're then 
 torn off; he was thrown upon a dunghill, whilst his tormentors 
 danced round him. 
 
 Mr. de Monjustin, who had, with twenty other gentlemen, 
 signed voluntarily a declaration very favourable to the people, 
 was suspended for more than an hour over a well, while his en- 
 emies were disputing which sort of death he should suffer. 
 
 We almost think, says the historian, that we are recounting 
 the cruelties of the Spaniards upon the inhabitants of Mexico 
 and Peru : but no, the case was worse still. The followers of 
 Cortes were but a set of adventuring free-booters, who had left 
 their country to seek gold at any price. The disciples of the 
 modern philosophers acted thus with their countrymen and 
 their neighbours. 
 
 These scenes took place in the years 1790 and 1791, at the 
 moment when the Revolution was called glorious ! Can it be 
 believed that the people of America, renowned for the mildness 
 of their disposition, would have approved of this revolution, 
 would have joined Doctors Price and Priestly in celebrating it, 
 had they been duly informed of these its horrible consequences ? 
 And, can it be believed, that they will still approve of it, when 
 such an endless list of crimes and cruelties is now added to the 
 account ? 
 
 No. VIJ. 
 
 The sovereign people, though extremely free, felt now and 
 then the worm o-i hunger. It was natural for them to lay the 
 scarcity of provisions on the aristocrats / they did so, and a 
 w^oman who was waiting for bread before a baker's door, ac- 
 cused him of being one, and said he threw his loaves into the 
 river. This charge, all improbable as it was, was looked upon 
 as sufficient. In a moment he was dragg^ed from his wife and 
 family, was hanged, and the patriotic mob, thinking the wife of 
 an aristocrat deserved httle better treatment than her husband, 
 brought his bloody head and threw it down before the affrighted 
 woman, who was in the last month of her pregnancy. 
 
216 
 
 The king stood god-father to the child of the baker, that was 
 born soon after, and gave the widow some pecuniary aid. The 
 other constituted authorities, as they called themselves, were 
 employed in works superior to that of justice or charity. It 
 would have been unworthy of their dignity to stoop from the 
 grand employment of making twenty-four millions of people 
 happy and free (by murdering and imprisoning a part, and 
 robbing the others,) in order to attend to the claims of justice 
 in favour of a widow and a child whom their own emissaries 
 had treated with such barbarity. 
 
 Rabaut, the vile insurrection historian, Rabautde St. Etienne, 
 varnishes this affair over, justifies the Assembly and their infer- 
 nal agents. Rabaut little thought that his turn to mount the 
 scaffold was not very distant. 
 
 No. VIII. 
 
 It will be difficult for posterity to believe to what a ridiculous 
 length the enthusiasm of equality and national sovereignty was 
 carried. It will never be credited certainly, that the newly en- 
 lightened people affected to call the obedience of the child to 
 the father, a remnant of feudal slavery. Thus one of the most 
 sacred bonds of the human race was loosened, and that for the 
 first time: hitherto, by polished a»d by savage nations, by the 
 Christian and the infidel, the sacred rights of a lather had never 
 been disputed. The philosophy and knowledge of the eigh- 
 teenth century had made a new discovery, and the French re- 
 volutionists were sufficiently depraved to reduce it to practice. 
 
 The savage democrats seemed to delight in murdering the 
 weak, the aged, and infirm. 
 
 On the 17th of July, 1791? just after the king's return from 
 Varennes, a mob of patriots went to the altar of the federation 
 to sign a petition, as they called it, to the Assembly, by which 
 they declared, that they never would be governed by Louis 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Days like this were ever begun by shedding blood ; fleshing 
 Ihe hell-hounds, as it were. An invalid, who liad lost his leg 
 in fighting for kings,|was an agreeable sacrifice. This poor fel- 
 low was found lying drunk or asleep with a hair dresser, under 
 the altar. They were both murdered as a prelude to signing 
 the petition. 
 
m 
 
 No. IX. 
 
 Among the prisoners at the chatelet was a woman who for- 
 merly sold flowers, and who, in a fit of jealousy, had mutilated 
 her lover, one of the revolted French guards, in a very barba- 
 rous and shameful manner. The rage of the murderers was re- 
 doubled on seeing the woman who had thus murdered one of 
 their companions ; she was tied to a stake, her feet nailed to 
 the ground, her breasts cut off with a sabre, and then tortured 
 with lighted torches and pointed instruments, in a more cruel 
 and brutal manner than it would be fit to describe. This was 
 in the month of September, 1792, at the end of three years ex- 
 perience in the art of cruelty. 
 
 No. X. 
 
 My readers must all recollect Monsr. Bailly, a man that ren- 
 •dered himself so famous by being president of the National Con- 
 stituent Assembly when they took the oath never to separate, 
 till a constitution was framed, and who, as Mayor of Paris, af- 
 terwards insulted the fallen monarch. 
 
 This man had long lived on the bounty of the king, and it 
 was thus he repaid him. Well, this Bailly was at last " be- 
 headed with all the marks of ignomy which the Parisians could 
 invent. La Fayette would have shared the same fate had he 
 staid in France ; and certainly the fathers of the principle of 
 insurrection could not find fault with the practice. Those, 
 therefore, who pity Mr. Bailly when they see him carried to 
 the place of execution in a dung cart, clothed with a red shirt, 
 and a red flag dragging in the dirt by way of ignomy, may con- 
 sole themselves by considering that he and La Fayette had beea 
 the first protectors of insurrection, and that they only wanted 
 to oppose it, when it came to be directed against themselves.'' 
 
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