from without — Live the Convention! — Down with the Tyrants!)
Tallien. Hark! again
The sounds of honest Freedom!
Enter Deputies from the Sections.
Citizen. Citizens! representatives of France!
Hold on your steady course. The men of Paris 105
Espouse your cause. The men of Paris swear
They will defend the delegates of Freedom.
Tallien. Hear ye this, Colleagues? hear ye this, my brethren?
And does no thrill of joy pervade your breasts?
My bosom bounds to rapture. I have seen 110
The sons of France shake off the tyrant yoke;
I have, as much as lies in mine own arm,
Hurl’d down the usurper. — Come death when it will,
I have lived long enough. [Shouts without.
Barrere. Hark! how the noise increases! through the gloom 115
Of the still evening — harbinger of death,
Rings the tocsin! the dreadful generale
Thunders through Paris —
[Cry without — Down with the Tyrant!
Enter LECOINTRE.
Lecointre. So may eternal justice blast the foes
Of France! so perish all the tyrant brood, 120
As Robespierre has perish’d! Citizens,
Caesar is taken. [Loud and repeated applauses.
I marvel not that with such fearless front
He braved our vengeance, and with angry eye
Scowled round the hall defiance. He relied 125
On Henriot’s aid — the Commune’s villain friendship,
And Henriot’s boughten succours. Ye have heard
How Henriot rescued him — how with open arms
The Commune welcom’d in the rebel tyrant —
How Fleuriot aided, and seditious Vivier 130
Stirr’d up the Jacobins. All had been lost —
The representatives of France had perish’d —
Freedom had sunk beneath the tyrant arm
Of this foul parricide, but that her spirit
Inspir’d the men of Paris. Henriot call’d 135
‘To arms’ in vain, whilst Bourdon’s patriot voice
Breathed eloquence, and o’er the Jacobins
Legendre frown’d dismay. The tyrants fled —
They reach’d the Hôtel. We gather’d round — we call’d
For vengeance! Long time, obstinate in despair, 140
With knives they hack’d around them. ‘Till foreboding
The sentence of the law, the clamorous cry
Of joyful thousands hailing their destruction,
Each sought by suicide to escape the dread
Of death. Lebas succeeded. From the window 145
Leapt the younger Robespierre, but his fractur’d limb
Forbade to escape. The self-will’d dictator
Plunged often the keen knife in his dark breast,
Yet impotent to die. He lives all mangled
By his own tremulous hand! All gash’d and gored 150
He lives to taste the bitterness of death.
Even now they meet their doom. The bloody Couthon,
The fierce St. Just, even now attend their tyrant
To fall beneath the axe. I saw the torches
Flash on their visages a dreadful light — 155
I saw them whilst the black blood roll’d adown
Each stern face, even then with dauntless eye
Scowl round contemptuous, dying as they lived,
Fearless of fate! [Loud and repeated applauses.
Barrere mounts the Tribune. For ever hallowed be this glorious
day, 160
When Freedom, bursting her oppressive chain,
Tramples on the oppressor. When the tyrant
Hurl’d from his blood-cemented throne, by the arm
Of the almighty people, meets the death
He plann’d for thousands. Oh! my sickening heart 165
Has sunk within me, when the various woes
Of my brave country crowded o’er my brain
In ghastly numbers — when assembled hordes,
Dragg’d from their hovels by despotic power,
Rush’d o’er her frontiers, plunder’d her fair hamlets, 170
And sack’d her populous towns, and drench’d with blood
The reeking fields of Flanders. — When within,
Upon her vitals prey’d the rankling tooth
Of treason; and oppression, giant form,
Trampling on freedom, left the alternative 175
Of slavery, or of death. Even from that day,
When, on the guilty Capet, I pronounced
The doom of injured France, has faction reared
Her hated head amongst us. Roland preach’d
Of mercy — the uxorious dotard Roland, 180
The woman-govern’d Roland durst aspire
To govern France; and Petion talk’d of virtue,
And Vergniaud’s eloquence, like the honeyed tongue
