found her behind a hedge, to which place she had drawn her husband, who was mortally wounded. When the cannibals discovered her, she was on her knees supporting his head with her arm: one of them fired upon her with a carabine, another quartered her with his hanger, while a third held up the expiring husband to be a spectator of their more than hellish cruelty.
Several wounded prisoners were collected together, and put into a ditch, with sentinels placed round them to prevent them from killing themselves, or one another; and thus were they made to linger, some of them two or three days, while their enemies testified their ferocious pleasure by all the insulting gesticulations of savages.
Such was the fury of the triumphant democrats, that the deputies from the Convention gave an order against burying the dead, till they had been cut in morsels. Tollet, the infamous Tollet, a democratic priest (that is to say, an apostate) of Trevoux, went, blood-hound like, in quest of a few unhappy wretches who had escaped the bloody 9th of October; and when, by perfidious promises, he had drawn them from their retreats, he delivered them up to the daggers of their assassins.
Of all the little army that attempted the retreat, only about forty-six escaped; six hundred and eighteen were brought back in chains; some of them died of their wounds, and all those who were not relieved from life this way, were dragged forth to an ignominious death.
During these dreadful scenes the deputies from the Convention, who were now absolute masters of the unfortunate city, were preparing others, if possible, still more dreadful. As a preliminary step, they reorganized the Democratic Society. To this infernal rendezvous the deputy Javouges repaired, and there broached his project in a speech, the substance of which was nearly as follows: After having represented Challier as a martyr in the cause of liberty, as the hero of the republic, and the avenger of the people, he addressed himself to the assembly in nearly these terms. “Think,” said he, “of the slavery into which you are plunged by being the servants and workmen of others; the nobles, the priests, the proprietors, the rich of every description, have long been in a combination to rob the democrats, the real sans culotte republicans, of their birthright; go, citizens; take what belongs to you, and what you should have enjoyed long ago.—Nor must you stop here, while there exists an aristocracy in the buildings, half remains undone: down with those edifices raised for the profit or pleasure of the rich; down with them all: commerce and arts are useless to a warlike people, and destructive of that sublime equality which France is determined to spread over the whole globe.” He told this enslaved, this degraded populace, that it was the duty of every good citizen to discover all those whom be knew to be guilty of having, in thought, word, or deed, conspired against the republic. He exhorted them to fly to the offices (opened for receiving such accusations), and not to spare one lawyer, priest, or nobleman. He concluded this harangue, worthy of one of the damned, with declaring, that for a man to accuse his own father was an act of civism worthy a true republican, and that to neglect it was a crime that should be punished with death.
The deeds that followed this diabolic exhortation were such as might be expected. The bloody ruffians of democrats left not a house, not a hole unsearched; men and women were led forth from their houses with as little ceremony as cattle from their pens; the square where the guillotine stood was reddened with blood, like a slaughter-house, while the piercing cries of the surviving relations were drowned in the more vociferous howlings of Vive la Republique!
It is hard to stifle the voice of nature, to stagnate the involuntary movements of the soul; yet this was attempted, and in some degree effected, by the deputies of the Convention. Perceiving that these scenes of blood had spread a gloom over the countenances of the innocent inhabitants, and that even some of their soldiers seemed touched with compunction, they issued a mandate, declaring every one suspected of aristocracy, who should discover the least symptoms of pity, either by his words or his looks!
The preamble of this mandate makes the blood run cold: “By the thunder of God! in the name of the representatives of the French people; on pain of death it is ordered,” &c. &c. Who would believe that this terrific mandate, forbidding men to weep, or look sorrowful, on pain of death, concluded with, Vive la Liberté! (Liberty for ever!)? Who would believe that the people, who suffered this mandate to be stuck up about their city like a play-bill, had sworn to live free, or die?
However, in spite of all their menaces, they still found that remorse would sometimes follow the murder of a friend, or relation. Conscience is a troublesome guest to the villain who yet believes in an hereafter; the deputies, therefore, were resolved to banish this guest from the bosoms of their partisans, as it had already been banished from their own.
With this object in view they ordered a solemn civic festival in honour of Challier. His image was carried round the city, and placed in the churches. Those temples which had (many of them), for more than a thousand years, resounded with hosannas to the Supreme Being, were now profaned by the adorations paid to the image of a parricide.
All this was but a prelude to what was to follow the next day. It was Sunday, the day consecrated to the worship of our blessed Redeemer. A vast concourse of democrats, men and women, assembled at a signal agreed on, formed themselves into a sort of a mock procession, preceded by the image of Challier, and followed by a little detached troop, each bearing in its hand a chalice, or some other vase of the church. One of these sacrilegious wretches led an ass, covered with a priest’s vestment, and with a mitre on his head. He was loaded with crucifixes and other symbols of the Christian religion, and had the Old and New Testament suspended to his tail. Arrived at the square called the Terreaux, they then threw the two Testaments, the crucifixes, &c. into a fire prepared for the purpose; made the ass drink out of the sacramental cup, and were proceeding to conclude their diabolical profanations with the massacre of all the prisoners, to appease the ghost of Challier, when a violent thunder-storm put an end to their meeting, and deferred the work of death for a few hours.
The pause was not long. The deputies, profiting by the infamous frenzy with which they had inspired the soldiery and the mob, and by the consternation of the respectable inhabitants, continued their butchery with redoubled fury. Those who led the unhappy sufferers to execution were no longer ordered to confine themselves to such as were entered on the list of proscription, but were permitted to take whoever they thought worthy of death! To have an enemy among the democrats, to be rich, or even thought rich, was a sufficient crime. The words nobleman, priest, lawyer, merchant, and even honest man, were so many terms of proscription. Three times was the place of the guillotine changed, at every place holes were dug to receive the blood, and yet it ran in the gutters! the executioners were tired, and the deputies, enraged to see that their work went on so slowly, represented to the mob that they were too merciful, that vengeance lingered in their hands, and that their enemies ought to perish in mass!
Accordingly next day, the execution in mass began. The prisoners were led out, from a hundred to three hundred at a time, into the outskirts of the city, where they were fired upon or stabbed. One of these massacres deserves a particular notice. Two hundred and sixty-nine persons, taken indiscriminately among all classes and all ages, were led to Brotteaux, and there tied to trees. In this situation they were fired upon with grape-shot. Here the cannoneers of Valenciennes, who had not had the courage to defend their own walls, who owed theirforfeited lives to the mercy of royalists, valiantly pointed their cannons against them, when they found them bound hand and foot!—The coward is ever cruel.—Numbers of these unfortunate prisoners had only their limbs broken by the artillery; these were dispatched with the sword or the musket. The greatest part of the bodies were thrown into the Rhone, some of them before they were quite dead; two men in particular had strength enough to swim to a sand-bank in the river. One would have thought, that thus saved as it were by miracle, the vengeance of their enemies would have pursued them no farther; but no sooner were they perceived, than a party of the dragoons of Lorraine crossed the arm of the river and stabbed them, and left them a prey to the fowls of the air.—Reader, fix your eyes on this theatre of carnage.—You barbarous, you ferocious monsters! You have found the heart to commit those bloody deeds, and shall no one have the heart to publish
