of the press? Shall no one tell, with what pleasure you plunged your daggers into the defenceless breasts of those whose looks had often appalled your own coward hearts? Shall no one tell, with what heroic, what godlike constancy they met their fate? How they smiled at all your menaces and cannibal gesticulations? How they despised you in the very article of death?—Strewed with every sweetest flower be the grave of Mons. Chapuis de Maubourg, and let his name be graven on every faithful heart! This gallant gentleman, who was counted one of the first engineers in Europe, fell into the hands of the democrats. They offered to spare his life, if he would serve in the armies of the Convention: they repeated this offer, with their carabines at his breast. “No,” replied he, “I have never fought but for my God and my king; despicable cowards! fire away!”
The murder in mass did not rob the guillotine of its prey: there the blood flowed without interruption. Death itself was not a refuge from democratic fury. The bodies of the prisoners who were dead of their wounds, and of those who, not able to support the idea of ignominious death, had given themselves the fatal blow, were carried to the scaffold, and there beheaded, receiving thousands of kicks from the sans culottes, because the blood would not run from them. Persons from their sick beds, old men, not able to walk, and even women found in child-bed, were carried to the murderous machine. The respectable Mons. Lauras was torn from his family of ten children and his wife big with the eleventh. This distracted matron ran with her children, and threw herself at the feet of the brutal deputy Collot d’Herbois.—No mercy!—Her conjugal tenderness, the cries of her children, every thing calculated to soften the heart, presented themselves before him, but in vain. “Take away,” said he, to the officious ruffians by whom he was surrounded, “take away the she rebel and her whelps.” Thus spurned from the presence of him who alone was able to save her beloved husband, she followed him to the place of execution. Her shrieks, when she saw him fall, joined to the wildness of her looks, but too plainly foretold her approaching end. She was seized with the pains of childbirth, and was carried home to her house; but, as if her tormentors had shown her too much lenity, the sans culotte commissary soon after arrived, took possession of all the effects in the name of the sovereign people, drove her from her bed and her house, from the door of which she fell dead in the street. Ref 022
About three hundred women hoped, by their united prayers and tears, to touch the hearts of the ferocious deputies; but all their efforts were as vain as those of Madame Lauras. They were threatened with a discharge of grape shot. Two of them, who, notwithstanding the menaces of the democrats, still had the courage to persist, were tied during six hours to the posts of the guillotine; their own husbands were executed before their eyes, and their blood sprinkled over them!
Mademoiselle Servan, a lovely young woman of about eighteen years of age, was executed, because she would not discover the retreat of her father! “What!” said she nobly, to the democratic committee, “what! betray my father! impious villains, how dare you suppose it?”
Madame Cochet, a lady equally famed for her beauty and her courage, was accused of having put the match to a cannon during the siege, and of having assisted in her husband’s escape. She was condemned to suffer death; she declared herself with child, and the truth of this declaration was attested by two surgeons. In vain did she implore a respite, in vain did she plead the innocence of the child that was in her womb: her head was severed from her body amidst the death-howl of the democratic brigands.
Pause, here, reader, and imagine if you can, another crime worthy of being added to those already mentioned. Yes, there is one more, and hell would not have been satisfied if its ministers had left it uncommitted. Libidinous brutality! Javouges, one of the deputies from the Convention, opened the career. His example was followed by the soldiery and the mob in general. The wives and daughters of almost all the respectable inhabitants, particularly of such as had emigrated, or who were murdered or in prison, were put in a state of requisition, and were ordered on pain of death, to hold their bodies (I spare the reader the term made use of in the decree) in readiness for the embraces of the true republicans! Nor were they content with violation: the first ladies of the city were led to the tree of Liberty (of Liberty!) and there made to take the hands of chimney-sweepers and common felons! Detestable wretches! At the very name of democrat, humanity shudders, and modesty hides its head!
I will not insult the reader’s feelings by desiring him to compare the pretended tyranny of the British Government with that I have here related; nor will I tell the United Irishmen, that even an Irish massacre is nothing compared to the exercise of the democratic laws of France; but I will ask them to produce me, if they can, an instance of such consummate tyranny in any government, or in any nation. Queen Mary of England, during a reign of five years, caused about five hundred innocent persons to be put to death; for this, posterity has, very justly too, branded her with the surname of bloody. What surname, then, shall be given to the assembly that caused more than that number to be executed in one day at Lyons? The massacre of St. Bartholomew, an event that filled all Europe with consternation, the infamy and horrors of which have been dwelt on by so many eloquent writers of all religions, and that has held Charles IX. up to the execration of ages, dwindles into child’s play, when compared to the present murderous revolution, which a late writer in France emphatically calls “a St. Bartholomew of five years.” According to Mons. Bousset, there were about 30,000 persons murdered, in all France, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew; there has been more than that number murdered in the single city of Lyons and its neighbourhood; at Nantz there have been 27,000; at Paris, 150,000; in La Vendée, 300,000. Ref 023 In short, it appears that there have been two millions of persons murdered in France, since it has called itself a republic, among whom are reckoned two hundred and fifty thousand women, two hundred and thirty thousand children (besides those murdered in the womb), and twenty-four thousand Christian priests!
And is there, can there be a faction in America so cruel, so bloody-minded, as to wish to see these scenes repeated in their own, or any other country? If there be, Great God! do thou mete to them, ten-fold, the measure they would mete to others; inflict on them every curse of which human nature is susceptible; hurl on them thy reddest thunder-bolts; sweep the sanguinary race from the face of the creation!
AN ACCOUNT OF SOME RECENT FEATS PERFORMED BY THE FRENCHIFIED CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
If such, then, are the principles of those men called Democrats, ought not every good man in this country to be very cautious how he gives them the least countenance? Ought he not to follow them in all their actions with an attentive eye, and let slip no opportunity of exposing their ambitious and destructive designs? For my part, I by no means desire to assume the dubious name of patriot; what I am doing, I conceive to be my duty; which consideration, as it will justify the undertaking, will in some measure apologize for the want of abilities that may appear in the execution.
Upon a view of the horrible revolution that at present agitates the world, we perceive that though the grand object of the democrats has been every where the same, yet their pretended motives have varied with their situation. In America, where the Federal Ref 024 Constitution had just been put in movement, and had begun to extend its beneficent effects, it was impossible to talk of reformation; at least it was impossible to make the people believe that it was necessary. The well-known wisdom and integrity and the eminent services of the President, Ref 025 had engraven such an indelible attachment for his person on the hearts of Americans, that his reputation or his measures could be touched but with a very delicate hand. A plan of indirect operations was therefore fixed upon; and it must be allowed, that, by the help of a foreign agent, it was not badly combined. The outlines of this plan were to extol to the skies every act of the boxing legislators of France; to dazzle those who have nothing with the sublime system of “equality;” to make occasional reflections on the resemblance between this government and that of Great Britain; to condemn the British laws (and consequently our own at the same time) as aristocratic, and from thence to insinuate that “something yet remained to be done;” and finally, to throw a veil over the insults and injuries received from France, represent all the actions of Great Britain in the most
