The advanced guards of Beaupuy, placed on the road to St. Florent, perceived a great number of people approaching, with shouts of The Republic for ever! Bonchamps for ever! On being questioned, they replied by proclaiming Bonchamps their deliverer. That young hero, extended on a mattress, and ready to expire from the effect of a musket-shot in the abdomen, had demanded the lives of four thousand prisoners, whom the Vendeans had hitherto dragged along with them, and whom they threatened to shoot. He had obtained their release, and they were going to rejoin the republican army.

At this moment, eighty thousand persons, women and children, aged men and armed men, were on the banks of the Loire, with the wrecks of their property, disputing the possession of about a score of vessels to cross to the other side. The superior council, composed of the chiefs who were still capable of giving an opinion, deliberated whether they ought to separate, or to carry the war into Bretagne. Some of them proposed that they should disperse in La Vendée, and there conceal themselves and wait for better times. Laroche-Jacquelein was of this number, and he would have preferred dying on the left bank to crossing over to the right. The contrary opinion, however, prevailed, and it was decided to keep together and to pass the river. But Bonchamps had just expired, and there was no one capable of executing the plans which he had formed relative to Bretagne. D'Elbée was sent, dying, to Noirmoutiers. Lescure, mortally wounded, was carried on a hand-barrow.* Eighty thousand persons quitted their homes, and went to ravage the neighbouring country, and to seek extermination there-and, gracious God! for what object?-for an absurd cause, a cause deserted on all sides, or hy pocritically defended! While these unfortunate people were thus generously exposing themselves to so many calamities, the coalition bestowed scarcely a thought upon them, the emigrants were intriguing in courts, some only were fighting bravely on the Rhine, but in foreign armies; and nobody had yet thought of sending either a soldier or a livre to that hapless La Vendée, already distinguished by twenty heroic battles, and now vanquished, fugitive, and laid waste.

The republican generals collected their forces at Beaupréau, and there they

* " By the last great battle fought near Cholet, the Vendean insurgents were driven down into the low country on the banks of the Loire. Not only the whole wreck of the army, but a great proportion of the men, women, and children of the country, flying in consternation from the burnings and butchery of the government forces, flocked down in agony and despair to the banks of this great river. On gaining the heights of St. Florent, one of the most mournful, and, at the same time, most magnificent spectacles, burst upon the eye. These heights form a vast semicircle, at the bottom of which a broad, bare plain, extends to the water's edge. Near a hundred thousand unhappy souls now blackened over that dreary expanse! Old men, infants, and women, were mingled with the half-armed soldiery, caravans, crowded baggage-wagons, and teams of oxen-all full of despair, impatience, anxiety, and terror. Behind, were the smoke of the burning villages, and the thunder of the hostile artillery. Before, was the broad stream of the Loire, divided by a long, low island, also covered with the fugitives. Twenty frail barks were plying in the stream; and on the far banks were seen the disorderly movements of those who had effected their passage, and were waiting to be rejoined by their companions. Such was the tumult and terror of the scene, and so awful were the recollections it inspired, that many of its awe-struck spectators have concurred in stating that it brought forcibly to their imaginations the unspeakable terrors of the great Day of Judgment! Through this bewildered multitude Lescure's family made their way silently to the shore; the general himself, stretched almost insensible on a litter; his wife, three months gone with child, walking by his side; and, behind her, the nurse, with an infant in her arms. When they arrived on the beach they with difficulty got a crazy boat to carry them to the island; but the aged monk who steered it would not venture to cross the larger branch of the stream; and the poor wounded man was obliged to submit to the agony of another removal. At length they were landed on the opposite bank, where wretchedness and desolation appeared still more conspicuous. Thousands of helpless creatures were lying on the grassy shore, or roaming about in search of the friends from whom they had been divided. There was a general complaint of cold and hunger, yet no one was in a condition to give directions, or administer relief. Lescure suffered excruciating pain from the piercing air which blew upon his feverish frame; the poor infant screamed for food, and the helpless mother was left to minister to both; while the nurse went among the burnt and ruined villages to seek a drop of milk for the baby! At length they got again in motion for the adjoining village of Varades, and with great difficulty procured a little room in a cottage swarming with soldiers." Edinburgh Review. Ε.

resolved to separate, and to proceed partly to Nantes and partly to Angers, to prevent a coup de main on those two towns. The notion of the representatives, not that of Kleber, immediately was, that La Vendée was destroyed. La Vendée is no more, wrote they to the Convention. The army had been allowed time till the 20th to finish the business, and they had brought it to a close on the 18th. That of the North had, on the same day, won the battle of Watignies, and closed the campaign by raising the blockade of Maubeuge. Thus the Convention seemed to have nothing to do but to decree victory, in order to insure it in all quarters. Enthusiasm was at its height in Paris, and in all France, and people began to believe that, before the end of the season, the republic would be victorious over all the thrones that were leagued against it.

There was but one event that tended to disturb this joy, namely, the loss of the lines of Weissenburg on the Rhine, which had been forced on the 13th and 14th of October. After the check at Pirmasens, we left the Prussians and the Austrians in presence of the lines of the Sarre and the Lauter, and threatening them every moment with an attack.

The Prussians, having annoyed the French on the banks of the Sarre, obliged them to fall back. The corps of the Vosges, driven beyond Hornbach, retired to a great distance behind Bitche, in the heart of the mountains; the army of the Moselle, thrown back to Sarreguemines, was separated from the corps of the Vosges and the army of the Rhine. In this position, it became easy for the Prussians, who had on the western slope passed beyond the general line of the Sarre and the Lauter, to turn the lines of Weissenburg by their extreme left. These lines must then necessarily fall. This was what actually happened on the 13th of October. Prussia and Austria, which we have seen disagreeing, had at length come to a better understanding. The King of Prussia had set out for Poland, and lest the command to Brunswick, with orders to concert operations with Wurmser. From the 13th to the 14th of October, while the Prussians marched along the line of the Vosges to Bitche, considerably beyond the height of Weissenburg, Wurmser was to attack the lines of the Lauter in seven columns. The first, under the Prince of Waldeck, encountered insurmountable obstacles in the nature of the ground, and the courage of a demi-battalion of the Pyrenees; the second, after passing the lines below Lauterburg, was repulsed; the others, after gaining, above and around Weissenburg, advantages balanced by the vigorous resistance of the French, nevertheless made themselves masters of Weissenburg. Our troops fell back on the post of the Geisberg, situated a little in rear of Weissenburg, and much more difficult to carry. Still the lines of Weissenburg could not be considered as lost; but the tidings of the march of the Prussians on the western slope obliged the French general to fall back upon Haguenau and the lines of the Lauter, and thus to yield a portion of the territory to the allies. On this point, then, the frontier was invaded, but the successes in the North and in La Vendée counteracted the effect of this unpleasant intelligence. St. Just and Lebas were sent to Alsace, to repress the movements which the Alsatian nobility and the emigrants were exciting at Strasburg. Numerous levies were directed towards that quarter, and the government consoled itself with the resolution to conquer on that point as on every other.

The fearful apprehensions which had been conceived in the month of August, before the battles of Hondtschoote and Watignies, before the reduction of Lyons and the retreat of the Piedmontese beyond the Alps, and before the successes in La Vendée, were now dispelled. At this moment, the country saw the northern frontier, the most important and the most threatened, delivered from the enemy; Lyons restored to the republic; La Vendée subdued; all rebellion stifled in the interior, excepting on the Italian frontier, where Toulon still resisted, it is true, but resisted singly. One more success at the Pyrenees, at Toulon, on the Rhine, and the republic would be completely victorious, and this triple success would not be more difficult than those which had just been gained. The task, to be sure, was not yet finished, but it might be by a continuance of the same efforts and of the same means. The government had not yet wholly recovered its assurance, but it no longer considered itself in danger of speedy death.

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY LAWS-PROSCRIPTION AT LYONS, MARSEILLES, AND BORDEAUX-INTERIOR OF THE PRISONS OF PARISTRIAL AND DEATH OF MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE GIRONDINSGENERAL TERROR-SECOND LAW OF THE MAXIMUM-IMPRISONMENT OF FOUR DEPUTIES FOR FORGING A DECREE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW METRICAL SYSTEM AND OF THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR-ABOLITION OF THE FORMER RELIGIOUS WORSHIP-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW WORSHIP OF REASON.

THE revolutionary measures decreed for the welfare of France were executed throughout its whole extent with the utmost rigour. Conceived by the most enthusiastic minds, they were violent in their principle; executed at a distance from the chiefs who had devised them, in a lower region where the passions, less enlightened, were more brutal, they became still more violent in the application. The government obliged one part of the citizens to leave their homes, imprisoned another part of them as suspected persons, caused provisions and commodities to be seized for the supply of the armies, imposed services for their accelerated transport, and gave, in exchange for the articles or services required, nothing but assignats, or a credit upon the state which inspired no confidence. The assessment of the forced loan was rapidly prosecuted, and the assessors of the commune said to one, "You have an income of ten thousand livres;" to another, " you have twenty thousand;" and all, without being permitted to reply, were obliged to furnish the sum required. Great vexations were the result of this most arbitrary system: but the armies were filled with men, provisions were conveyed in abundance towards the depots, and the thousand millions in assignats which were to be withdrawn from circulation, began to come in. It is not without great oppression that such rapid operations can be executed and that a state which is threatened can be saved.

In all those places where more imminent danger had required the presence of the commissioners of the Convention, the revolutionary measures had become more severe. Near the frontiers, and in all the departments suspected of royalism or federalism, those commissioners had levied the population en masse. They had put everything in requisition; they had raised revolutionary taxes on the rich, besides the general tax resulting from the forced loan; they had accelerated the imprisonment of suspected persons; and lastly, they had sometimes caused them to be tried by revolutionary commissioners instituted by themselves. Laplanche, sent into the department of the Cher, said on the 29th of Vendemiaire to the Jacobins, "I have everywhere made terror the order of the day; I have everywhere imposed contributions on the wealthy and on the aristocrats. Orleans furnished me with fifty thousand livres; and at Bourges, it took me but two days to raise two millions. As I could not be everywhere, my deputies supplied my place: a person named Mamin, worth seven millions, and taxed by one of the two at forty thousand livres, complained to the Convention, which applauded my conduct; and, had the tax been imposed by myself, he should have paid two millions. At Orleans, I made my deputies render a public account. It was in the bosom of the popular society that they rendered it, and this account was sanctioned by the people. I have everywhere caused the bells to be melted, and have united several parishes. I have removed all federalists from office, imprisoned suspected persons, put the sans-culottes in power. Priests had all sorts of conveniences in the houses of detention; the sans-culottes were lying upon straw in the prisons; the former furnished me with mattresses for the latter. I have everywhere caused the priests to be married. I have everywhere electrified the hearts and minds of men. I have organized manufactories of arms, visited the workshops, the hospitals, and the prisons. I have sent off several battalions of the levy en masse. I have reviewed a great number of the national guards, in order to republicanize them; and I have caused several royalists to be guillotined. In short, I have fulfilled my imperative commission. I have everywhere acted like a warm Mountaineer, like a revolutionary representative."

It was in the three principal federalist cities, Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, that the representatives struck especial terror. The formidable decree issued against Lyons enacted that the rebels and their accomplices should be tried by a military commission; that the sans-culottes should be maintained at the expense of the aristocrats that the houses of the wealthy should be destroyed, and that the name of the city should be changed. The execution of this decree was intrusted to Collot-d'Herbois, Maribon-Montaut, and Fouché of Nantes.* They had repaired to Commune-Affranchie, taking with them forty Jacobins, to organize a new club, and to propagate the principles of the mother society. Ronsin had followed them with two thousand men of the revolutionary army, and they had immediately let loose their fury. The representatives had struck the first stroke of a pickaxe upon one of the houses destined to be demolished, and eight hundred labourers had instantly fallen to work to destroy the finest streets. The proscriptions had begun at the same time. The Lyonnese suspected of having borne arms were guillotined or shot, to the number of fifty or sixty a day. Terror reigned in that unfortunate city. The commissioners sent to punish it, intoxicated with the blood which they spilt, fancying, at every shriek of anguish, that they beheld rebellion springing again into life, wrote to the Convention that the aristocrats were not yet reduced, that they were only awaiting an opportunity to rebel again, and that, to remove all further ground for apprehension, it was necessary to displace one part of the population and to destroy the other. As the means em

• "Joseph Fouché, born at Nantes in 1763 was intended for his father's profession-a seacaptain: but, not being strong enough, was sent to prosecute his studies at Paris. He then taught mathematics and metaphysics at Arras and elsewhere; and, at twenty-five years of age, was placed at the head of the college of Nantes. In 1792 he was chosen member of the Convention, where he voted for the King's death: and was soon after sent with Collot-d'Herbois on a mission to Lyons. On the fall of Robespierre, Fouché, having been denounced as a Terrorist, withdrew into obscurity until 1798, when the Directory appointed him French minister to the Cisalpine republic. In the following year he was made minister of police, and joined Bonaparte on his return from Egypt, who continued him in his post, in order that he might detect Royalist and Jacobin conspiracies. In 1809, Fouché was intrusted with the portfolio of the Interior, as well as of the police, and created Duke of Otranto. In the ensuing year, having given umbrage to Napoleon by entering into negotiations for peace with the Marquis Wellesley, he was sent into honourable exile as governor of Rome. He was soon recalled to France, and banished to Aix, where he lived a whole year retired. In 1813, he was again employed by Napoleon, was sent on a mission to Murat, and returned to Paris a few days after the declaration of the senate that the Emperor had lost his throne. During the first restoration Fouché lived partly retired; but, on Napoleon's return from Elba, the King sent for him; he preferred, however, to join the Emperor, who a third time made him minister of police. After the battle of Waterloo, the French chamber placed Fouché at the head of a provisionary government, and he was afterwards reinstated in the police by the King. He was soon however, displaced, and, having been compromised in the law against regicides in 1816, retired to Trieste, where he died in 1820. Fouché's countenance was expressive of penetration and decision. He was of the middle size, rather thin, of firm health and strong nerves. The tones of his voice were somewhat hollow and harsh; in speech he was vehement and lively; in his appearance plain and simple."-Encyclopædia Americana. E.

""Fouché is a miscreant of all colours, a priest, a terrorist, and one who took an active part in many bloody scenes of the Revolution. He is a man,' continued Bonaparte, 'who can worm all your secrets out of you with an air of calmness and unconcern. He is very rich, but his riches have been badly acquired. He never was my confidant. Never did he approach me without bending to the ground; but I never had esteem for him. I employed him merely as an instrument.' "-A Voice from St. Helena. E.

"Fouché never regarded a benefit in any other light than as a means of injuring his benefactor. He had opinions, but he belonged to no party, and his political success is explained by the readiness with which he always served the party he knew must triumph, and which he himself overthrew in its turn. It might be said that his ruling passion was the desire of continual change. No man was ever characterized by greater levity or inconstancy of mind."-Bourrienne. E.

ployed did not appear to be sufficiently expeditious, Collot-d'Herbois conceived the idea of resorting to mining for the purpose of destroying the buildings, and to grapeshot for sacrificing the proscribed; and he wrote to the Convention that he should soon adopt more speedy and more efficacious means for punishing the rebel city.*

At Marseilles, several victims had already fallen. But the utmost wrath of the representatives was directed against Toulon, the siege of which they were carrying on.

* "Attended by a crowd of satellites, Couthon traversed the finest quarters of Lyons with a silver hammer, and, striking at the door of the devoted houses, exclaimed, Rebellious house, I strike you in the name of the law.' Instantly the agents of destruction, of whom twenty thousand were in the pay of the Convention, levelled the dwelling to the ground. But this was only a prelude to a more bloody vengeance. Collot-d'Herbois was animated with a secret hatred towards the Lyonnese; for, ten years before, when an obscure actor, he had been hissed off their stage. He now resolved at leisure to gratify his revenge. Fouché, his worthy associate, published, before his arrival, a proclamation in which he declared that the French people could acknowledge no other worship than that of universal morality; that all religious emblems should be destroyed: and that over the gates of the church-yards should be written-Death is an eternal Sleep! Proceeding on these atheistical principles, the first step of Collot-d'Herbois and Fouché was to institute a fete in honour of Chalier, the republican governor of Lyons, who had been put to death on the first insurrection. His bust was carried through the streets, followed by an immense crowd of assassins and prostitutes. After them came an ass bearing the Gospel, the Cross, and the communion vases, which were soon committed to the flames, while the ass was compelled to drink out of the communion-cup the consecrated wine! The executions meantime continued without the slightest relaxation. Many women watched for the hour when their husbands were to pass to the scaffold, precipitated themselves upon the chariot, and voluntarily suffered death by their side. Daughters surrendered their honour to save their parent's lives; but the monsters who violated them, adding treachery to crime, led them out to behold the execution of their relatives? Deeming the daily execution of fifteen or twenty persons too tardy a display of republican vengeance, Collot-d'Herbois prepared a new and simultaneous mode of punishment. Sixty captives of both sexes were led out together, tightly bound in a file, to the Place du Brotteaux; they were arranged in two files with a deep ditch on each side, which was to be their place of sepulture, while gendarmes with uplifted sabres threatened with instant death whoever moved from their position. At the extremity of the file, two cannon, loaded with grape, were so placed as to enfilade the whole. The signal was then given, and the guns were fired. Broken limbs, torn off by the shot, were scattered in every direction; while the blood flowed in torrents into the ditches on either side the line. A second and third discharge were insufficient to complete the work of destruction, till, at length, the gendarmes, unable to witness such protracted sufferings, rushed in, and despatched the survivors with their sabres. On the following day, this bloody scene was renewed on a still greater scale. Two hundred and nine captives were brought before the revolutionary judges, and, with scarcely a hearing, condemned to be executed together. With such precipitance was the affair conducted, that two commissaries of the prison were led out along with their captives; their cries, their protestations, were alike disregarded. In passing the bridge Morand, the error was discovered on the captives being counted; and it was intimated to Collot-d'Herbois that there were too many. What significs it,' said he, that there are too many? If they die to-day, they cannot die to-morrow.' The whole were brought to the place of execution, where they were attached to one cord made fast to trees at stated intervals, with their hands tied behind their backs, and numerous pickets of soldiers disposed so as at one discharge to destroy them all. At a given signal the fusillade commenced; but few were killed; the greater part had only a jaw or a limb broken; and, uttering the most piercing cries, they broke loose in their agony from the rope, and were cut down by the gendarmes. The great numbers who survived the discharge, rendered the work of destruction a most laborious operation, and several were still breathing on the following day, when their bodies were mingled with quicklime, and cast into a common grave. Collot-d'Herbois and Fouché were witnesses of this butchery from a distance, by means of telescopes which they directed to the spot. All the other fusillades were conducted in the same manner. One of them was executed under the windows of an hotel on the Quay, where Fouché, with thirty Jacobins and twenty courtezans, was engaged at dinner. They rose from table to enjoy the bloody spectacle. The bodies of the slain were floated in such numbers down the Rhone that the waters were poisoned. During the course of five months, upwards of six thousand persons suffered death, and more than double that number were driven into exile."Alison. E.

"One day, during the bloody executions which took place at Lyons, a young girl rushed into the hall where the revolutionary tribunal was held, and throwing herself at the feet of the judges, said, • There remain to me of all my family, only my brothers! Mother-father-sisters-uncles-you have butchered all; and now you are going to condemn my brothers. Ah, in mercy, ordain that I may ascend the scaffold with them!' Her prayer, accompanied as it was with all the marks of frantic despair, was refused. She then threw herself into the Rhone, where she perished."-Du Broca. E.

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