A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 716 pages of information about A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Complete.

A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 716 pages of information about A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Complete.

Fouquier Tinville, with sixteen revolutionary Judges and Jurymen, have been tried and executed, at the moment when the instigators of their crimes, Billaud-Varennes, Collot, &c. were sentenced by the Convention to a banishment, which is probably the object of their wishes.  This Tinville and his accomplices, who condemned thousands with such ferocious gaiety, beheld the approach of death themselves with a mixture of rage and terror, that even cowardice and guilt do not always exhibit.  It seems an awful dispensation of Providence, that they who were inhuman enough to wish to deprive their victims of the courage which enabled them to submit to their fate with resignation, should in their last moments want that courage, and die despairing, furious, and uttering imprecations, which were returned by the enraged multitude.*

—­Yours, &c.

* Some of the Jurymen were in the habit of taking caricatures of the prisoners while they condemned them.  Among the papers of the Revolutionary Tribunal were found blank sentences, which were occasionally sent to the Committee of Public Safety, to be filled up with the names of those intended to be sacrificed.—­The name of one of the Jurymen executed on this occasion was Leroi, but being a very ardent republican, he had changed it for that of Citizen Tenth of August.

Amiens, May 26, 1795.

Our journey to Paris has been postponed by the insurrection which occurred on the first and second of Prairial, (20th and 21st of May,) and which was not like that of Germinal, fabricated—­but a real and violent attempt of the Jacobins to regain their power.  Of this event it is to be remarked, that the people of Paris were at first merely spectators, and that the Convention were at length defended by the very classes which they have so long oppressed under the denomination of aristocrats.  For several hours the Assembly was surrounded, and in the power of its enemies; the head of Ferraud, a deputy, was borne in triumph to the hall;* and but for the impolitic precipitation of the Jacobins, the present government might have been destroyed.

* The head of Ferraud was placed on a pole, and, after being paraded about the Hall, stationed opposite the President.  It is impossible to execrate sufficiently this savage triumph; but similar scenes had been applauded on the fourteenth of July and the fifth and sixth of October 1789; and the Parisians had learned, from the example of the Convention themselves, that to rejoice in the daily sacrifice of fifty or sixty people, was an act of patriotism.  As to the epithets of Coquin, Scelerats, Voleurs, &c. which were now bestowed on the Assembly, they were only what the members were in the constant habit of applying to each other.
The assassin of Ferraud being afterwards taken and sentenced to the Guillotine, was rescued by the mob at the place of execution, and the inhabitants of the Fauxbourg St. Antoine were in revolt
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A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.