Chapter 15

After taking some tea, the remainder of the evening was dedicated to reciprocal conversation of all kinds; and our guards having acquaintance in the town, and knowing it was impossible for us to escape, even were we so inclined, very civilly left us to ourselves. We found the General had been wounded at Maubeuge, and was now absent on conge for the recovery of his health. He talked of the present state of public affairs like a military man who is attached to his profession, and who thinks it his duty to fight at all events, whatever the rights or merits of those that employ him. He confessed, indeed, that they were repulsing their external enemies, only to confirm the power of those who were infinitely more to be dreaded at home, and that the condition of a General was more to be commiserated at this time than any other: if he miscarry, disgrace and the Guillotine await him--if he be successful, he gains little honour, becomes an object of jealousy, and assists in rivetting the chains of his country. He said, the armies were for the most part licentious and insubordinate, but that the political discipline was terrible--the soldiers are allowed to drink, pillage, and insult their officers with impunity, but all combinations are rigorously suppressed, the slightest murmur against the Representative on mission is treason, and to disapprove of a decree of the convention, death--that every man of any note in the army is beset with spies, and if they leave the camp on any occasion, it is more necessary to be on their guard against these wretches than against an ambuscade of the enemy; and he related a circumstance which happened to himself, as an example of what he mentioned, and which will give you a tolerable idea of the present system of government.--After the relief of Dunkirk, being quartered in the neighbourhood of St. Omer, he occasionally went to the town on his private concerns. One day, while he was waiting at the inn where he intended to dine, two young men accosted him, and after engaging him in a general conversation for some time, began to talk with great freedom, though with an affected caution of public men and measures, of the banditti who governed, the tyranny that was exercised, and the supineness of the people: in short, of all those too poignant truths which constitute the leze nation of the day. Mons. de ____ was not at first very attentive, but finding their discourse become still more liberal, it excited his suspicions, and casting his eyes on a glass opposite to where they were conversing, he perceived a sort of intelligence between them, which immediately suggested to him the profession of his companions; and calling to a couple of dragoons who had attended him, ordered them to arrest the two gentlemen as artistocrates, and convey them without ceremony to prison. They submitted, seemingly more surprized than alarmed, and in two hours the General received a note from a higher power, desiring him to set them at liberty, as they were agents of the republic.

Duquesnoy, one of the Representatives now with the Northern army, is ignorant and brutal in the extreme. He has made his brother (who, as well as himself, used to retail hops in the streets of St. Pol,) a General; and in order to deliver him from rivals and critics, he breaks, suspends, arrests, and sends to the Guillotine every officer of any merit that comes in his way. After the battle of Maubeuge, he arrested a General Bardell, [The Generals Bardell and D'Avesnes, and several others, were afterwards guillotined at Paris.] for accommodating a wounded prisoner of distinction (I think a relation of the Prince of Cobourg) with a bed, and tore with his own hands the epaulette from the shoulders of those Generals whose divisions had not sustained the combat so well as the others. His temper, naturally savage and choleric, is irritated to fury by the habit of drinking large quantities of strong liquors; and Mad. de ___'s relation assured us, that he had himself seen him take the Mayor of Avesnes (a venerable old man, who was presenting some petition to him that regarded the town,) by the hair and throw him on the ground, with the gestures of an enraged cannibal. He also confined one of his own fellow deputies in the tower of Guise, upon a very frivolous pretext, and merely on his own authority. In fact, I scarcely remember half the horrors told us of this man; and I shall only remind you, that he has an unlimited controul over the civil constitution of the Northern army, and over the whole department of the North.

You, I suppose, will be better informed of military events than we are, and I mention our friend's conjecture, that (besides an enormous number of killed) the wounded at Maubeuge amounted to twelve or fourteen thousand, only to remark the deception which is still practised on the people; for no published account ever allowed the number to be more than a few hundreds.--Besides these professional details, the General gave us some very unpleasant family ones. On returning to his father's chateau, where he hoped to be taken care of while his wounds were curing, he found every room in it under seals, three guards in possession, his two sisters arrested at St. Omer, where they happened to be on a visit, and his father and mother confined in separate houses of detention at Arras. After visiting them, and making some ineffectual applications for their relief, he came to the neighbourhood of Dourlens, expecting to find an asylum with an uncle, who had hitherto escaped the general persecution of the gentry. Here again his disappointment and chagrin were renewed: his uncle had been carried off to Amiens the morning of his arrival, and the house rendered inaccessible, by the usual affixture of seals, and an attendant pair of myrmidons to guard them from infraction. Thus excluded from all his family habitations, he had taken up his residence for a day or two at the inn where we met him, his intention being to return to Arras.

In the morning we made our adieus and pursued our journey; but, tenacious of this comparative liberty and the enjoyment of pure air, we prevailed on our conductors to let us dine on the road, so that we lingered with the unwillingness of truant children, and did not reach Amiens until dark. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, one of the guards enquired how we were to be disposed of. Unfortunately for us, Dumont happened to be there himself, and on hearing we were sent from Arras by order of Le Bon, declared most furiously (for our Representative is subject to choler since his accession to greatness) that he would have no prisoners received from Arras, and that we should sleep at the Conciergerie, and be conveyed back again on the morrow. Terrified at this menace, we persuaded the guard to represent to Dumont that we had been sent to Amiens at our own instance, and that we had been originally arrested by himself, and were therefore desirous of returning to the department where he was on mission, and where we had more reason to expect justice than at Arras. Mollified, perhaps, by this implied preference of his authority, he consented that we should remain for the present at Amiens, and ordered us to be taken to the Bicetre. Whoever has been used to connect with the word Bicetre the idea of the prison so named at Paris, must recoil with horror upon hearing they are destined to such a abode. Mad. de ___, yet weak from the remains of her illness, laid hold of me in a transport of grief; but, far from being able to calm or console her, my thoughts were so bewildered that I did not, till we alighted at the gate, begin to be really sensible of our situation. The night was dark and dreary, and our first entrance was into a kitchen, such as my imagination had pictured the subterraneous one of the robbers in Gil Blas. Here we underwent the ceremony of having our pocket-books searched for papers and letters, and our trunks rummaged for knives and fire-arms. This done, we were shown to the lodging I have described, and the poor priests, already insufferably crouded, were obliged almost to join their beds in order to make room for us.--I will not pain you by a recital of all the embarrassments and distresses we had to surmount before we could even rest ourselves. We were in want of every thing, and the rules of the prison such, that it was nearly impossible, for some time, to procure any thing: but the human mind is more flexible than we are often disposed to imagine it; and in two days we were able to see our situation in this best point of view, (that is, as an escape from Arras,) and the affair of submitting our bodies to our minds must be atchieved by time.--We have now been here a week. We have sounded the very depth of humiliation, taken our daily allowance of bread with the rest of the prisoners, and contracted a most friendly intimacy with the gaoler.

I have discovered since our arrival, that the order for transferring us hither described me as a native of the Low Countries. I know not how this happened, but my friend has insisted on my not rectifying the mistake, for as the French talk continually of re-conquering Brabant, she persuades herself such an event would procure me my liberty. I neither desire the one nor expect the other; but, to indulge her, I speak no English, and avoid two or three of my countrymen who I am told are here. There have been also some English families who were lately removed, but the French pronounce our names so strangely, that I have not been able to learn who they were.

November 19, 1793.

The English in general, especially of late years, have been taught to entertain very formidable notions of the Bastille and other state prisons of the ancient government, and they were, no doubt, horrid enough; yet I have not hitherto been able to discover that those of the new republic are any way preferable. The only difference is, that the great number of prisoners which, for want of room, are obliged to be heaped together, makes it impossible to exclude them as formerly from communication, and, instead of being maintained at the public expence, they now, with great difficulty, are able to procure wherewithal to eat at their own. Our present habitation is an immense building, about a quarter of a mile from the town, intended originally for the common gaol of the province. The situation is damp and unwholesome, and the water so bad, that I should suppose a long continuance here of such a number of prisoners must be productive of endemical disorders. Every avenue to the house is guarded, and no one is permitted to stop and look up at the windows, under pain of becoming a resident. We are strictly prohibited from all external intercourse, except by writing; and every scrap of paper, though but an order for a dinner, passes the inquisition of three different people before it reaches its destination, and, of course, many letters and notes are mislaid, and never sent at all.--There is no court or garden in which the prisoners are allowed to walk, and the only exercise they can take is in damp passages, or a small yard, (perhaps thirty feet square,) which often smells so detestably, that the atmosphere of the house itself is less mephitic.

Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature, of justice, and of tyranny--of lunatics who are insensible of their situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the profession of a clergyman. Among the latter is the Bishop of Amiens, whom I recollect to have mentioned in a former letter. You will wonder why a constitutional Bishop, once popular with the democratic party, should be thus treated. The real motive was, probably, to degrade in his person a minister of religion--the ostensible one, a dispute with Dumont at the Jacobin club. As the times grew alarming, the Bishop, perhaps, thought it politic to appear at the club, and the Representative meeting him there one evening, began to interrogate him very rudely with regard to his opinion of the marriage of priests. M. Dubois replied, that when it was officially incumbent on him to explain himself, he would do so, but that he did not think the club a place for such discussions, or something to this purpose. _"Tu prevariques donc!--Je t'arrete sur le champ:"_ ["What, you prevaricate!--I arrest you instantly."] the Bishop was accordingly arrested at the instant, and conducted to the Bicetre, without even being suffered to go home and furnish himself with necessaries; and the seals being immediately put on his effects, he has never been able to obtain a change of linen and clothes, or any thing else--this too at a time when the pensions of the clergy are ill paid, and every article of clothing so dear as to be almost unpurchaseable by moderate fortunes, and when those who might otherwise be disposed to aid or accommodate their friends, abandon them through fear of being implicated in their misfortunes.

But the Bishop, yet in the vigour of life, is better capable of enduring these hardships than most of the poor priests with whom he is associated: the greater number of them are very old men, with venerable grey locks-- and their tattered clerical habits, scanty meals, and wretched beds, give me many an heart-ache. God send the constant sight of so much misery may not render me callous!--It is certain, there are people here, who, whatever their feelings might have been on this occasion at first, seem now little affected by it. Those who are too much familiarized with scenes of wretchedness, as well as those to whom they are unknown, are not often very susceptible; and I am sometimes disposed to cavil with our natures, that the sufferings which ought to excite our benevolence, and the prosperity that enables us to relieve them, should ever have a contrary effect. Yet this is so true, that I have scarcely ever observed even the poor considerate towards each other--and the rich, if they are frequently charitable, are not always compassionate.*

* Our situation at the Bicetre, though terrible for people unused to hardships or confinement, and in fact, wretched as personal inconvenience could make it, was yet Elysium, compared to the prisons of other departments. At St. Omer, the prisoners were frequently disturbed at midnight by the entrance of men into their apartments, who, with the detestable ensign of their order, (red caps,) and pipes in their mouths, came by way of frolic to search their pockets, trunks, &c.--At Montreuil, the Maisons d'Arret were under the direction of a Commissary, whose behaviour to the female prisoners was too atrocious for recital--two young women, in particular, who refused to purchase milder treatment, were locked up in a room for seventeen days.--Soon after I left Arras, every prison became a den of horror. The miserable inhabitants were subject to the agents of Le Bon, whose avarice, cruelty, and licentiousness, were beyond any thing a humane mind can imagine. Sometimes the houses were suddenly surrounded by an armed force, the prisoners turned out in the depth of winter for several hours into an open court, during the operation of robbing them of their pocket-books, buckles, ear-rings, or whatever article of value they had about them. At other times they were visited by the same military array, and deprived of their linen and clothes. Their wine and provisions were likewise taken from them in the same manner--wives were separated from their husbands, parents from their children, old men treated with the most savage barbarity, and young women with an indecency still more abominable. All communication, either by writing or otherwise, was often prohibited for many days together, and an order was once given to prevent even the entry of provisions, which was not revoked till the prisoners became absolutely distressed. At the Hotel Dieu they were forbidden to draw more than a single jug of water in twenty-four hours. At the Providence, the well was left three days without a cord, and when the unfortunate females confined there procured people to beg water of the neighbours, they were refused, "because it was for prisoners, and if Le Bon heard of it he might be displeased!" Windows were blocked up, not to prevent escape, but to exclude air; and when the general scarcity rendered it impossible for the prisoners to procure sufficient food for their support, their small portions were diminished at the gate, under pretext of searching for letters, &c. --People, respectable both for their rank and character, were employed to clean the prisons and privies, while their low and insolent tyrants looked on and insulted them. On an occasion when one of the Maisons d'Arrets was on fire, guards were planted round, with orders to fire upon those that should attempt to escape.--My memory has but too faithfully recorded these and still greater horrors; but curiosity would be gratified but too dearly by the relation. I added the above note some months after writing the letter to which it is annexed.

Nov. 20.

Besides the gentry and clergy of this department, we have likewise for companions a number of inhabitants of Lisle, arrested under circumstances singularly atrocious, even where atrocity is the characteristic of almost every proceeding.--In the month of August a decree was passed to oblige all the nobility, clergy, and their servants, as well as all those persons who had been in the service of emigrants, to depart from Lisle in eight-and-forty hours, and prohibiting their residence within twenty leagues from the frontiers. Thus banished from their own habitations, they took refuge in different towns, at the prescribed distance; but, almost as soon as they were arrived, and had been at the expence of settling themselves, they were arrested as strangers,* and conducted to prison.

* I have before, I believe, noticed that the term estranger at this time did not exclusively apply to foreigners, but to such as had come from one town to another, who were at inns or on a visit to their friends.

It will not be improper to notice here the conduct of the government towards the towns that have been besieged. Thionville,* to whose gallant defence in 1792 France owed the retreat of the Prussians and the safety of Paris, was afterwards continually reproached with aristocracy; and when the inhabitants sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the Convention threatened them from the tribune with "indemnities a coup de baton!" that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a good thrashing.

* Wimpsen, who commanded there, and whose conduct at the time was enthusiastically admired, was driven, most probably by the ingratitude and ill treatment of the Convention, to head a party of the Foederalists.--These legislators perpetually boast of imitating and surpassing the Romans, and it is certain, that their ingratitude has made more than one Coriolanus. The difference is, that they are not jealous for the liberty of the country, but for their own personal safety.

The inhabitants of Lisle, who had been equally serviceable in stopping the progress of the Austrians, for a long time petitioned without effect to obtain the sums already voted for their relief. The noblesse, and others from thence who have been arrested, as soon as it was known that they were Lillois, were treated with peculiar rigour;* and an _armee revolutionnaire,_** with the Guillotine for a standard, has lately harrassed the town and environs of Lisle, as though it were a conquered country.

* The Commandant of Lisle, on his arrival at the Bicetre, was stripped of a considerable sum of money, and a quantity of plate he had unluckily brought with him by way of security. Out of this he is to be supplied with fifty livres at a time in paper, which, according to the exchange and the price of every thing, is, I suppose, about half a guinea.

** The armee revolutionnaire was first raised by order of the Jacobins, for the purpose of searching the countries for provisions, and conducting them to Paris. Under this pretext, a levy was made of all the most desperate ruffians that could be collected together. They were divided into companies, each with its attendant Guillotine, and then distributed in the different departments: they had extraordinary pay, and seem to have been subject to no discipline. Many of them were distinguished by the representation of a Guillotine in miniature, and a head just severed, on their cartouch-boxes. It would be impossible to describe half the enormities committed by these banditti: wherever they went they were regarded as a scourge, and every heart shrunk at their approach. Lecointre, of Versailles, a member of the Convention, complained that a band of these wretches entered the house of a farmer, one of his tenants, by night, and, after binding the family hand and foot, and helping themselves to whatever they could find, they placed the farmer with his bare feet on the chaffing-dish of hot ashes, by way of forcing him to discover where he had secreted his plate and money, which having secured, they set all the vessels of liquor running, and then retired.

You are not to suppose this a robbery, and the actors common thieves; all was in the usual form--"au nom de la loi," and for the service of the republic; and I do not mention this instance as remarkable, otherwise than as having been noticed in the Convention. A thousand events of this kind, even still more atrocious, have happened; but the sufferers who had not the means of defence as well as of complaint, were obliged, through policy, to be silent.

--The garrison and national guard, indignant at the horrors they committed, obliged them to decamp. Even the people of Dunkirk, whose resistance to the English, while the French army was collecting together for their relief, was perhaps of more consequence than ten victories, have been since intimidated with Commissioners, and Tribunals, and Guillotines, as much as if they had been convicted of selling the town. In short, under this philanthropic republic, persecution seems to be very exactly proportioned to the services rendered. A jealous and suspicious government does not forget, that the same energy of character which has enabled a people to defend themselves against an external enemy, may also make them less submissive to domestic oppression; and, far from repaying them with the gratitude to which they have a claim, it treats them, on all occasions, as opponents, whom it both fears and hates.