Part 23

He became a Deputy in 1791, and after the events of August 10, 1792, Carnot was despatched to the Republican army of the Rhine. During the next two years he commanded armies on the frontier, and gained many brilliant victories. He took no part in the atrocities of the Terror, but has been unjustly accused both by his contemporaries and by posterity of having approved the massacres at Avignon and the executions at Lyons. As a member of the Committee of Public Safety his name is attached to the decrees ordering these cruel punishments, but he was at this time fighting on the banks of the Rhine. He hated Robespierre and Robespierre detested him, often saying, “We need Carnot now for the war, but as soon as the war is over his head shall fall.”

Carnot became one of the five Directors, and in that capacity gave Napoleon Bonaparte command of the army of Italy. During that campaign the other four Directors opposed Carnot; he was stripped of his office and even of his seat in the Institut, a body he had virtually founded, was impeached and forced to fly for his life to Switzerland. He remained in exile until the events of the 18th Brumaire, when he was recalled and appointed Minister of War and Tribune. He was opposed to the creation of a life consulate, and later on to that of an Empire.

From 1807 to 1813 he retired into private life, employing his leisure in scientific studies and the education of his children. The disasters of 1813 brought him out of his retreat, and he again offered his services to the Emperor.

Napoleon appointed him Governor of Antwerp on January 24, 1814, which place he defended with so much ability that it was still in the possession of the French at the conclusion of the war. He again retired into private life, but when Napoleon returned from Elba he made Carnot Minister of the Interior. He held his appointment for less than three months, but during that short period brought about many educational reforms which are still in use.

After Waterloo, Carnot was a member of the Provisional Government, but as soon as the Bourbons returned he was banished and outlawed. The Emperor Alexander gave him a passport to Poland. He eventually fixed his residence with his family at Magdeburg in Prussia, where he died at the age of seventy.

CHAPTAL, COMTE DE CHANTELOUP, JEAN ANTOINE.

Born June 4, 1756; died 1832.

A celebrated chemist. His uncle, a rich physician at Montpellier, gave him his first education. He studied chemistry at the University of Montpellier, received the title of Doctor in 1777, and went to Paris. In 1781 he returned to his native town a celebrated man.

The State of Languedoc founded in his honour a Professorship of Chemistry at the School of Medicine. Chaptal had adopted the theories of Lavoisier. The young professor considered chemistry, then in its infancy, likely to become the most useful and practical of sciences. By his uncle’s death he inherited a large fortune, and he devoted the whole of it to constructing various laboratories, where experiments could be carried out, and large establishments in which scientific productions might be manufactured.

By his inventive studies, and assisted by his large fortune, manufactories of alum, soda, and saltpetre were successfully established, and the Government recompensed this work by giving him a patent of nobility and the Grand Cordon of the Order of St. Michael.

Chaptal adopted all the ideas of the Revolution, although he disapproved its excesses. He was in consequence arrested; but his scientific knowledge was too important to the Government, and he was liberated and appointed Director of the Saltpetre Manufactory at Grenoble. After this he directed also the re-organisation of the School of Medicine. During the Consulate, Chaptal succeeded Lucien Bonaparte as Minister of the Interior, and in that capacity rendered great service to the State; he was appointed Treasurer of the _Senat_, under the title of Count Chanteloup. When Napoleon returned from Elba, Chaptal accepted the portfolio of Minister of Commerce. After the Restoration, Louis XVIII. erased his name from the list of Peers of France, but a few years later his peerage was restored. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, and wrote several important scientific works in his old age.

Before his death, at the age of seventy-five, he had many pecuniary misfortunes, and died in comparative poverty.

CIMAROSA, DOMENICO.

Born 1749 at Aversa, in the Kingdom of Naples; died in Venice, 1801.

The son of a poor mason, he was but seven years of age when his father was killed by a fall from a scaffold. In her distress the boy’s mother applied to a charitable monk for help. This good man gave Cimarosa a few Latin lessons, and was so struck by the child’s intelligence that he decided to adopt him. This monk was organist of the convent, and taught his pupil music. Discovering the boy’s extraordinary aptitude for musical composition, he obtained his admission into the Conservatory at Santa Maria di Loretto.

At the age of twenty-four Cimarosa produced his first opera at Naples. His next ten years were a succession of triumphs, and he produced innumerable operas and other musical compositions. In 1787 the Empress Catherine offered him the title of Imperial Composer, with a high salary. He journeyed to Russia, was treated with great distinction, and many operas written by him in Russia were performed during his five years’ stay in that country. He returned to Naples in 1793.

In 1799 he joined the Revolutionary party in Italy, was thrown into prison, and but for the intercession of the Russian Ambassador would have been executed. Upon his release he took refuge at Venice, where he died.

He composed over a hundred operas, many of which still hold the stage.

CLOOTZ (surnamed ANACHARSIS), JEAN BAPTISTE, BARON DE.

Born in Cleves in Germany, 1755; guillotined in Paris, 1794.

He was educated in Paris, possessed considerable natural intelligence, but was led astray by the violent excitability of his nature. He had confused dreams of social regeneration, and declared that his life was to be devoted to the reformation of the world.

He inherited a vast fortune, renounced his title of baron, taking the romantic name of Anacharsis, travelled over Germany, Italy and England, preaching his extraordinary doctrines, and spending money with unbridled extravagance.

The French Revolution filled him with delirious joy; it appeared to realise all his mad projects. On June 19, 1790, he presented himself at the bar of the Assembly to read an address in which he requested that all strangers residing in Paris might be admitted to the Grand Federation which was to take place on July 14 of the same year. He called himself “the Ambassador of Humanity” to France, and gave large sums to the “nation” for the fitting out of a regiment “to fight in the holy war against tyranny.”

The events of August 10 seem to have shaken Clootz’s reason. Not content with attacking all the kings and princes of the earth, he delivered a violent tirade against the Almighty, declaring himself the personal enemy of God. He publicly abjured all religion. He complimented the Convention upon their victories near the Rhine, and requested the members to put prices upon the heads of the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Prussia. A decree of August 20, 1792, having granted him the title of citizen, he repaired to the Bar of the Assembly and delivered a long speech of thanks, and in the praise of regicide. After he became a member of the Convention he wearied his co-Deputies by long rambling speeches. He voted for the death of the King “in the name of the whole generation of mankind,” adding, “he personally condemned Frederick William of Prussia to death.”

Robespierre was his secret enemy, and by his (Robespierre’s) influence Clootz was excluded from the club of the Jacobins and arrested, the only accusation against him being that he was rich and of noble birth. Clootz was condemned to death with his supposed accomplices. He received his sentence with calmness, and passed his remaining hours preaching materialism to his fellow victims. At the scaffold he requested permission to suffer last, as he wished to make some observations while watching the heads of his companions fall.

He wrote several books, as strange in their contents as was his own character.

CONDORCET, JEAN ANTOINE NICOLAS DE CARINTON, MARQUIS DE.

Born at Ribemont, in Picardy, 1743.

A member of a very ancient and noble family: being her only surviving son, his mother devoted him to the Virgin, making him wear girl’s clothes until the age of eleven.

He became one of the most illustrious mathematicians and philosophers of France. He was not quite twenty-two when he presented his celebrated essay, “Sur le calcul intégral” before the Academy. He was elected member of the Academy of Science after composing an eulogy on the death of La Fontaine in 1771.

During the next fifteen years he published many books of historical and philosophical interest.

Turgot inspired Condorcet with a taste for political economy.

In 1789, notwithstanding his great position in the world of literature and politics, Condorcet was not elected a member of the States-General. But in 1791 he was a Deputy for Paris in the second Assembly. He voted against the execution of Louis XVI.

Condorcet was shortly after denounced as an Academician, a conspirator, and an enemy of the people. He was also accused of having attacked the “sublime efforts of the Committee of Public Safety,” and on October 3 the Convention ordered his arrest. For a time various friends concealed the illustrious refugee in their houses, but he was obliged to fly on April 6, 1794, from his last hiding-place. Hunger drove him into a baker’s shop to buy bread, where the whiteness of his hands, the fineness of his linen, and the fact that he was carrying a volume of Horace excited suspicion, and he was arrested. He committed suicide the same night in prison, swallowing poison contained in a ring. He was fifty years of age.

Condorcet was one of the most illustrious of Frenchmen, a true friend of liberty, a gentleman, an honest man, an elegant speaker, a brilliant writer, and a distinguished geometrician; he fell a victim, with many others almost equally distinguished, to the fury of those revolutionary demagogues who deprived France of most of the benefits she might have received from the Revolution of 1789.

CONDÉ, PRINCE LOUIS JOSEPH DE BOURBON.

Born at Chantilly, 1736; died in Paris, 1818.

The son of that Duke de Bourbon (afterwards Prince de Condé) who succeeded the Regent Duke of Orleans as Prime Minister to Louis XV. This Prince died in 1739, when his only son was three years of age.

From his earliest childhood the young Prince de Condé was devoted to military studies. His guardian, the Count de Charolais, gave him an excellent general education. The Prince made a good classical scholar, and through life was fond of making quotations of Greek and Latin authors. He wrote an admirable history of the life of his ancestor, the great Condé.

During the Seven Years War he showed military genius and personal courage, and the victory of Johannesburg was principally due to his efforts (1762). He married at the age of seventeen Mlle. de Soubise, by whom he had a son and a daughter. She died when her husband was twenty-seven and she but twenty-five years old.

His disposition was noble and generous, and his political views distinctly liberal. He violently opposed the suggestions of Count St. Germain (the War Minister) that Russian discipline, including the caning of soldiers, should be introduced into the French army. Deserving officers, not of noble birth, found in him a friend and protector, as he used his influence to assist their promotion.

The Prince de Condé spent twenty years of his life in embellishing and improving his magnificent residence at Chantilly and the surrounding domain. Here he entertained the German Emperor, Joseph II., the Emperor Paul, when Grand Duke Cesarovitch, Gustavus, King of Sweden, the Duke of Brunswick, and many other potentates. He was a generous landlord and a public benefactor during the famine (1775); he bought up, at any and every price, all the grain he could possibly obtain, this corn being re-sold to the people at the usual price given in prosperous years for wheat.

Governor of Burgundy, that province owed to his efforts new roads and bridges, the encouragement of local art, and the foundation of useful and literary institutions. In 1787, as President of the Assembly of Notables, his discourses were in favour of order, economy and reform. Nevertheless, he was one of the first objects of attack by the Revolutionary party, and menaced on every side. Very shortly after the destruction of the Bastille he departed with his family from France. He went first to Austrian Flanders, and later to Turin, where he helped to combine the movement which brought about the counter revolution in Lyons and Southern France. He was chosen to command the body of French noblemen and gentlemen known as _L’armée du Rhin_ or _Des Emigrés_.

A decree of the Assembly, 1791, deprived him of an annuity of £24,000 a year (granted by the State to the House of Condé in exchange for the territory of Clemontain). His property at Chantilly was confiscated, and, as he was without resources, he sold all his plate, diamonds and jewels.

When the civil war began he commanded a body of five thousand men. At the close of the first campaign he possessed no funds beyond a sum of money the Empress Catherine sent him as a present. Shortly after this he entered regularly into the service of the Emperor of Austria and received the pay of an ordinary general.

In the campaign of 1793 the Prince de Condé performed many brilliant feats of strategy, entering Alsace and occupying Berstein; the enemy drove his troops to Hagenau, and he marched on foot at the head of his regiment and retook Berstein by a bayonet charge. During the two following campaigns, Condé’s army was occupied only in guarding the Rhine. He suffered from the jealousy and malevolence of the Austrian commanders, and was supplied with bad provisions and spoilt flour; but the Prince ordered his table to be served with similar bread to that of the soldiers.

During the whole of this time (in 1795) Condé was negotiating with Pichegru, who commanded the Republican army on the opposite bank of the Rhine. They agreed that Condé should pass over the Rhine with his army and join Pichegru; they were to march jointly on Paris and restore the monarchy. The Prince, being subordinate to the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, Werhmer, considered it a point of honour to communicate this scheme to his superior officer. The Cabinet of Vienna refused to assent to Condé’s arrangement with the Republican general, unless Strasburg and the other Alsatian fortresses were occupied by the Imperial troops. The Prince refused his consent, and Pichegru, whose first condition had been “no Austrian soldier shall set his foot on French soil,” naturally refused to entertain the proposal for an instant. The project was, therefore, abandoned.

The forces of Condé, consisting of 10,000 men, were now an integral part of the regular Austrian army. The passage of Moreau over the Rhine caused the retreat of the Austrians, and although Condé and his troops invariably distinguished themselves, and at the battle of Biberach saved the Austrian army from a crushing defeat, the advance of Moreau was never seriously checked.

After the peace of Campo-Formio in the following year, Condé and his remaining followers took service under Paul I. of Russia. In 1799 Paul abandoned the Austrian alliance, and made peace with France; the army of the _Emigrés_ then passed over to the English. Condé fought in Bavaria and defended the passage of the Inn. But after the battle of Hohenlinden the whole of his remaining forces were disbanded. In 1801 the Prince joined his son, the Duke de Bourbon, in England, the British Government providing them with a small allowance.

Condé settled in the ancient abbey of Malmesbury, where he found a devoted companion in his second wife, the Dowager Princess of Monaco. In 1804 the news reached him of the assassination of his grandson, the Duke d’Enghien, the last male heir of his race. In 1813 he lost his wife, at the very moment when his long and cruel exile was about to terminate.

He landed at Calais with Louis XVIII. in May 1814. Notwithstanding his great age (he was nearly eighty) he was the only member of the royal family who did not instantly attempt flight from Paris on the return of Napoleon from Elba.

“We should fight,” he cried, as the carriage in which he had been forcibly seated was bearing him away towards the frontier.

On his return after Waterloo he spent the remaining five years of his life at the Palais Bourbon (now the Chamber of the French Legislature) and at a small château at Chantilly, the last relic of its ancient splendour.

He died in Paris, aged eighty two, and was, by order of Louis XVIII., buried at St. Denis, in the vault of the Kings of France.

DANTON, GEORGE JACQUES.

Born October 28, 1759; executed April 6, 1794.

At the time of the outbreak of the Revolution he was a needy lawyer. The immorality of his private life caused him to be greatly discredited by members of his profession, and he seldom obtained employment. He therefore hailed with joy the social changes, and threw himself with all the energy of his temperament into the Revolutionary movement. He made the acquaintance of Mirabeau, who found him a man whose actions and unscrupulousness were likely to be of great use to his political plans. Mignet, in his “History of the Revolution,” says:

Danton was a revolutionary giant. He saw nothing condemnable in any action which could serve his purpose. His theory was that with audacity one could achieve anything and everything.

Danton, who had been surnamed “the Mirabeau of the populace,” possessed the following characteristics in common with the great Tribune. Strongly marked features, a loud voice, an imperious mien, a bold eloquence, and a dominating presence. Their vices were similar, with this difference, that in all his debaucheries Mirabeau remained a patrician, and Danton never ceased to be a democrat.

President of the Cordeliers, Danton took for his satellites Marât and Camille Desmoulins. Danton became the orator of the people, and was ready to speak anywhere and everywhere either in a public hall or in the street, from an open window or in the Tribune of the Assembly.

The political _rôle_ and public life of Danton did not attain real importance until the return of the Royal Family from Varennes. For a time he sold himself to the Court party, and as he was under an order of arrest for debts he gladly accepted the terms offered him by the anti-revolutionists. He received altogether £12,000 sterling, but as soon as supplies ceased he rejoined his former friends and was a more implacable revolutionist than before. When the “Federals” arrived from Marseilles, Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, placed them under Danton’s orders. He plied them with wine and led them himself, with that personal courage which never deserted him, to the attack on the Tuileries on August 10. During the whole of that eventful day Marât and Robespierre were hiding in a cellar.

After August 10, Danton was appointed, as a reward for his services, Minister of Justice. He began his ministry by ordering domiciliary visits in every part of Paris, by arresting the clergy and all suspected Royalists. He then assembled the General Committee of National Defence, and in a speech to that body on September 1, 1792, said: “My advice is that it is necessary to terrify all Royalists.”

The following day he appeared in the Legislative Assembly at the head of the authorities, and in a voice of thunder shouted to the trembling Deputies:

It is at this moment, gentlemen, you can decree that Paris is worthy of France. The cannon you are about to hear sound, is not the cannon of alarm, it is the first step taken to destroy our enemies. What is required to vanquish them? Audacity! still more audacity!! and ever increasing audacity!!!

A few hours afterwards the massacres of September commenced. They lasted four days, and to the assassinations of defenceless prisoners in Paris succeeded those of the equally defenceless prisoners at Orleans on the ninth of the same month; a day or two later, a similar scene of slaughter occurred at Versailles.

Elected one of the Paris Deputies to the Convention, Danton resigned his Ministerial post. He was a violent promoter of the trial of Louis XVI., and to a friend who suggested the Convention was not by right of law a court of justice, he replied: “You are right; and we will _not judge him_, we shall _kill him_.”

Bertrand de Molleville, ex-Minister of Marine, who had taken refuge in London, informed Danton he possessed a letter written by him (Danton) at the time he was in the pay of the Royalists. This he threatened to publish if Danton used his influence to condemn Louis XVI. Danton left Paris in consequence and did not return until the last day of the King’s trial. Immediately after the King’s execution, Danton and Lacroix repaired to Belgium, which Dumouriez had just invaded. They received 4,000,000 of francs (£600,000) to be used in promoting a Revolution in Flanders and the Netherlands.

They were accused of having appropriated the greater part of this enormous sum, and there is every reason to believe this accusation was a just one. In order to avert suspicion, Danton replaced himself at the head of the most extreme revolutionists. He proposed and carried a motion for the levying of an army of 300,000 men, and also suggested the devastation of France in case of invasion. On March 10 he decreed the establishment of the famous Revolutionary Tribunal, which a year later sent him to the scaffold.

The Committee of Public Safety was formed and became the real governing power of France. Danton was its foremost member, and now reached the apogee of his career. But he was menaced on two sides; by the party of the Girondins, who clamoured for the punishment of those who had _by murder soiled the cause of Liberty_, and by the “Purists” of the _Montagne_, who accused him of the embezzlement of funds in Belgium. As, according to his own cynical remark, “authority in a Revolution should always belong to rogues,” he joined Robespierre and Pache and brought about the trial and execution of the Girondins. Soon afterwards the influence of Danton began to wane, he was now reproached with too much moderation, and of being desirous to coerce the actions of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He had denounced the Saturnalia of the Feast of Reason.

Robespierre decided Danton should fall, and many of his (Danton’s) friends advised him to fly while there was yet time. He replied: “They would not dare!” and remained, lulled by this false security, until he was arrested in his own house on the night of March 30, 1794. Many members of the Convention tried to save him, and an effort was made to give him an opportunity of appearing before the Assembly and publicly attesting his patriotism; but this was vetoed by Robespierre, who with feigned indignation said: “We shall see whether the Convention will be able to break a rotten idol, or will allow that idol to destroy in its fall not only the Convention but the people of France.”

St. Just ascended the Tribune, and poured forth a violent impeachment of his former ally, whom he accused of every possible form of treachery to the Republic. “Terror was voted as the order of the day,” and Danton’s fate was sealed.