CHAPTER VI

The result of a sword-stroke across the head--St. Georges and the remounts--The quarrel he sought with my father--My father is transferred to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse--He hands in his resignation and returns to Villers-Cotterets--A retrospect over what had happened at home and abroad during the four years that had just elapsed.

My father was glad enough to find himself once more in Paris, as soon as he saw they were not going to guillotine him. He had been troubled for long by a wen on his forehead, which had caused him great pain. This wen had grown upon the old sword-cut he had received in one of those three army duels he fought to sustain the pre-eminence of the queen over the king. The wen was found to have adhered to his skull, and its removal meant a rather critical operation.

The operation was very successfully performed by M. Pelletan.

On the 15th of Thermidor this year, an order from the Committee of Public Safety appointed my father as commandant of the military school established at the camp of Sablons.

This appointment did not last long.

On the 18th Thermidor, three days, that is, after this appointment, he was ordered to join the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse.

But before quitting Paris my father had an account to settle with his old colonel, St. Georges.

We mentioned previously that instead of joining his regiment St. Georges had found it more convenient to settle at Lille, where he induced the Government to place him in charge of a remount depot; in addition to this, by virtue of the powers which regimental heads arrogated to themselves at this period, he requisitioned an immense number of pleasure-horses, in which he traded.

The price these horses fetched was estimated at upwards of a million francs.

Although people were not very strict in those days at this kind of peccadillo, St. Georges went to such lengths that he was summoned to Paris to show his accounts. As St. Georges' books were very badly kept, he hit on the idea of throwing the blame upon my father, by saying it was Lieutenant-Colonel Dumas who had had charge of the regimental remounts.

The minister of war therefore wrote to my father, who immediately proved that he had never ordered a single requisition, nor bought nor sold a single horse.

The reply of the minister entirely exculpated my father from blame. But this did not lessen his grudge against St. Georges, and as his wen caused him horrible suffering and kept him in a perpetual state of irritability of temper, he positively swore he would fight a duel with his old colonel.

Brave though St. Georges was with pistol or sword in hand, he much preferred to choose his own duels. Fortunately or unfortunately, this one was noised abroad. My father called three times at St. Georges' house without finding him at home; he called again another three times, each time leaving his card. At length he wrote such a pressing threat in pencil on the last of these cards, that, the day but one after he had undergone his operation, my father, who was in bed and nursed by Dermoncourt (the captain who had turned the guillotine of St. Maurice into faggots), received a visit from St. Georges, who, on being told that the invalid was ill in bed, was about to leave his card and withdraw, when Dermoncourt, who had heard a great deal about him, seeing a magnificent specimen of a mulatto, who stuttered in his talk, recognised St. Georges, and ran after him.

"Ah! M. de St. Georges," he exclaimed, "is it you? Do not go away, I beseech you; for, ill though he is, the general is quite capable of running after you, so anxious is he to see you."

St. Georges at once made up his mind what part to play.

"Oh! dear good Dumas!" he cried. "I know how very much he longs to see me; and I him. We were always such great friends. Where is he? where is he?"

And darting into the room he flung himself upon the bed, clasped my father in his arms and hugged him almost to suffocation.

My father endeavoured to speak, but St. Georges did not give him time.

"Ah!--and you wanted then to kill me, Dumas?" he said. "To kill me--me? To kill St. Georges? Is it possible? Why, you are my own son! Were St. Georges dead, no other man but you could replace him. Be quick and get up! Order me a cutlet, and let there be an end to all this nonsense."

At first my father was strongly inclined to pursue the quarrel to the bitter end; but what could you say to a man who threw himself on your bed, embraced you, called you his son, and invited himself to lunch?

My father held out his hand and said:

"Ah! you ruffian, you may well be pleased to call me your successor instead of being the successor of the former minister of war; for I promise you I would have hung you!"

"Oh! but surely you would have guillotined me," said St. Georges, laughing at the wrong side of his mouth.

"Not a bit of it, not a bit of it! Only honest folk are guillotined nowadays; thieves are hung."

"Now tell me frankly what were your intentions in coming to see me?" said St. Georges.

"First of all to find you."

"Certainly, but what next?"

"Next?"

"Yes."

"I should have gone into the room I was told you were in, I should have shut the door behind me, I should have put the key in my pocket, and whichever of us two remained alive at the end of five minutes would have had to open it."

"In that case," replied St. Georges, "you see I was very wise not to be found at home."

But as at that moment the door opened to announce that lunch was ready, the discussion ended and the meal began.

With that rapidity of movement with which the Convention manoeuvred its generals at this period, my father was changed from the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse to the chief command on the coast of Brest; but he had grown disgusted with these factitious moves, and, sixteen days after his appointment, he sent in his resignation, and retired to Villers-Cotterets, to be with my mother, who, a year or two before, had given birth to my eldest sister.

Many things had happened since the 28th November 1792, when Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie had married Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret.

In the first place, to look abroad, a speedy vengeance had succeeded the defeats of Marchain and the taking of Longwy and of Verdun, in the victories of Valmy and of Jemappes. Charleroy had been occupied by General Montesquiou, and Nice by General Anselme. The siege of Lille was raised; and Mayence was taken by General Custine. Our troops had entered Frankfort-on-the-Maine. Brussels had been occupied by General Dumouriez, and Savoy restored to France. The citadel of Anvers had been taken by General Labourdonnaye, Namur by General Valence. England, Holland and Spain had declared war. Breda and Gertruydenberg had been taken by Arçon. The First Coalition against France was formed, comprising Prussia, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Spain, Portugal, the two Sicilies, the Papal States, and the King of Sardinia. The battle of Nerwinde had been lost, which led to the emigration of Dumouriez and of the duc de Chartres. Porentruy was restored to France. The English took Tobago from us. Spain invaded le Roussillon. Lyons rose in arms. Negroes massacred the whites at St. Domingo. Mayence surrendered to the Prussians, Valenciennes to the Austrians, and Pondichéry to the English. Toulon was handed over. Le Quesnoy capitulated. But Jourdan blockaded Maubeuge, Toulon was retaken, and Bonaparte appeared on the scenes.

The year 1794 opened under brighter auspices. Jourdan, Marceau, Lefebvre, Championnet, and Kléber won the battle of Fleurus. Ypres was re-captured by Moreau. A second battle of Fleurus opened up Belgium once more to the French armies. The taking of Ostende and of Tournay by General Pichegru, and the occupation of Mons by General Ferrand, had freed our frontiers and made way for the besieging of Condé, Valenciennes, le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, which were taken--Condé on June 15th, Valenciennes on the 28th July, le Quesnoy the 11th of September 1793, and Landrecies the 30th April 1794. Finally we re-entered Ghent, Brussels, Landrecies, Nieuport, Anvers, Liège, Fontarabia, St. Sébastien, Valenciennes, Condé, and Aix-la-Chapelle. We invaded Roncevaux, that valley of poetical associations. We took by force Andernach, Coblentz, Venloo, Maestricht, Nimègue, Figuières. We gained the battle of Escola, which lasted five days, from the 15th to the 20th October 1794, and in which the two generals commanding were killed; Dugoummier on the 18th; and la Union on the 20th. We took possession of Amsterdam, and the Stadtholder fled to London. We took the Dutch fleet (which was blocked up in the ice of the Texel) with a charge of cavalry. Berg-op-Zoom surrendered to Pichegru. Ross was taken after a seventy days' siege. Holland was conquered; and finally a treaty was concluded between Tuscany and France; which openly recognised the French Republic as a part of the political system of Europe.

Prussia imitated Tuscany's example, and concluded a treaty of peace with France at Bâle. It was signed by baron de Hardenberg and François Barthélemy, nephew of the author of the _Voyages du jeune Anacharsis._ By April 5th, 1795, the two Powers had nothing further to restore to each other.

A third treaty of peace was signed on May 16th between France and the United Netherlands. The United Netherlands ceded the whole of the Batavian provinces along the left bank of the eastern Escaut, and on both banks of the Meuse to the south of Venloo.

The United Netherlands paid France 100,000,000 florins sterling, Dutch currency, to indemnify the cost of the war.

Finally, on July 22nd, Spain in her turn treated for peace with France; France surrendered to Spain her conquests in Biscay and in Catalonia. Spain ceded to France the portion of St. Domingo which she possessed.

Such was our position with regard to Europe towards the middle of the year 1795.

Now a word about our home politics.

On all sides were signs of arrest and change.

The old world was tottering and dragging down into the débris with it the very people who had undermined it. A new world was springing into being.

The age of Louis XV. was at an end. The age of Napoleon was beginning.

The great event which occupied the mind of France was the trial of Louis XVI. on the 28th November 1792.

On the 7th November the Convention had decreed, upon the report of the Mailhe (Deputy of the Haute-Garonne) that Louis XVI. could be tried and that the Convention should try him. The same day Robespierre demanded that the king should without further delay be pronounced a traitor to his country, a criminal towards humanity, and that he should be sentenced to death to set a good example to the world.

On December 4th it was decreed that whoever should attempt to reinstate royalty in France, or any other power which might assail the supremacy of the people, should suffer the penalty of death.

On December 6th a decree was issued nominating a Commission of twenty-one members, with instructions to accelerate the examination and trial of Louis XVI.

On December 11, Louis XVI. appeared before the Convention.

On the 25th he made his will.

On the 15th January the nominal appeal turned upon these two queries:

1. _Was Louis guilty of conspiracy against liberty and of an attempt against the safety of the State?_--_YES or NO._

Out of 719 members present, 683 voted in the affirmative.

2. _Should the sentence to be passed upon Louis be submitted to the sanction of the people in their primary assemblies?_--_YES or No._

Out of 749 members present, 424 refused an appeal to the people.

A third question was put; vital, supreme, final.--_What penalty had Louis incurred?_

Three hundred and eighty-seven votes out of seven hundred and thirteen replied: _The penalty of death._

Finally they proceeded to promulgate a fourth nominal appeal, couched in these terms:

_Should the execution of the sentence on Louis Capet be reprieved?_--_YES or NO._

Three hundred and eighty votes were against reprieve.

Three hundred and ten for it.

There could not then be any reprieve.

On January 20th the sentence was declared to Louis XVI.

On the 21st January at ten o'clock Louis XVI. was executed.

The Convention created ten armies to meet the outburst of indignation that rose throughout the whole of Europe: the Army of the North and of the Ardennes, commanded by General Custine; the Army of the Moselle, commanded by Houchard; the Army of the Rhine, commanded by Alexandre Beauharnais; the Army of the Alps, commanded by Kellermann; the Army of Italy, commanded by Brunet; the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, commanded by Defiers; the Army of the Western Pyrenees, commanded by Dubousquet; the Army of the Coastline of Rochelle, commanded by General Canclaux; the Army of the Shores of the Channel, commanded by Félix Wimpfen; the Army of the West, commanded by Westermann.

At the same time, Representatives of the People were appointed in connection with each army, selected by the Convention, and invested with absolute powers.

Three of the generals we have just named died on the scaffold: Custine, Houchard, and Alexandre Beauharnais.

The Girondists, who had voted with the Jacobins at the king's trial, now split off from them.

On the 18th April a Commission was formed to restrain the Terrorist party.

This Commission was elected on the 18th, dissolved on the 27th, re-established on the 28th, and definitely suppressed on the 31st.

The result was to bring about a total separation between the two parties.

On the 31rst of May the Girondists were proscribed.

On the 13th June Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat.

On August 1st, Marie-Antoinette was accused by the Revolutionary Tribunal.

On the 5th August an itinerary Revolutionist army was created to survey the departments, bearing the guillotine and artillery with them.

On September the 3rd the trial of Marie-Antoinette began.

On the 5th the decree which abolished the Christian Calendar and dated the beginning of the French Era from the 22nd September 1792 was issued.

On the 12th, Marie-Antoinette underwent her first examination.

On the 16th, Marie-Antoinette was condemned to death.

At eleven o'clock the same morning she ascended the scaffold.

On the 31st October the execution of the Girondists followed.

On the 6th November it was Philippe-Égalité's turn.

On the 11th, Bailly's.

On the 1st December the prisoners were reckoned up: they numbered 4130 in the various prisons of Paris.

On March 1st, 1794, there were 6000.

On April 27, 7200.

On April 5th, Danton, Charbot, Bazire, Lacroix, Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles, and Fabre d'Églantine were guillotined.

Robespierre ruled without opposition as master of France, aided by Barère, Merlin de Douai, Saint-Just, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Fouché de Nantes, Vadier, and Carnot.

On the 16th the following decrees were issued:--

1. That all individuals warned of conspiracy, or who are under suspicion, shall be conducted to the Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris from any part of the Republic.

2. That all so-called nobles and foreigners shall leave the frontier and sea-board towns within ten days under penalty of death.

On the 22nd they guillotined Malesherbes, who defended Louis XVI. They made the martyrdom and holocaust complete by conducting to the scaffold at the same time his daughter, his sister, his son-in-law, his granddaughter and her husband.

The number of prisoners grew and grew. On the 1st May they mounted to 8000.

On the 8th, Lavoisier was executed; and twenty-seven other tax-collectors, whose names are now forgotten, were executed with him.

On the 10th, Princess Élisabeth ascended the scaffold; and, as her neckerchief was pushed aside, she exclaimed to the executioner:

"In the name of modesty, monsieur, cover up my bosom."

She died as she had lived, a Christian, a saint, a martyr.

On the 8th June, Robespierre celebrated the Feast of Supreme Reason. He was the high priest of the new religion. Standing on a platform raised against the walls of the Tuileries, and surrounded by his disciples, he made a speech in which he condescended to recognise the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul; after which he set fire to two mannikins representing Atheism and Fanaticism.

Still the prisoners went on increasing. 11,400 were incarcerated in Paris prisons.

There were thirty-two prisons in Paris--twenty-seven more than in the time of the Bastille.

A 2nd and 3rd of September was expected.

A 9th and 10th of Thermidor arrived, and it was high time. At Bicêtre the experiment of a guillotine with nine blades was tried. The former machine, it seemed, could not work fast enough. By the 25th, 26th, and 27th July they had only managed to execute some 135 persons in all by means of the guillotines between the Place de la Révolution and that of the faubourg St. Antoine.

The Thermidorians next reigned; their rule was milder, but it nevertheless had its special events.

On the 26th July the two Robespierres were executed, with Couthon, St. Just, Lebas, Henriot, and seventeen other Jacobins.

On August 10th a decree lessened the power of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which the nation did not yet dare to abolish altogether.

It issued regulations more favourable to the accused: they were now allowed to have legal counsel to defend their cases. True, the queen had been allowed two; but they had received orders not to defend her.

Executions no longer occurred daily, and each execution accounted for only a small number of victims.

In former times, when they guillotined the condemned in batches of twenty-five and thirty, the blades grew blunt by the time the last person's turn arrived. They had to fall two or three times before they finished their task; this method spilt such a quantity of blood that it set up an epidemic in the faubourg St. Antoine, caused by the smell of the blood. In the Place de la Révolution the blood flowed into a ditch which was dug round the scaffold. A child fell into this ditch and was drowned.

After the Revolutionary Tribune came the Committee of Public Safety. Here cause followed effect instead of preceding it. The Committee of Public Safety indeed! A name of terrible omen. The Committee of Public Safety might, indeed, have saved France; but you will remember the saying of Pyrrhus after the battle of Siris:

"Another victory like that, and we are lost."

Another Committee of Public Safety, and there would be no France left.

On August 24th a decree was made to limit its prerogatives. Barère, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Carnot were turned out of this formidable institution; Barère after having sat there seventeen months, and Carnot fourteen.

On October 8th seventy-three of the proscribed deputies re-entered the Convention. They were proscribed after the 31st of May; they returned to office after the 9th Thermidor. Chief among these were Lanjuinais, who sat last on 31st May; Boissy-d'Anglas, who saluted the head of Féraud on 1st Prairial, Daunou and Henri la Rivière.

On the 16th, Carrier was accused by a majority of 418 votes out of 500, and condemned to death.

On the 2nd February 1795, Barère, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois and Vadier were impeached, and on the 1st April they were sentenced to banishment.

Barère took refuge in Belgium, returned to France in 1830, and died in the bosom of his family.

Billaud-Varennes was transported to Cayenne with Collot d'Herbois, but managed to escape to Mexico, where he entered a monastery of Dominicans, under the name of Polycarpe Vareñas. He fought on the side of the settlers against the mother country, twice narrowly escaped being shot, and died at Haiti in 1820.

Collot d'Herbois, an indifferent comedian and poet, nearly always half drunk, mistook a bottle of nitric acid for brandy, and died in horrible agony at Cayenne in 1796.

And last on the list, Vadier disappeared completely, and was never afterwards heard of.

On May 3rd a decree restored confiscated goods to the families of all those who were condemned for _any reason whatsoever save emigration._

Two families were excepted from the operation of this beneficial law, those of Louis XVI. and Robespierre.

What a strange turn of fortune's wheel it was which subjected these two names to the same punishment!

Lanjuinais and Boissy-d'Anglas marked their return to the Assembly by this decree.

On the 6th, Fouquier Tinville and fifteen judges or members of the ancient Revolutionary Tribune were executed _en Grève_ in Paris. Do you understand the significance of that term _en Grève?_ Public order was now restored, for had not the scaffold itself resumed its place?

Notwithstanding all that had happened, means for defending France, as we have seen, had sprung up on all sides as if by miracle. France, which scarcely had an army in 1789, had had six in 1792, ten in 1793, and fourteen in 1795.

On the 3rd October 1793, Carnot drew up a report for the Convention, wherein he advocated the setting up of workshops, and suggested that measures should be taken to facilitate as rapidly as possible the formation of divers and formidable means of defence against the enemy.

Science, in fact, placed herself at the disposition of the Committee of Public Safety; she took her part in the Revolution in busying herself about the provision of special methods of defence. She was confronted with almost insoluble problems, and she succeeded in solving them.

France was short of gunpowder, of guns, and of cannons. In nine months the scientific Commission had extracted soil out of France which yielded 900,000 pounds of gunpowder per annum--12,000,000 pounds of gunpowder.

Before the French Revolution there were but two foundries for making pieces of bronze ordnance and four for making iron gunnery; these six foundries turned out 900 cannon annually.

Fifteen foundries were built to turn out bronze cannon, and thirty for iron ones.

The former produced 7000 cannon per annum, and the latter 13,000. An enormous firearms factory had even been improvised at Paris, which made 140,000 muskets per annum, that is to say, more than all the other factories together were capable of turning out previous to the Revolution. There was only one manufactory for side arms before the war.

Twenty factories were now opened and directed their attention to fresh processes.

A manufactory of rifles was founded and set to work; these arms were unknown in France; air-balloons and the telegraph became organs of war.

And, thanks to a new process, hides, which ordinarily took several years to be cured, were made fit for use in a week.

Thus, whilst the Convention was evolving its fourteen armies, science was providing the material for their use; and the members of the Committee of Public Safety boasted loudly.

"These fresh triumphs, and all those which signalised the immortal campaign of 1794, belong to us. They are the outcomes of measures for which we have been reproached as though they were crimes, it is with these successes we pay back to you all the blood we have shed."

These terrible words, so profoundly true, were not uttered by an Attila nor a Genseric, but were pronounced by Carnot.

Yes, you terrible heroes of the Convention, you have wielded the hammer of God and made the sword which was to deliver the world!

What a dark and melancholy creed you formidable Titans reared; you who from 1793 to 1795 piled up June upon August, September on January, Prairial on Thermidor, and who, from the height of the ruins of the monarchical Olympus which you scaled, have confounded all Europe!