A tree is judged by its fruits. Consider the results in this case. In every city, town, and hamlet of France arrests of suspected persons were made en masse, and judgment and execution were rendered in almost the same summary and comprehensive order of the fashion. Only a few instances can be selected from this calendar of crime. The city of Lyons had sprung to the defense of the Girondists after their expulsion from the Convention on June 2. It took four months and a half and a considerable army to put down the opposition of this, the second city of France. When this was accomplished the Convention passed a fierce decree: The city of Lyons is to be destroyed. Every house which was inhabited by the rich shall be demolished. There will remain only the homes of Lyons of the poor, of patriots, and buildings especially employed for industries, and those edifices dedicated to humanity and to education. The name of this famous city was to be obliterated. It was henceforth to be known as the Liberated City (Commune affranchie). This savage sentence was not carried out, demolition on so large a scale not being easy. Only a few buildings were blown to pieces. But over 3,500 persons were arrested and nearly half of them were executed. The authorities began by shooting each one individually. The last were mowed down in batches by cannon or musketry fire. Similar scenes were enacted, though not on so extensive a scale, in Toulon and Marseilles.
It was for the Vendee that the worst ferocities were reserved. The Vendee had been in rebellion against the Republic, and in the interest of counter-revolution. The people had been angered by the laws against the priests. Moreover the people of that section refused to fight in the Republic's armies. It was entirely legitimate for the government to crush this rebellion and it did so after an indescribably cruel war, in which neither side gave quarter. Carrier, the representative on mission sent out by the Convention, established a gruesome record for barbarity. He did not adopt the method followed by the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris which at least pretended to try the accused before sentencing them to death. This was too slow a process. Prisoners were shot in squads, nearly 2,000 of them. Drowning was resorted to. Carrier's victims were bound, put in boats, and the boats then sunk in the river Loire. Women and children were among the number. Even the Committee of Public Safety was shocked at Carrier's fiendish ingenuity and demanded an explanation. He had the insolence to pretend that the drownings were accidental. "Is it my fault that the boats did not reach their destination?" he asked. The number of bodies in the river was so great that the water was poisoned and for that reason the city government of Nantes forbade the eating of fish. Carrier was later removed by the Committee, but was not further punished by it, though ultimately he found his way to the guillotine.
Meanwhile at Paris the Revolutionary Tribunal was daily sending its victims to the guillotine, after trials which were travesties of justice.
Guillotines were erected in two of the public squares and each day saw its executions. Week after week went by, and head after head dropped into the insatiable basket. Many of the victims were emigres or non-juring priests who had come back to France, others were generals who had failed of the indispensable victory and had been denounced as traitors. Others still were persons who had favored the Revolution at an earlier stage and had worked for it, but who had later been on the losing side in the fierce party contests which had rent the Convention. Nowadays political struggles lead to the overthrow of ministers. But in France, as in Renaissance Italy, they led to the death of the defeated party, or at least of its leaders. As the blood-madness grew in intensity, it was voted by the Convention, in order to speed up the murderous pace, that the Revolutionary Tribunal after hearing a case for three days might then decide it without further examination if it considered "its conscience sufficiently enlightened."
The Girondists were conspicuous victims. Twenty-one of them were guillotined on October 31, 1793, among them Madame Roland, who went to the scaffold "fresh, calm, smiling," according to a friend who saw her go. She had regretted that she" had not been born a Spartan or a Roman," a superfluous regret, as was shown by the manner of her death, "at only thirty-nine," words with which she closed the passionate Memoirs she wrote while in prison. Mounting the scaffold she caught sight of a statue of liberty. "O Liberty, how they've played with you!" she exclaimed.
She had been preceded some days before by Marie Antoinette, the daughter of an empress, the wife of a king, child of fortune and of misfortune beyond compare. The Queen had been subjected to an obscene trial, accused of indescribable vileness, the corruption of her son. "If I have not answered," she cried, "it is because nature herself rejects such a charge made against a mother: I appeal to all who are here." This woman's cry so moved the audience to sympathy that the officials cut the trial short, allowing the lawyers only fifteen minutes to finish. The Queen bore herself courageously. She did not flinch. She was brave to the end. Marie Antoinette has never ceased to command the sympathy of posterity, as her tragic story and the fall to which her errors partly led and the proud and noble courage with which she met her mournful fate have never ceased to move its pity and respect. She stands in history as one of its most melancholy figures.
Charlotte Corday, a Norman girl, who had stabbed the notorious Marat to death, thinking thus to free her country, paid the penalty with serenity and dignity. All through these months men witnessed a tragic procession up the scaffold's steps of those who were great by position or character or service or reputation; of Bailly, celebrated as an astronomer and as the Mayor of Paris in the early Revolution; the Duke of Orleans, who had played a shameless part in the Revolution, having been demagogue enough to discard his name and call himself Philip Equality, and having infamously voted, as a member of the Convention, for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI; Barnave, next to Mirabeau one of the most brilliant leaders of the Constituent Assembly; and so it went, daily executions in Paris and still others in the provinces. Some fleeing the terror that walked by day and night, caught at bay, committed suicide, like Cordorcet, last of the philosophers, and gifted theorist of the Republic. Still others wandered through the countryside haggard, gaunt, and were finally shot down, as beasts of the field. Yet all this did not constitute 'the Great Terror,' as it was called. That came later.
Thus far there was at least a semblance or pretense of punishing the enemies of the Republic, the enemies of France. But now these odious methods were to be used as means of destroying political and personal enemies. Politics assumed the character and risks of war.
We have seen that since August 10, 1792, there were two powers in the state, the Commune or Government of Paris and the Convention or Government of France, now directed by the Committee of Public Safety. These two had in the main cooperated thus versus far, overthrowing the monarchy, overthrowing the Girondists. But now dissension raised its head and harmony was no more. The Commune was in the control of the most violent party that the Revolution had developed. Its leaders were Hebert and Chaumette. Hebert conducted a journal, the Pere Duchesne, which was both obscene and profane and which was widely read in Paris by the lowest classes. Hebert and Chaumette reigned in the City Hall, drew their strength from the rabble of the streets which they knew how to incite and hurl at their enemies. They were ultra-radicals, audacious, truculent. They constantly demanded new and redoubled applications of terror. For a while they dominated the Convention. Carrier, one of the Convention's representatives on mission, was really a tool of the Commune.
It was the Commune which now forced the Convention to attempt the dechristianization of France. For this purpose a new calendar was desired, a calendar that should discard Sundays, saints' days, religious festivals, and set up novel and entirely secular divisions of time. Henceforth the month was to be divided not into weeks, but into decades or periods of ten days. Every tenth day was to be the rest day. The days of the months were changed to indicate natural phenomena, July becoming Thermidor, or period of heat; April becoming Germinal, or budding time; November becoming Brumaire, or period