BOOK Fonfrède, Lasource, Gensonné, and fourteen XIX. others of inferior note. It is remarkable, that 1793. among the crimes laid to their charge was that of having caused war to be declared, first against Austria, and afterwards against England and Holland. As at the different periods alluded to the Girondists were the ruling party in the state, the charge was doubtless in a certain sense true; and, as France sufficiently felt the evils resulting from the war, the insidious purpose of the Jacobins was perfectly answered by representing it as occasioned by the erroneous or criminal politics of the Brissotines, who, in their turn, did not scruple to retort the charge upon the Jacobins, as the persons whose clamour and violence made these several declarations unavoidable. The plain truth is, that both parties concurred in both instances, and that the successive declarations in question were at the time regarded by all France, and not without strong colour of reason, as just and necessary: and this reciprocation of reproach was manifestly no other than the malignant effusion of an inverate and infuriate spirit of faction. But the article on which they were convicted was, the having conspired against the unity and indivisibility of the republic, and exciting a rebellion in the departments of the South, and in that of Calvados. Valazé

XIX.

1793.

stabbed himself as soon as he heard the sentence BOOK pronounced. The remaining one and twenty deputies were, on the 30th of October, conveyed from the prison to the Place de la Révolution, and there executed-meeting their fate with the utmost fortitude, and many of them, actuated by the noblest sentiments of patriotism, exclaiming, under the fatal axe of the guillotine, "Vive la République!"

ceedings of

These shocking executions were succeeded by a Savage provast number of others equally abhorrent to every the Revolu tionary Triprinciple of justice and humanity;-for the most bunal. part it is scarcely possible to state upon what pretences; though the real fact doubtless was, that the victims singled out by revenge or suspicion were sacrificed in consequence of their attachment to the vanquished party. In the direful catalogue were found the names of Manuel, president of the Commune of Paris; the brave and veteran general Luckner; the learned and philosophic Bailly; the excellent Malesherbes; the gallant Kersaint; the young and amiable Barnave; the virtuous Rabaut de St. Etienne; and, to mention no more, the celebrated and accomplished madame Roland, wife of the minister of that name, who himself indeed, with Petion, Le Brun, Condorcet, and some others, escaped the scaffold, but terminated their lives no less miserably in various modes.

BOOK France now began to wear a face of universal XIX. horror; and, among the tygers in human shape 1793. who polluted the air which they breathed and

of Robes

pierre,

the land on which they trod, the detestable name Ascendency of Robespierre became about this period incomparably the most conspicuous in infamy. Amid the innumerable sacrifices made by the infernal Revolutionary Tribunal, there was one which seemed to shed a pale gleam of pleasure over the deep and dreadful gloom-this was the execution of Philip duke of Orléans, whose character was made up of an assemblage of vices and crimes, without the intervention of one single solitary virtue. He possessed not, according to common opinion, even the courage almost inseparable from high birth, and which gives, when carried to a certain pitch of elevation, a sort of factitious lustre to villany. Finding his fate inevitable, he suffered nevertheless with apparent composure, amid the insults and reproaches of the populace.

Extravagant

As if eager at this period to carry every speconduct of cies of extravagance to the height, the National tion. Convention, if the remnant of the national re

the Conven

presentation which still retained their seats in the assembly could merit that appellation, seemed on the sudden seized with the wildest phrenzy of impiety. On the 7th of November, Gobet, the republican bishop of Paris, with his

XIX.

grand-vicars and various other unworthy mem- BOOK bers of the ecclesiastical body, entered the hall of the Convention, and solemnly resigned their 1793. functions, renouncing, in terms of profane contempt, their profession as Christians, amidst loud acclamations of applause. By a decree of the Commune of Paris, the churches were shut up, and a number of allegorical divinities, Liberty, Equality, &c. were consecrated as objects of worship; and a painted harlot was publicly enthroned in the cathedral of Nôtre Dame in the character of the goddess of Reason. The New caobservance of the Sunday, that antient and ve-blished. nerable institution, and even the æra in use for fifteen centuries throughout Christendom, were abolished, and a new calendar substituted analogous to that of Greece, agreeably to which the year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, with five intercalary days set apart as a sort of Saturnalian festival; each month being subdivided into decades, and a respite from labour allowed on the tenth day.

The example of the bishop of Paris seemed to excite an enthusiastic spirit of emulation. Lequinio and Laignelot, deputies of the Convention, wrote to that assembly from Rochefort, Oct. 2. "We pass from miracle to miracle— Eight priests of the Catholic persuasion, and one minister of the Protestant church, disrobed

lendar esta

BOOK themselves on the day of the last decade, in XIX. presence of the whole people in the Temple of 1793. Truth, heretofore called the parish church of

this town. In this place there will no longer exist more than one mode of preaching morality -but one repository for the remains of the dead, whose resurrection has been perpetually preached by superstition for the torment of the living."

Boisset, another commissioner in the department of Ardèche, says, "Fanaticism is destroyed! The altars of Christianity are replaced by altars more holy."-Julien of Toulouse, a member of the Convention, and a minister of the Protestant church for twenty years, publicly, in the midst of that assembly, renounced his functions for ever."I declare (said he) that I will no longer enter into any other temple than the sanctuary of the laws; that I will acknowledge no other divinity than Liberty, no other worship than that of my country, no other Gospel than the Republican Constitution." Dumont, one of the National Commissioners, announced to the Convention, that, "in order to destroy fanaticism, he arrests all priests who celebrate religious ceremonies on Sundays." Even the existence of Christ, as a real person, was disputed by the ingenuity, or rather the effrontery, of modern infidelity; and M. Volney, in his admired work, RUINES de les EMPIRES, Scrupled not to style