STORY OF THE "VENGEUR DU PEUPLE.” 229 THE STORY OF THE "VENGEUR DU PEUPLE." Amid all the sanguinary horrors of the great French Revolution stands forth that famous engagement between English men-of-war and the ships of the Republic, fought on "the glorious first of June," 1794; when, in the universal crash of defeat and scudding wrecks, the Vengeur, being summoned to strike, still held on the fight; and though maimed hopelessly right and left, stem and stern, and sinking to the bottom steadily, fought the battle to the last. The lower-deck guns were kept firing, until the water rushing in, effectually stopped the labours of the gallant sai ors. Driven to the upper deck, they worked the guns there with equal fierceness, until similarly interrupted. Finally, with colours flying, with deck crowded with frantic sans-culottes sailors, tossing their arms in defiance, shrieking one vociferous chorus of "Vive la République," down sinks the Vengeur, and is never seen more. Here was a subject for painter, for poet, or story-teller ! But this, it would appear, is the cruel practical version of the whole affair. Lord Howe had come up with Villaret Joyeuse, off Brest, and a tremendous sea-fight had taken place, with the usual issue six French ships taken, and a seventh, the Vengeur, gone to the bottom. This was the news brought to London, and proclaimed at the operahouse to the music of God save the King. To the French capital, then, in utter chaos, news of a victory must be announced, for anything like a defeat would be guillotining matter for those who announced it. Gradually, however, the truth comes out; that ruinous business of six vessels absent and a Vengeur sunk, sounds queerly as a victory. Something must be done, and that speedily, and the ingenious forthwith manufacture the splendid transparency of the sinking Vengeur, and the "all hands" shouting "Vive la République" as they go down. Curious to say, perfidious Albion at once accepted the transparency, and admired it more than any others; until, unluckily, the story being resuscitated in 1862-sixty-eight years after the fight-an English naval man, actually in the fight, and not a cable's length from the sinking vessel, comes forward, and slits the mendacious wind-bag open. It was, he says, at the end of the fight, the poor Vengeur was in a helpless condition, and settling down fast. There were no colours flying, and there were plenty of sans-culottes, frantic indeed, and shouting, not defiance, but in despair. The boats of perfidious Albion were hard at work, almost swamped, bringing them off. A hundred of these "defiant Vengeurs" were dragged on board the Culloden; more in that ship, more in this; and above all, the Captain, Renaudin, at lunch in the conqueror's cabin! "Never, in fact," says that officer, were men more anxious to be saved." Here, indeed, is a collapse !— (Abridged from All the Year Round, with additions.) 66 M. Jal, in his Dictionnaire Critique, places the whole facts of the Vengeur episode in their true light, and shows that the sans-culotte enthusiasm has mis-stated, in the grossest manner, the various circumstances of the naval engagement. He who would represent the last 230 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. moments of the Vengeur du Peuple with a due regard to historic truth, must paint the poor ship sinking without a mast, without a flag, and without officers, for they had all been taken prisoners. On the deck is a group of men, some in despair, others calm and gloomy, a few accomplishing that sacrifice amidst the cries of Vive la République. Further on, the boats of the Culloden and of the Alfred should be introduced, full of sailors who have been rescued from death, and who are awaiting their unfortunate comrades. In everything that has been painted and written in France on the subject, there is much to be altered. Renaudin, captain of the French ship, saved with several of his crew, was sent to Tavistock and remained a prisoner only for a very short time. M. Jal gives us the letter which Captain Oakes, of the Royal Navy, wrote to the French officer for the purpose of informing him that he was set free. It is, and our author acknowledges it himself, a model of courtesy and kindness. Renaudin, we are sorry to say, behaved in a totally different manner; we presume that he considered it the duty of a true republican to be wanting in common civility; he thoroughly succeeded; and his answer to Captain Oakes, likewise transcribed by M. Jal, is very curious, examined from that point of view. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The following account of the victims of the first French Revolution is from the statement of the Republican Prudhomme: Guillotined by sentence of the Revolutionary Tribunal 18,603 Women died of premature childbirth. 3,400 348 It is in an especial manner remarkable in this dismal catalogue, how Total EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. 231 large a proportion of the victims of the Revolution were persons in the middling and lower ranks of life. The priests and nobles guillotined are only 2413, while the persons of plebeian origin exceed 13,000! The nobles and priests put to death at Nantes were only 2160, while the infants drowned and shot were 2000, the women 7641, and the artisans 5300! So rapidly in revolutionary convulsions does the career of cruelty reach the lower orders, and so wide-spread is the carnage dealt out to them, compared with that which they have sought to inflict on their superiors.-Sir Archibald Alison's History of Europe. EXECUTION OF CHARLOTTE CORDAY. In this terrific episode of the French Revolution, one of the executioner's assistants having, as he held up the head of Charlotte Corday, smote it with his hand on the cheek, and of that cheek having blushed with indignation, a theory has been advanced that sensibility does not immediately die with the body, when violent death kills the latter by decapitation. The German anatomist, Sömmering, appeals to the above incident as a "well-known fact," witnessed by many people, in proof of the theory of sensation after death by beheading. Dr. Sue indorses the theory, the more readily, as he says, the cheek of an ordinary corpse will not redden by being struck; and that, when the head of Charlotte Corday was held up, it was only smitten on one cheek, and that both cheeks blushed with shame, a perfect proof, says Dr. Sue, that "after decollation there is undoubtedly in the brain some remains of judgment, and in the nerves remains of sensibility." An equally illustrious man, Cabanis, declared that he did not believe a word of the theory of his celebrated colleagues. Cabanis, in a learned dissertation on the subject, further stated, that a medical man of ability, a friend of his, followed Charlotte Corday from the prison to the scaffold; that he never lost sight of her for a moment; that she turned slightly pale on ascending, but that her face soon shone more beautiful than ever; and that as for the reputed blush mantling her dead cheek when the hangman struck them, he saw nothing whatever of the sort. Dr. Leveillé also discredits the story; but he is not prepared, he says, to assert that the recently dead cheek, still warm, might not have reddened when struck. A blow, he thinks, might arrest the downward flow of remains of blood in the small vessels, and thus produce a momentary redness; but as for judgment or sensibility being there, or both cheeks blushing when only one is struck, he wisely rejects all such conclusions as sheer nonsense. tween these statements it is easy to choose. Be EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. Every schoolgirl knows the story of pure, good, soft-hearted, stupid Louis, who could not read the signs of the times, and whom we actually lose temper with for his obtuseness. But we are agreed how nobly he 232 EXECUTION OF THE DUC D'ENGHIEN. played his part at the end, and how a courageous Irish clergyman, of the Edgeworth family, was found to stand by him on the scaffold. Happily, there is no false colouring so far. We know all the incidents of that terrible scene, the rolling of the drums when he would speak his indignant protest against his hands being tied like a common malefactor's, and his ready consent to a whisper from the priest. So far, all true. But, alas! that we must sponge out that grand apostrophe which is, indeed, the culmination of the whole. "Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel!" It is like tearing up a tree by the roots. It grieves one to the soul to have to give up that darling bit of sentiment. The whole scene, otherwise pathetic, somehow seems to halt, and become tame, after that excision. Yet, it could not stay, except out of mere compliment to the poor King, for the words were never spoken. Who, indeed, was to pick them up? Not the poor King, certainly. Not the crowd, for the drums were beating furiously. Sanson (the executioner) and his brethren were not likely to treasure up a bit of sentiment. Clearly then, it rests with the Abbé Edgeworth himself, who, when pressed on the subject, had no recollection of having made such an apostrophe. The moment was one of agitation. He does not know or recollect any words of the kind, and might have spoken twenty other such speeches. This is unsatisfactory. When the Restoration came, almost every one had in their mouth the happy mot of the King, so full of tact and wit. "There is nothing changed in France, only one Frenchman more." But every one did not know that the French ex-bishops had been asking perseveringly, "Had he said anything?" and finally, in despair at anything neat or appropriate from such a quarter, had sent forth their pleasant guess. Thus is history written.-All the Year Round. EXECUTION OF THE DUC D'ENGHIEN. Many details attending this transaction are still in dispute; but the broad outline of it is as follows:-The pure Republicans (as they were then called) had, on the one hand, at this period, become desperate; on the other hand, the latitude that had for a time been allowed to the Royalists, had given that party courage. The renewal of an European war increased this courage. The power and prestige of the marvellous person at the head of the consular government had made both parties consider that nothing was possible to them so long as he lived. A variety of attempts had consequently been made against his life. The popular belief, that of Bonaparte himself, was that these attempts proceeded mainly, from the emigrés, aided by the money of England. Georges Cadoudal, the daring leader of the Chouans, who had already been implicated in plots of this kind, was known to be in Paris and engaged in some new enterprise, with which Pichegru certainly, Moreau apparently, was connected. But in the reports of the police it was also stated that the conspirators awaited the arrival at Paris of a prince of the house of Bourbon. The Duc d'Enghien, then residing at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of EXECUTION OF THE DUC D'ENGHIEN. 233 Baden, seemed the most likely of the Bourbon princes to be the one alluded to; and spies were sent to watch his movements. The reports of such agents are rarely correct in the really important particulars. But they were particularly unfortunate in this instance; for they mistook, owing to the German pronunciation, a Marquis de Thumery, staying with the Bourbon Prince, for Dumouriez, and the presence of that general on the Rhenan frontier, and with a Condé, strongly corroborated all other suspicions. A council was summoned, composed of the three consuls-Bonaparte, Cambacères, Lebrun-the minister of justice and police, Régnier-and Talleyrand, minister of foreign affairs. At this council (March 10th, 1804) it was discussed whether it would not be advisable to seize the Duc d'Enghien, though out of France, and bring him to Paris; and the result was the immediate expedition of a small force, under Colonel Caulaincourt, which seized the Prince on the Baden Territory (March 15th); M. de Talleyrand, in a letter to the Grand Duke, explaining and justifying the outrage. Having been kept two days at Strasburg, the royal victim was sent from that city on the 18th, in a post-chariot, arrived on the 20th at the gates of Paris, at eleven in the morning; was kept there till four in the afternoon; was then conducted by the boulevards to Vincennes, which he reached at nine o'clock in the evening; and was shot at six o'clock on the following morning, having been condemned by a military commission composed of a general of brigade (General Hallin), six colonels, and two captains, according to a decree of the Governor of Paris (Murat) of that day (March 20th); which decree (dictated by Napoleon) ordered the unfortunate captive to be tried on the charge of having borne arms against the Republic, of having been and being in the pay of England, and of having been engaged in plots, conducted by the English in and out of France, against the French government. The concluding order was that, if found guilty, he should be at once executed. The whole of this proceeding is atrocious. A prince of the dethroned family is arrested in a neutral State, without a shadow of legality; he is brought to Paris, and tried for his life on accusations which, considering his birth and position, no generous enemy could have considered crimes; he is found guilty without a witness being called, without a proof of the charges against him being adduced, and without a person to defend him being allowed. The trial takes place at midnight, in a dungeon; and the prisoner is shot, before the break of day, in a ditch! It is natural enough that all persons connected with such a transaction should have endeavoured to escape from its ignominy. General Hallin has charged Savary (afterwards Duc de Rovigo) who, as commander of the Gendarmerie, was present at the execution, with having hurried the trial, and prevented an appeal to Napoleon, which the condemned prince demanded. The Duc de Rovigo denies with much plausibility these particulars, and indeed, all concern in the affair beyond his mere presence, and the strict fulfilment of the orders he had received; and accuses M. de Talleyrand, against whom, it must be observed, he had a |
