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disposed to throw on Marie Antoinette, almost exclusively, the blame of those measures, which they considered as counter revolutionary. She came to France a gay, young, and beautiful Princess-she found in Louis, a faithful, affectionate and almost uxorious husband.

The terms of her accusation were too basely depraved to be even hinted at here. She scorned to reply to it, but appealed to all who had been mothers, against the very possibility of the horrors which were stated against her. The widow of a King, the sister of an Emperor, was condemned to death, dragged in an open tumbril to the place of execution, and beheaded on the 16th of October, 1793. She suffered death in her 39th year.

The Princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis, did not, by the most harmless demeanour and inoffensive character, escape the miserable fate in which the Jacobins had determined to involve the whole family of Louis XVI. She was beheaded in May 1794, and met her death as became the manner in which her life had been spent.

The Dauphin was a promising child of seven years old, an age at which no offence could have been given, and from which no danger could have been apprehended. Nevertheless, it was resolved to destroy the innocent child, and by means to which ordinary murders seem deeds of mercy.

The unhappy boy was put in charge of the most hardhearted villain whom the Community of Paris, well acquainted where such agents were to be found, were able to select from their band of Jacobins. This wretch, a shoemaker, called Simon, asked his employers, "what was to be done with the young wolf-whelp; was he to be slain?”—“ No”. What then?""He was to be got rid of." Accordingly, by a continuance of the most severe treatment-by beating, cold, vigils, fasts and ill usage of every kind, so frail a blossom was soon blighted. He died on the 8th of June 1795.

After this last horrible crime, there was a relaxation in favor of the daughter, and now the sole child of this unhappy house. The Princess Royal, whose qualities have since honored even her birth and blood, experienced from this period a mitigated captivity. Finally, on the 19th of December 1795, this last remaining relic of the family of Louis was permitted to leave her prison and her country, in exchange for La Fayette and others, whom, on that condition, Austria delivered from captivity

CHAP. IV

Civil war of La Vendee. Vendeans' method of fighting. Seige of Ly ons, its surrender, and dreadful Punishment. Reign of Terror. Revolutionary Tribunal. Horrors perpetrated at Nantes. Assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday. Danton condemned and executed. Cecile Regnaud. Fall of Robespierre and return of tranquility. Ball of the Victims.

THE civil war of La Vendee was waged with various fate for nearly two years, during which the insurgents or brigands as they were termed, gained by far the greater number of advantages, though with means infinitely inferior to those of the government, which detached against them one general after another, at the head of numerous armies, with equally indifferent success. Most of the Republicans entrusted with this fatal command suffered by the guillotine, for not having done that which circumstances rendered impossible.

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The tactics of the Vendeans were peculiar to themselves, and of a kind so well suited to their country and their habits, that it seems impossible to devise a better and more formidable system. The Vendean took the field with the greatest simplicity of military equipment. His scrip served as cartridge-box, his uniform was the country short jacket and pantaloons, which he wore at his ordinary labor; a cloth knapsack contained bread and some necessaries, and thus he was ready for service. They were accustomed to move with great secrecy and silence, among the thickets and enclosures by which their country is intersected, and were thus enabled to choose at pleasure the most favorable points of attack or defence. Their army, unlike any other in the world, was not divided into companies, or regiments, but followed in bands, ard at their pleasure, the chiefs to whom they were most attached. Instead of drums or military music, they used, like the ancient Swiss and Scottish soldiers, the horns of cattle for giving signals to their troops. Their officers wore, for distinction, a sort of chequered red handkerchief knotted round their head, with others of the same color tied round their waist, by way of sash, in which they stuck their pistols.

The attack of the Vendeans was that of sharp-shooters.They dispersed themselves so as to surround their adversaries with a semicircular fire, maintained by a body of formidable marksmen accustomed to take aim with fatal precision, and

whose skill was the more dreadful, because, being habituated to take advantage of every tree, bush or point of shelter, those who were dealing destruction amongst others, were themselves comparatively free from risk. This manœuvre was termed s'egailler; and the execution of it resembling the Indian bush-fighting, was, like the attack of the red warriors, accompanied by whoops and shouts, which seemed, from the extended space through which they resounded, to multiply the number of the assailants.

When the Republicans, galled in this manner, pressed forward to a close attack, they found no enemy on which to wreak their vengeance; for the loose array of the Vendeans gave immediate passage to the head of the charging column, while its flanks, as it advanced, were still more exposed than before to the murderous fire of their invisible enemies. In this manner they were sometimes led on from point to point, until the regulars meeting with a barricade, or an abbatis, or a strong position in front, or becoming perhaps involved in a defile, the Vendeans exchanged their fatal musketry for a close and furious onset, throwing themselves with the most devoted courage among the enemy's ranks, and slaughtering them in great numbers. If, on the other hand, the insurgents were compelled to give way, a pursuit was almost as dangerous to the Republicans as an engagement. The Vendean, when hard-pressed threw away his clogs, or wooden-shoes, of which he could make himself a new pair at the next resting-place, sprang over a fence or canal, loaded his fusee as he ran, and discharged it at the pursuer with a fatal aim, whenever h found an opportunity of pausing for that purpose.

This species of combat, which the ground rendered so advantageous to the Vendeans, was equally so in case of victory or defeat. If the Republicans were vanquished, their army was nearly destroyed; for the preservation of order became impossible, and without order their extermination was inevitable, while baggage, ammunition, carriages, guns and all the material part, as it is called, of the defeated army, fe: into possession of the conquerors. On the other hand, if the Vendeans sustained a loss, the victors found nothing on the field but the bodies of the slain, and the sabots or woodenshoes of the fugitives. The few prisoners whom they made had generally thrown away or concealed their arms, and their army having no baggage or carriages of any kind, could of course lose none. Pursuit was very apt to convert an advantage into a defeat; for the cavalry could not act, and the in

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fantry dispersed in the chase, became frequent viens to those whom they pursued.

In the field, the Vendeans were courageous to rashness.They hesitated not to attack and carry artillery with no other weapons than their staves; and most of their worst losses proceeded from their attacking fortified towns and positions with the purpose of carrying them by main force, After conquest they were generally humane and merciful. But this de

pended on the character of their chiefs. At Machecoul, the insurgents conducted themselves with great ferocity in the very beginning of the civil war; and towards the end of it mutual and reciprocal injuries had so exasperated the parties against each other, that quarter was neither given nor taken on either side. Yet until provoked by the extreme cruelties of the revolutionary party, and unless when conducted by some peculiarly ferocious chief, the character of the Vendeans united clemency with courage. They gave quarter readily to the vanquished, but having no means of retaining prisoners, they usually shaved their heads before they set them at liberty, that they might be distinguished, if found again in arms, contrary to their parole. A no less striking feature, was the severity of a discipline respecting property, which was taught them only by their moral sense. No temptation could excite them to pillage; and Madame La Roche-Jacquelcin has preserved the following singular instance of their simple honesty: -After the peasants had taken the town of Bressuire by storm, she overheard two or three of them complain of the want of tobacco, to the use of which they were addicted, like the natives of moist countries in general. "What," said the lady, "is there no tobacco in the shops?""Tobacco enough," answered the simple-hearted and honest peasants, who had not learned to make steel supply the want of gold,—“ tobacco enough; but we have no money to pay for it."

Upwards of two hundred battles and skirmishes had been fought in this devoted country. The revolutionary fever was in its access; the shedding of blood seemed to have become positive pleasure to the perpetrators of slaughter, and was varied by each invention which cruelty could invent to give it new zest. The habitations of the Vendeans were destroyed, their families subjected to violation and massacre, their cattle houghed and slaughtered, their crops burnt and wasted. One Republican column assumed and merited the name of the Infernal, by the horrid attrocities which they committed. P Pillau, they roasted the women and children in a heated oven

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Many similar horrors could be added, did not, th heart and hand recoil from the task. Without quoting any 1 ore special instances of terror, we use the words of a Repuolican eyewitness, to express the general spectacle presented by the theatre of civil conflict.

"I did not see a single male being at the towns of Saint Hermand, Chantonnay, or Herbiers. A few women alone had escaped the sword. Country-seats, cottages, habitations of whichever kind, were burnt. The herds and flocks were wandering in terror around their usual places of shelter, now smoking in ruins. I was surprised by night, but the wavering and dismal blaze of conflagration afforded light over the country. To the bleating of the disturbed flocks, and bellowing of the terrified cattle, was joined the deep hoarse notes of carrion crows, and the yells of wild animals coming from the recesses of the woods to prey on the carcasses of the slain. At length a distant column of fire, widening and increasing as I approached, served me as a beacon. It was the town of Mortagne in flames. When I arrived there no living creatures were to be seen, save a few wretched women who were striving to save some remnants of their property from the general conflagration."

Bourdeaux, Marseilles, Toulon and Lyons, had declared themselves against the Jacobin supremacy. Rich from commerce and their maritime situation, and, in the case of Lyons, from their command of internal navigation, the wealthy merchants and manufacturers of these cities foresaw the total insecurity of property, and in consequence their own ruin, in the system of arbitrary spoliation and murder upon which the government of the Jacobins was founded.

Lyons had expected to become the patroness and focus of an Anti-Jacobin league, formed by the great commercial towns against Paris and the predominant part of the Convention. She found herself isolated and unsupported, and left to oppose her own proper forces and means of defence to an army of sixty thousand men, and to the numerous Jacobins contained within her own walls. About the end of July, after a lapse of an interval of two months, a regular blockade was formed around the city, and in the first week of August hostilities took place.

General Precy, formerly an officer in the royal service, undertook the almost hopeless task of defence, and by forming redoubts on the most commanding situations around the town, commenced a resistance against the immensely superior force

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