The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, April 1884, No. 7Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Religion
The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, April 1884, No. 7
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
In the meantime, enraged at this interference of the foreign powers,
and fluctuating (according to the reports from the scene of war) between
apprehension and exultation, the Parisian mob and the extreme republican
party came to regard the king with increased enmity. He was named in the
Assembly with violent opprobrium; the mob, incited to fury by Robespierre
and his associates, demanded the abolition of the royal authority; and on
the 10th of August the palace of the Tuileries was attacked. The national
guards, who had been appointed to the defence of the courtyards, went
over to the insurgents, and pointed their cannon against the chateau.
Only the gallant Swiss were left, and they, overpowered by numbers and
fighting gallantly to the last, were literally cut to pieces. The king
and his family escaped to the National Assembly, and on the 14th were
removed to the old Temple prison. From this time the reign of terror may
properly be said to have begun. The chronicles of September are written
in blood. Supreme in power as in crime, the party of the Fédérés, or Red
Republicans, secured the barriers, sounded the tocsin, and proceeded to
clear the prisons by an indiscriminate massacre. Nobles and priests, aged
men and delicate women, all who were guilty of good birth, loyalty, or
religion, were slain without distinction. The inmates of the Abbaye, the
Conciergerie, the Carmes, La Force, and the Bicêtre were all murdered,
after a hideous mockery of trial, at which neither innocence nor evidence
availed. The head of the beautiful and hapless Princess de Lamballe was
paraded about Paris on a pike, and displayed before the eyes of the
wretched prisoners in the Temple, whose confidential friend and companion
she had been. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil only saved her father’s life by
drinking a goblet of blood. Mademoiselle Cazotte flung herself between
her father and the murderers. Instances of the sublimest resignation, of
the loftiest courage, are abundant amid the records of this appalling
period. Thirteen thousand souls are said to have been sacrificed in Paris
alone, and similar massacres were perpetrated at Orleans, at Rheims, at
Lyons, and at Meaux. On the 21st of September, the legislative assembly,
having presided for the allotted space of one year, was succeeded by a
new body of representatives, chiefly consisting of the extreme republican
party, and known by the name of the National Convention. To abolish the
statutes of the kings, to leave the offices of government open to men of
every condition, to persecute the members of the more moderate faction,
and to impeach the king before the bar of the convention, were among the
first acts of the new government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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