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NOTES ON ISSUE 12: GLOSSARY
PART 1 OF 3
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…not until long afterwards when
France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred
defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the
populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of
horror…
Carlyle puts the death-count of the September massacres, which lasted
for four days and nights (September 2-6, 1792), at 1,089 (537) – the
number from which Dickens derives his estimate of 1,100.
For the first time, he felt that in that sharp
fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door
of his daughter’s husband…
Iron and other metal implements are “forged” at a hearth or in a
furnace, the fire rendering the metal malleable and thus shapeable (Oxford
English Dictionary). Dickens’ figure of speech suggests that the
sharp fire of the Doctor’s experience – his pain and anger – has
finally been turned to good purpose, equipping him for the liberation
of his son-in-law.
The new Era began; the king was tried, doomed, and
beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death,
declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag
waved night and day from the great towers of Notre-Dame; three hundred
thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose
from all the varying soils of France…
The New Era – marked by the new Republican Calendar (the
Revolutionary Calendar, which was in use until January 1, 1806
[Carlyle 661]) – dated from the abolition of the monarchy,
September 21, 1792. (Although the Calendar was not developed
until the following year, the start of the New Era was backdated
to the commencement of the Republic.)
After King Louis XVI was beheaded on
January 21, 1793, Europe, appalled by this act of regicide, again began
to threaten France (as Prussian and Austrian troops had done –
unsuccessfully – in 1792). Again declaring the country in danger, the
young Republic was roused to arms. Carlyle describes this period in The
French Revolution as follows:
It is necessary now again that
France rise, in swift vengeance, with her million right-hands, with her
heart as of one man. Instantaneous recruitment in Paris; let every
Section of Paris furnish its thousands; every Section of France!
Ninety-six Commissioners of us, two for each Section of the
Forty-eight, they must go forthwith, and tell Paris what the Country
needs of her. Let Eighty more of us be sent, post-haste, over France;
to spread the fire-cross, to call forth the might of men. Let the
Eighty also be on the road, before this sitting rise. Let them go, and
think what their errand is. Speedy Camp of Fifty-thousand between Paris
and the North-Frontier; for Paris will pour forth her volunteers!
Shoulder to shoulder; one strong universal death-defiant rising and
rushing; … and France, in spite of the world, [shall] be free! (618-9)
Recruiting its defending armies in this
way, the Republic again declared the country in danger:
And
so there is Flag of Fatherland in Danger waving from the
Town-hall. Black Flag from the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral; there is
Proclamation, hot eloquence; Paris rushing out once again to strike its
enemies down. That, in such circumstances, Paris was in no mild humour
can be conjectured. (619)
Dickens’ summary of the events of the
early Republican period follows Carlyle’s account closely.
Now, breaking the unnatural silence of the whole
city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king – and now,
it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which
had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn
it grey.
Dickens follows, in the details of his summary of these executions,
Carlyle’s French Revolution. Carlyle narrates the execution
of Louis XVI, on January 21, 1793, as follows:
The drums
are beating: “Taisez-vous, Silence!”
he cries, “in a terrible voice, d’une voix
terrible.” He mounts the scaffold, not without
delay; he is in a puce coat, breeches of grey, white stockings.
He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat
of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he
spurns, resists; Abbé Edgeworth [his confessor] has
to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted
to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal
moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, “his
face very red,” and says: “Frenchmen, I die innocent:
it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before God that
I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that France –
” A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances
out, with uplifted hand: “Tambours!”
The drums drown the voice. “Executioners, do your duty!”
The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for
Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not),
seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly
desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank.
Abbé Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: “Son
of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven.” The Axe clanks down;
a King’s Life is shorn away. It is Monday the 21st of
January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years four months
and twenty-eight days.
Executioner
Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of Vive la
République rises, and swells…. (598)
The execution of Marie-Antoinette, on
October 16, 1793, is given thus:
The
young imperial Maiden of Fifteen [Marie-Antoinette at the time of her
marriage] has now become a worn discrowned Widow of Thirty-eight; grey
before her time: this is the last Procession: “Few minutes after the
Trial ended, the drums were beating to arms in all Sections; at sunrise
the armed force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities
of the Bridges, in the Squares, Crossways, all along from the Palais de
Justice to the Place de la Révolution. By ten o’clock, numerous
patrols were circulating in the Streets; thirty thousand foot and horse
drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie-Antoinette was brought out. She
had on an undress of piqué blanc: she was led to the
place of execution, in the same manner as an ordinary criminal; bound,
on a Cart; accompanied by a Constitutional Priest in Lay dress;
escorted by numerous detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and
the double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to regard
with indifference. On her countenance there was visible neither
abashment nor pride. To the cries of Vive la République
and Down with Tyranny, which attended her all the way, she
seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her Confessor. The tricolor
Streamers on the housetops occupied her attention, in the Streets du
Roule and Saint-Honoré; she also noticed the Inscriptions on the
house-fronts. On reaching the Place de la Révolution, her looks
turned towards the Jardin National,
whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion.
She mounted the Scaffold with courage enough; at a quarter past Twelve,
her head fell; the Executioner showed it to the people, amid universal
long-continued cries of Vive la République. (670-1)
A revolutionary tribunal in the
capital, and forty and fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over
the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for
liberty and life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to
any bad and guilty one…
Here, Dickens is describing the development of the administrative
anatomy of the French Republic, which led inevitably to the Reign of
Terror. Threatened with invasion by foreign forces after the execution
of Louis XVI, “Patriotism” leapt to defend France – and to revenge
itself upon “traitors” within (aristocrats, emigrants, and so forth).
This revolutionary feeling instigated, as Carlyle explains it,
…Comités
Révolutionnaires for the arrestment of Persons Suspect.
Revolutionary Committee, of Twelve chosen Patriots, sits in every
Township of France; examining the Suspect, seeking arms, making
domiciliary visits and arrestments; – caring, generally, that the
Republic suffer no detriment. Chosen by universal suffrage, each in its
Section, they are a kind of elixir of Jacobinism; some Forty-four
Thousand of them awake and alive over France!… A mad vitality of
Jacobinism [the Jacobins were the extreme revolutionary party which,
vanquishing the moderate Girondins, took over the Republic and
instigated the Reign of Terror], with Forty-four Thousand centres of
activity, circulates through all fibres of France. (623)
The detention of “suspects” soon passed
(on September 17, 1793) into Republican law, and a “Tribunal
Révolutionnaire” began regularly sending suspects,
referred by
the “forty-four thousand” revolutionary committees, to the guillotine.
Let the Forty-four
thousand Sections and their Revolutionary Committees stir
every fibre of the Republic; and every Frenchman feel that
he is to do or die. They are the life-circulation of Jacobinism,
these Sections and Committees: Danton, through the organ of
Barrère and Salut Public [the “Committee
of Public Safety,” of which Robespierre was a part],
gets decreed, That there be in Paris, by law, two meetings
of Section weekly; also, that the Poorer Citizen be paid for attending, and have his day’s-wages
of Forty Sous. This is the celebrated “Law of the Forty
Sous”; fiercely stimulant to Sansculottism, to the life-circulation
of Jacobinism….
Nor with heroic
daring against the Foreign foe, can black vengeance against
the Domestic be wanting. Life-circulation of the Revolutionary
Committees being quickened by that Law of the Forty Sous,
Deputy Merlin … comes, about a week after, with his
world-famous Law of the Suspect; ordering all Sections,
by their Committees, instantly to arrest all Persons Suspect;
and explaining withal who the Arrestable and Suspect specially
are. “Are suspect,” says he, “all who by
their actions, by their connexions, speakings, writings have”
– in short become Suspect….
No frightfuller
Law ever ruled in a Nation of men. All Prisons and Houses
of Arrest in French land are getting crowded to the ridge-tile:
Forty-four thousand Committees, like as many companies of
reapers or gleaners, gleaning France, are gathering their
harvest, and storing it in these Houses. Harvest of Aristocrat
tares! Nay lest the Forty-four thousand, each on its own harvest-field,
prove insufficient, we are to have an ambulant “Revolutionary
Army”: six-thousand strong, under right captains this
shall perambulate the country at large, and strike in wherever
it finds such harvest-work slack. So … has Convention
decreed. Let Aristocrats, Federalists, Monsieurs vanish, and
all men tremble: “the Soil of Liberty shall be purged,”
– with a vengeance! (665-7)
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