The public prosecutor of the terror, Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville; tr. from the French of Alphonse Dunoyer by A. W. Evans. With a photogravure frontispiece and fourteen other illustrations

Introduction

IN the famous oval room of the Soubise Palace, where, amid the gilded garlands of foliage and flowers, the eighteenth-century painter, Charles Natoire, grouped the supple and youthful figures which he had borrowed from the legend of Cupid and Psyche, there is a melancholy glass case which to-day contains the will of Louis XVI. and the last letter of Marie Antoinette.

A note it is, rather than a letter. Two yellow, rumpled, ink-stained sheets on which the Queen of France, condemned to death, expressed her last thoughts and addressed her final recommendations to her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth.

The note was written at the conclusion of that terrible final appearance before the Revolutionary Tribunal. It is dated, " This i6th of October, at half -past four in the morning." Seven and a half hours before the execution !

" It is to you, my sister, that I am writing for the last time. I have just been condemned, not to a shameful death, that is only for criminals, but to join your brother. Innocent as he, I hope to show the same firmness in these last moments. I am as calm as one whose conscience has no reproach ; I feel profound regret at leaving my poor children, you know that I only existed for them and for you, my good and tender sister. In what a position do I leave you who in your affection have sacrificed everything to be with us ! I have learned from the speech for the defence in the trial that my daughter has been separated from you. Alas ! poor child, I dare not write to her, she would not receive my letter ; I do not even know if this will reach you. Receive for them both this my blessing ; I hope that one day, when they are bigger, they will be re-united with you, and enjoy to the full your tender care ; let them both think of what I viii INTRODUCTION

have not ceased to inspire in them, that the principles and exact execution of one's duties are the fundamental basis of life, that their friendship and mutual confidence will cause its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her age she ought always to help her brother by the counsels that her greater experience and affection inspire her with ; let my son, on his side, render to his sister ever}'- care, every service that affection can inspire ; lastly, let both feel that in whatever position they may find themselves, they will be truly happy only by their union ; let them take example from us. How much consolation has our friendship brought us in our misfortunes ! Happiness is doubly enjoyed when one can share it with a friend ; and where is a more tender or devoted friend to be found than in one's own family ? Let my son never forget his father's last words which I repeat to him expressly ; let him never seek to avenge our death.

" I have to speak to you of something very painful to me. I know how much trouble this child must have caused you. Forgive him, dear sister ; think of his age and of how easy it is to make a child say what one likes, and even what he does not understand. A day will come, I hope, when he will better realise the value of your goodness and tenderness towards both. It remains for me to confide my last thoughts to you. I should have liked to write them to you from the beginning of my trial, but, besides the fact that I was not allowed to write, its course has been so rapid that I really should not have had the time.

" I die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, in that of my fathers, in that in which I have been brought up and always professed ; having no spiritual consolations to expect, not knowing if there are priests of that religion here ; and if there were, the position in which I am would expose them too much if once they entered here. I sincerely ask God's pardon for all the faults I may have committed since I came into being ; I hope that in His goodness He will hear my last prayers as well as those that I have long made that He will receive mj;' soul in His mercy and goodness. I ask pardon from all whom I know, and especially from you, my sister, for all the trouble that, without wishing it, I may have caused them. I pardon all my enemies for the evil they have done me. I here say adieu to my aunts and to

INTRODUCTION ix

all my brothers and sisters. I once had friends : the idea of being separated from them and their sufferings for ever is one of the greatest regrets that I take with me in dying ; let them know at least that to my last moment I have thought of them.

" Adieu, my good and tender sister ; may this letter reach you ! Think always of me. I embrace you with all my heart as well as those poor dear children. Oh ! God ! how heart-rending it is to leave them for ever ! Adieu ! Adieu ! I am going to occupy myself with nothing more except my spiritual duties. As I am not free in my actions, perhaps they will bring me a priest^ ; but I here protest that I shall not say a word and shall treat him as an absolute stranger."

The Queen has not signed this note, which is entirely written in her own hand. But the last page bears the five following signatures. — A. Q. Fouquier, Lecointre, Legot, Guffroy, and Massieu.

How is this to be explained ?

The first is the signature of Antoine Quentin Fouquier- Tinville, Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris ; the other four are those of the members of the National Convention, charged with the verification of the ex-Public Prosecutor's papers when, after Robespierre's fall, that magistrate was ordered to be indicted and placed on trial in his turn.

The gaoler of the Conciergerie had taken possession of the Queen's last letter ; he had handed it over to Fouquier- Tinville. Marie Antoinette's presentiment did not deceive her when she wrote : " Alas ! poor child, I dare not write to her, she would not receive my letter ; I do not even know if this will reach you." " May this letter reach you ! " she also wrote. Those pages never reached their address. The Public Prosecutor kept among his papers this moving expression of the last prayers of a dead woman. Without any regard for the final wishes of a mother whom his Tribunal sent to the scaffold, he arranged among his portfolios the note

' A priest who had taken the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — Tr.

X INTRODUCTION

in which Marie Antoinette breathed forth all the pride of her character and all the ardent and simple tenderness of her heart.

That is why to-day, after a hundred and seventeen years have passed, those who visit the Princesse de Soubise's drawing-room pause, filled with emotion, before the mystery of this touching letter, countersigned in the clumsy and uncouth handwriting of the famous Public Prosecutor. They ask questions. They want to know. And when they are given the above explanation, many of them remain there, motionless, and ask in low tones and with a sort of shiver in their voice : " What was Fouquier-Tinville then ? A brute ? A monster ? "

Fouquier-Tinville does not seem to have had the appearance of a monster, if we refer to these terms in a note which was sent to him by Therese Frangoise de Stainville, Princesse de Grimaldi-Monaco, guillotined on the gth of Thermidor in the year II., the very day of Robespierre's fall : —

" Citizen, I ask ji^ou, in the name of humanity, to have this packet sent to my children ; you seemed to me to have a humane look, and when I saw you I regretted that you were not my judge ; perhaps I should not be charging you with a last wish if you had been. Heed the request of an unhappy mother, who perishes at the age of happiness and who leaves children deprived of their only resource ; let them at least receive this last evidence of my tenderness, and I shall ever owe you gratitude. "^

The Princesse de Monaco had declared herself pregnant, but soon afterwards she had written to Fouquier : —

" I warn you, citizen, that I am not with child. I wanted to tell you so ; no longer hoping that you will come, I send you word. I have not stained my mouth with this lie through fear of death, or to avoid it, but to give myself a day longer in order to cut off my hair myself and not to yield it to be cut by the hand of the executioner. It is the only legacy I can leave to my children ; at least it must be unstained. Choiseul Stainville Josephe Grimaldi-Monaco,

* Archives Nationales, W. 121, ist dossier, piece 100.

INTRODUCTION xi

a foreign princess dying by the injustice of French judges." 1

The princess's hair was enclosed in a paper containing two notes, one addressed to her two daughters, the other to their governess.

' ' My children, this is my hair. I have put off my death for a day not out of fear, but because I wished to be able to cut off this sad spoil myself in order to give it to you ; I did not want it done by the executioner's hand, and I had only this means ; I have passed a day more in this agony, but I do not complain of it ; I ask that my hair be kept in a phial covered with black crape, and locked up throughout the year, and that only three or four times in a year you have in your room before your eyes what remains of your unhappy mother who died loving you, and who regrets life only because she cannot be useful to you. I recommend you to your grandfather ; if you see him, tell him that I am filled with the thought of him, and let him keep you in place of everything, and you, my children, take care of his old age and make him forget his misfortunes."

To the governess she wrote : —

" I have already written to you one word and now I write another to recommend my children to you ; when you receive this I shall be no more, but may my memory cause you to take pity on my unfortunate children, for that is the only feeling they can then inspire. The ring in which my children's names were written, and which you ought to have received, is a keepsake that I offer you. It is the only thing of which I can dispose ; let Louise know the reason why I have postponed my death ; let her not suspect me of weakness." 2

In spite of " the humane look " that the Princesse de Monaco found in him, Fouquier-Tinville did not forward these affecting notes to the orphans for whom they had been written. The Public Prosecutor arranged them among the papers of his daily correspondence, where they are preserved in the portfolios of the National Archives.

1 Archives Nationales, W. 431, dossier 968, piece 7.

^ Archives Nationales, W. 121, ist dossier, pp. 100 bis and 100 ier.

xii INTRODUCTION

A sombre and enigmatical figure is Fouquier-Tinville. For a long time his name was in men's memory the symbol of the whole past of the Terror, and for a long time to come this tragic name will remain the symbol of the " judicial assassinations "^ committed by the Tribunal established on March lo, 1793.

Yet in the scales of impartial history, the Public Prosecutor's responsibility is a little less heavy than that of President Dumas, President Herman, Judge Coffinhal, Lescot- Fleuriot, the Public Prosecutor's deputy, and the jurors.

Paradoxical as the assertion may appear, Fouquier- Tinville displayed sentiments of humanity on rare occasions. The others never did. They questioned the accused, and their questions were propounded with such a refinement of perfidy, with such a hypocritical though seeming regard for legality, that the accused felt condemned in advance. It is only necessary to read Herman's cross-examination of Marie Antoinette and his summing-up in the Queen's trial to form an opinion of the worth of that civil-spoken and inexorable personage. President at the trial of the Girondins, at those of the Due d'Orleans, of Barnave, of Danton and the Dantonists, this official saw his zeal rewarded by an excellent place which, indeed, was no sinecure and involved risks. Three days after Danton's execution, Herman succeeded Pare ; he was appointed Minister of Justice, being replaced in the Presidenc}^ of the Tribunal by Dumas.

Dumas distinguished himself by his brutality. He is said to have been an habitual drunkard. He was continually in rivalry with Fouquier-Tinville, who at the time of his own trial said, " He was m}^ mortal enem3^" He was always armed with two pistols which, when in court, he placed on the table before him. He interrupted the accused. During the adjournment, he would slip among the jury and hold conversations with them.^ He was ferocious, aggressive, and ill-tempered. His usual procedure, when an

1 The phrase is that of Boissy d'Anglas in the Moniteiiy, March

MADAME ROLAND

INTRODUCTION xiii

accused person spoke, was to cut him short, and definitely refuse him the right to speak. Fouquier opposed him, and caused witnesses to be heard in spite of the President.

After the law of the 22nd of Prairial, we shall see that Dumas and Coffinhal contented themselves with asking the accused their names and positions, and briefly reminding them of the heads of the indictment brought against them. When the accused answered, Dumas would exclaim : " We were expecting what you are saying. You are priests and nobles. That is enough. Let us go on to the next."^

When he cross-examined Madame Roland, the sculptor Lescot-Fleuriot, Fouquier-Tinville's deputy, propounded to the accused long, embarrassing questions. He demanded clear, short answers. Then he interrupted the examination, burst into a rage, and said : " With such a chatterbox we shall never finish. Besides, we are not at the Ministry of the Interior^ to indulge in wit."

When Pache, the Mayor of Paris, being compromised in the case of Hebert and the Hebertists, was imprisoned, Lescot- Fleuriot took his place and became one of Robespierre's firmest supporters until the decisive night between the 9th and loth of Thermidor.

When sitting as President at the trial of the elder LoizeroUes, the old man who was arraigned before the Tribunal when it was his son who had been summoned to appear, Coffinhal, on the 8th of Thermidor, calmly allowed the one to be condemned for the other. He washed his hands of the matter. Some months later, Fouquier-Tinville could justly say : " That omission and that crime, if they really exist, are personal to Cofiinhal and to the registrar's clerk who had charge of the case." It was Cofhnhal who, revising and correcting the list of accused in the " batch " ^ among which the poets Roucher and Andre Chenier appeared on the 7th of Thermidor, added these words in the margin facing the

^ Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 63. ' Roland had been Minister of the Interior. — Tr. " FoiirnSe, the term generally applied to a number of prisoners tried and executed together. — Tr.

xiv INTRODUCTION

name of Louis Sers, " captain of infantry in command at Chambarnagot." Chambarnagot for Chandernagor !^ Some important depositions at Fouquier-Tinville's trial seem to attribute to Coffinhal, " that brutality which was natural to him," the execution of women who were with child. -

As for the motley troop of jurors, each of them had his proper share, his terrible share, in the hecatombs of Prairial and of Messidor. What about their consciences ? Fouquier- Tinville liked to style some of them, " ;«_v solid men." These solid men had not, on the whole, been more criminal than the others. They liked to utter big words which, for the most part, they did not understand — liberty, equality, fraternity, unity, indivisibility, or death. They were proud and happy to speak and write these words, to see them printed on fine engraved paper. They were playing an overwhelming part, and thought it agreeable and right to be paid eighteen livres a day for playing that part. Several among them were both members of the Popular Commissions and jurors of the Tribunal of the Terror.

But they themselves experienced the terror they inspired. Veritable tyrants, each in his own Section, in his own Commission, in his own street, at the Tribunal they feared being denounced by men more tyrannous than themselves, and this is why they became ferocious and implacable. They played the part of informers from fear of being accused in that same part. For some of them, it was enough to see the prisoners in order to decide on their verdicts. The mere inspection of a face determined them to vote for death. One of them said : " Were I the Public Prosecutor, I would have the condemned bled before their execution so as to weaken their courageous bearing." Another publicly boasted of " never having voted except for death when it was a case of trying priests or nobles, for they were all food for the guillotine. "3 Another having asked permission to address the

' Archives Nationales, W. 431, No. 969. - Buchcz and Roux, XXXV., p. 3.

■•' Aubry, the tailor. Archives Nationales, W. 500. 3rd dossier, P- 58.

INTRODUCTION xv

court, said : " Is it not enough to show you are an aristocrat, that you have served a noble ? " ^ This man said to his colleagues, just after they rose from a sitting : " We have only taken two hours and a half this time, because we had only to refer to the letter that was beside the name." Another stated that " when there was no crime, it was necessary to imagine one." Some of them could neither read nor write. Others, on the contrary, men of letters or of fashion, or artists, voted for death with a sort of bored carelessness, a mocking air — and to put an end to the matter.

It ought to be said that nothing is less just than to attribute entire responsibility to Fouquier-Tinville for the judicial crimes committed by the Tribunal established on March lo, 1793, an exceptional, " provisional " Tribunal, a sort of " military justice applied by civil judges." It was not he who cross-examined ; it was not he who voted for death. He was neither judge nor juror. ^

A servant of the law, he took care to keep within the bounds of the law. What he seemed essentially to desire, ' ' entrusted as he was for eighteen months with the painful duty of seeking out crime and prosecuting it," was to discover the guilty ; and that because his two formidable patrons, the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, exacted it. The men who composed those Committees made him " walk " as they wanted. He carried out their orders exactly, and in particular the orders of the most violent and most sinister among them, Vadier, Voulland, and Amar.^

At the Committee meetings, to which he went every evening, and where he often remained until an advanced hour of the night, he waited for the lists of persons to be charged, and he handed them over to others. He was exact, and fulfilled precisely the intentions and resolutions of the two

1 This juror was Didier. Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier

^ He said so in reply to Cambon at his cross-examination on the 9th of Germinal in the year III. (Buchez and Roux XXXIV., p. 329.)

^ Archives Nationales, W. 500, 3rd dossier, p. 46. The witness Advenier saw Voulland, Vadier, and Amar go fairly often to Fouquier's room and lock themselves in with him "carefully."

xvi INTRODUCTION

Committees. He remembered this when, torn from his power, imprisoned, and ready, in his turn, to appear before his judges, he wrote, on the 19th of Thermidor : " If it is a crime to have given effect to the resolutions of the Committees of Pubhc Safety and of General Security, I confess that I am guilty ; I should have been guilty if I did not execute them. What then ought I to have done ? " In the same manner, on the 14th of Thermidor, addressing Louis (of the Bas-Rhin) and Moyse Bayle, he wrote: "My defence is limited to a recital of the events that took place between the Committees and myself. ... Is there a more frightful position than mine, after having spent days and nights in the public service ? " He wrote in one of the memorials for his defence : " No appeals of any sort whatever could have stopped me ; the execution of the laws that emanated from the Convention, justice, and humanity — these have been my rule of conduct." He also wrote this to Merlin (of Douai) : " It is a slanderous wound which time will heal. I repeat it. My crime is that I have been the instrument of too severe laws, and that it was not in my power not to execute them ; hence hatred and resentment."

He is the " executor of the laws." He is the axe and rods ; he is the Revolutionary bludgeon. The laws often change. A struggle for power, an uninterrupted pitiless struggle, was entered upon by political parties. The conqueror slew the conquered, and was himself then conquered and killed. It was the business of the Revolutionary Tribunal and its Public Prosecutor to perform this task.

It was thus that Fouquier-Tinville drew up in succession indictments against Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Olympe de Gouges, Madame du Barry, Hebert and the Hebertists, Danton and the Dantonists, the alleged conspiracy in the prisons, etc., etc., until the day when he saw himself obliged to plead in court against his friends, Lescot-Fleuriot and others.

The study of the part played by Fouquier-Tinville will be the purpose of the first part of this book. We have entitled it " The Public Prosecutor." The trials have been

INTRODUCTION xvii

studied by the historians of the Revolutionary Tribunal, MM. Campardon, Wallon, and Lenotre, and we do not flatter ourselves that this book contains anything new in this respect. But it seemed to us useful and interesting to undertake it for the better understanding of the second part of the book, entitled " The Prisoner." In this latter portion we have applied ourselves to a minute re-examination of Fouquier- Tinville's trial.

It is by making this slow and minute re-examination that we best understand the sort of man this tragic Fouquier- Tinville was. In so far as he was Public Prosecutor, he appears to us clearly as a public official, bent on keeping his place and the handsome salary it represented, at the price of every form of servility, even the basest, most criminal, and most dishonourable. Ordered to be placed on trial by the National Convention some moments after having been nominated in the same Assembly as Public Prosecutor for a fresh period, Fouquier-Tinville, a prisoner, faUen, hemmed in, deserted, scoffed at, defended himself with such argumentative vigour, such presence of mind, in a word, such talent ; he demonstrated with such skill that he was the scapegoat for others whose exact and untiring agent he had been ; he explained so completely the wheels of the blood-stained machine of which he himself had been one of the wheels that moved most easily ; he challenged the evidence so audaciously and coolly, especially that of his mortal enemies, the clerks in the registry, that, in spite of his horrible activity, his case became curious and extremely interesting. It was that of a former procurator, a former advocate, firmly bound to procedure, a former lawyer whose brain had been misshapen and his reason led astray through the abuse of chicanery, and who, needy and the father of a family, seeking a situation, fell into the midst of the Revolution, was taken seriously, took himself seriously, and into whose hands, companions, as unconscious as he of the responsibility of their acts, placed the machine for judging others. The reader will see, in the first part of this study, what effect such a machine can produce, and what xviii INTRODUCTION

in such hands it did produce both before and after the 22nd of Prairial.

And now, let us be pardoned if, in writing the history " of those rigorous times " — to use the words of a contemporary, the poet Vigee — we have not thought it our duty to give details of what befell the family of him who was guillotined in the month of Floreal. His family is not responsible for his judicial crimes. Under what pretext and by what right should we question, in their eternal peace, the piteous and innocent ashes of those whom he loved and who loved him ? As PubUc Prosecutor of the Terror, Antoine Quentin Fouquier-TinviUe is on trial at the bar of History. It is on this ground that he interests us, and on this ground that we mean to study him, not without having always in mind the cynical saying of Carrier, the pro-consul of Nantes, when in his turn brought to trial, he exclaimed : ' ' Everything here is guilty, down to the President's bell ! "

A. D.

Chapter I

fouquier-tinville's beginnings

?AG£

The Ck)ininune against the Legislative Assembly — Robespierre's speech — Required, " a court of popular justice " — ^The Tribunal of August 17th, 1792 — Fouquier-Tinville, third director of the jury d' accusation — Fouquier's origins — His portrait — His letter to Camille Desmoulins — The tribunal of August 17th suppressed — Fouquier appointed deputy to the Public Prosecutor of the Criminal Tribunal of the Department of Paris — March loth, 1793 — Serious reverses of the French armies — Danton's speech — " Let us be terrible in order to prevent the people from being terrible " — Creation of the Tribunal of the Terror — Fouquier-Tinville made Public Prosecutor . 29

CHAPTER n

" THE DICTATORSHIP OF JUSTICE "

Powers of the Public Prosecutor — The writs of indictment — Fouquier is pitiless towards those who are drunk or mad — Growth of the work of the Revolutionary Tribunal — It is reinforced by the Convention — On September 5th, 1793, the Sections come to demand that terror be made the order of the day — ^The suspects — The strength of the revolutionary government is in " virtue " and " terror " — The people are hungry — Trial of Hubert, Ronsin, and others — Danton's trial — Part played by Fouquier-Tinville — His letter to the Committee of Public Safety — Saint-Just's attitude — The arguments ended without having been begun — Fouquier and Madame de Lavergne's indictment — A mysterious affair — Chaumette's trial and the first idea of the Conspiracy in the Prisons — Fouquier and his correspondence . , 39

XX CONTENTS

Chapter III Fouquier-tinville And The Conspiracies In The Prisons

PAGE

The attempt on CoUot-d'Herbois — ^The Law of the 22nd of Prairial — The " batches " of Prairial — Fouquier's task becomes miore complicated — How the writs of indictment are drawn up — The sessions of the Tribunal — ^The " red shirts " — ^The spies — The conspiracies in the prisons — Summary of the Public Prosecutor's work, and judgment passed on that work ..... 68

Chapter IV Fouquier-tinville And The Ninth Of Thermidor

The sessions of the Tribunal in the Hall of Equality — The amalgams — No material evidence — The paralytic Durand Puy de Verine — The arrest of President Dumas — Fouquier-Tinville's attitude — The departure of the six carts — Fouquier goes to dine with Vergnhes — " I cannot stop the course of justice " — The dinner at Vergnhes 's — New grounds for uneasiness — The rising — Fouquier goes back to the Palace — He sends for information about what is happening — " I remain at my post " — The evening in the refreshment room — Fouquier leaves for the Committee of Public Safetjr .... 104

Chapter V The Reaction Of Thermidor And Fouquier-tinville's

ARREST

The loth of Thermidor at the Tribunal — Fouquier pleads against Robespierre, Couthon, Lavalette, Hanriot, Dumas, Saint-Just, Payan, Bernard, Gobeau, Gency and Vivier — He leaves the session so as not to plead against his friend Lescot-Fleuriot, the Mayor of Paris — ^The outlawry of the loth of Thermidor — The outlawry of the nth — The Session of the 14th of Thermidor at the Convention— "All Paris asks j^ou for the execution of Fouquier- Tinville " — Fouquier's arrest — Fouquier at the Conciergerie — Reflections during a first night in prison — First " Defensive Memorial " — Fouquier says he is innocent and a victim — He invokes humanity and justice in his favour . . . . . . .119

CONTENTS xxi

Chapter VI Fouquier-tinville Prepares His Defence

PAGE

Second memorial for the defence — The affair of the Strasburg patriots — Fouquier clears himself — Re-organisation of the Revolutionary Tribunal — The Tribunal of the 23rd of Therraidor — Fouquier is heard at the bar of the Convention— On the 12th of Fructidor Lecointre (of Versailles) raises Fouquier's case — A stormy session — Fouquier protests against certain allegations — Errors of journalists — Fouquier asks to be heard again — He learns of the acquittal of the ninety-four inhabitants of Nantes who owe him their lives . . . . . .139