Part 6 (1/2)

_THE REIGN OF TERROR._

During the latter part of 1793 the country had virtually delivered itself up to the will of its tyrants. The war against religion had a.s.sumed an open and defiant character, under the influence of the guillotine; churches had already lost their sacred significance, and the names of the saints or holy mysteries which they had hitherto borne gave place to profane and often impious t.i.tles; the Republican calendar had been formally adopted and enforced upon the nation; everywhere priests were called upon to burn their letters of ordination and to bring to the Convention their crosses, chalices, ciboriums and other objects destined for the Holy Sacrifice. The Archbishop of Paris, the infamous Gobel, entered the hall of the Convention at the head of other const.i.tutional clergy, and there despoiled himself of all insignia of episcopal or priestly office, declaring at the same time that he renounced forever all his rights and duties as a minister of Catholic wors.h.i.+p.

_THE G.o.dDESS OF REASON._

It was at this time, November 10th, 1793, that the Convention proclaimed the wors.h.i.+p of reason, and deified that abstract idea by a sacrilegious ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris. An actress was placed upon a throne within the sanctuary of that ancient temple, and received amidst the hymns and maudlin praises of the mult.i.tude the adoration of a fallen nation. The example of Paris was imitated in all parts of the country, until the strange spectacle was observed of a whole nation gone mad.

The new wors.h.i.+p brought with it renewed hostility to Christianity.

Almost every day the Convention was called upon to review processions whose object was to ridicule and cast odium upon the things of G.o.d.

Bands of _Sans-Culottes_ defiled through the streets, or pa.s.sed through the a.s.sembly halls, attired in copes, chasubles and dalmatics which they had pillaged from the churches. No limit was put to these exhibitions of horrible sacrilege. In many cases the processions were headed by an a.s.s bearing a mitre upon his head, a chalice upon his back, with a cross hanging from his tail. It seemed as if the Revolution could go no further in its impiety, though men still held their breath waiting anxiously for the next move in the horrible nightmare.

In the midst of the general madness the Revolution turned against its own creatures and denied its own religion. The people had already begun to mock at the absurdity of the wors.h.i.+p of reason, and tired of one false G.o.d, looked to their leaders to supply them with another. It was at this juncture that Robespierre, the man of blood and crime, suddenly became the apostle of a new cult, which was baptized in the blood of the adorers of reason. The guillotine reaped rich harvests, numbering that year among its victims the apostates, Gobel, Lamourette, Clootz, together with Hebert, Danton, Desmoulins and others.

In the beginning of the year 1794, Robespierre caused the Convention to pa.s.s a decree proclaiming the existence of a Supreme Being, and const.i.tuting feast days ”to recall mankind to the consideration of the divinity and to the dignity of his being.” On June 8th, he presided personally as high priest, at the first solemn feast of the new wors.h.i.+p.

The latter, however, proved even less popular as a religion than its predecessor, and served only to demonstrate how the human heart craves for the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, and will not be satisfied with the human imitations of a religion whose origin is divine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WORs.h.i.+P OF SUPREME BEING.]

In its proscriptive decrees the Convention hitherto had not included the aged and infirm priests; by a decree of Floreal 22, these also were subjected to all exactions imposed upon others. Another decree demanded the accusation of all enemies of the people, and p.r.o.nounced the penalty of death, without trial or witnesses, upon simple verbal denunciations.

The Terror was now in its blindest spasm of madness, and in Paris alone, during three months, more than two thousand victims laid their heads upon the block, including many const.i.tutional priests, who had the good fortune, through the pious offices of the Abbe Emery, to retract their errors and become reconciled to G.o.d.

A pall of moral darkness hung over the nation from end to end, a deep silence, full of anxiety and terror, was broken only by the shrieks of the dying and the insane laughter of the murderers. The silence and holiness of the Lord's Day was desecrated by labor and unseemly orgies; the _decadi_ was observed instead of Sunday, and peasants or others daring to work on that day, or daring to rest on Sunday, were treated as suspects and punished with all the violence of irreligious hatred.

Throughout the land every symbol and remembrance of religion had vanished: the church steeples had been torn down, the bells no longer called the faithful to divine service, the cross was treated as an object of public shame. Everywhere men and women suspected of fanaticism or denounced as enemies of the Revolution were condemned to death and executed. In the city of Lyons the guillotine severed thirty heads a day; but its work proving too slow for the blood-thirst of the a.s.sa.s.sins, the victims were ranged in rows, and mowed down by storms of bullets. In this way fully one thousand seven hundred fell in a short period of a few months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).]

In the departments of the Ain and the Saone-et-Loire, liberty was decreed to priests who should agree to marry within a month; the aged were exempted from this law upon the condition of adopting a child of Revolutionary parents, to care for as their own. In Savoy, one thousand two hundred livres was offered as a reward for the arrest of a non-juring priest; all who refused to apostatize, whether faithful or const.i.tutional, were arrested and condemned. At Ma.r.s.eilles and at Avignon, the infamous Maignet emulated his predecessor, Jourdan Coupetete, with the guillotine and fusillade of bullets. In the South, a young girl was arrested and put to death for having crossed over into Spain to confess to a legitimate priest. An aged official was sentenced to imprisonment and a heavy fine for having a.s.sisted at the ”Feast of Reason” with an air of sadness and arrogance. Six women were guillotined for having a.s.sisted at the Ma.s.s of a non-juring priest.

In the Vendee one thousand eight hundred persons were murdered within a period of three months. And so the list went on through all the first half of 1794, which has left a record of millions murdered, deported, exiled, imprisoned, or tortured in a thousand and one ways. They were red letter days in the Revolutionary calendar, but the red color was made from the blood of Frenchmen. A mitigation of the horrors of those days came at last when the head of the arch-a.s.sa.s.sin, Robespierre, rolled away from the block on July 27th, 1794.

_SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE._

Among the oppressive laws enacted by the Convention, before its final dissolution in 1795, were those concerning education and the separation of Church and State. The decree of October 21st, 1793, decided that primary schools should form the first degree of instruction; therein should be taught all that was rigorously necessary for a citizen to know. Persons charged with instruction in such schools should be known as inst.i.tutors. The decree determined the number of schools to be founded in each commune, according to the number of its inhabitants, and fixed the programme of instruction.

The children shall receive in these schools the first physical, moral, and intellectual education, the better to develop in them republican ways, the love of country, and a taste for work. They shall learn to speak, read and write the French language. They shall be taught those virtues which do most to honor free men, and particularly the ideas of the French Revolution, which shall serve to elevate their souls and render them worthy of liberty and equality. They shall acquire some notions of French geography. The knowledge of the rights and duties of man and citizen shall be taught them by example and experience. They shall be taught the first notions of the natural objects that surround them, and the natural action of the elements. They shall be exercised in the use of numbers, the compa.s.s, weights, measures, etc.

Another decree, of October 28th, 1793, declared that ”no ci-devant n.o.ble, no ecclesiastic or minister of any wors.h.i.+p whatsoever, can be a member of the commission of instruction, or be elected a national inst.i.tutor. No women of the ci-devant n.o.bility, no ci-devant religious women, canonesses, nuns, who have been placed in the old schools by ecclesiastics or ci-devant n.o.bles, can be nominated as inst.i.tutors in the national schools.”

A decree of February 21st, 1795, read as follows:

Art. 1. Conformable to Art. 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and to Art. 22 of the Const.i.tution, the exercise of no wors.h.i.+p shall be troubled. Art. 2. The Republic shall pay salary to no minister of wors.h.i.+p. Art. 3.

It shall furnish no locality either for the exercise of wors.h.i.+p or for the residence of its ministers. Art. 4. The ceremonies of every kind of wors.h.i.+p are interdicted outside the enclosures chosen for such exercise. Art. 5. The law does not recognize any minister of wors.h.i.+p; no such minister may appear in public with the habit, ornaments, or costume affected in religious ceremonies. Art. 6. All a.s.semblages of citizens for the exercise of any wors.h.i.+p whatsoever shall be subject to the surveillance of the const.i.tuted authorities.

This surveillance shall be fortified by measures of police guard and public security. Art. 7. No particular symbol of any wors.h.i.+p may be erected in any public place, neither exteriorly, nor in any manner whatsoever. No inscription can be put up to designate such place of wors.h.i.+p. No public proclamation or convocation can be made to draw the citizens thither. Art. 8. The communes or sections of communes may not hire or purchase, in their collective name, any locality for the exercise of wors.h.i.+p. Art. 9. No donation, perpetual or temporary, may be formed, and no tax imposed to pay the expenses of such wors.h.i.+p. Art. 10. Whosoever shall, by violence, disturb the ceremonies of any wors.h.i.+p whatsoever, or who offers outrage to its objects, shall be punished, according to the law of July 19-22, 1791, in regard to correctional police. Art. 11. The law (of 2 des sans-culottides, an II.) with regard to ecclesiastical pensions, is not hereby abrogated, and its dispositions shall be executed according to their form and tenor. Art. 12. Every decree whose dispositions are contrary to the present law formulated by the representatives of the people in the departments is annulled.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN.]