by James Tipton
We made for a small bay in Normandy, our smuggler’s appointed meeting place with the Frenchmen on the black market. We could see one or two small lights on the shore, and the Irishman said these were the lanterns of the men who were meeting him. We entered the mouth of the small bay. France was just yards away now. As we bobbed near shore, a figure raced into the water, waving his arms.
Then we heard the explosions of muskets and saw their sudden fire and smoke in the dawn. The man who had been running cried, “It’s a trap. Take me with you,” and swam toward us in a panic.
I recognized the uniforms of the French National Guard now, as they took aim in the shallows and fired a volley at us. We three lay flat on the deck. I thought of diving overboard and swimming for the other side of the bay, but then noticed more National Guard running down the steep hill there and forming themselves on the beach.
We were surrounded.
The swimmer reached us now, and I held my hand out to him. In the pale light I could see dark blood running from his sleeve. Calvert and I, while lying down, each had one of his arms and were just raising him on deck when the next volley came. The man simply moaned softly and went limp in our arms. We let him slide back into the water, & I turned & saw the Irishman lying under the mainsail & maneuvering it with one raised arm. By the time the third volley came, we were out of range & just saw spurts of fire on the shore.
“What a waste of merchandise,” the Irishman said, and we headed back toward England.
The cliffs on the Isle of Wight rose through shrouds of fog, and we heard the welcome cries of English gulls over the waves when we came again up to a British ship of the line. It looked like a floating fort, from where we were, like a piece of kindling, on the water. This time we had been seen. I half-expected the Irishman to start bailing his cargo overboard, but he simply said, “She’s a slow monster.”
Our captain, while filling the air with Irish curses against the British, took us right across the bow of His Majesty’s ship, and so a broadside missed us. Only when we were safely hidden in the fog again did a random cannonball lodge itself in our stern. Calvert and I bailed buckets of water overboard as more filled the deck from below, and the Irishman managed to take us into his watery cave that we had left with such high hopes.
He told us that even when he had finally repaired his boat, no amount of money from my friend could induce him to take us across the Channel again, for we were decidedly bad luck. Calvert, though, in any case, had had enough of adventure, and I felt very bad that I had got him into that danger. We parted on Salisbury Plain after he drove the one-horse carriage that he rented into a ditch. He said our whole expedition was folly of the highest order, and, indeed, not suffering for love himself, how could he possibly know what desperateness had driven me to such folly?
You, my love, more prudent than I, are probably happy that I am safe in England. I, however, despite this disastrous expedition, would far rather confront any Committee of Surveillance than this desolation I now feel at my destroyed hopes of seeing you, a desolation agitated further by my anxiety for you & for dear Caroline.
Last night I took bleak shelter at Stonehenge as hailstones the size of rocks pelted the plains. I closed my eyes and imagined the wailing of wind to be voices of ancient races, raised in cries of war or of human sacrifice—and indeed how different are we now, than then?
The cries of war now have made an insurmountable barrier out of a narrow strip of choppy sea. What remains for me now? Shall I sacrifice prudence again and undertake another expedition of folly?
I do not have the money or means, and will, at any rate, yield to what I believe your wishes to be—that I remain safe, though to see you for a moment, to hear your voice say one word, would be enough for me to try that folly again.
But for now I will walk to North Wales and visit my friend Robert Jones, whom I told you about, with whom I traversed the continent three years ago. In the woods and mountains of that country I will seek the solace of Nature. If I find thee again during this war, it will be there.
Adieu most tenderly thy dearest Friend, William.
Bath, England
27 July, 1793
I raised my eyes and gazed for some time at the September haze on the river. I could hear Caroline, as if far away in my lap, winding the watch chain around and around her little fingers. I didn’t know which emotion was the strongest—bliss at the reminder of William’s love; worry at his dangerous crossing and that his impetuous nature might try such an adventure again; or relief that he was unharmed and that he would be safe in the faraway mountains of Wales.
I felt a cold breeze off the river. Caroline wanted to be off my lap.
I folded the letters, put them in my pocket, and picked up the watch chain. It was hopelessly tangled.
To Regenerate Mankind
Dear Annette,
I trust you have had good hunting this summer. Since I am a reformed old aristocrat, I have no time to hunt, myself, but now do several honest days’ work before retiring to my château at week’s end. A Republican going home to his château is rather a delicious irony, isn’t it? Now please do me this honor: see for yourself the patriotic zeal I employ for our new republic. I am enclosing a pass for you to the courts tomorrow morning. Be there at nine, then lunch with me at the Town Hall and discuss the future of Europe; you will find it all unexpectedly enlightening. I trust you have made good use of the old lodge. I have the honor to be, etc.
Château de Beauregard
9 September 1793
An impassive National Guardsman perused my pass, signed by the count—or rather “Henri Thibaut, City Magistrate”—and, like a taciturn valet, opened the old oaken door of the Town Hall, once a sumptuous palace, now a haven for the bureaucracy of surveillance, suppression, and propaganda. Every large room had its desks and occupants, quill in hand and sacred stamps at the ready. Every corridor, instead of hall porters, had its sentries standing silently by doors and busy clerks carrying papers to the next desk for the next stamp.
The walls, once adorned by tapestries or paintings, were now as spar-tan and stark as the morals the Revolution professed, following the example of the “Incorruptible” Robespierre.
As a guardsman, younger than myself, led me toward the courtroom, I glanced into several high-ceilinged rooms, looking in vain for that religious tapestry I had briefly glimpsed the day of my own trial. It was unnerving being here again as a free citizen; so easily, I thought, my freedom could be revoked. What if someone denounced me, having recognized me from Paul’s escape or seen me ride out late at night, leaving, past curfew, on one of my excursions? I might never walk out of here, except to go to the Beauvoir again. Why had I accepted this invitation? It could be a trap, the count now working in his new capacity as upholder of the revolutionary laws. I clutched my pass, to show that I was on the side of the powers that be, but no one noticed me.
In small groups, talking conspiratorially outside tall double doors or descending the marble staircase, I saw impeccably dressed men in high-collared cloth coats, silk cravats, and knee breeches, some even with the traditional powdered wigs. These were the lawyers. And they all boasted the tricolor cockade, pinned either to their hats or to their lapels. Apparently one could still look like an aristocrat if one just attached a cockade to one’s clothing somewhere.
Women in the market wore cockades now on their dresses or hats.
In fact, one was tempting fate if one did not wear a cockade. I had bought tricolor ribbons at the scarf lady’s table in the market, and I wore them now on the pocket of my dress. Their colors just showed beneath the edge of my shawl.
My footman in uniform rather than livery now opened the gilded doors that led me into the room of the cherubic ceiling. I felt for a moment my throat dry and my thirst come back. Why had the count asked me here? To see what happened to people who dared to defy the strict authority of the new regime? Was he trying to frighten me into ceasing to use the lodge? Well, I had already stoppe
d, as of last week—told them the Mother of Orléans was going to be just a mother—both because it’s always good to stop while you’re ahead, and because I needed it less. Whole displaced villages, men, women, and children, were now traveling with their newly formed Royal and Catholic Army.
I sat on a hard bench in the back of the grand room and again looked up. They could strip the walls of centuries-old tapestries or art, but they didn’t bother to change the ceiling—those blue fields of heaven where plump, good-natured angels once, perhaps, looked down with some irony on a bishop’s feast, and now, with the same irony, mutely regarded revolutionary justice.
The count himself entered from a side door, elegantly dressed as usual, in his curled wig, blue silken coat, white waistcoat and breeches, and shoes whose buckles shone. The cockade hung from his wide lapels like a decoration on a party costume. He walked in with his casual air of old-world authority, sat at the center of a long table, and glanced out at the spacious room. I was one of a handful of spectators—the man in front of me was already writing in a notebook: perhaps a reporter from the Blois Gazette. The count’s eye briefly caught mine, then looked down at the papers on his desk.
He had a busy morning. I would have been bored had not a rising tide of anger at the absurdity and the injustice of the proceedings kept me continually awake.
The first case was that of four middle-aged aristocratic men, accused of singing funeral psalms as they carried a corpse to the cemetery. The count reminded them of the law regarding freedom of conscience but not of religious expression, sentenced them to sing “La Marseillaise” in the market square from nine to noon the following morning, and told them they were free to go but must wait for the representative-on-mission for possible further questioning.
His second case involved a young woman who had failed to wear a cockade in public. She protested absentmindedness: her husband had been recently called up in the levée, she had two children, and she was in a hurry going to market and had simply forgotten to put on the tricolor. The count said he assumed she knew the recent law that women must display a cockade in public and asked her, What if, one morning, the National Guard protested absentmindedness and simply forgot to protect the nation from the Austrians and the Prussians? This elicited some small chuckles from the clerks in the room and my presumed reporter, and the count ordered her to return to the Town Hall tomorrow, prominently displaying her cockade, and to wait now with the others on the benches to the side of the great room, where I had sat.
The next case, of hoarding candles, actually had a witness, a seemingly vindictive neighbor, whom the count asked, Would you still have turned your neighbor in if you would not receive the reward for reporting hoarders? She said she expected none, so the count dismissed her, and she, angrily, demanded the reward that the government said was rightfully hers. The count told the alleged hoarder to give twenty candles to the neighbor, who left outraged, and the hoarder took her place with the others.
A refractory priest was then shown in, who had refused to take the new oath of allegiance and had been caught hiding in the old cloisters of Saint-Saturnin, near where I lived. One side of his face was dis-colored, as if he had been beaten during his arrest or sometime after.
The count sentenced the priest to deportation.
Then a group of farmers stood, accused of resisting giving grain to the army. One of them was a giant peasant who said, boldly, that he needed every ounce of grain to support his family. The count said mildly that we all must make sacrifices now and ordered them to bring to the Town Hall their next twelve bushels of grain.
The next case seemed especially absurd. An upper-bourgeoisie mother and daughter (much like Maman and Angelique, I thought) had been overheard expressing opposition to the Revolution. They had called the Committee of Public Safety “boorish” for shutting down their favorite magazine, the Journal of Style and Taste. I almost laughed aloud, then realized they were accused of being counter-revolutionaries. The count told them that, under threat of imprisonment for six months, as difficult as it might be, they were to keep their private opinions private. They were free to go after further questioning.
In the count’s last case of the morning, perhaps the most pathetic, a farmer and his son had evaded the new levée en masse. When the representatives-on-mission came from Paris to oversee the conscription, the father had hidden his son in nearby woods and brought him food until the representatives left their village. The father protested, without his son, how would he run his farm? The count said that thousands were in the same situation and sentenced the son to immediate enlistment and the father to return to the farm and desist from any more obstruction of the law.
It was near noon now, and the accused, surrounded by four armed guardsmen, crowded the benches. I saw the giant gaze up at the cherubs. Finally, the representative, introduced simply as “Citizen Carrier,” strode in quickly, and the count vacated his seat and sat further down the table. The representative was dressed in a smart black frock coat with a carefully tied neckcloth, but he also wore the symbol of the extreme revolutionaries, the sans-culottes—long trousers rather than knee breeches—except these were of fine cashmere, not the coarse cloth of the Parisian workingman. The count crossed his arms and seemed to regard narrowly the representative, who, without asking for a review of any of the cases, addressed the accused, the few spectators, and the lawyers and clerks in the room.
He was a tall, very thin man and had a gentle voice when he spoke, like a tired father trying to make a recalcitrant son see reason.
“I have already made myself familiar with all these cases,” he said, as if it were a matter of little concern. “You all know, or at least have heard, that we are on the threshold of a new world order. No, we have passed through that door and are about to bathe in the glorious sun-shine of liberty and equality. And I refer not just to our great nation but to humanity itself.” He paused.
“But to do this,” and he continued with the same sincere, even friendly tone, “we must work as brothers; we must have a fraternity of common will. You will agree, then, if one has the opportunity—no, the responsibility—to regenerate mankind”—and he paused again—“the only crime, and indeed a heinous one at that, would be in some way to obstruct that sacred process. This obstruction could be large—threatening the nation with invasion, for instance, as is the case with the allied front of Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain, aided and abetted by the perfidy of the émigrés—our own depraved aristocrats. Or”—and now he looked thoughtful, almost sad—“the obstruction could be seemingly small. Perhaps one merely forgot to wear the beautiful tricolor rosette that proclaims one’s love of one’s country; perhaps one just wanted to sing songs, that in the darkness of superstition, have always been sung; perhaps one forgets one’s neighbor’s needs and keeps important items, such as candles, all for one’s own use; perhaps one thinks that our glorious fighting men can defend our nation without food in their bellies; perhaps one carelessly casts aspersions on a Republic that espouses greater virtues than those of the vanities of fashion, or”—and here his gentle, but insistent voice, grew in intensity—“or perhaps one has forgotten the invaders on all our borders. One has forgotten that France stands alone against the world—and thinks that one’s own harvest is more important than the harvest of liberty and of peace, or perhaps”—and now his voice raised itself almost to a fury—“one has stubbornly and brazenly refused to offer allegiance to this great Republic and insists, in ancient priestly arrogance, to think oneself above the law.”
He paused once more, and when he resumed, his voice was again soft and his tone reasonable. “These offenses may seem small in themselves, but I tell you, they constitute an even greater threat than all of the allied armies combined”—and suddenly his pitched intensity returned—“for these are the crimes of the haters of liberty. These are the people who work from within the nation to destroy our brotherhood of freedom; these are the real enemies of la patrie, our country.
“Whether he acts from stupidity or from intention, he is of the party of the tyrants who make war on us. We have new masters now—not the old barons and counts”—he paused—“but no less cruel or insolent. These are the enemies who stand, unseen, among us. To ensure the security of the nation, one must punish not only the traitors, but even those who are indifferent, or careless, or selfish. Through the Revolution, the French people has manifested its will, and all that is outside of that will is the enemy.”
I wondered how long he could go on in this harangue. The count looked utterly bored. He must have heard it all before. I was not bored; I was scared. Now Citizen Carrier’s voice grew gentle again.
“There are only two types of people in France today—the patriot and the counter-revolutionary. The guilty parties here have shown where their sympathies lie.”
And the representative stood up, his fingertips pressing the table.
“Therefore I will overrule the magistrate’s verdicts.” I looked at the count, and he was staring at the table. “In his capacity as a newly appointed local official, he was unable to see the gravity of these crimes in terms of the crisis of the nation as a whole. There is no hope for prosperity or peace as long as the last enemy of liberty breathes.
All the guilty parties here—without exception—shall be delivered to the guillotine. That is the sovereign will of the people, of whom I am the representative, chosen by the Committee of Public Safety with absolute authority in these matters.” He paused and looked at the aristocrats who had sung the hymns, then at the priest. “I might add that it has become abundantly clear that—as it is said in Paris—France will never be secure until the last aristocrat is strangled in the bowels of the last priest,” and Citizen Carrier strode from the grand room, as if he had more important matters to attend to.