About 1600 prisoners were
murdered in Paris alone. Hardly any one has ever defended those
slaughters. Even Marat called them "disastrous," and yet no one
interfered. Neither Danton, nor Roland, nor the Assembly, nor the
National Guard, nor the City of Paris, although the two or three hundred
ruffians who did the work could have been dispersed by a single company
of resolute men, had society so willed it. When Robespierre's time came
he fell almost automatically. Though the head of the despotic "Committee
of Public Safety," and nominally the most powerful man in France, he was
sent to execution like the vilest and most contemptible of criminals by
adversaries who would not command a regiment. The inference is that the
September massacres, which have ever since been stigmatized as the
deepest stain upon the Revolution, were, veritably, due to the
Royalists, who made with the Republicans an issue of self-preservation.
For this was no common war. In Royalist eyes it was a servile revolt,
and was to be treated as servile revolts during the Middle Ages had
always been treated. Again and again, with all solemnity, the Royalists
had declared that were they to return as conquerors no stone of Paris
should be left standing on another, and that the inhabitants should
expire in the ashes of their homes on the rack and the wheel.
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