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ON THE HEROISM OF THE "VENGEUR'S" SAILORS[1]
(1794)
Born in 1755, died in 1841; elected to the Assembly in 1789, to the Convention in 1792, over which he presided during the trial of Louis XVI., and was a member of the Committee of Public Safety and a Deputy in 1815 during the Hundred Days. Macaulay's ferocious attack on Barère will be remembered.
The Committee has instructed me to make known to the Convention certain sublime acts which can not be ignored either by it or by the French people.
Since the sea became a field of carnage and war has dyed the waves with blood, the annals of Europe have known no combat so stubborn, no valor so sustained, and no action so terrible, so murderous, as that of the 13th Prairial, when
- ↑ Delivered before the Convention on July 9, 1794, in Barère's capacity as official reporter for the Committee of Public Safety. Its basis of fact is that the Vengeur was sunk and that all of her crew, whom the English boats could not rescue, went down crying for help or shouting, "Vive la Republique." The incident occurred during the battle which the British called " The Glorious First of June " (1794). Lord Howe with twenty-five ships of the line had engaged a French fleet of twenty-six ships, dismasting ten, capturing six, and sinking one, the Vengeur. Translated for this edition by Scott Robinson from the text as given by Stephens.
