seems that, if the prison massacres were unhappily projected by the leaders of the Commune, there was yet no distinct organization or directing Committee, but that the people itself, to judge from the conduct of some of its organized sections—moved by an impulse of rage and despair—turned furiously upon its internal foes, and, breaking all social bonds, constituted itself judge and executioner in one.
The first signal for the horrible crimes about to be committed was the transfer of some twenty-four prisoners, chiefly priests, to the Abbaye, the most crowded of all the prisons. This transfer was significant, when taken in connection with the removal of the gaoler's family, and that of several men, by the orders of Danton, among whom happened to be Desmoulins' schoolmaster. The carriages containing these priests, followed by an escort of Marseillais and other federate troops, were soon surrounded by a booting, yelling, menacing crowd, to whom a cassock was the symbol of counter-revolution and civil war; and, whether the attack first began on the outside, or was provoked by one of the priests, a spark was enough to blow the passions of the multitude into a destructive blaze.
Then were the prison doors burst open. Half-clad men, armed with pikes, with a strange glare in their savage, hunger-bitten faces, swarmed about the court-yards. Prisoners were at first simply hauled from their cells, dragged along the passages, driven pell-mell into the court-yards, and cut down ruthlessly like grass falling beneath the mower's scythe. Some, delirious with fear, flung themselves of their own accord on the weapons of their executioners; others resisted to the death, and fell pierced by successive wounds. To put some kind of limit to these ghastly
