[Year 2
be buried on land. Their one long grave is dug; they stand ranked, by the loose mould-ridge; the younger of them singing the Marseillaise. Jacobin National Guards give fire; but have again to give fire, and again; and to take the bayonet and the spade, for though the doomed all fall, they do not all die;—and it becomes a butchery too horrible for speech. So that the very Nationals, as they fire, turn away their faces. Collot, snatching the musket from one such National, and levelling it with unmoved countenance, says, 'It is thus a Republican ought to fire.'
This is the second Fusillade, and happily the last: it is found too hideous; even inconvenient. There were Two-hundred and nine marched out; one escaped at the end of the Bridge: yet behold, when you count the corpses, they are Two-hundred and ten. Rede us this riddle, O Collot? After long guessing, it is called to mind that two individuals, here in the Brotteaux ground, did attempt to leave the rank, protesting with agony that they were not condemned men, that they were Police Commissaries: which two we repulsed, and disbelieved, and shot with the rest![1] Such is the vengeance of an enraged Republic. Surely this, according to Barrère's phrase, is Justice 'under rough forms, sous des formes acerbes.' But the Republic, as Fouché says, must 'march to Liberty over corpses.' Or again, as Barrère has it: 'None but the dead do not come back, Il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.' Terror hovers far and wide: 'the Guillotine goes not ill.'
But before quitting those Southern regions, over which History can cast only glances from aloft, she will alight for a moment, and look fixedly at one point: the Siege of Toulon. Much battering and bombarding, heating of balls in furnaces or farm-houses, serving of artillery well and ill, attacking of Ollioules Passes, Forts Malbosquet, there has been: as yet to small purpose. We have had General Cartaux here, a whilom Painter elevated in the troubles of Marseilles; General Doppet, a whilom Medical man elevated in the troubles of
- ↑ Deux Amis, xii. 251–62.
