September massacres

“ There is nothing in the annals of the world to be compared with the series of events in the Paris prisons in '92, to which history has given the name of the September Massacres. In that deliberate slaughter, over one thousand men and women perished, hewn in pieces in the prisons or at the prison doors. The revolutionary committees had packed the gaols with "suspected" persons, mostly innocent of anything that could be laid to their charge ”

“ A contemporary sketch depicts him delivering a speech on "a table of corpses" against the door of the Abbaye: "Citizens, you are slaughtering the enemies of France. You are doing your duty." Indiscriminate killing had been the legal order of the day. There was no question of the guillotine during the September massacres. Every citizen who could arm himself was a Samson by privilege of the prison judges; and popular justice, called "severe justice of the people," made the butcheries of September a people's fête. ”

“ Lashed to uncontrollable rage by the preliminary successes of the invading Prussians, the Paris proletariat break into the prisons and massacre the unfortunate members of the nobility there immured. Few are spared. Young equally with the old––girls and women no less than the sterner sex––the noble, the wise, the cultivated, the beautiful, are murdered in cold blood. The September Massacres shock moderates everywhere with the feeling that France is at last running amuck––the mad dog of the Nations. ”

“ A street, more or less tranquil the moment before, would suddenly become a miniature battlefield, an opinion dividing patriots into factions which began to fight savagely. Anything might happen to-night, another prison might be stormed as the Bastille was, another tenth of August insurrection, another horror equalling the September massacres, anything was possible. Only a leader a little bolder than the rest was wanting, and all attempt at law and order would be trampled to nothing in a moment by a myriad of feet. ”

“ This Convention is not four days old, and the melodious Melibœan stanzas that shook down Royalty are still fresh in our ear, when there bursts out a new diapason,—unhappily, of Discord, this time. For speech has been made of a thing difficult to speak of well: the September Massacres. How deal with these September Massacres; with the Paris Commune that presided over them? A Paris Commune hateful-terrible; before which the poor effete Legislative had to quail, and sit quiet. And now if a young omnipotent Convention will not so quail and sit, what steps shall it take? ”

“ The September massacres. discredited government, entered into conflict with the Legislative Assembly, which considered its mission at an end, and paralyzed the action of the executive council, particularly during the bloody days of September, provoked by the discovery of the court’s intrigues with the foreigner, by the treachery of La Fayette, the capture of Longwy, the investiture of Verdun by the Prussians (August 19–30) , and finally by the incendiary placards of Marat. Danton, a master of diplomatic and military operations, had to avoid any rupture with the Commune. ”

“ In relation to the September massacres: "No, I do not pity them, those fanatical priests... When a community or its majority wants anything, it is right. The minority is always culpable, even when right morally. Common sense is that is needed to appreciate that truth. It is indisputable that the nation has the power to sacrifice even an innocent person." ("Nuits de Paris," XVth, p.377.) ”

“ No; we do not attribute to the French army what took place during this mournful eclipse of honor.
There have been massacres in history, abominable ones assuredly, but they have possessed some show of reason; Saint Bartholomew and the Dragonnades are explained by religion, the Sicilian Vespers and the butcheries of September are explained by patriotism; they crush the enemy or annihilate the foreigner; these are crimes for a good cause; but the carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre is a crime without an ostensible reason. ”

“ In the dealings of nations, as of individuals, feelings often count for more than interests. This was the case in the last four months of the year 1792, when the subjects in dispute bulked small in comparison with the passions and prejudices which magnified and distorted them. The psychology of the time therefore demands no less attention than its diplomacy. Its first weeks were darkened by news of the September massacres. ”

“ A convention between France and Italy, signed in 1864, by which Louis Napoleon agreed gradually to withdraw the French troops from Rome, Victor Emmanuel undertaking not to violate the Pope’s territory.
September Laws.
A series of laws restricting the liberty of the Press, passed in France in 1835.
September Massacres.
The massacre, after a mock trial, of the priests, officials and other Royalists confined in the prisons of Paris between the 2nd and 6th of September, 1792. About 1,000 prisoners are known to have perished. ”

“ Even in Paris, this execrable hot-bed of revolution, where, it must be admitted, the massacres were, in a moment of vertigo, accepted by all classes of the people as a measure of public safety, they now inspire unspeakable horror! The revolutionists themselves are divided into two camps—the patriots of the 10th of August, and the Septembrists—a precious germ of internal discord among the wretches. All in all, there is good, much good for us, in the days of September. The terror evoked by them will come to the assistance of the present plot. Everything is prepared ”

“ Such were the experiences that brought about the occurrences of the 2nd and 3rd of September, known as the Prison Massacres—a pitiless popular retribution.
Petion, Mayor of the Commune of Paris, speaking at the bar of the Assembly, once said:
"The people demands justice on its enemies; legislators, it looks to you!" ”

“ By all those, therefore, who would regard public order and a security for life as being more important than the success of a political idea, or the integrity and defence of a nation, he can be accused of a criminal negligence in the matter of the massacres of September. ”

“ Swollen with hatred of the old social system which had not recognised his merits, he put himself at the head of the most violent section of the people. Having publicly glorified the massacres of September, he founded a journal which denounced everybody and clamoured incessantly for executions. ”

“ The debates of the Convention, the debates of the Jacobins, and all the public prints, are fraught with proofs of this appropriated susceptibility, and it is often attributed to persons and occasions where we should not much expect to find it. A quarrel between the legislators as to who was most concerned in promoting the massacres of September, is reconciled with a "sweet and enthusiastic excess of fraternal tenderness." ”

“ If we analyse the elements composing the pretended delegations of the sovereign people, we shall find that, apart from a small number of simple souls who submitted to the impulses of the leaders, the mass was almost entirely formed of the bandits of whom I have been speaking. To them were due the innumerable murders of which the massacres of September and the killing of the Princesse de Lamballe were merely typical.
They terrorised all the great Assemblies, from the Constituent Assembly to the Convention, and for ten years they helped to ravage France. ”

“ We may spare ourselves the pain of relating the horrors of the September massacre, when, for more than four days, gangs of men worse than devils, and of women unsexed by profligacy and cruelty till they had become worse even than the men, gave themselves up to the work of indiscriminate slaughter, deluging the streets with blood, and where they could spare time, aggravating the pangs of death by superfluous tortures. ”

“ The fury of the populace grew greater now that they felt that they could indulge it with impunity; they ran to the Town Hall, and tearing down and burning the tricoloured, raised the white flag. The roll of the generale, the clang of the tocsin were heard, the neighbouring villages poured in their populations and increased the throng in the streets; single acts of violence began to occur, wholesale massacres were approaching. ”

“ The king and his family escaped to the National Assembly, and on the 14th were removed to the old Temple prison. From this time the reign of terror may properly be said to have begun. The chronicles of September are written in blood. Supreme in power as in crime, the party of the Fédérés, or Red Republicans, secured the barriers, sounded the tocsin, and proceeded to clear the prisons by an indiscriminate massacre. Nobles and priests, aged men and delicate women, all who were guilty of good birth, loyalty, or religion, were slain without distinction. ”

“ For three months husband and wife lived side by side in that awful prison, the walls of which still bore the red imprints made in the September massacre, and in garden of which blood still oozed, it was believed, from the roots of the tree where murdered men had been stacked up by the score. ”

“ We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation-state, but with a worldwide, hydra-headed enemy, who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers. ”

“ We may here interrupt the narrative of events subsequent to the restoration of peace in the territory, with the story of the most horrible massacre of white people by religious fanatics of their own race that has been recorded since that famous St. Bartholemew's night in Paris—the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Committed on Friday, September 11, 1857,—four days before the date of Young's proclamation forbidding the United States troops to enter the territory—it was a considerable time before more than vague rumors of the crime reached the Eastern states. ”

“ As conquerors, they will treat the conquered as conspirators, and will demand that their plots be punished. The real conclusion to all these fine ideas was to be the massacre of the prisoners in September. ”

“ Meanwhile he watched mankind march on, like a train of pack-horses on the Snake River, tumbling from one morass into another, and at short intervals, for no reason but temper, falling to butchery, like Cain. Since 1850, massacres had become so common that society scarcely noticed them unless they summed up hundreds of thousands, as in Armenia; wars had been almost continuous, and were beginning again in Cuba, threatening in South Africa, and possible in Manchuria ”

“ Indeed, the day which followed a massacre was always kept as a holiday, everyone leaving his work undone and coming out to stare at the slaughtered victims. In this case, a man wishing to amuse the crowd took his pipe out of his mouth and put it between the teeth of the corpse—a joke which had a marvellous success, those present shrieking with laughter. ”

“ Because that's the part of our planet that is exceedingly dangerous, and saw on September 11th the root cause of attacks that resulted in the death of more than 3,000 Americans -- the deadliest attack on American soul. ”

“ THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE.
The following letters were printed in the New York Tribune in the winter of 1879. They are of interest, not only as giving a minute account of one of the most atrocious massacres ever perpetrated, but also as showing the sense of justice which is to be found in the frontiersman's mind to-day. That men, exasperated by atrocities and outrages, should have avenged themselves with hot haste and cruelty was, perhaps, only human but that men should be found, fifteen years later, apologizing for, nay, justifying the cruel deed, is indeed a matter of marvel. ”

“ Three thousand five hundred insurgents—to omit two hundred thieves shot by the rioters—had perished. This supposes as many wounded at the least. As the tumbrels rolled with the corpses to the working quarters, a chorus of [Pg 118] curses went up against the king, the queen, their foreign camerilla, the nobles who had counseled them. Some swore revenge, and they had it in the coming massacres; others took up weapons and ran to the palace to vent their spite on the dead Swiss; others again crowded round the Assembly and the abbey where were prisoners, shouting "Vengeance." ”

“ Medical stores were wholly unobtainable: the chief hospital had been burnt early in the siege, and the sick and wounded, laid in vaults or casemates for safety, died off like flies in the underground air. The seeds of pestilence were spread by the number of dead bodies of men and animals which were lying where they could not be reached, under the ruins of fallen houses. The spirit alike of garrison and troops still ran high: the repulse of the great assault of September 19, and the cessation of the bombardment for many days after had encouraged them. ”

“ A few days later, knowing that they were not going to be able to enter Nancy, furious at the thought that they would soon be forced to retire and that they must give up their cherished dreams, in the night of the ninth and tenth of September, those unfortunate men advanced two pieces of artillery under cover of a storm, bombarded our peaceful city, and ripped to pieces houses in various quarters of the town, murdering women and children. ”

“ The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as they walked away.
Being anxious to see if it was too late to help the man whom I had not been able to save, I went out into the street and bent over him. He was bloody, disfigured, dying, but was yet alive, uttering dismal groans. I tried to lift him up, but soon saw that the wounds which he had received from bullets fired at close range were both mortal, one being in the head, and the other in the loins. Just then a patrol, of the National Guard turned round the corner of the street. ”