The September Massacres; Accounts of Personal
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The September Massacres George Lenôtre (Thomas Carr, translation) Gosselin, Louis Léon Théodore [Georges Lenôtre] The September massacres; accounts of personal experiences written by some of the few survivors of the terrible days of September 2nd and 3rd, 1792, together with a series of hitherto unpublished police reports. London: Hutchinson & co. ltd., 1929. Translated by Thomas Carr, Franco-American Institute Library in Rennes Cover image: Massacres des 2, 3, 4, 5 et 6 Septembre 1792 Pierre-Gabriel Berthault PART I: LA FORCE _____ On the Rue Saint-Antoine, on the left for those going towards the Bastille, situated precisely across from the house that today bears the number 113, in 1792 opened the Rue des Ballets. It was thirty paces long and ten wide and paved with old cobblestones, slightly inclined towards the gutter that ran down the middle of the road and then emptied into a sewer grate. Embedded into the stone pavement of the Rue Saint-Antoine were three houses to the right and a single house to the left—no more. They were dirty, dilapidated hovels, three centuries old. The background to the decor formed by these two alignments was the black facade of the Prison de la Force, which ran alongside the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile—at the time of the Revolution, it was called the des Droits de l’Homme.1 It ran into the Rue des Ballets there and formed a dead end. At the projecting angle formed by the intersection of these two streets was a large boundary stone. The prison, seen from this side, was a low building. There was only the ground floor covered by a sloping roof that reached almost as high as the building. The door was directly in line with the Rue des Ballets.2 Topped by a transom and protected by thick bars, it led to a narrow guard’s booth, two meters deep and three meters wide. To the left opened the guardroom. Directly across from the door one passed through the first corridor, and then, continuing straight ahead, through the second. These two corridors formed two rooms of nearly equal dimensions—five paces by four. When one reached the second office, still turning one’s back to the Rue des Ballets, one found a door leading to a courtyard. To the right, there was first a door and then a windowed partition. The door and the partition separated the second corridor from the clerk’s office. The room was three by six meters, and was lighted by a single window overlooking the courtyard. The window was placed in a corner of the room, at a right angle with the exit of the second corridor. The courtyard was relatively small, surrounded by low buildings3 similar to those we have just seen. It was called La Cour du Greffe,4 or Première cour d’entrée.5 Further on, inside the prison, are other, larger courtyards—the Cour de la Dette,6 the Vit au Lait,7 the Cour des Femmes,8 and still others. The name of the concierge was Bault. As concierge of the prison, he was a powerful man. In those times, the concierge was the director, the absolute master of his jail. Bault lived in the building running alongside the Rue des Droits de l’Homme. His kitchen was on the ground floor, facing the street. He had an apartment under the sloping ceiling, with an 1 The Street of the Rights of Man 2 “They were leading me to the Grande Force. I finally arrived at that horrible prison. The entryway was extremely low and as it was dark and I was worried, I couldn’t judge the height of the door and I bumped my head hard. The strength of the blow was such that it shook my entire being. I could not keep myself from crying, “Oh, I’m fainting. Catch me!” From Unpublished Memoirs of the Internuncio at Paris During the Revolution, 1790 – 1801, by Monsignor de Salamon. 3 Memorial of Norvins, volume II, p. 186. 4 From Memorial of Norvins, volume II, p. 186, The Clerk’s Courtyard. 5 First Entrance to the Courtyard 6 Debtor’s Courtyard 7 Courtyard of Those Who Live from Milk or the Wet-Nurses’ Courtyard. 8 Women’s Courtyard 1 entrance which was private, official and open only to the prison’s suppliers. He had another, more secret entryway which he used from time to time.9 Bault was not a cruel man. His wife dressed in the style of the sans-culottes, and when a prisoner was brought in, she was there to speak her mind. Weber, foster brother of and first valet to the Queen, recounts that when he arrived in La Force on August 19, 1792, he overheard Madame Bault questioning the commissioners. When she learned that her new pensioner had been arrested for taking part ten days earlier in the defense of the royal family and of the castle, she exclaimed, “That’s wonderful! Ca ira, ça ira!” Nevertheless, she was not cruel. In September 1793, Bault and his wife left La Force to replace their colleagues the Richards at la Conciergerie. They ending up being Marie-Antoinette’s jailers, and it is said that they proved to be humane and charitable towards their prisoner. The Baults had a daughter living with them in La Force in 1792. In the Rue Pavée, which intersected the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, there was a special entryway into a prison adjoining the first one. It was called La Petite Force. The facade of this gateway, which had not yet been completed in 1792, was that of a theater entrance, in the architectural style of Desmaisons: thick vermiculated pilasters and a bold vault, covering a circular peristyle in which buggies could turn around under cover. The ground floor, with its gloomy appearance, led up to three floors filled with square, barred windows. The prison extended from behind this narrow facade all the way to the private houses running along the Rue Culture Sainte-Catherine (today called Rue de Sévigné). It was possible to reach one prison or the other, either by the covered way at the foot of the houses, or by a labyrinth of paths cutting through the buildings. La Petite Force was a women’s prison. It had its own concierge, Madame de Hanère, who lived there with her daughter. Both were courageous people, sympathetic and kind. Still, it seems that prisoners of either sex were registered first by the clerk in the larger prison, where Bault worked. Madame de Tourzel writes in her memoirs that she and her companions entered La Force by the Rue des Ballets and not by the Rue Pavée, and so, whether she knew it or not, she was kept prisoner in La Petite Force, because she was a pensioner of “Madame de Hanère.”10 The intention in the following pages is not to group together the events that led to the September Massacres. Rather, it is to indicate several facts in order to clarify the narratives that our witnesses have left for us. Since the 10th of August, numerous suspects were being arrested and led to the prison on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile and to the one on the Rue Pavée. They were arrested either for their attachment to the Royal Family, or simply for being suspected of regretting the fall of the Royal Régime, which had already been virtually abolished. The tales we are going to read will be sufficiently instructive about the way in which these incarcerations were handled. It is important to note here that the prisons were filling up with aristocrats, and that everyone in Paris was aware of the fact. The government and the Revolutionary Commune governing in the Hôtel de Ville were hesitant about the means to be used to get rid of these cumbersome pensioners—by deportation, or by other means? 9 Memorial of Norvins, volume II, p. 205. “Il Ducatel (Bault’s successor) told me to follow him to the end of a short hallway leading to his apartment and our own. (Norvins lived in La Force with one of his friends, in a room overlooking the rue des Ballets). He opened the door of the room and led me to another which led to a hidden stairway, ending in a thick armored door, which he also opened, and which led to the small street called the rue des Droits de l’Homme. 10 Memoirs of the Duchess of Tourzel, volume II, p. 252. 2 Speakers at public meetings and corner bawlers were stirring up the public’s wrath against the prisoners. The highly important revolutionary biography undertaken by Mr. Tourneux mentions a pamphlet, which, though undated, must certainly have been sold in Paris on the day of September the 1st. Its title was: “High Treason of Louis Capet. Aristocrats and Non-Juring Priests Discovered Plotting to Assassinate All Good Citizens of the Capital during the Nights of the 2nd and 3rd of This Month, with the Help of the Criminals and the Blackguards Detained in the Prisons of Paris, signed by Charles Boussemart, the smooth-faced patriot.” This was the kind of statement that the Commune was tolerating—or rather, encouraging—in the city. The question of whether the government or the Commune ordered the massacres and thus tacitly assumed responsibility for them has long been debated. Despite a wealth of thorough research and passionate deductions, a written order unleashing the killings has never been found. Still, we can be sure that the government suffered through the catastrophe with no great regrets.