ipal
streets and buildings were to be levelled with the ground, and a
monument erected where they stood, was to record the cause:--"_Lyons
rebelled against the Republic--Lyons is no more._" Such fragments of the
town as might be permitted to remain, were to bear the name of Ville
Affranchie. It will scarce be believed that a doom like that which might
have passed the lips of some eastern despot, in all the frantic madness
of arbitrary power and utter ignorance, could have been seriously
pronounced, and as seriously enforced, in one of the most civilized
nations in Europe; and that to the present enlightened age, men who
pretended to wisdom and philosophy, should have considered the labours
of the architect as a proper subject of punishment. So it was, however;
and to give the demolition more effect, the impotent Couthon was carried
from house to house, devoting each to ruin, by striking the door with a
silver hammer, and pronouncing these words--"House of a rebel. I condemn
thee in the name of the law." Workmen followed in great multitudes, who
executed the sentence by pulling the house down to the foundations. This
wanton demolition continued for six months, and is said to have been
carried on at an expense equal to that which the superb military
hospital, the Hotel des Invalides, cost its founder, Louis XIV. But
republican vengeance did not waste itself exclusively upon senseless
lime and stone--it sought out sentient victims.

The deserved death of Chalier had been atoned by an apotheosis executed
after Lyons had surrendered; but Collot D'Herbois declared that every
drop of that patriotic blood fell as if scalding his own heart, and that
the murder demanded atonement. All ordinary process, and every usual
mode of execution, was thought too tardy to avenge the death of a
Jacobin proconsul. The judges of the revolutionary commission were worn
out with fatigue--the arm of the executioner was weary--the very steel
of the guillotine was blunted. Collot D'Herbois devised a more summary
mode of slaughter. A number of from two to three hundred victims at once
were dragged from prison to the place de Baotteaux, one of the largest
squares in Lyons, and there subjected to a fire of grape-shot.
Efficacious as this mode of execution may seem, it was neither speedy
nor merciful. The sufferers fell to the ground like singed flies,
mutilated but not slain, and imploring their executioners to despatch
them speedily. This was done wit