em in a vote for the dissolution of the new Municipal Council. At the
same time, intelligence of the Prussian successes readied the capital,
intelligence which, it seemed possible, might animate the Royalists to
some fresh effort; and, lest they should find means of reconciling
themselves to Vergniaud and his party, the Jacobins and Cordeliers
resolved to give both a lesson by a deed of blood which should strike
terror into them. 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.
It will be sufficient for our purpose to record the fate of one of the
most innocent of all the victims, who owed her death to the fact that she
had long been the queen's most chosen friend, and whose murder was gloated
over with special ferocity by the monsters who perpetrated it, as enabling
them to inflict an additional pang on her wretched friend and mistress.

Madame de Lamballe, as we have seen, had accompanied the queen to the
Temple on the first day of her captivity, and had subsequently been
removed to one of the city prisons known as La Force. It was on the
prisoners in the different places of confinement that the work of death
was to be done: and she had been specially marked out for slaughter, not
solely because she was beloved by Marie Antoinette, but also, it was
understood, because, as she was very rich, and sister-in-law to the Duc
d'Orleans, that detestable prince desired to add her inheritance to his
OWD already vast riches. She was dragged before Hebert, one of the foulest
of the Jacobin crew, who had taken his seat at the gate of the prison to
preside over the trials, as they were called, of the prisoners in La
Force. "Swear," said he, "devotion to liberty and to the nation, and
hatred to the king and queen, and you shall live." "I will take the first
oath," she replied, "but the second never; it is not in my heart. The king
and queen I have ever loved and honored." Almost before she had finished
speaking she was pushed into the gate-way. One ruffian struck her from
behind with his sabre. She fell. They tore her into pieces. A letter of
the queen's fell from her h