Robespierre. Suspicions arose; she was
searched; and two knives were found about her. She was questioned, and
spoke of the Jacobin domination with resolute scorn and aversion. It is
unnecessary to say that she was sent to the guillotine. Barere declared
from the tribune that the cause of these attempts was evident. Pitt and
his guineas had done the whole. The English government had organized a
vast system of murder, had armed the hand of Charlotte Corday, and had
now, by similar means, attacked two of the most eminent friends of
liberty in France. It is needless to say that these imputations were,
not only false, but destitute of all show of truth. Nay, they were
demonstrably absurd; for the assassins to whom Barere referred rushed on
certain death, a sure proof that they were not hirelings. The whole
wealth of England would not have bribed any sane person to do what
Charlotte Corday did. But, when we consider her as an enthusiast, her
conduct is perfectly natural. Even those French writers who are childish
enough to believe that the English government contrived the infernal
machine and strangled the Emperor Paul have fully acquitted Mr. Pitt of
all share in the death of Marat and in the attempt on Robespierre. Yet
on calumnies so futile as those which we have mentioned did Barere
ground a motion at which all Christendom stood aghast. He proposed a
decree that no quarter should be given to any English or Hanoverian
soldier.[20] His Carmagnole was worthy of the proposition with which it
concluded. "That one Englishman should be spared, that for the slaves of
George, for the human machines of York, the vocabulary of our armies
should contain such a word as generosity,--this is what the National
Convention cannot endure. War to the death against every English
soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk, quarter had been refused to them when
they asked it on their knees, if our troops had exterminated them all,
instead of suffering them to infest our fortresses by their presence,
the English government would not have renewed its attack on our
frontiers this year. It is only the dead man who never comes back. What
is this moral pestilence which has introduced into our armies false
ideas of humanity? That the English were to be treated with indulgence
was the philanthropic notion of the Brissotines; it was the patriotic
practice of Dumourier. But humanity consists in exterminating our
enemies. No mercy to the execrable Englishman. Such a