Wisconsin School for the Deaf - Tattler Yearbook (Delavan, WI)

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If 11111111 ' 111 11 i t 11 :111; n i : 111! 111 ] 1111111:111 i i m i i 11111111111111111111111111 ri 1111 m 11111111111111111111111111111; 11 n 111:111:111: m i: 11111111111111111 He wai the leading spirit of the Committee of Surveillance, and the louder and instigator cf the hl»od.-'hed of the Terror Period. Originally, he had studied medicine, with the idea of becoming a doctor, and for a short time ho was court physician in the palace of King Louis XVI. He liked to call himself the friend of the people , hut hi.-. greatest desire was to be dictator of France, that he might, as he himself put it, purify society , ami at the same time have in his power the sole and unquestioned right to 11 At one time he was known to have demanded 270,000 heads. In 1702 he was e’ectcd a member of the Commune of Paris, which organization served as n form of government for the lenders of the time. From time to time he published journals in the interests of the revolutionists. In April. 1798, he was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which had only recently been formed, but his influence was widespread. and he was nequitted of the charge of sedition, which Kiwi been brought against him by a fellow-leader. Only a few months later he was slabbed to death hv a young woman. Charlotte do Cor day, who hated him for his ruthless slaughter and for the terror ho caused in France. She was n strong Republican, and felt convinced that, were Marat dead, France would get out of the mire of bloodshed into which he had dragged it. and that with his death would come pence to her beloved France. Yet things diil not work out u« -he hud hoped they would. For her deed she wa. sentenced to the guillotine, and it wasn’t long before tin-country had nnothor leader, who was almost as powerful as Marat had been. This was Maximilian Robespierre, originally a lawyer, hut with such a kind nature, that the duties of a criminal judge became extremely repulsive to him. In 1789 he was sent to the National Convention in Paris u- a representative. There he had found congenial companionship in a Jacobin Club, and soon became n member of the powerful Committee on Public Safety. After the death of Marat, the control of affairs fell into his hands and those of Georges Jacques Dan ton. Strange as it may xeem, Robespierre changed completely and took n leading part in bringing King Louis XVI and thou- sands of others to the guillotine. Danton, who had after the deulh of Marat been n strong follower of Robespierre, soon began to oppose him. Robespierre succeeded in having him behoudt d, and then he ruled supreme. Rut his increasing power and his control of the country by the Revolutionary Army made him unpopular among the people of France. Hr even instituted n religion of his own and tried to force his ideas of morality upon the people. In order to enforce these alone, he tent 1200 people to the guillotine within a period of nix weeks. On July 27. 1791. the Convention ro.c against him. and before he coul 1 he given a cbunce to defend himself he was thrown into prison. He escaped, hut was recaptured within u short time, and the following day he was led to the same guillotine to which he had sent thousands of others. Some of the deeds commit led during the Reign of Terror were horrible beyond description. The knife of the guillotine rose and fell too slowly to satisfy the blood-lust of the revolutionary leaders, so other methods of killing people were devised, torture even being employed. Long rows of captives wore mowed down by grape-shot, hut even this became loo slow. Holes were made in crowded barges set afloat on the Loiio. Young men and girls were tied hand and foot together and flung into the river to drown. The dead bodies, twined together in hideous embmees, were feasted upon by large flocks of crows and kites along the shore . One man was known to go around with his pockets well stuffed with ears. Another patriot strutted around with the finger of a smull child in his hat. The gruesome cart curried thousands and thousands to and from the guillotine, until the stench in the neighborhood became so terrible that the house? were all vacated, and this horrible machine, devised to abolish decapitation with the axe or sword, was set up in another section of the city. A revolt of I.a Vendee and the invasion of France by the Austrians, English, and other autiderg brought oven more confusion. Finally, in 1795, the insurrection was crushed with a whifT of grapeshot by Napoleon, then an artillery officer, and a government culled the Directory- was established in France, ushering in n new period of history. = L2d] | r7lllllillllllMlllllllllllllllllllllllllllflllllll!llltllltlllIllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllltllllllllltlllll(IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIflllllllllllF.

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 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiij. mm reigned in th» streets and distant fin reddened the dark night. On Monday morning the city awakened but not to iu work day industry. The workers had become tighter . People wanted arms. Only the shops of tho smith weir open, for from them were tamed out pike which wore fiercely hammered nnd shaped to kill. These were the weapons for the hands of the bloodthirsty mob which formed a rising sea of ghastly faces in the «tn e .8. Meanwhile old Marquis IV taunny, keeper of the Bastille, laid pulled up the drawbridge and retired to its interior. Sentries walked the bnt-t einents through the night. Shot fired at them by revolutionists took no effect. Morning dawned on the fourteenth, in the distracted city grew a solemn determination to do or die. This day would be long remembered. With the curliest light came the cry, Arms! To arm !” There were a hundred and fifty thousand mutinous people, only on third of which were furnished with so much n a pike. At the Hotel dc Invulides there were muskets nnd at nine o'clock the flood of people was there. “To the Bastille! rang through the streets from thousands of mouths. Wave upon wave of the half-crazed hosts came from every direction to the repellent prixon. At last it wits besieged! A ruin of hard grnpevhot buret forth on the wails, nine feet thick, but accomplished nothing. Then the chums of the outer drawbridge were fiercely harked away. With it loud thunder the drawbridge fell. But this was only the outworks and the Bastille was yet to take. E The ronr of the great multitude grew deeper at the climnx of its frenzy. Panic muddened people swept like tire around the Bastille. The wounded were trampled in their last efforts to help take the accursed stronghold. It wns not easy to batter walls so thick. Inside, the great Bastille clock ticked hour nftor hour o if nothing special was parsing. It tolled one when the firing began and at five the uproar had not slackened. Fur down in their vaults, the seven prisoners, kept there at that time, heard the muffled din ns of earthquakes. Their turnkeys gave them no information. An army of French soldiers inarched up to the prison. For a moment there was a lull. The guardian.-- of the Pastille rejoked but. alas! the soldier had sided with the revolutionists. After four hours of hard fighting, the defender of the Bastille retired under their battlements. They rose with white Hags made of napkins tied to their muskets. A paper was held out of a porthole. Terms of surrender were accepted and the drawhridge wns lowered. The living deluge rushed in. The Bastille had fallen! Instant death was threatened the keeper? should any secret remain undisclosed. Out in the streets the seven prisoners were borne shoulder high while the heads of their turnkeys were carried on the ends of pikes. Old secret cume to light a the people dug into the walls nnd floor of the prison far into the night. F.vor since the fourteenth of July has been a national holiday in France in remembrance of the day when the Bastille, the symbol of tyranny and injustice of the ruling class, fell and with it the despotic nnd cruel government of a few, to be replaced, after much bloodshed, by u government of the people. The Reign of Terror By HARRIOT MOREHOUSE The Reign of Terror was the most sanguinary period during the whole of the French Revolution. For over a year the entire country was kept in n state of fear, suspicion, nnd hatred, class hatred in particular. The country was under the rule of a small group of men entirely without scruples, who were determined that France should become a nation free of the tyrannical rule of kings and nobles. And. although their rnu-e was to Ik admired, they went to terrible extremes in their struggle for It. There was little true friendship between the active members of the various Revolutionary Clubs. Oppressive taxation by the state, nobility, nnd church had aroused the lower class to open revolt. They willingly elected men who sympathized with their cause to serve ns their leaders. Not all of these men were wisely chosen, yet ull of them played important parts in the history of France. In fact, the story of th Reign of Terror is really a history of the leaders of the time. Perhaps the most powerful of nil was Marat. [25]

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