al
defence.

Danton, who knew English, and read English books, seems to have
remembered a passage in Spenser, when he declared that France must be
saved at Paris, and told his terrified hearers to be bold, to be bold,
and again to be bold. Then he went off to see to the enrolments, and
left the agents of the Commune to accomplish the work appointed for
the day. Twenty-four prisoners at the Mairie were removed to the
Abbaye, which was the old Benedictine monastery of St. Germain, in
hackney coaches; twenty-two of them were priests. Lewis XVI. had
fallen because he refused to proscribe the refractory clergy who were
accused of spreading discontent. Beyond all men they were identified
with the lost cause, and it had been decided that they should be
banished. They were imprisoned in large numbers, as a first step
towards their expulsion. That group, escorted by Marseilles from the
Mairie to the Abbaye, were the first victims. The people, who did not
love them, let them pass through the streets without injury; but when
they reached their destination, the escorting Marseillais began to
plunge their swords into the carriages, and all but three were killed.
Two made their way into a room where a commission was sitting, and, by
taking seats among the rest, escaped. Sicard, the teacher of the deaf
and dumb, was recognised and saved: and it is through him that we know
the deeds that were done that day. They were directed by Maillard who
proceeded from the abbey to the Carmelites, a prison filled with
ecclesiastics, where he sent for the Register, and had them murdered
orderly and without tumult. There was a large garden, and sixteen of
the prisoners climbed over the wall and got away; fourteen were
acquitted; 120 were put to death, and their bones are collected in the
chapel, and show the sabre cuts by which they died.

During the absence of Maillard, which lasted three hours, certain
unauthorised and self-constituted assassins appeared at the Abbaye and
proposed to go on with the work of extermination which he had left
unfinished. The gaolers were obliged to deliver up a few prisoners, to
save time. When Maillard returned, he established a sort of tribunal
for the trial of prisoners, while the murderers, in all something
under 200, waited outside and slaughtered those that were given up to
them. In the case of the clergy, and of the Swiss survivors of the 4th
of August, little formality was observed. At the Abbaye, and at La
F