In 1685 Grammont captured Campeachy after severe fighting, but the booty obtained was not in accordance with his expectations. He was then offered and accepted a government situation by the French, only stipulating that he should be permitted to make one more cruise. He set out with one ship and one hundred and eighty men (on what object was never known), but he and his crew were never again heard of.

From The National Review. WOMEN IN THE REIGN OF TERROR.

service of Spain, and had even fought | few days afterwards. Then the fleet dis against the Brethren of the Coast, but fall- persed; a few reached home safely, but ing into their hands, they, knowing his the majority either fell into the hands of abilities, proposed that he should join their enemies or were lost at sea. them. This he agreed to do, and soon became one of the greatest scourges of the Spanish colonies. These three men conceived the project of attacking the city of Vera Cruz, one of the strongest towns on the coast. It had a garrison of three thousand men, and was strongly fortified, besides being defended by an adjoining fort, in which there were eight hundred men and sixty heavy pieces of ordnance. Although at first dismayed at the idea of attempting the capture of such a stronghold, the Buccaneers, fired by the knowledge of the vast amount of plunder they would obtain, agreed to take the risk, and the expedition set sail. Van Horn's various crews numbered in all about twelve hundred men, and when they hove in sight off Vera Cruz, the Spaniards took the Buccaneer fleet for some ships of their own expected at that same time. The freebooters hoisted Spanish colors, and stood off the city till dark, when they succeeded in disembarking unobserved about two miles' distance from the town. Shortly before daybreak, they came to the gates of Vera Cruz, and no sooner were they opened than they rushed into the town, cutting down all who opposed them. In the mean time De Gratt marched to the fort and surprised it, while in the city itself the troops who showed fight were massacred and all the others shut up in one of the churches. Here they remained penned up like a flock of sheep, although they greatly outnumbered their captors. The wealthiest of the inhabitants were secured, and in a few hours the Buccaneers were in full possession of one of the most splendid and opulent cities in Spanish America. Twenty-four hours were devoted to pillage, and everything of value which they could lay hold of conveyed on board their vessels.

WHEN we think of the women who perished by the guillotine, we are apt to remember only Marie Antoinette, Princess Elisabeth, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, or Madame Dubarry; yet, after all, these were not the greatest atrocities of the Terror. There were reasons, howsoever barbarous, for the slaughter of these celebrated personages. Marie Antoinette had occupied a throne, and was believed to have taken an active part in politics. Elisabeth, though pure and blameless, was the king's sister, and almost inevitably shared his fate. Madame Roland could not plead her sex, for she had been (so to speak) a Girondin statesman, and when she refused pity to Marie Antoinette she recognized the principle that if women mix in politics they must accept the risks. Charlotte Corday, howsoever we may admire her motives, was a murderess, and was executed. Madame Dubarry, though for twenty years in retirement, had enriched herself at the expense of France; but even she would probably have escaped had it not been for the relentless persecution of an EnglishSix millions of piastres was reckoned man, Grieve. The most unpardonable the value of the plunder, and had they not crimes of the Revolution were the butcrbeen pressed for time (being afraid of the ery of harmless and (in many cases) obtroops rising) they would have been able scure women, for heedless talk, for letters to greatly increase even this large amount. or remittances to émigré husbands or On their departure they met a Spanish sons, for sheltering fugitives, for possessfleet of seventeen sail, but, notwithstanding medals of Louis XVI., for hearing ing its superior strength, it did not venture to meddle with the victorious Buccaneers. Retribution in another form, however, was on the track of the freebooters; disputes arose, and Van Horn and De Gratt quarrelled and fought a duel, in which the former was severely wounded and died a

mass celebrated by recusant priests. Family affection and generous instincts were then crimes. Louis Blanc professed to regard the Terror as no worse than the repression of the Indian Mutiny or of the

See Englishmen in the French Revolution.

The capitulation was signed on the 2nd | larger, portion of Frenchmen welcomed September. A Prussian officer, passing the Prussians who were to put down the through the streets just afterwards, was Paris mob and restore the monarchy, and fired at from a hairdresser's window and that the Prussians throughout the camkilled. All the town was in a panic, fear-paign had had constant proofs of the ing that the capitulation would be annulled friendliness of the people. Nothing, thereand the place given up to pillage. "I do fore, could be more natural than these not know," says an eye-witness, of whom amenities at Verdun-to say nothing of there is more to be said presently, "who the fact that the first deputation was deconceived the idea of a deputation going signed to avert the pillage of the town. to the king of Prussia and offering sweet- The Paris Jacobins, however, denounced meats "Verdun was famous for its the capitulation as due to the intrigues and sweetmeats - "but this idea was gener- clamors of the royalist inhabitants; the ally adopted. The ladies offered their deputations were magnified into triumphal money, and young ladies were chosen to processions, with girls dressed in white present his majesty with a pretty basket for the occasion the 2nd of September containing the sweetmeats. My aunt, the was a Sunday, and the Sunday dresses Baroness de Lalance, had her horses har- may have been white and a ball was nessed to her wagon and took us to the said to have been given to the Prussian camp" which was two miles off. "All officers. When, six weeks afterwards, was done so hurriedly that we had not the the invaders had to evacuate Verdun, the least notion of what we were wanted to do. Convention issued thundering decrees Our relations spoke together, but without against the inhabitants, and ordered the saying a word to us. The deputation arrest of the district and municipal author. consisted of Madame de Lalance, her ities. In January, 1793, most of them husband was a royalist émigré, Madame Masson, a widow, — these two had bought the sweetmeats at a confectioner's - Madame Tabouillot, her daughter Claire, aged 15, and Madame de Lalance's three nieces, Suzanne, Gabrielle, and Barbe Henry, aged respectively 24, 23, and 15. They were coldly received, and the king refused the basket of sweetmeats, offered him by the two girls Claire and Barbe. It is not clear whether flowers were also offered; possibly the basket was decorated with them.

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Two days afterwards, the Prussians being about to raise their camp, there was some curiosity to see the cannon which had so terrified the inhabitants. Crowds went to see the camp, and the then crownprince, afterwards Frederic William III., a young man of 22, who kept a diary of this French campaign, speaks of meeting a party of women and pretty girls. He politely accosted them; they returned his greeting; and leading his horse by the bridle, he accompanied them a short distance, pleased with their conversation. There can be little doubt that this party included Mademoiselle Lagirouzière, and three sisters, Anne, Henriette, and Hélène Watrin, aged 23, 21, and 20, or rather two of them. They saw the king, who asked Hélène whether there was a theatre at Verdun, and she replied in the negative.

Be it remembered that the Tuileries had been stormed three weeks previously, that the king and queen were prisoners in the Temple, that a large, perhaps the

were liberated; but a prosecution was ordered against the members of the council of war and against gendarmes who had continued to serve during the Prussian occupation.

In February, the Convention acknowledged that the place had been defenceless, and declared that the inhabitants had not deserved ill of their country; but, with not unusual want of logic, it ordered the prosecution both of the men who had clamored for capitulation and of the women who had visited the Prussian camp. Women, the report urged, were the chief cause of the emigration of the nobles, and, together with the priests, they kept up an anti-revolutionary fanaticism. Moreover, if left unpunished, they would teach their children hatred of liberty - this implied that punishment was to make them love liberty that is to say, Jacobin rule. Whether before or in consequence of this decree, the women and girls were one evening summoned to the bishop's palace and interrogated. For a time nothing followed, and the affair seemed at an end; but by and by they were arrested and confined in a convent in the town, "where we passed the winter," says Barbe Henry but probably it was the summer—“as agreeably as possible." The accused, with the exception of the Baroness de Lalance, belonged to the upper middle class rather than to the aristocracy. Madame Masson was a magistrate's widow; the Henrys were a magistrate's daughters; Mlle. Lagirouzière was a forest official's

daughter; the Watrins' father had been an | gated by Fouquier-Tinville. Even that officer; another prisoner was a captain's infamous man seems to have had comwidow; and another sold watches. In the punctions as to the juniors. He tried to spring, Barbe says - but it must have make them cast the whole responsibility been in November or December, 1793 - on their parents or relations; but, resigned it was decided that they should be tried to their fate, they refused to incriminate by the departmental tribunal at St. Mihiel. their elders. With perhaps impolitic retiAfter being again interrogated they were cence, indeed, they revoked their previous accordingly taken thither, about ninety in frank admissions, Barbe denying that she all, for besides these women and girls saw any sweetmeats, though, as we have there were male inhabitants, charged with seen, she actually offered them. One of intriguing for the capitulation. The sol- the Watrins had not been to the camp at diers who escorted them were very kind to all, but had merely sent money to her the prisoners; but at St. Mihiel they en- émigré brother. All were alike asked, countered a ferocious mob, and the soldiers even the two girls, whether by their inhad to draw their swords to save them trigue, they had not forced the garrison to from being massacred. The women and capitulate. "I was too frightened for the girls were detained four months in a that," replied Anne Watrin. "I hid in convent. Then orders came from Paris the garden to see the bombs fall." The that they should be conducted thither; fourteen women and girls-the three and the local authorities, evidently per- Henrys were orphans, and the Watrins ceiving that this was tantamount to a had no father living were brought on death-warrant, remonstrated against the the 24th of April before the tribunal, toexpense of transporting prisoners and gether with twenty-one men, viz., the capwitnesses to Paris, and were very dilatory tain who signed the capitulation, several in collecting the evidence. The accused municipal officers and gendarmes, five were again taken to Verdun, and again ecclesiastics, a druggist, a hairdresser, a interrogated. Barbe gave her age as 16; chandler, etc. Barbe states that behind but the magistrate, who wore the Jacobin the judges sat women toying and jesting emblem, the red cap, told the clerk to with them. The counsel assigned the write down that she was fille majeure prisoners was allowed a quarter of an hour an adult. "No, citizen," objected Barbe: to speak in their defence. "I am not of age, for I am only 16." "Hold your tongue," was the reply. "You like the Capets, for you offered sweetmeats and flowers to the Prussian tyrant." Then, turning to the clerk, he repeated, "Write fille majeure." Barbe, however, again objected, and her correct age was given.

On the 10th of March the accused were placed in open carts and started for Paris. There was no straw, and, while some of the prisoners sat on their small bundles of clothes, others were forced to stand and lean against the side of the cart. The gendarmes showed as much humanity as fear of compromising themselves allowed, and sometimes permitted them, when tired of their constrained posture and of the jolting, to get down and walk. At St. Ménéhould there was an attempted rescue by officers who had overtaken them from Verdun; but it was ineffectual. The journey lasted a fortnight; and on arriving in Paris they were taken at once to the Conciergerie, either because the other prisons were full or because an immediate trial had been resolved upon. Like the other inmates, they found the Conciergerie crowded and fetid but they prayed fervently. The prisoners were interroVOL. LXXVII. 3987

LIVING AGE.

All were convicted and sentenced to death; but the law then, as now, provided that capital sentences on persons under 16 should be commuted. Barbe and Claire were accordingly condemned to 20 years' imprisonment and to stand six hours on the scaffold. Had they been a few months older they would doubtless have perished, for boys just over 16 and girls of 18 were sacrificed on other occasions. Some of the spectators had shown compassion during the trial; but when sentence was pronounced there were plaudits, in which the witnesses joined. Thereupon, either from excitement or from bravado, the Watrins clapped their hands also; their compan. ions followed suit, "indulging in I know not what transports," says Barbe, who did not at the moment understand that her life was spared. Taken out of court, their hair was cut off, and their hands tied behind them. The executioner was about to prepare Barbe also for the guillotine; but her sister Suzanne exclaimed against the mistake, and he desisted. fainted. When she recovered consciousness she found herself in the bed of Madame de Boufflers, a fellow-prisoner, who showed the poor child every kindness. When the clock struck seven- - Barbe

Barbe

says: "in the morning;" a very excusa- | being assigned them out of their confisble inaccuracy, for it must have been cated property; but even these pensions evening Madame de Boufflers said, "It became conditional on taking an oath to is all over," and all was over. The twelve be faithful to the nation and to maintain had been guillotined. Next day Barbe liberty and equality. They were enand Claire were placed, not, it is said, on trapped into signing a blank paper as the guillotine, but on a platform erected being merely a promise not to disturb for the purpose, an inscription stating that public tranquillity; but this turned out to the girls had furnished money, food, and be the oath. They corresponded with munitions to the enemy; but passers-by their ex-chaplain and with relatives, who shrugged their shoulders and not a single did not conceal their sadness at the state insult was uttered. How long the girls of affairs, and one of their correspondents were imprisoned is not known; but it is warned them to be more discreet in their probable that they were liberated in 1795. letters and conversation. In June, 1794, Three-and-thirty years after this tragedy their lodgings were searched, and letters Barbe Henry, then the wife of a Colonel were seized, as also a portrait of Louis Meslier, wrote for her daughter's perusal, XVI. sent to Sister Brard by a cousin, on the eve of confirmation, the narrative Mulot de la Ménardière. A Voltairean from which we have largely quoted. It bookseller, and an incorrigible rhymester, was not written for publication, and has he had written under the portrait a quanever yet been published in its entirety; train extolling the king. It was an imbut the sculptor David d'Angers, having prudence to preserve their letters, for one with his revolutionary fanaticism justified condemned the king's execution, and anthe executions, Cuvillier Fleury, in a other expressed satisfaction at a repulse small volume, "Portraits Politiques et of the "French patriots" in Belgium. Révolutionnaires," was allowed in 1851 There were also verses sighing for the to give extracts from it. The narrative end of crimes and of devouring vultures. bears the stamp of truth, though of course Sister Brard having been prevented by after thirty years the writer may have the cold from working in the garden, fallen into slight inaccuracies. Her state- Mulot in verse wished the cold would dement, moreover, as to the Prussian officer stroy not only insects but Jacobin deputies. having been shot, which seems to have After being three days confined to their been studiously suppressed at the trial, is lodgings, the sixteen nuns were lodged as confirmed by the Prussian crown-prince's prisoners in the Visitation convent. diary, published in 1846.

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On the 17th July, 1794 — another eleven days and Robespierre's fall would have saved them sixteen Carmelite nuns from Compiègne were butchered on even flimsier pretexts. Their troubles had begun with domiciliary visits. They were repeatedly invited to re-enter the world, but unanimously refused. Some were even pressed by their families thus to study their own safety, and the brother of a novice of 16 (Marie Jeanne Meunier) went so far as to threaten force; but the novice, while thanking her family for their solicitude, declared that death alone should part her from the community. In September, 1792, however, they were compelled to quit their convent and assume secular dress. They were quartered in four houses in the town, scanty pensions

In 1815, according to information furnished in 1847 by a Prussian diplomatic attaché to M. Mérat for his "Verdun en 1792," she was offered a pension of twelve hundred francs by her old acquaintance Frederic William III., and refused it. Five years later, however, her residence near Metz having been burnt down, and having four children to bring up on small means, she applied for the pension; and she received it from 1821 till her death in 1836.

Thanks to a Sister Philippe, who happened to be away in Paris, and survived in a convent at Sens till 1856, we have some particulars of these unfortunate ladies. The prioress was Marie Charlotte Ledoine, 42 years of age. In girlhood she felt a vocation for the cloister; but her parents were too poor to pay a dowry. Princess Louise, daughter of Louis XV., who had joined the Carmelites at St. Denis, heard of and sent for her, and induced Marie Antoinette (not yet queen, but dauphine) to pay the money. In eleven years Marie Ledoine became prioress, and she composed hymns for use in the convent. Two of the nuns were in 1794 in their eightieth year. An other, Sister Croissy, was grand-niece of Louis XIV.'s able minister, Colbert; the then queen was present at her taking the veil, and she was for eight years prioress. Then there was a widow, Rosalie Chrétien de Neuville. Married at 18, and a widow at 23, she was for eighteen months inconsolable, refused to see anybody, and had

Another nun was on a visit of comfort to a bereaved family, and she also escaped.