At the Abbaye, the captives first heard the tolling of the tocsin. Then the heavy doors swung open before armed men who announced that they were to be conducted to La Force to stand trial. Such a word might well have kindled the hope of a lawful tribunal; yet beyond the wicket-gate, bare sabres lay in wait. During those grim days of September 1792, the promise of a hearing was thus turned, for many a wretch, into a mortal snare.
The dread of foreign invasion had seized Paris. Hostile armies were advancing, and on the 1st of September the rumour spread that Verdun had fallen; the populace believed the fortress had succumbed to treason, whereas it was merely invested. At that very hour, the prisons were being filled with nobles, refractory priests, former servants of the court, and denounced citizens. In his political interpretation, Champagnac charges Danton and Marat with having contrived the destruction of these captives before the arrival of the foreign hosts; this accusation remains his own assertion, and constitutes no established fact attested by the scenes that ensued.
On Sunday, the 2nd of September, the thoroughfares were thronged. A levy of citizens had been decreed, and it was whispered abroad that the Prussians might reach the capital within three days. At the Abbaye, the gaolers had sent their families away since morning. The midday meal was served earlier than was customary, and the knives had been withdrawn from the napkins. The prisoners questioned their keepers concerning these precautions, but the warders kept silent. Then, towards two of the clock, the drums beat the general alarm, the bells clanged, and the alarm gun shook the air.
Twenty-four priests, detained for having refused the civic oath, were ordered to be conveyed from the Hôtel-de-Ville to the Abbaye. Six carriages bore them away under the escort of Breton and Marseillais federates. Along the quays, a clamorous mob reviled them as conspirators who had plotted to cut the throats of wives and children whilst the patriots marched to the frontier. The carriage doors were wrenched open; the captives were struck, insulted, and thrust into the courtyard of the Abbaye. Maillard and his men stood there. The first prisoners were dispatched upon the spot. A single man, the Abbé Sicard, escaped the butchery.
Billaud-Varennes entered the courtyard following the slaughter of the ecclesiastics. Champagnac attributes to him these words: “People, thou immolatest thine enemies; thou art doing thy duty.” Maillard replied that nothing more remained to be done there, and led his troop towards the monastery of the Carmelites, wherein some two hundred priests had been confined. Amongst them was the Archbishop of Arles. Men ran to seek him out and struck him down. The prisoners fled scattered through the church, the gardens, and the chambers; some sought sanctuary beside the altar or behind the trees. Two brothers of the house of La Rochefoucauld, the Bishops of Beauvais and of Saintes, were likewise slain. The massacre dragged on as the assailants scoured the grounds.
Maillard returned thereafter to the Abbaye, bathed in sweat, and demanded wine for his “labourers.” The sectional committee caused twenty-four pints to be served out to him. The men drank in the courtyard, amid the corpses, and then turned toward the prison proper. The captives heard the clamour before they saw the gates yield. The foremost among them were dragged into the yard and butchered without the semblance of an inquiry. Maillard ordered the gaol registers and the keys to be brought forth; his followers thereupon improvised a tribunal.
A prisoner would be summoned before a table, whilst other armed men guarded the wicket. The president read the name and the cause of arrest, then uttered a preconcerted phrase. “Monsieur, to La Force” served in truth as the sentence of death, signaling his dismissal to the slaughterers outside. These words lent to brute butchery the guise of a judicial decree, void though it was of any lawful hearing or legitimate magistrate. The Swiss soldiers held at the Abbaye were among the first led to the portal. Maillard reproached them with the slaughter of the 10th of August; they replied that they had fought only because they were assailed, and were obeying their officers. They were promised another trial. Knowing full well what awaited them, they recoiled before the gate. One of them at last sprang forward; the others followed in his wake.
Reding, a Swiss officer wounded in the earlier strife, was next fetched from his pallet. When one of the band sought to carry him out, he declared that he had suffered enough and feared not death, but begged that they might end his life upon the spot. One of the assailants stood motionless for an instant. His fellow urged him on; Reding was carried into the street and butchered. In this succession of horrors, that momentary hesitance did not avail to save the soldier. Elsewhere, the gaol-book and the customary formula sufficed to consign the prisoners to the selfsame doom.
The former minister Montmorin demanded a lawful tribunal. Maillard answered him that he should go to La Force “to await a new trial.” Montmorin asked for a coach and a few effects, then took some paces toward the gate. He was slaughtered immediately. The King’s valet-de-chambre was, according to the phrase attributed to Maillard, condemned along with his master. During the evening, the Abbé Lenfant and the Abbé Chapt de Rastignac bestowed their blessing upon the captives from the chapel gallery. An hour later, they were themselves put to death.
Journiac de Saint-Méard, who lay imprisoned within the Abbaye, was brought before Maillard. The chief count against him concerned his connection with a royalist journal; the captive denied having penned its contents. He was further charged with having consorted with the émigrés. He answered that a formal certificate attested he had not quit Paris for three-and-twenty months. A bystander recognized the signature. The instrument was scrutinized and pronounced authentic. Saint-Méard then conceded that he was accounted a royalist, but denied all manner of conspiracy.
The judgment was a pardon. The surrounding prisoners embraced him; two men shielded him with their arms and helped him pass through the thicket of pikes. Saint-Méard offered them money. They refused it, asking only for an embrace. The verification of the document, followed by the recognition of the magistrate who had signed it, afforded him an issue of life which so many others, led to that fatal wicket, were denied.
The massacres spread from the 2nd to the 6th of September to La Force, the Châtelet, the Conciergerie, the Bernardins, Saint-Firmin, the Salpêtrière, and Bicêtre. At La Force, Champagnac describes the appearance of the Princesse de Lamballe before a wicket similar to that of the Abbaye. When questioned concerning the intrigues of the court, she replied that she knew of none. She was commanded to swear fidelity to liberty and hatred to the King and Queen; she consented to the former oath, but refused the latter. The leader of the wicket ordered her to be released. In the street, she was butchered. The chronicle records that portions of her remains were paraded through Paris and that the rabble repaired to the Temple, wherein the royal family was confined. The Queen swooned upon being apprised of what had transpired; the King reproached the intruders for having conveyed such a calamity to his consort in so brutal a manner.
The Princesse de Tarente, examined for many hours, was spared after having refuted the charges against the Queen. At the Abbaye, Cazotte was snatched from the mob when his daughter threw herself before him and clung to his neck; Sombreuil was delivered, according to Champagnac, through the heroic devotion of his child. Roland refused to disburse payment to the men who had partaken in the slaughters. The chronicle records, however, that the Commune paid sundry sums to the executioners, including an entry of 1,463 livres inscribed on the 4th of September.
At Bicêtre, the captives offered desperate resistance, and cannon were brought up to subdue them. The carnage there continued until the 5th of September; an authority cited by Champagnac still records executions at La Force on the following day. Then the gates ceased to open upon those feigned transfers. There remained only the gaol registers, the sums noted in the municipal disbursements, and the recollections of those who had waited their turn before the wicket. Among them, Saint-Méard had survived because an instrument had been authenticated. For the rest, the promise of another trial had been nothing more than the final word before the pavement ran with blood.