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Updated: May 31, 2025
After several days of a mockery which was called a trial, though the witnesses were afraid to appear, or the Counsel to plead in his favour, Custine has suffered at the Guillotine. I can be no judge of his military conduct, and Heaven alone can judge of his intentions. None of the charges were, however, substantiated, and many of them were absurd or frivolous.
Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs and dresses that "malproprete profonde et huileuse" which M. de Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted with that of the southern nations. The cafe of the Indian, on the contrary, was perfectly clean and new.
It was the citoyen Beauvisage, of the Committee of Surveillance. "Citoyens," he announced, "we have bad news: Custine has evacuated Landau." "Custine is a traitor!" cried Gamelin. "He shall be guillotined," said Beauvisage. Trubert, in his rather breathless voice, expressed himself with his habitual calmness: "The Convention has not instituted a Committee of Public Safety for fun.
The barque Lafayette, with an assorted cargo, we burned. The schooner Crenshaw, with an assorted cargo for the West Indies, we burned. The barque Lauretta, with an assorted cargo on board for Europe, we burned. The brig Baron de Custine we took a bond for and released. The whaling ship Levi Starbuck we burned. The T.B. Wales, from Calcutta to Boston, with a valuable cargo on board, we burned.
When Custine, a few weeks before his death, left the army to visit some of the neighbouring towns, the command devolved on Laveneur, who received, along with other official papers, a list of countersigns, which, having probably been made some time, and not altered conformably to the changes of the day, contained, among others, the words Condorcet Constitution; and these were in their turn given out.
General de Beauharnais was to turn to good what General Custine, according to the opinion of these gentlemen of the Convention, had failed to do. This was an important and highly significant order, and to leave it unfulfilled was to excite the anger of the Committee of Safety; it was simply to deserve death.
The frontier from Dunkirk to Givet was threatened by superior forces. Custine was promptly called from the Moselle to the army of the north, but his presence did not restore affairs. Valenciennes, the key to France, was taken; Conde shared the same fate; the army, driven from position to position, retired beyond the Scarpe, before Arras, the last post between the Scarpe and Paris.
Petersburg, had stopped at Stettin; and, on his leaving the inn to take ship for Cronstadt next day, the innkeeper said to him: ``Well, you are going into a very bad country. ``How so? said De Custine; ``when did you travel there? ``Never, answered the inn- keeper; ``but I have kept this inn for many years.
These disasters enabled Robespierre and the Commune to impose their views as to the conduct of the military affairs of the Republic. Decrees were passed for purifying the army. The aristocrat generals, Beauharnais, Biron, Custine, were removed, and, eventually, were all sent to the scaffold. Sans-culottes, some honest, some capable, many dishonest, many incapable, replaced them.
Then, as never before, I realized the feeling which the Marquis de Custine had revealed, to the amusement of Europe and the disgust of the Emperor Nicholas, nearly twenty years before. The brilliant marquis, on his way to St.
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