All the windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls this morning in these streets by one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with march burning, but no word or movement; it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling is the only sound. Louis reads in his book of devotion the prayers of the dying; clatter of this death march falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward and forget the earth. Heedless of all, Louis reads his prayers of the dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the carriage opens. What temper he is in! Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the black mahlstrom and descent of death, in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation, struggling to be resigned. “Take care of Edgeworth.” He straitly charges the lieutenant who is sitting with them; then they two descend. The drums are beating; “Taisez-vous” (silence) he cries in a terrible voice, d’une voix terrible. He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of grey, white stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The executioners approach to bind him; he spurns, resists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the scaffold, his face very red, and says: “Frenchmen, I die innocent. It is from the scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that France ---” A general on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand. “Tambours!” The drums drown the voice. “Executioners, do your duty!” The executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (For Santerre and his armed ranks will strike if they do not), seize the hapless Louis – six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there – and bind him to their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him, “Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven.” The axe clanks down, a king’s life is shorn away. It is Monday, the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged thirty-eight years four months and twenty-eight days. Executioner Samson shows the head; a fierce shout of Vive la Republique! rises and swells. There is a dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterwards denied it, sells locks of the hair; fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings. And so, in some half hour it is done and the multitude has all departed.
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February 5th. – It is as true as it is extraordinary that the French armies have a great deal of women in, who act both as officers and privates; and at the late battle of Hocheim two women in officers’ uniforms were taken. One had received three wounds, and the other that evening delivered a fine boy. George Wood, of Bottom-o’-th’-moor, died Feb. 8th, age 65 years. New burial ground, Manchester, Feb. 10th. Rev. Mills Wrigley performed the burial service, when there were interred in one grave 11 coffins and 12 bodies, a woman and child being intombed in one coffin. This new burial ground was connected with St. Michael’s Church. According to the “New Manchester Guide, 1815”, St. Michael’s Church “was consecrated on the 23rd July, 1789. The present minister (1815) is the Rev. Miles Wrigley. Adjoining the burial ground belonging to this church, which is tolerably large, is what is called the new burial ground. It is appropriated to the interment of poor persons, who have no family place of burial, and is attached to the Collegiate Church, in which the register is kept, but the service is performed by the minister of S. Michael’s. The number of persons who are continually dying in Manchester must be great, and an expeditious and economical method of interring the bodies has been adopted. A very large grave for the reception of mortality is digged, and when not actually in use for depositing remains of the dead is covered over with planks, which are locked down in the night, until the hole is filled up with coffins piled beside and upon one another. The cavern of death is then closed and covered up with earth, and another pit is prepared and filled in the same manner. This cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Chester, 21st September, 1787, since which many thousand bodies have been interred in this depot of mortality”. This graveyard is now kept as an open space near S. Michael’s Church, being carefully flagged over and railed round, and used as a common playground. Travellers on the railway between Manchester and Oldham may have noticed it in passing. Preston, February 12th – This day the Royal Lancashire Militia were embodied here. February 15th – An exalent fine winter thus far. |
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Manchester, February 10th – It is as true as it is extraordinary, that upwards of 1,200 young men enlisted in the different colars here in the course of the last seven days, as appeared in Harrop and Wheeler’s Manchester papers News had arrived that France had declared war a few days before, hence this agitation in military quarters. Ten days elapsed before England declared war against France, as will be seen shortly.
Oldham, February 6th – This day, at the Angel Inn here, there was a numerous and respectable meeting of the inhabitants of Oldham, Crompton, Chadderton, and Royton, Jos. Pickford in the chair, when it was resolved to send an address to his Majesty, which was signed by a great number of the inhabitants. The French Revolutionists had tried all they knew by means of the Constitutional Clubs to raise a spirit of revolution in England. A proclamation had been issued by the king, denouncing this seditious correspondence. Chauvelrin, the French ambassador, had boldly declared against this proclamation. Under such circumstances it was necessary even for Fox to pull in his horns, he declaring that the discussion of parliamentary reform was inexpedient just then – hence the meetings in every part of the country to assure the king of the loyalty of his subjects. “Joseph Pickford”, the chairman, will be recognised as the indomitable magistrate who afterwards took the name of Radcliffe and was knighted as Sir Joseph Radcliffe, for faithfully discharging the magisterial duties in the Luddite turmoil. January 12th. – This day, in Wheeler’s Manchester paper, the landlords for the division of Middleton testified their loyalty by signing and address, dated Dec. 22nd, 1792. In Middleton 12, Royton 7, Crompton 9, Chadderton 7, Oldham 44, and the names of James Mills, Redtom Nook, and James Clough, of Lower-moor, did not appear; Ashton-under-Lyne 49. Those of Rochdale appeared in a former paper. We may guage, to some extent, the hold which Jacobinism had on the public mind by this statement. Out of forty-six publicans in Oldham, only 2 did not sign the address of loyalty. It will be noted that this was long before the declaration of war, or even the death of the French King. February 1st – The French declare war against England and Holland.
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February 11th – England declares war against France.
This war lasted ten years. Pitt had kept this country out of war as long as he could. Green says: “It was France and not England which at last wrenched from his grasp the peace to which he clung so desperately. No hour of Pitt’s life is so great as the hour when he stood alone in England and refused to bow to the growing cry of the nation for war.” Thomas Carlyle puts this matter before the world, in his usual grim fashion, as follows:- England declares war, being shocked principally, it would seem, at the condition of the River Scheldt; Spain declares war, being shocked principally at some other thing, which doubtless the manifesto indicates. Nay we find it was not England that declared war first, or Spain first; but that France herself declared war first on both of them – a point of immense parliamentary and journalistic interest in those days, but which has become of no interest whatever in these. They all declare war – the sword is drawn, the scabbard thrown away. It is even as Danton said, in one of his all too gigantic figures, “The coalised Kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the head of a King.” Manchester, February 19th. – This day there was a meeting of the inhabitants here, when they came to the resolution to assist the Government, when it was agreed to give three guineas extra to 500 marines, who should immediately enter. In this town a subscription was then entered, and £1,200 was immediately subscribed. Rochdale, February 25th – This loyal town gives four guineas over and above his Majesty’s bounty, which makes fourteen guineas per man, for a troop to be raised in this parish, for the 7th Regiment of Dragoons. March 2nd – Last night died Mary, wife of James Woolstoncroft, of Magot-lane. February 27th – in Jonathan Chadwick’s, of Wood, seven of that family, which consisted of nine, are at this time, violently afflicted with a fever. Sunday, March 3rd – Last night there was one of the most tremendous nights for winds ever remembered. It is impossible to describe its velosety, or to give a detail of the damages sustained here and in all the county south-west, for that was its direction. In this neighbourhood it drove down a deal of chimneys, blew down several barns, and drove out several windows. At Manchester it drove down two of the spires of the old church, which made their way through the church, one person was killed. A woman and a child passing over the old wooden bridge, which railing was blown down, have not since been heard of. The spires blown down had the church and King’s colours fix to them. |
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William Rowbottom's Diary as published in the Oldham Standard |
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