many cases, not only beyond the extinction of the last throb of life, but to the utmost limits of humiliation and disfigurement, with which the slaughtering knife was made to do its office. The whole story is a terrific illustration of what human nature is capable of becoming and of perpetrating under the spur of bigotry and religious hatred, aided by the hardening and depraving influence of barbarous institutions and manners; but we should be giving ourselves up, in some degree, to the very spirit which animated the sanguinary mob whose excesses we have been recounting, were we to charge the Catholic religion in particular with the crimes committed on this occasion by those who happened to be its votaries. Enormities, such as those we have been contemplating, have no more natural connexion with the peculiar dogmas of the Catholic than they have with those of the Protestant form of faith. They flow from such an excess of religious zeal as amounts in fact to a perversion of the spirit of all religion (which is that of love and mercy) into one of the very opposite character. The general opinion of the Catholic world, as we have just found De Thou recording, condemned the Parisian massacre from the first in terms as decided as any employed by the Protestants themselves; and with a very few exceptions, writers of that persuasion, down to our own day, have continued to shew themselves as eager as any other, in expressing their detestation of this foulest and bloodiest treachery of ancient or modern times.

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CHAPTER XI.

PLACE LOUIS XV.

Formation of Place Louis XV.-Statue of Louis XV.-Accident at Marriage of Louis XVI.-Revolution of 1789 breaks out in Place Louis XV. -Executions here during the Revolution-Execution of Louis XVI.

On the conclusion of the general peace of Aix-laChapelle in 1748, the city of Paris resolved to present a statue to the reigning King Louis XV. It was this circumstance which gave occasion to the formation of the magnificent square called the Place Louis Quinze. The ground on which it stands was at this time a shapeless and unoccupied waste-forming a singularly uncharacteristic place of passage between the splendid garden of the palace and the not less beautiful Champs Elysées beyond, and breaking the continuity of what was otherwise one of the most prolonged and harmonious vistas of richly ornamented landscape. But in 1763, when the statue was finished, it was determined to convert this spacious opening into a place for its reception, and operations were immediately commenced for levelling the ground and reducing it to a regular form. The statue-a representation in bronze of the king on horseback, supported by four virtues-was fixed in the centre of the new Place on the 19th of April that year, and uncovered to the public view on the 20th of June following. The buildings around the square were begun about the same time, but were not finished till 1772. And it was not till 1784 that the wooden fence which had been ori

ginally raised around the statue, was taken down, and replaced by a balustrade of white marble. This statue, when it was first erected, drew forth many smart sayings from the wits of the capital, in allusion both to the disposition and the execution of the figures, of which those forming the pedestal were very inferior to that of the king which they supported. Of these pasquinades the following is still remembered as one of the most stinging:

"O la belle statue! ô le beau piédestal!

Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!"

Before the Place Louis XV, was quite finished, it was the scene of a catastrophe, memorable for the number of victims it involved, and for the remarkable occasion of national festivity and rejoicing, over which it threw so sudden and inauspicious a gloom. Never perhaps had any royal marriage been hailed with gladder expectations than that of the unfortunate Louis XVI., then Dauphin and heir of France, with the beautiful daughter of Maria Theresa, which was celebrated at Versailles on the 16th of May, 1770. Even on that day, however, the superstitious, it is recorded, were not unvisited by certain misgivings and fears when, during the performance of the nuptial ceremony, a violent storm burst upon Versailles, accompanied by so heavy a rain as almost to inundate the town. But at Paris, a few days afterwards, the earth was drenched, not with water, but with blood. On the 30th various festive spectacles were exhibited in the capital in honour of the recent nuptials; and the day was concluded by a magnificent display of fireworks in the Place Louis XV., which attracted a multitude that filled to overflowing the whole of that capacious square. As soon as this show was over, the immense mass of spectators, separating into different bodies, sought to leave the

ground by the various openings which led from it; but by far the largest portion endeavoured to effect their retreat through the broad street, the Rue Royale, leading directly to the northern Boulevards and the adjacent parts of the city. Here shortly commenced a terrible scene. The buildings on both sides of the street were still going on; and in some places merely the foundations had been dug for houses which were not yet begun. By the lamentable negligence of the authorities these openings in the ground had been allowed to remain uncovered and unfenced, while elsewhere heaps of building materials lay about in all directions. When the foremost ranks of the crowd therefore, pressed upon by those behind, poured in upon the street in a voluminous wave, many of the miserable people, encountering these pitfalls and other obstacles, were instantly thrown down in the rush, and trodden into the earth, or buried beneath numbers of other bodies falling after them into the same trench. To augment the pressure and confusion, many persons, not aware that the show was over, or anxious perhaps to obtain the places of those whom they saw leaving the ground, still continued to move towards the square, some on foot and some in carriages, and thus, even where the way was otherwise clear, blocked it up with their opposing current. The tumult and consternation now became universal. The cries of young and old, and of both sexes, rent the air; and despair and madness took possession of the mighty multitude. Every individual strove for himself with frenzied and superhuman energy; the strong, although even the strongest could do but little to aid themselves in such a struggle, yet endeavoured recklessly to force their way forward over the bodies of their weaker companions; many drew their swords, and, extending their arms by a wild effort over the shoulders

of those around them, attempted to hack out for themselves a path of escape by repeated blows with their weapons on the dense mass of their fellow-sufferers. The destruction of life which took place on this occasion was never correctly ascertained. The number of those killed on the spot is allowed, by the lowest estimate, to have exceeded three hundred; of whom above one hundred and thirty still lay stretched on the ground, or were found crushed among the foundations of the buildings, when the police visited the scene next morning; but it has been calculated that at least twelve hundred persons died almost immediately of their wounds, while probably a much greater number, who for some time survived the catastrophe, were eventually brought to their graves by the injuries they then received.

It was in the Place Louis XV. that the Revolution of 1789 may be said to have first broken out. It was here, at least, that the first of the blood was shed that flowed in that terrible convulsion. On the morning of the 12th July a detachment of the Swiss guards with four pieces of cannon had been stationed in the Champs Elysées, to be in readiness to repress the popular disturbances which were apprehended from the state of the public mind. About noon the news of the dismissal of Necker reached Paris, and inflamed the indignation of the citizens to such a degree that it became very evident they would not long confine themselves to mere murmurs and menaces against the government. A crowd immediately collected; and, having taken the busts of the ex-minister and the Duke of Orleans from a wax-work on the northern boulevards, bore them in tumultuous triumph through the principal streets. By this time the King's German regiment of cavalry, commanded by the Prince of Lambesc, had drawn up in the Place Louis XV., where the