Nay more; when on the 29th Prairial those unfortunate men and
women were condemned and executed for alleged complicity in the
so-called " Foreign Conspiracy," de Batz, who is universally
admitted to have been the head and prime-mover of that conspiracy
--if, indeed, conspiracy there was--never made either the
slightest attempt to rescue his confederates from the guillotine,
or at least the offer to perish by their side if he could not
succeed in saving them.
And when we remember that the martyrs of the 29th Prairial
included women like Grandmaison, the devoted friend of de Batz,
the beautiful Emilie de St. Amaranthe, little Cecile Renault--a
mere child not sixteen years of age--also men like Michonis and
Roussell, faithful servants of de Batz, the Baron de Lezardiere,
and the Comte de St. Maurice, his friends, we no longer can have
the slightest doubt that the Gascon plotter and the English
gentleman are indeed two very different persons.
The latter's aims were absolutely non-political. He never
intrigued for the restoration of the monarchy, or even for the
overthrow of that Republic which lie loathed.
His only concern was the rescue of the innocent, the stretching
out of a saving hand to those unfortunate creatures who had fallen
into the nets spread out for them by their fellow-men; by those
who--godless, lawless, penniless themselves--had sworn to
exterminate all those who clung to their belongings, to their
religion, and to their beliefs.
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