too frequent prostitute to power, as presenting prospects of profit or promotion. "By one of those acts of imposture and villainy, of which," notes my well-informed authority, "the history of ministries, in all the countries of Europe, affords no lack of instances, it was resolved, to raise a screen between the Ministry and popular hatred, by the cruel and disgraceful destruction of Lally;" and, as to the co-operation needed from lawyers for the purpose, "the grand tribunal of the nation, the Parliament of Paris, found no difficulty in seconding the wishes of the Ministry, and the artificial cry of the day, by condemning him to an ignominious death.”

Over the long and disgusting farce of the politico-legal formalities that were to terminate in such a melancholy tragedy, I pass to the more immediate preliminaries of the final catastrophe, and its heartless perpetration. For the interrogatories that were to precede his sentence, the prisoner was ordered to be removed, in the night between the 4th and 5th of May, 1766, from the Bastille to the prison called the Concier gerie; whence there was, by several flights of stairs, and through different halls, a communication with the great Court of Parliament Though it was not more than 1 o'clock in the morning when he arrived, he would not go to bed. About 7, he was brought before his Judges, and soon found he might make up his mind for the worst. He was firs divested of his honours, or commanded to give up his Grand Cross and Red Riband of the Order of St. Louis. This he did with such power over his feelings, as not to evince any apparent concern. He was next told, to seat himself upon a stool; an indication that the sentence to be passed upon him would at least involve corporal punishment. "He could not,” says an enemy, "bear up against this decree of infamy. Covered with 14 scars, how hard was his destiny, to fall into the hands of the execotioner!" Accordingly, "then, and not before, he discovered great emotion," uncovered his head, displaying the grey locks of age, hared his breast marked with the wounds of honour, and joining his hands, and looking upwards, as if appealing from earth to heaven, exclaimed"Here, then, is the reward of so many years' services!"* The interre tories to which he was subjected lasted 6 hours, during which, beg greatly fatigued, he was allowed a glass of wine and water. From tha examination, he was reconducted to prison. Next day, the 6th, to the scr prise and horror of all not interested in such a decision, the sentence of condemnation (already set forth) was pronounced, with a reluctant deferring by the Parliament, of execution till the 9th. A characteristic deputa tion from the same iniquitous tribunal to Louis XV. recommended the King to show no mercy, or, as they metaphorically expressed it, "x enchain his clemency!"-that shameless request being made, in order frustrate the efforts, in Lally's favour, of his connexions and friends who, in opposition to the meditated murder of the General, loudly demanded what they knew, that, on his behalf, they were so well entitie to demand, "not pardon, but justice!" The Parliament, with thest other reasons (such as those reasons were!) for thus hounding Lally s death, had, it should be observed, a special motive for being intent on making him an example-namely, that, as in their contentions ca several occasions with the Crown, a General Officer had been deputed zo break up their refractory sittings, they, with proportionable irritation. For the "55 years" of one account, and the "45 years" of another, I ad stitute " 'so many years,” as applicable to either period passed in the service.

and desire of revenge for such mortifying exercises of authority at their expense, were anxious to have satisfaction against some representative of the like military grade, and more particularly against Lally. Not that he appears to have been such an instrument of the Crown for dissolving them; but that the triumph for which they longed would, they conceived, be the greater, if obtained over him, since he was not only of the rank in the army obnoxious to them, but had also exercised viceregal sway; and thus the offending military and sovereign power would, as it were, be both rendered accountable for the past, in his person. In opposition, however, to this corporate spirit of persecution, so strong a feeling was excited in favour of Lally among those of his own profession, that, on the 8th, at the rising of the Council of State, the Marshal de Soubise threw himself upon his knees before the King, beseeching his Majesty to grant, "in the name of the army, at least the pardon of General Lally!" With the treacherous and hypocritical effrontery of a master-politician, the Premier, or Duke of Choiseul, as if he had no hand in the abominable treatment of Lally, followed the example of Soubise. Louis raised up the honest Marshal, and fixing his eyes pointedly on the double-dealing Duke, said to him-"It is you who have caused him to be arrested. It is too late. They have judged him. They have judged him." And, long after, his Majesty remarked, that such an execution was, indeed, a massacre, though it was others who were answerable for it, and not he-an attempt of the King to exculpate himself, which, however satisfactory he may have deemed it, seems anything but so to us.

The evening of this last ineffectual appeal to the Crown for mercy, the unfortunate Count was taken from the Bastille, as too honourable a place of confinement, to a jail for common criminals. Notwithstanding that sufficiently ominous removal, and his being aware of the decision against him, he is said to have still clung to the notion, that there would be some postponement of his fate. Next day, however, or the 9th, at noon, he was summoned to the chapel of the prison, there to learn, too surely, that he had now only to prepare for DEATH. The officer appointed to read his sentence to him, the attendants to take possession of his person for the executioner after the reading of that sentence, and a confessor, appeared before him. On hearing the unjust doom, he specially denounced, as utterly false, the allegation of his "having betrayed the interests of the King," and naturally devoted, in the strongest terms of indignant despair, the political and legal authors of his unmerited destruction to general execration here, and divine vengeance hereafter. Then, seeming to recover from this vehement outburst of passion, or become more collected in himself, and pacing to and fro for some time, while directing one hand, beneath his dress, towards his heart, and with the other seeking a pair of compasses he had been using for geographical purposes, he affected to kneel down as if to pray, and suddenly attempted to wound himself mortally with the compasses, which penetrated 4 inches, but without effecting his object; a movement he made in lowering himself having preserved the heart. He was, of course, not allowed to repeat the blow, and the blood-stained compasses were handed to the Confessor, the venerable Aubry, Curé of the Parish of St. Louis en l'Ile; who did his utmost to console the unhappy General, and bring him, from this state of distraction, to a different disposition of mind, or feelings of resignation and religion. Nor were those zealous efforts of

7

the Priest without producing such satisfactory results, that, in the generous conflict of sentiment between the principles of his classical and theological education, the worthy man observed of the Count after his decease-" He stabbed himself as a hero, and repented as a Christian!" Meanwhile the rage of Lally's enemies against him, instead of being at all mitigated by the approaching certainty of his death, was bent, with a sort of diabolic spirit, or Jewish intensity of vengeance, on adding whatever anguish they could to the closing scene of his existence. The King had intimated to the Parliament, that, so far as might be consistent with the charges for which the prisoner was to suffer, every respect should be shown him, in connexion with his execution. It was consequently understood, and accordingly communicated by the Confessor to the General, that the ceremony was to take place by night; that be was to leave the prison by torch-light in his own carriage, with the Confessor, an officer in a civilian's dress, and a valet-de-chambre; that the carriage might be followed by the coaches of such friends, as desired to pay him that last sad tribute of their regard; and that the execu tioner should only be in attendance at the scaffold, for the performance of his duty. But the persecutors of Lally could not bear that he should quit life, without draining the gall and wormwood of their inveterate malignity to the very dregs. They contrived to set the above arrangement for the execution aside, as not sufficiently lacerating to the feelings of the dying man.

*

The principal hand in effecting such a detestable "change for the worse was the infamous Recorder, Pasquier. This hard-hearted official, whose name is also associated elsewhere with a sentence of most monstrous cruelty, is described as "very expert in the labyrinth and chicanery of the law, very dexterous and subtle, and, at the same time, an old man, subject to prejudices, headstrong, violent, and choleric;" and, having been roughly handled by Lally in the course of his so-called trial, had drawn the final report upon it in such an unfair and sanguinary spirit, as mairly led to his condemnation. Not regarding even this condemnation to be rigorous enough per se, the vindictive and remorseless procurer of it now insisted, that an execution of the sentence, merely in the manner above mentioned, was quite inadmissible, as amounting, in his opinion, to a mitigation of punishment; death, he argued, being nothing, unless attended by every horror of an infamous apparatus at its infliction! And such accompaniments of an execution, with extra forms of brutal insult to the dying, it was accordingly the special object of this revolting specimen of loathsome lawyerism to order as if to present a sufficiently indignant conception to our minds of the immeasurable contrast between the hero who was to suffer, and the reptile to whom his suffering, and the disgraceful aggravation of it, were to be owing, on this occasion-a lion, as it were, to be destroyed by the paltry poison of a contemptible adder. unappeased at the idea of being merely able to effect that destruction, or spitefully fretting itself until satisfied that every drop of its vile venom should operate most effectually, by agonizing its noble victim, with doe intensity, to the very last. It was decided by this rancorous wretch, and his abominable associates, in the unmanly meanness of thus trampling upon the fallen, whose hours were numbered,—that, to render the exect

* That of the poor Chevalier de la Barre, condemned, at Abbeville, although only about 17, to be put to death, by "la torture ordinaire et extraordinaire," and executed accordingly!