the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth . In repelling the gospel , which would have brought her healing , France had opened the door to infidelity and ruin . When the restraints of God ' s law were cast aside , it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the powerful tides of human passion ; and the nation swept on to revolt and anarchy . The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in the world ' s history as the Reign of Terror . Peace and happiness were banished from the homes and hearts of men . No one was secure . He who triumphed today was suspected , condemned , tomorrow . Violence and lust held undisputed sway .
King , clergy , and nobles were compelled to submit to the atrocities of an excited and maddened people . Their thirst for vengeance was only stimulated by the execution of the king ; and those who had decreed his death soon followed him to the scaffold . A general slaughter of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined . The prisons were crowded , at one time containing more than two hundred thousand captives . The cities of the kingdom were filled with scenes of horror . One party of revolutionists was against another party , and France became a vast field for contending masses , swayed by the fury of their passions . " In Paris one tumult succeeded another , and the citizens were divided into a medley of factions , that seemed intent on nothing but mutual extermination ." And to add to the general misery , the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with the great powers of Europe . " The country was nearly bankrupt , the armies were clamouring for arrears of pay , the Parisians were starving , the provinces were laid waste by brigands , and civilization was almost extinguished in anarchy and license ."
All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and torture which Rome had so diligently taught . A day of retribution at last had come . It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust into dungeons and dragged to the stake . Long ago these had perished or been driven into exile . Unsparing Rome now felt the deadly power of those whom she had trained to delight in deeds of blood . " The example of persecution which the clergy of France had exhibited for so many ages , was now retorted upon them with signal vigour . The scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests . The galleys and the prisons , once crowded with Huguenots , were now filled with their persecutors . Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar , the Roman Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so freely inflicted on the gentle heretics ."
" Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals ; when no man could greet his neighbours or say his prayers . . . without danger of committing a capital crime ; when spies lurked in every corner ; when the guillotine was long and hard at work every morning ; when the jails were filled as close as the holds of a slave ship ; when the gutters ran foaming with blood into the Seine . . . . While the daily wagonloads of victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris , the proconsuls , whom the sovereign committee had sent forth to the departments , revelled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in the capital . The knife of the deadly machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter .
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