The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-05-27 00:00:00

A SCENE FROM THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION.

The rule Correspondent of the Daily nary:al.!, sends
C tie follnwhor
The ,:::upatieu of the Church of Notre Dame ids
Vtetoires was accompanied by peculiar atrocities. Tius
Guards appeared there at four oil ick on Thursday
afternoon. Their first act was to expel with various
insults and foul abuse the numbers of people who were
saying their prayers ; then they arrrested the clergy
and some of the nelgtd,uring inhabitants who came in
to protest. The doors were ohlit, and the prisoners
were informed by an officer, in a pompous Imre* that
the Id -ct. of the vieit wan "to seek for corpsea in the
name of high morality." The atone pavement was
polled up ; tbe treasure of the Chinch, which was
very considerable, including gifts of precious objects
and votive offerings worth more thin £lO,OOO, was
soon discovered in a Geller ; but the search for
"corpus " was less productive. It way not till lute
In the evening, when the diggers got down deep
into the old burial-jos uhtl, that skeletons were found.
During the night the Guards, of course, get drunk; in
the intervals of their work they put on the vestments uf
the clergy, and executed dances and sang obscene
songs before their prisoners—telling them that they
had just dug up "the fresh Indies of women
slaughtered by the priests," but refusing to allow a
doctor, who sersa incarcerated with the othets, to verify
the autisation. Citizen Le Moussit, chief Cum
missaire de Police, presided over the proceeding ; he
was °inert at nine nextmorning by Pottier, a member
of the Commune, who, en his arrival, violently
atla bed the Imprisoned priests, screaming to them,
"111,rdrables, combien avezivous the de fernmee ?" but
who, finally, softened down and said that everybody
should be released if no charge could be substantiated.
, At the same moment a priest arrived from the Church
"of St. Augustin, which had been seized and
closed two hours before, to ask pertniesion from
Citizen Le Moussu to perform the burial sere
vice in the crypt of his church, urging tbst
several funerals were awaiting his return.
In reply he was instantly arrested, with the
organist of St. Augustin, who hril accompan'ed
him, and the funerals were left to thews dyes.
Ad day the prisoners were kept, a groat or• Is going
lon round them. They saw the church p tilutcol in
' ways which cannot be described; they taw the cash.
: box emptied, the boxes for voluntary gifts forced open
and their contents seized ; they .•,,1 the Notional
I Guards receive their pay out of the money thus
obtained, and become drunker and drunker; his y : aw
the metres, the lamps, the brorzs ornaments, and
I everything else of value pulled down and pa-bed Into
cases, which, with the treasure, were carried off in
four large vane. Then the obscene insults recommenced,
a cantini6T being remarkable, es-en amongst those
drunken brutes, in the incredible foulness of her ima-
gination and her language. At last, at six on Thurs-
day evening, after a detention of twenty-six hours, the
prisoners, save one priest, were told they might go
home. Such is the acts-unt given to me by one of the
released.

A correspondent of the Echo also writes i—
" A scene took place yesterday at the magnificent
new Church of the Trinity, at the end of the Chanest,e
d'Antin, on the Boulevard., which is worth describing
by itself. After stripping the buildings of all the valu-
ables and decorations, which were systematically car-
ried off in three furniture waggons, to be sold I pre-
sume, the Federal guards brought out the marble
statue of the Virgin, a gcm of art, blacked its eyes
with charcoal, made a hole in its mouth, into which
they stuck a dirty bliiirt pipe, and finally dressed up
the statue in the costume of a cantinit:re, who disrobed
herself on purpose. They wound up this exploit by
dancing a kind of cormagnuic round the statue and
drinking obscene toasts."