(Pierre Gaupin), though a man of talents and an author, would hardly have deserved a place in this work, did not his life and the manner of his death hold out an awful warning against those principles which produced the overthrow of social order in France.

He was a native of the town of Nevers, in the Orleanais; and as he rose to the office of recorder in Paris, few men excited more attention in France for a time, or had a more hateful task to perform, during the most tragic part of the revolution, than Chaumette. He had been bred to the sea; but not relishing that life, and failing to obtain expected preferment therein, he quitted it, and lived by the use of his pen, which he certainly knew how to manage more to his profit than the compass. He could, however, speak better, and more fluently, than he could write. He had also been employed as a librarian and amanuensis to a dignitary of the church, in the diocese of Nivernais; but at the commencement of the troubles in France, he was actually a clerk to an attorney, and occasionally wrote for the newspapers, as well as trifles for the stage. He was one of the chief disciples of Camille Desmoulins, and among the first who put the tri-coloured cockade in his hat just before the taking of the Batilie. He greatly out-ran that apostle in zeal for the new faith; for when Camille was composing the first number of his Vie Cordelier, with the hope of tranquillising the overexcited imaginations of the leaders of that great event, and tempering the public rage against the real or supposed enemies of the new order of things, Chaumette was still farther inflaming it, and directing it in vengeance against particular individuals. It was Chaumette that instigated the commune of Paris to demand the trial of the queen, and he was of the committee which prepared the charges and regulated the evidence against that ill-fated woman. He was himself a witness too against her. The most infamous part of Chaumette's conduct on that occasion was his accusing the queen of an incestuous connection with her son. Even the horrid tribunal was shocked at this insinuation, of which the author became instantly the object of almost universal abhorrence; and Robespierre himself, under whose auspices Chaumette was believed to act, grew outrageous when he was told of a charge so scandalously absurd. "The fool (exclaimed he!) was it not enough that he had proved her a Medsllina, but he must make her an A- grippina too!" Of proof indeed there was not much; and the severest enemy of the beautiful Antoinette, if his mind be not wholly warped by prejudice, will admit, that by these brethren in iniquity she was murdered under the form of a revolutionary trial.

Robespierre had sense enough to see that this abominable conduct of Chaumette would hurt the cause in which they were both embarked; and for that reason he never forgave him, though he allowed the zeal to continue to operate on interior objects, till it weakened the zealot himself in ruin. Chaumette had credit now with none but the very fount of the revolution; and such recremenditious matter will always be thrown off in national ebullitions of this kind.

Robespierre was at this time in the very zenith of his power, yet Chaumette moved such a proposition in the full commune, as gave reason to many to believe that he would set up as his rival in the city. This daring motion was for uniting all the heads of the 48 sections of Paris in one council; a measure that would have surmounted the force of the legislature itself, if not its authority. This was a project, conceived in common with the famous Hébert, Momora, and Mazuel, and would have been aided in its execution by the daring Roussin, who at that time commanded a body of the armé révolutionnaire.

How far Robespierre was apprised of or approved the scheme, does not appear; many shrewd observers of what was passing, seemed satisfied that it was to have been only a prelude "to the dwelling act" that was to follow, when the hero of the piece was to have been in full play. The majority of the convention saw through the veil which covered the workings of the plot, and anticipated their own danger, should it be carried into effect. They, therefore, without loss of time, annulled the proceedings already had in it, and declared all to be rebels who should persist therein. Chaumette appeared to put a good face on the correction. He told the commune, on its next meeting, that his proposition must be relinquished; for that the convention, with a voice paternal, though severe, had stamped with nullity their former resolution, and that it became them, like dutiful children, to submit. Hébert, Momora, and Mazuel, were soon after accused as traitors, imprisoned, tried, and executed; but Chaumette survived a short time longer, as his enemies thought it safer to wear away by degrees the remaining popular partiality for him, before he should be struck at. He was taken up, however, on the 26th of March 1794, under a charge of conspiring, with the foregoing men, against the government, and guillotined on the 13th of April following, without the smallest effort, on the part of Robespierre, to save him. Such is the gratitude and such the friendship of minds filled with universal philanthropy and the rights of man! That Chaumette and Robespierre were closely linked together, is known to all who are not strangers to the transactions of that time; but when the latter had risen to dictatorial power on the shoulders of the former, he kicked him, like a useless scaffold, from under his feet.

Chaumette said at the place of execution, that the revolution had inflamed his imagination, and at times intoxicated his brain, from the too free gratification of his vengeance for the personal injuries he had received. He said also, that three influences had come to light of his aristocratic and inveterate enemies attempting his life; and that a desire of reprisal, in which he conceived the safety of the commonwealth in a measure involved, made him seek all occasions for arrogating power; but that he never cherished an idea of possessing any permanent authority, not even of a secondary or subordinate nature. That the revolution intoxicated his brain, is doubtless true; but that he never aspired to permanent authority, is an infamous falsehood.