M. Lenotre has raked in the dusty corners of history
for the material of The September Massacres (Hutchinson, 21s.), and brought out of them the personal narratives of certain people who were lucky enough to survive those two days of orgiastic bloodshed, prompted by higher authority, in the autumn of 1792. Three prisons—La Force, the Abbaye and the Carmelite Convent (which still remains, and where, in 1867, the bodies of its slaughtered inmates were exhumed) —were beset by a rabble howling for people's justice, and a' thousand helpless men and women received it from the pikes, swords :and guns of the 'bob outside. The story of these horrors is related by eyewitnesses, and it is interesting to see at the end of the book a number of hitherto unpub lished statements made before examining magistrates by the actual murderers or persons alleged to be such.
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