News

HMS Is Facing a Deficit. Under Trump, Some Fear It May Get Worse.

News

Cambridge Police Respond to Three Armed Robberies Over Holiday Weekend

News

What’s Next for Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative?

News

MassDOT Adds Unpopular Train Layover to Allston I-90 Project in Sudden Reversal

News

Denied Winter Campus Housing, International Students Scramble to Find Alternative Options

Prof. Sumichrast's Third Lecture.

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Professor Sumichrast gave last evening, in the Fogg Lecture Room, the third of his series of lectures on "Paris during the Reign of Terror." The subject was "The Prisons." The early years of the Revolutionary government, said Professor Sumichrast, were marked by that tyranny and cruelty which is almost invariably exercised by a weak government as the only means of maintaining its power. The prisons and the scaffold were used by the authorities to protect themselves from the people.

During the monarchy there had been only two Parisian prisons, but the new regime turned almost every sort of establishment into prisons, and they were all crowded to the doors. The most famous of the prisons was the Conciergerie, the antechamber of death, which still stands, though it has been greatly altered internally. This, and the Temple, the former headquarters of the Knights Templar, are the most interesting of the many places of confinement used by the Terrorists. The Temple was the prison of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth, Madame Royal, and the Dauphine, and it was thence that the king was driven to his death in January, 1793.

The lecturer described the Conciergerie and the Temple, showing plans and views of the cells occupied by the royal captives, and interesting reproductions of sketches and drawings made at the time by persons who had access to them.

The last lecture of the series will be given next Wednesday, and will treat of the Guillotine and the various places in Paris where it was set up during the Reign of Terror.

Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

Tags