The execution of the queen was followed by that of the Girondists; and this brilliant array of noble and great men was followed in the next month by names no less noble, no less great.  It was an infuriated chase of the aristocrats as well as of the officers, of all the military persons who, in the unfortunate days of Toulon and of Mayence, had been in the army, and who had been dismissed, or whose resignation had been accepted.

The aristocrats were tracked in their most secret recesses, and not only were they punished, but also those who dared screen them from the avenging hand of the republic.  The officers were recognized under every disguise, and the very fact that they had disguised themselves or remained silent as to their true character was a crime great enough to be punished with the guillotine.

More than twenty generals were imprisoned during the last months of the year 1793, and many more paid with their lives for crimes which they had never committed, and which had existence only in the heated imagination of their accusers.  Thus had General Houchard fallen; he was followed in the first days of the new year of 1794 by the Generals Luckner and Biron.

Alexandre de Beauharnais had served under Luckner, he had been Biron’s adjutant, he had been united with General Houchard in the unfortunate attempt to relieve Mayence.  It was therefore natural that he should be noticed and espied.  Besides which, he was an aristocrat, a relative of many of the emigres, the brother of the Count de Beauharnais, who was now residing in Coblentz with the Count d’Artois, and it had not been forgotten what an important part Alexandre de Beauharnais had played in the National Assembly; it was well known that he belonged to the moderate party, that he had been the friend of the Girondists.

Had the Convention wished to forget it, the informers were there to remind them of it.  Alexandre de Beauharnais was denounced as suspected, and this denunciation was followed, in the first days of January, by an arrest.  He was taken to Paris, and at first shut up in the Luxemburg, where already many of his companions-in-arms were incarcerated.

Josephine was not in Ferte-Beauharnais when the emissaries of the republic came to arrest her husband.  She was just then in Paris, whither she had gone to seek protection and assistance for Alexandre at the hands of influential acquaintances; in Paris she learned the arrest of her husband.

The misfortune, which she had so long expected and foreseen, was now upon her and ready to crush her and the future of her children.  Her husband was arrested—­that is to say, he was condemned to die.