Note 279 — Chapter II

One of the pamphlets of the day, frequently referred to, much quoted in the newspapers, and evidently much read, bore the horrific title: The Cannibals’ Progress; or the Dreadful Horrors of French Invasion, as displayed by the Republican Officers and Soldiers, in their Perfidy, rapacity, ferociousness & brutality, exercised towards the Innocent inhabitants of Germany. Translated from the German, by Anthony Aufrer(e), Esq. … The Connecticut Courant, in announcing a new edition of this work as just off the press, offered the following description of its character: “This work contains a circumstantial account of the excesses committed by the French Army in Suabia. At the present moment, when our country is in danger of being overrun by the same nation, our people ought to be prepared for those things, which they must expect, in case such an event should happen. The pamphlet should be owned by every man, and read in every family. They will there find, from an authentic source, that the consequences of being conquered by France, or even subjected to their government, are more dreadful than the heart of man can conceive. Murder, robbery, burning of towns, and the violation of female chastity, in forms too dreadful to relate, in instances too numerous to be counted, are among them. Five thousand copies of this work were sold in Philadelphia in a few days, and another edition of ten thousand is now in the press in that city.” Cf. the issue of the Courant for July 2, 1798. Another book of horrors which deserves mention in this connection, although it came to public attention in America a little later, was the following: The History of the Destruction of the Helvetic Union and Liberty. By J. Mallet Du Pan. This work was first printed in England in 1798, and the following March was reprinted in Boston. A sentence or two taken from the author’s preface will convey a fair notion of its nature: “In the Helvetic History, every Government may read its own destiny, and learn its duty. If there be yet one that flatters itself that its existence is reconcilable with that of the French Republic, let it study this dreadful monument of their friendship. Here every man may see how much weight treaties, alliances, benefactions, rights of neutrality, and even submission itself, retain in the scales of that Directory, who hunt justice from the earth, and whose sanguinary rapacity seeks plunder and spreads ruin alike on the Nile as on the Rhine, in Republican Congresses as well as in the heart of Monarchies.” Like The Cannibals’ Progress, this work was much quoted in the newspapers and caught the sympathetic eye of many clergyman, Jedediah Morse among the number. July 29, 1799, Chauncey Goodrich, of Hartford, Connecticut, wrote Oliver Wolcott to the effect that “the facts … in Du Pan, Robinson, Barruel, have got into every farm house; they wont go out, till the stories of the indian tomahawk & war dances around their prisoners do.” (Wolcott Papers, vol. v, 77.) Nathaniel Ames did not think highly of the veracity of The Cannibals’ Progress, yet he paid tribute to its influence in the following fashion: “July 31, 1798. Judge Metcalf with his cockade on came down to see Gen. Washington expecting to get a Commission to fight the French & infatuated at the slanders of the Progress of the Cannibals that the French skin Americans, to make boots for their Army, &c.” (Dedham Historical Register, vol. ix: Diary of Ames, p. 24.)