To replace the Madeleine Cemetery the Commune of Paris chose a more discreet location, at the far end of the district of Petite-Pologne. The site selecedwas near the Wall of the Farmers-General at Monceau, where the rue des Errancis met the rue de Valois. The large rectangular space had originally belonged to the chapel serving a miraculous Calvary which stood nearby (demolished at the beginning of 1794). It was now used as a market garden. Down one side ran the parc de Monceaux.
The trees on the site were removed and, in order to provide an convenient entrance, a section of the Wall was demolished opposite the Customs House. At some point a sign was erected over the gateway: « Dormir, enfin ».
 |
| Plaque at 97 rue de Monceau, all that now marks the location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errancis_Cemetery#/media/File:Cimetiere_des_Errancis.JPG |
The cemetery was to be known as the Cimetière des Errancis or Cimetière de Monceau (more familiarly "Mousseaux".) The gates opened on 5th March 1794. At first it received ordinary burials, but on 25th March the order was given to transfer the bodies of those executed and the Madeleine cemetery was closed definitively. For a time, there was some mystification over the new location and bodies were first taken to the Madeleine, then discreetly removed to Monceau several days later.
The new cemetery was a long two kilometres away from the place de la Révolution. Alcide Beauchesne in his book on Madame Élisabeth, recreates the route. The grim convoy of carts, accompanied by gendarmes, would progress slowly along the rues des Champs-Élysées, de la Madeleine, de l'Arcade, de la Pologne, Sainte-Lazare, and finally make the ascent of the rue du Rocher. At the top, the rue des Errancis led past the remains of the Calvary to the barrière Monceaux and the gate into the enclosure of the cemetery. Before burial the corpses would be stripped, with a careful register kept of personal effects for remittance to the Hôtel-Dieu. They would then be consigned without ceremony into the communal ditch. As Beauchesne noted, speed was essential: the blade of the guillotine could fall faster than the gravedigger's spade.
According to the official plaque, the Errancis Cemetery contained the bodies of 1,119 individuals guillotined between 24th March 1794 and May 1795. This is broken down by Hillairet as 943 in the 83 days between 25th March and 9th June 1794 (when the guillotine was moved from the place de la Révolution) then a further 176, executed in 11-28 Thermidor (July 1794) and at the end of prairial Year III (May 1795). Thus the Hébertists (executed on 24th March) would have been interred in the Madeleine, whilst Danton and his companions in death were among the first in the new cemetery. Among the most prominent of those interred were Robespierre and his allies, Malesherbes and Madame Élisabeth in May 1794. Among the last were Fouquier-Tinville and little Louis XVII's guardian Antoine Simon. It should be emphasised, however, that the cemetery was also used for ordinary burials. According to one source, it was closed in September 1794 but reopened in August 1796 when it temporarily replaced the cemetery in the rue Pigalle. It was only closed definitively on 23rd April 1797.
Following the closure of the cemetery, the land seems to have reverted to its original owner, Viger de Jolival who in 1790 had acquired the former maison du Christ, its garden and adjoining enclosure. The area of the cemetery was rented out once more for agricultural use, though Viger de Jolival fenced off the area which he believed to contain the grave of Madame Élisabeth. By the Restoration, however, there was already a great deal of confusion over where the Revolution's victims lay. On 22 May 1816 Descloseaux was obliged to publish a retraction, admitting that he had assumed the Madeleine cemetery had remained open until May 1794 and had erroneously claimed many of the dead from Monceau. Viger de Jolival, on the other hand, supposed that the duc d'Orléans had been buried in his cemetery and even pinpointed the spot. This mistake was surprisingly enduring. The 19th-century authority on the history of Paris, Louis Lazare (1811–1880) stated categorically that both Charlotte Corday and Orléans were at Monceau, the latter under the very walls of his former pleasure park.
In 1815 a sustained attempt was made to assess the feasibility of exhuming the corpse of Madame Élisabeth. The gravedigger was again the irrepressible Joly, who had been transferred from the Madeleine after its closure. Beauchesne reproduces all the extensive documentation (Vie de Madame Elisabeth, vol. 2, p.285-321). Joly convincingly recalled the location and details of the burial, but since the corpses had been piled naked into a communal grave and the heads placed willy-nilly, the exhumation project was abandoned as unrealistic. Bélanger and Viger de Jolival both put forward proposals for monuments but in the event nothing was built. Later the ground was sold off in parcels; until 1860 there was a dance hall, le bal de Chaumière, on part of the site. The remains were gradually carted off to the Catacombs, with a first exhumation in 1826, followed by further transfers in 1844, 1859, 1863 and 1879 as work on the advancement of the boulevards exposed more bones.
References
Cimetière des Errancis on Tombes et sepultures
https://www.tombes-sepultures.com/crbst_69.html
Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs
https://www.landrucimetieres.fr/spip/spip.php?article243
Alcide Beauchesne, La vie de Madame Élisabeth, soeur de Louis XVI. vol.2 (1870):
https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_5hoJAAAAQAAJ#page/n259/mode/2up
Burial of Madame Élisabeth, p.251-283.
Documents concerning the search for the remains of Madame, p.285-321
List of those buried in the Errancis Cemetery, p.322ff.
Readings
Le Cimetière de Mousseaux, novel of 1801
In 1815 a sustained attempt was made to assess the feasibility of exhuming the corpse of Madame Élisabeth. The gravedigger was again the irrepressible Joly, who had been transferred from the Madeleine after its closure. Beauchesne reproduces all the extensive documentation (Vie de Madame Elisabeth, vol. 2, p.285-321). Joly convincingly recalled the location and details of the burial, but since the corpses had been piled naked into a communal grave and the heads placed willy-nilly, the exhumation project was abandoned as unrealistic. Bélanger and Viger de Jolival both put forward proposals for monuments but in the event nothing was built. Later the ground was sold off in parcels; until 1860 there was a dance hall, le bal de Chaumière, on part of the site. The remains were gradually carted off to the Catacombs, with a first exhumation in 1826, followed by further transfers in 1844, 1859, 1863 and 1879 as work on the advancement of the boulevards exposed more bones.
References
Cimetière des Errancis on Tombes et sepultures
https://www.tombes-sepultures.com/crbst_69.html
Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs
https://www.landrucimetieres.fr/spip/spip.php?article243
Alcide Beauchesne, La vie de Madame Élisabeth, soeur de Louis XVI. vol.2 (1870):
https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_5hoJAAAAQAAJ#page/n259/mode/2up
Burial of Madame Élisabeth, p.251-283.
Documents concerning the search for the remains of Madame, p.285-321
List of those buried in the Errancis Cemetery, p.322ff.
Readings
Le Cimetière de Mousseaux, novel of 1801
 |
| https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6451391q/f10.item |
Like the Madeleine, the Errancis Cemetery soon exercised popular imagination. This illustration is from François-Jean Villemain d'Abancourt, Le Cimetière de Mousseaux, a novel of 1801 after Regnault-Warin; the text explains how the dead of the various Revolutionary regimes followed one another rapidly into the grave; the frontispiece shows the monumental gate of the cemetery, adorned with skull and bones; two gravediggers are at work throwing naked decapitated bodies pêle-mêle into a great common ditch.
Louis Lazare, Bibliothèque municipale: publications administratives, vol. 4 (1864):
p143-8:
Before the closure of the Madeleine cemetery, the Commune of Paris had chosen a new site, at the far end of the faubourg de la Petite-Pologne. On the plan Verniquet, published before 1789, the rue du Rocher finishes at the rue de la Bienfaisance, and the rest of the route to the barrier is called rue d'Errancis, or more properly des Errancis. This extension of the rue du Rocher was given this name because the gypsies of the Petite-Pologne, which was one big Cour des Miracles, used to pretend all sorts of infirmities to excite the pity of passersby - hence vagabonds, cripples, no-hopers ("errancis" "estropiés, "éreintés").
Near the former customs wall, where the rue des Errancis met the rue de Valois, was to be found at the start of the Revolution, a great area of open land, forming a long rectangle delimited to the west by the wall of the parc de Monceau, delectable site of the Folies de Chartres.
The Commune of Paris cut down the elm trees planted on this piece of land and it became became the Errancis Cemetery, which replaced the Madeleine.
Charlotte Corday was one of the first victims to be buried here.
Philippe-Égalité could only temporarily leave behind the duc d'Orléans. They say his body is buried next to the wall of his parc de Monceau.
The pit that was dug for the remains of Robespierre, Saint-Just, Fleuriot, Lescot, Rayen, Vivier and the other victims of 9 Thermidor, was to the north of the cemetery, along the wall of the former chemin de ronde de Clichy, now part of the boulevard de Monceau. There were twenty-two torsos in two cartloads, the heads having been put separately in a huge chest. In addition, was the intact body of Lebas. The cost of the transport and inhumation was as much as 193 livres, plus 7 livres as a tip for the gravediggers. This included purchase of quicklime, which was spread "over the remains of the tyrants to prevent them being one day deified".*
If any bones are found in this place, they are the remains of ordinary victims of the guillotine, that the Commune cannot fear will be made into relics.
The Errancis cemetery was shut some time afterwards, and sold later by the national domain. The land belonged successively and in different parcels to MM. d'Aligre, anspach and Sipiere. At the moment the rues de Malesherbes is being extended as far as the former Boulevard de Monceau which was enlarged in 1860 by the incorporation of the chemin de ronde de Clichy.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6580285d/f151
* I read that even this account of the burial of the Robespierristes may be inaccurate; Lebas may in fact have been interred in the cemetery of Saint-Paul. See the discussion on Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs.
Alcide Beauchesne, La vie de Madame Élisabeth, soeur de Louis XVI. vol.2 (1870):
Louis Lazare, Bibliothèque municipale: publications administratives, vol. 4 (1864):
p143-8:
Before the closure of the Madeleine cemetery, the Commune of Paris had chosen a new site, at the far end of the faubourg de la Petite-Pologne. On the plan Verniquet, published before 1789, the rue du Rocher finishes at the rue de la Bienfaisance, and the rest of the route to the barrier is called rue d'Errancis, or more properly des Errancis. This extension of the rue du Rocher was given this name because the gypsies of the Petite-Pologne, which was one big Cour des Miracles, used to pretend all sorts of infirmities to excite the pity of passersby - hence vagabonds, cripples, no-hopers ("errancis" "estropiés, "éreintés").
Near the former customs wall, where the rue des Errancis met the rue de Valois, was to be found at the start of the Revolution, a great area of open land, forming a long rectangle delimited to the west by the wall of the parc de Monceau, delectable site of the Folies de Chartres.
The Commune of Paris cut down the elm trees planted on this piece of land and it became became the Errancis Cemetery, which replaced the Madeleine.
Charlotte Corday was one of the first victims to be buried here.
Philippe-Égalité could only temporarily leave behind the duc d'Orléans. They say his body is buried next to the wall of his parc de Monceau.
The pit that was dug for the remains of Robespierre, Saint-Just, Fleuriot, Lescot, Rayen, Vivier and the other victims of 9 Thermidor, was to the north of the cemetery, along the wall of the former chemin de ronde de Clichy, now part of the boulevard de Monceau. There were twenty-two torsos in two cartloads, the heads having been put separately in a huge chest. In addition, was the intact body of Lebas. The cost of the transport and inhumation was as much as 193 livres, plus 7 livres as a tip for the gravediggers. This included purchase of quicklime, which was spread "over the remains of the tyrants to prevent them being one day deified".*
If any bones are found in this place, they are the remains of ordinary victims of the guillotine, that the Commune cannot fear will be made into relics.
The Errancis cemetery was shut some time afterwards, and sold later by the national domain. The land belonged successively and in different parcels to MM. d'Aligre, anspach and Sipiere. At the moment the rues de Malesherbes is being extended as far as the former Boulevard de Monceau which was enlarged in 1860 by the incorporation of the chemin de ronde de Clichy.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6580285d/f151
* I read that even this account of the burial of the Robespierristes may be inaccurate; Lebas may in fact have been interred in the cemetery of Saint-Paul. See the discussion on Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs.
Alcide Beauchesne, La vie de Madame Élisabeth, soeur de Louis XVI. vol.2 (1870):
p.251-255:
Next to the guillotine, was a cart drawn by two horses, containing two huge baskets, one to receive the heads of the executed and the other the bodies...The executioners threw the twenty-fourth head, that of Madame Élisabeth into one basket and laid her body, still dressed, on top of the pile of bodies in the other. It seems that her clothes would not have been covered in blood, whereas those at the bottom of the pile would have been saturated.
The cart started to move off, with its escort of gendarmes. The crowd parted before it. The last few cries of Vive la République! from members of the municipal police, faded into the distance. The convoy progressed slowly along the rue des Champs-Élysées, then the rues de la Madeleine, de l'Arcade, de la Pologne, Saint-Lazare and du Rocher. People stopped to see it pass; through a few half-open windows faces could be glimpsed of silent immobile observers, perhaps on their knees. The cortege climbed very slowly up the rue du Rocher and stopped for an instant at the top (no doubt to let the horses get their wind). From this point the road became the rue des Errancis, in those days just a track leading to the Monceaux barrier. A hundred paces short of the barrier the convoy passed between the only house on the road and, on the right opposite, a pile of stones , the pedestal of a calvary knocked down in the Revolution. It crossed over the barrier, took a left turn to face away from the customs post, then halted in front of a gateway in the town wall (F on the plan). The gate opened and the cart entered the enclosure which had served for the past two months as the cemetery for those executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal. The Madeleine Cemetery, doubly populated by the ordinary deceased and the cull of the guillotine, no longer had earth to cover the bones of the dead. Besides, the inhabitants of the surrounding area had long complained of the fetid stench it gave off.
As soon as the cart was inside, the gate immediately closed; the gendarmes and any other followers withdrew; only the two carters and a police commissary accompanied the vehicle.
This piece of land which widened out to border the parc de Monceaux, had only recently been under cultivation. Half the area still had beds and the rest showed traces of furrows, interrupted here and there by open trenches. Some of these had been filled in in preceding days, for the soil was disturbed and badly levelled in places; they were hard-pressed, and the blade of the guillotine falls faster than the gravedigger's spade.
This resting place was inaugurated on 4 germinal Year II (24th March 1794) with [the execution of the Hébertistes].
Danton was to soon join his adversaries, with the fourteen companions in death allotted him by Robespierre.
Eight days later, a huge pit received twenty-one for whom the new crime "prison conspiracy" had been invented: Chaumette found himself the accomplice of Arthur Dillon and the young widow of Camille Desmoulins. Scarcely nine days later its was the turn of the virtuous Malesherbes and two generations of his children.
KEY
A. Rue des Errancis
B. Maison du Christ
C. Porte condamnée
D. Coach entrance
E. Gate from the Courtyard into the grden.
F. Coach entrance for the charettes
G. Place where the remains of Madame Élisabeth were believed to be buried.
H. Communal grave of the victims of 10 May 1794.
I. Little gate between the garden and the enclosure.
K. Place where M. Viger de Jolival thought that the duc d'Orléans was buried.
L. and M. Sites of the communal graves containing the victims of the Thermidorean reaction.
N. Courtyard
O. Garden
P. Parc de Monceaux
Q. Customs house
R. Route from the Monceaux barrier to that of Clichy
S. Monceaux barrier.
It was in this soil, where they had already buried her brother's judge, that the daughter of the Kings of France was to sleep her final sleep with her escort of martyrs. The cart stopped beside the ditch indicated on the plan by the letter H. This ditch, according to the estimate of the gravedigger who was present, was twelve to fifteen feet wide and similar in length, situated a few paces from the little wall that separated the cemetery enclosure from the garden. The bloody cargo was discharged. According to the eyewitness account of the gravedigger, the body of Madame Élisabeth, recognisable by her clothes and her position at the top of the pile, was the first or among the first to be unloaded by the side of the ditch, where it was immediately stripped naked - for these barbarians had no respect for life or death.
All the bodies were stripped of their clothes and tossed into the communal pit. A register was kept of these personal effects which had to be handed over to the Hôtel-Dieu. From time to time the gravediggers went down into the ditch to arrange the bodies, so that they were not too entangled. They placed them alternately one with its torso towards the wall, then one with the torso towards the middle of the ditch; there were two rows of bodies in a horizontal layer. Afterwards further layers of bodies were arranged on top with their shoulders and feet facing in opposite directions to those underneath. Each layer was separated with about six inches of earth and finally the ditch was covered with about three feet of earth. The body of Madame Élisabeth, again according to the gravedigger, was laid on its stomach at the bottom of the ditch on the side closest to the wall.
Since the heads were placed indiscriminately in any space available, he was unable to say where that of Madame Élisabeth's was buried...
https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_5hoJAAAAQAAJ#page/n259/mode/2up
p.269-272
The cemetery where the remains of Madame Élisabeth rest, exerts a sad but irresistible attraction. During the Revolutionary period it saw the executioner's cart more often than the funeral cortege. Burials of the victims of the guillotine succeeded one another in rapid succession...On 10 Thermidor the chiefs of party succumbed - the two Robespierres, Saint-Just, Couthon, Hanriot, Dumas and Simon, the guardian of the prince. They were only twenty-two men, but the following day , 11 Thermidor, there was a much more considerable consignment, comprising most of the members of the Commune, seventy-one in all...Nor did the guillotine cease with the onset of reaction...not just the likes of Carrier, Fouquier-Tinville, Lebon, but innocent victims continued to be swept up....
It was not long before the cemetery, which also received those who died natural deaths, began to full up.
On 26 prairial Year II (14th June 1794) the guillotine was transferred to the porte Saint-Antoine, then, two days later to the barrière du Trône renversé, where it remained permanently until 9 thermidor.
Two years later by order of the administration of the department of the Seine the cemetery of Montmartre was opened and that of Monceaux ceased to receive burials. The great gate in the city wall of Paris which gave access, remained closed. The orphans of the Revolution had not attended their fathers' burials and for the most part did not know where their remains lay. For a long time public curiosity was much more concerned with prisons rather than cemeteries, with the guillotine rather than graves. Those who had known the "champ du Christ", forgot the way. Silence surrounded it as on the inside. The years went by, taking with them the traditions of the past, leaving to tumble only a few poor wooden crosses rotting in the middle of the weeds and the graves effaced.
In 1790, M.Viger de Jolival, a former tax official, had acquired the chapel, the garden and the adjoining enclosure. The administration of Paris took over the little enclosure, next to the garden and made it into the cemetery; later this same land was rented out to an inhabitant of Monceaux who mowed it and planted potatoes. M. Viger was aware that Madame Élisabeth was among the victims of the guillotine buried there. He surrounded the spot marked G on the plan with a trellis and added a stone with the words "Madame Élisabeth". But the statement of Joly, the gravedigger at the time, shows that M. Viger was mistaken about the position of the grave. He was even more in error about the resting place of the duc d'Orléans, who he claimed was buried at location K. Orléans's remains are not even in this cemetery which was only opened six months after his death; he was buried in the Madeleine, in the opposite corner to Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette...
Apart from the two places mentioned, M. Viger turned over the rest of the cemetery to agriculture. The gateway only opened at rare intervals to let in the ploughman. A certain sieur Fauconnier who worked as a child there, and has accompanied me there on more than one occasion over the past fifteen years, told me that his father often sent him to work in the champ du Christ, warning him not to touch the marked off areas.
p.298-9:
The search for Madame Élisabeth - the testimony of the gravedigger Joly:
Next to the guillotine, was a cart drawn by two horses, containing two huge baskets, one to receive the heads of the executed and the other the bodies...The executioners threw the twenty-fourth head, that of Madame Élisabeth into one basket and laid her body, still dressed, on top of the pile of bodies in the other. It seems that her clothes would not have been covered in blood, whereas those at the bottom of the pile would have been saturated.
The cart started to move off, with its escort of gendarmes. The crowd parted before it. The last few cries of Vive la République! from members of the municipal police, faded into the distance. The convoy progressed slowly along the rue des Champs-Élysées, then the rues de la Madeleine, de l'Arcade, de la Pologne, Saint-Lazare and du Rocher. People stopped to see it pass; through a few half-open windows faces could be glimpsed of silent immobile observers, perhaps on their knees. The cortege climbed very slowly up the rue du Rocher and stopped for an instant at the top (no doubt to let the horses get their wind). From this point the road became the rue des Errancis, in those days just a track leading to the Monceaux barrier. A hundred paces short of the barrier the convoy passed between the only house on the road and, on the right opposite, a pile of stones , the pedestal of a calvary knocked down in the Revolution. It crossed over the barrier, took a left turn to face away from the customs post, then halted in front of a gateway in the town wall (F on the plan). The gate opened and the cart entered the enclosure which had served for the past two months as the cemetery for those executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal. The Madeleine Cemetery, doubly populated by the ordinary deceased and the cull of the guillotine, no longer had earth to cover the bones of the dead. Besides, the inhabitants of the surrounding area had long complained of the fetid stench it gave off.
As soon as the cart was inside, the gate immediately closed; the gendarmes and any other followers withdrew; only the two carters and a police commissary accompanied the vehicle.
This piece of land which widened out to border the parc de Monceaux, had only recently been under cultivation. Half the area still had beds and the rest showed traces of furrows, interrupted here and there by open trenches. Some of these had been filled in in preceding days, for the soil was disturbed and badly levelled in places; they were hard-pressed, and the blade of the guillotine falls faster than the gravedigger's spade.
This resting place was inaugurated on 4 germinal Year II (24th March 1794) with [the execution of the Hébertistes].
Danton was to soon join his adversaries, with the fourteen companions in death allotted him by Robespierre.
Eight days later, a huge pit received twenty-one for whom the new crime "prison conspiracy" had been invented: Chaumette found himself the accomplice of Arthur Dillon and the young widow of Camille Desmoulins. Scarcely nine days later its was the turn of the virtuous Malesherbes and two generations of his children.
A. Rue des Errancis
B. Maison du Christ
C. Porte condamnée
D. Coach entrance
E. Gate from the Courtyard into the grden.
F. Coach entrance for the charettes
G. Place where the remains of Madame Élisabeth were believed to be buried.
H. Communal grave of the victims of 10 May 1794.
I. Little gate between the garden and the enclosure.
K. Place where M. Viger de Jolival thought that the duc d'Orléans was buried.
L. and M. Sites of the communal graves containing the victims of the Thermidorean reaction.
N. Courtyard
O. Garden
P. Parc de Monceaux
Q. Customs house
R. Route from the Monceaux barrier to that of Clichy
S. Monceaux barrier.
It was in this soil, where they had already buried her brother's judge, that the daughter of the Kings of France was to sleep her final sleep with her escort of martyrs. The cart stopped beside the ditch indicated on the plan by the letter H. This ditch, according to the estimate of the gravedigger who was present, was twelve to fifteen feet wide and similar in length, situated a few paces from the little wall that separated the cemetery enclosure from the garden. The bloody cargo was discharged. According to the eyewitness account of the gravedigger, the body of Madame Élisabeth, recognisable by her clothes and her position at the top of the pile, was the first or among the first to be unloaded by the side of the ditch, where it was immediately stripped naked - for these barbarians had no respect for life or death.
All the bodies were stripped of their clothes and tossed into the communal pit. A register was kept of these personal effects which had to be handed over to the Hôtel-Dieu. From time to time the gravediggers went down into the ditch to arrange the bodies, so that they were not too entangled. They placed them alternately one with its torso towards the wall, then one with the torso towards the middle of the ditch; there were two rows of bodies in a horizontal layer. Afterwards further layers of bodies were arranged on top with their shoulders and feet facing in opposite directions to those underneath. Each layer was separated with about six inches of earth and finally the ditch was covered with about three feet of earth. The body of Madame Élisabeth, again according to the gravedigger, was laid on its stomach at the bottom of the ditch on the side closest to the wall.
Since the heads were placed indiscriminately in any space available, he was unable to say where that of Madame Élisabeth's was buried...
https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_5hoJAAAAQAAJ#page/n259/mode/2up
p.269-272
The cemetery where the remains of Madame Élisabeth rest, exerts a sad but irresistible attraction. During the Revolutionary period it saw the executioner's cart more often than the funeral cortege. Burials of the victims of the guillotine succeeded one another in rapid succession...On 10 Thermidor the chiefs of party succumbed - the two Robespierres, Saint-Just, Couthon, Hanriot, Dumas and Simon, the guardian of the prince. They were only twenty-two men, but the following day , 11 Thermidor, there was a much more considerable consignment, comprising most of the members of the Commune, seventy-one in all...Nor did the guillotine cease with the onset of reaction...not just the likes of Carrier, Fouquier-Tinville, Lebon, but innocent victims continued to be swept up....
It was not long before the cemetery, which also received those who died natural deaths, began to full up.
On 26 prairial Year II (14th June 1794) the guillotine was transferred to the porte Saint-Antoine, then, two days later to the barrière du Trône renversé, where it remained permanently until 9 thermidor.
Two years later by order of the administration of the department of the Seine the cemetery of Montmartre was opened and that of Monceaux ceased to receive burials. The great gate in the city wall of Paris which gave access, remained closed. The orphans of the Revolution had not attended their fathers' burials and for the most part did not know where their remains lay. For a long time public curiosity was much more concerned with prisons rather than cemeteries, with the guillotine rather than graves. Those who had known the "champ du Christ", forgot the way. Silence surrounded it as on the inside. The years went by, taking with them the traditions of the past, leaving to tumble only a few poor wooden crosses rotting in the middle of the weeds and the graves effaced.
In 1790, M.Viger de Jolival, a former tax official, had acquired the chapel, the garden and the adjoining enclosure. The administration of Paris took over the little enclosure, next to the garden and made it into the cemetery; later this same land was rented out to an inhabitant of Monceaux who mowed it and planted potatoes. M. Viger was aware that Madame Élisabeth was among the victims of the guillotine buried there. He surrounded the spot marked G on the plan with a trellis and added a stone with the words "Madame Élisabeth". But the statement of Joly, the gravedigger at the time, shows that M. Viger was mistaken about the position of the grave. He was even more in error about the resting place of the duc d'Orléans, who he claimed was buried at location K. Orléans's remains are not even in this cemetery which was only opened six months after his death; he was buried in the Madeleine, in the opposite corner to Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette...
Apart from the two places mentioned, M. Viger turned over the rest of the cemetery to agriculture. The gateway only opened at rare intervals to let in the ploughman. A certain sieur Fauconnier who worked as a child there, and has accompanied me there on more than one occasion over the past fifteen years, told me that his father often sent him to work in the champ du Christ, warning him not to touch the marked off areas.
p.298-9:
The search for Madame Élisabeth - the testimony of the gravedigger Joly:
- M Joly stated that it was he who, at peril of his life, had placed the King in a coffin, when he was employed in the Madeleine cemetery; he had subsequently been transferred to the cemetery at Mousseaux, where, on 10th May 1794, he had buried Madame Elisabeth with twenty to twenty-five persons, both men and women. They were all placed in the same communal ditch (H) He confirmed that, apart from the cart driver, who was dead and the police commissaire, he was the only witness...He gave me the following details: On 10th May, in the afternoon, a cart brought in, via Gateway (F), twenty or twenty-five souls, the heads in one basket and the bodies tossed into another. M. Joly learned from the carter that Madame Elisabeth was among the victims. Before they were thrown in the ditch (which did not yet contain any bodies) the corpses were stripped of their clothes, jewellery and other possessions; they were buried together without distinction and covered with only three feet of earth. Thus there is no guide for anyone wishes to discover the person for whom we are searching.
- [The concierge Joly] seems sensible and in good faith. He is certain that the body of Madame Elisabeth is in the place that he indicates. He even knows how the body was placed and in what direction; but it is at a great depth, with quantities of bodies arranged in layers over it in the same ditch. Sieur Joly estimates that he dug a space twelve feet long and the same wide. The absolute nakedness of the all the bodies makes it impossible to find any distinguishing marks.
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