THE TELEGRAPH, 
10 
Safety required to be formed in the interests of the Republic. 
The Convention embodied Lakanal’s proposals in a decree. 
Officially adopting Chappe’s telegraph, it directed the Com¬ 
mittee of Public Safety to cause a line of communication, with 
the necessary number of stations, to be established. Chappe, 
thus appointed Telegraph Engineer received the pay of 
5 francs 10 sous per day, so that his position was assimilated 
to that of a lieutenant of engineers. 
The Committee of Public Safety, thinking that Chappe’s 
telegraph would enable the commanders of the army to com¬ 
municate rapidly with each other, decided that the telegraphs 
should first be established in the vicinity of besieged towns, 
and that the lines should pass from the limits of the frontiers, 
that is to sav from Lille and from Landau to Paris. 
This line was ready for use in Fructidor , An. IT. (August, 
1794), and the circumstances connected with the first despatch 
deserve to be related. 
The town of Conde had just been retaken from the Austrians. 
On the same day, namely the 1st September, 1794, at noon, 
a despatch forwarded from the tower of St. Catherine at Lille 
passed from, station to station until it reached the dome of the 
Louvre at Paris, just at the moment the Convention was about 
to sit. 
Carnot ascended the tribune, and with a sonorous voice, 
announced that he had just received by the telegraph the 
following news :— 
“ Conde is restored to the Republic; its surrender took 
place at six o’clock this morning.” 
This news was received with thunders of applause, and 
every voice was raised to honour the new invention, so 
brilliantly inaugurated for the glory and safety of the 
country. 
Chappe’s aerial telegraph underwent divers vicissitudes 
under the Directory and under the Empire. Nevertheless 
under these governments, as well as under the Restoration, 
many lines were established in France ; but Chappe was not 
to witness these developments of his cherished invention; for, 
disgusted with the little esteem in which his invention was 
held by the emperor, and suffering acutely from a chronic 
disease of the bladder, he gave way to despair, and cut his own 
