“ THE 2nd of September,” said Collot d’Herbois, “ is the great article of the Credo of our liberty.” In other words, the massacres in the prisons were the prelude to the Reign of Terror, the first manifestation of that organized system of destruction which for ten months held sway over France. This is why, in relating the history of the Terror, it is necessary to begin at September 1792, in order to show the progressive stages which led up to the final climax.
For, before this system could be pursued with impunity, the demagogues were obliged to remove three principal obstacles from their path ; these were, firstly, the monarchy, and consequently the Constitution of 1791 ; secondly, the King ; and thirdly, the Girondins. It was the struggle to effect this threefold purpose that for a year arrested the course of the Terror, which otherwise must have followed directly on the September massacres. We shall now see how one by one these obstacles were overthrown, and how, in each case, the schemes of the demagogues triumphed over the will of the people.
THE PROCLAMATION OF THE REPUBLIC
The idea no doubt prevails in this country that France became a Republic because the French nation was finally convinced of the advantages offered by a Republican form of government. Nothing is further from the truth. France, as the cahiers had shown, was solidly monarchical, and the protests following on the 20th of June gave evidence that this sentiment still prevailed throughout the country. “ The Republicans,” said Danton in September 1792, “ are an infinitesimal minority . . . the rest of France is attached to the monarchy.”[1]
If, however, any doubt existed on this point, if the demagogues had any reason to suppose that the opinion of the people had changed since the formation of the cahiers, the only course in accordance with the principles of democracy would have been to make a fresh appeal to the nation. For, however impossible it may be to consult the people on the details of legislation, it is obviously a farce to describe a State as democratic in which the form of government is not the choice of the nation as a whole. The only legitimate method by which the form of government can be changed is, therefore, a referendum to the people.
Nothing of this kind was done in France. When, on the list of September, the Convention that now superseded the Legislative Assembly held its first sitting, none of the deputies—amongst whom all the leading revolutionaries, Girondins, Dantonistes, and Robespierristes alike, were included—had made any attempt to discover the real wishes of their constituents on the question of abolishing the monarchy, whilst in the provinces the idea of a Republic had not even been considered.[2]
At one moment it seemed as if the new Assembly were endowed with some appreciation of the principles of democracy, for it began by passing this admirable resolution : “ The National Convention declares that there can be no Constitution unless it is accepted by the people.”
Yet after this, at the very same sitting, it proceeded with ludicrous inconsequence to discuss the fundamental point of the Constitution, the question of a Republic, without any reference whatever to the wishes of the people !
It was Couthon, the ally of Robespierre, who had first proposed the abolition of the monarchy, and the proposal was now seconded by Collot d’Herbois amidst “ universal applause.” True, one obscure member named Quinette rose to observe : “ It is not we who are the judges of the monarchy, it is the people. We have only the mission to form a definite government, and the people will choose between the old one which included the monarchy, and the new one which we shall present to them.” But the protest of Quinette was overruled by Grégoire, who declared that “ no one could ever propose to preserve in France the disastrous race of kings. . . . We know too well that all dynasties have only been devouring races living on human flesh. . . . I ask that by a solemn law you should ordain the abolition of monarchy.”
In vain Bazire interposed with the remonstrance that the Assembly should not allow itself to be carried away by a “ moment of enthusiasm,” that “ the question of abolishing the monarchy should at least be discussed by the Assembly.”
“ What need is there for discussion,” answered Grégoire, “ when every one is agreed ? Kings are in the moral order of things what monsters are in the physical order . . . the history of kings is the martyrology of nations. Since we are all equally penetrated by this truth, what need is there for discussion ? ”
And, in response to this dignified discourse, the Assembly, without further debate, passed the resolution : “ The National Convention decrees that monarchy is abolished in France.”[3]
Thus, in flagrant violation of the first principle of democracy, rule by the will of the people,[4] in direct contradiction to the resolution passed by the Convention itself at that same sitting, the Republic was proclaimed by an infinitesimal minority of political adventurers. For if these men who took upon themselves to overthrow the ancient government of France had been honest in their intentions, if they had themselves been convinced of the advantages of a Republic over a monarchy, their action might, to a certain extent, be condoned by their enthusiasm. But it was not so. These men were not Republican by conviction, for, as we have already seen, they were actuated by various policies far removed from Republicanism. Still, at the inauguration of the Convention, it seems that the same schemes for a change of dynasty survived ; the factions had merely undergone some slight modifications. Now, although at most stages of the Revolution we find contemporaries disagreed on the aims of the factions, it is curious to notice the extraordinary resemblance between the explanations given by writers belonging to completely different parties of the motives that inspired the proclamation of the Republic.
According to such divergent authorities as Montjoie, Pagès, Prudhomme, and “ The Two Friends of Liberty,” Carra and his party still inclined to the Duke of Brunswick ; Brissot and his party to the Duke of York ; Sillery, Sieyès, and Laclos to the Duc d’Orléans ; Dumouriez, Biron, and Valence to the Duc de Chartres ; whilst Marat and Danton, now less disposed to support the Duc d’Orléans, began to think of their own elevation and joined forces with Robespierre, in order to establish either a Dictatorship under one of their number or a Triumvirate composed of all three. Owing to these conflicting policies, none of which could be openly avowed, every one was obliged to profess Republicanism—“ some voted for the Republic for fear Orléans should be King, others in order not to appear Orléanistes ; all wished to acquire or maintain their popularity.” This was what Robespierre meant when he said later on, “ The Republic slipped in furtively between the factions.”[5]
But once the Republic had been proclaimed and the monarchy declared to be finally abolished, it became necessary for the factions to reconstruct their policies, and so three main parties were formed in the Convention. These became known as the Gironde, the Plain, and the Mountain.
The first of these parties consisted of the deputies of the Gironde who had sat in the Legislative Assembly—Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Ducos, and Fonfrède—and also Brissot with his following, which included Buzot, Valazé, Isnard, and Condorcet. All these were henceforth described collectively as Girondistes or Girondins, and it was they who, as time went on, came to represent the truly Republican party in the Convention.
The Plain or Marais was composed of several hundred nondescript deputies, non-committal in their views, and afraid to move boldly in any direction.
But the real force of the Assembly lay in the Mountain, that fierce and subversive minority dominated by Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, and including the most violent members of the Jacobin and Cordelier Clubs—Camille Desmoulins, Billaud-Varenne, Collot d’Herbois, Fabre d’Églantine, Panis, Sergent, Legendre, and also the Duc d’Orléans, who, by the usual methods of bribes and cajolery, by dinners lavished on the new members of the Commune, and, in the opinion of many contemporaries, by the payment of 15,000 livres to Marat, succeeded in securing election as a deputy for Paris.[6]
Inevitably the Montagnards carried all before them ; it was they and not the pedantic Girondins who understood the art of rousing popular passions. Hitherto, as we have seen, even the mob of Paris had needed to be systematically stirred up in order to take part in the revolutionary movement, and this is not surprising, for the issues at stake were outside their comprehension. What matter to them whether the “ patriot ministers ” were recalled or not, whether the King had the right of Veto, whether the non-during priests were deported, and so forth ? As to the leaders of the Legislative Assembly, none had appealed to their mentalities ; the eloquence of Vergniaud left them cold ; the speeches repeated parrot-like by the so-called deputations from the Faubourgs were unintelligible alike to orators and audience.
But when Marat, Danton, and Robespierre assumed the reins of power everything was changed. Marat spoke a language the populace could understand ; instead of bewildering their minds with political subtleties he simply ordered them to go out and burn and pillage and destroy. By this means he appealed irresistibly to the craving for excitement which distinguishes the populace in every city, particularly in Paris, whilst his ostentation of poverty imposed for a while on some of the more credulous amongst the people themselves. It has been said that “ Marat loved the poor,” that from the beginning of the Revolution he had lived on the barest necessaries of life. This we now know to be untrue ; Marat, though of filthy and neglected appearance, lived in the greatest comfort, and was never known to make any personal sacrifices for the poor of Paris.[7] The vicious, the wastrel, the degraded alone inspired his sympathy ; honest and law-abiding men of the people, especially those who by their industry had achieved some degree of prosperity, became the objects of his contempt and hatred. “ Give me 300,000 heads,” he said, “ and I will answer for the country being saved. . . . Begin by hanging at their doors the bakers, the grocers, and all the tradesmen.” When the people failed to respond to these suggestions, Marat turned and rent them : “ Oh ! babbling people, if you but knew how to act ! ”[8] or again : “ Eternal idlers, with what epithets would I not overwhelm you if, in the transports of my despair, I knew of any more humiliating than that of Parisians ! ”[9] In this lay the difference between the policies of Robespierre and Marat. Robespierre aimed at democracy, not in the sense of government by the people, but of a State solely composed of “ the people ”;[10] he would have liked to turn the whole world into a vast working-man’s settlement, of which he would be the presiding genius ; whilst Marat wanted ochlocracy, a State dominated by that small portion of the people known as the “ mob,” making of the world a huge thieves’ kitchen, in which he would play the part of brigand chief. Robespierre, now falling more and more under the influence of Marat, began to realize the superiority of Marat’s method ; he perceived that in times of revolution it is to the subversive minority that a demagogue must look for support, and that to appeal to the reason of the people must ever prove less effectual than to rouse the passions of the mob. Hitherto he had sought to establish his popularity by fulsome adulation of the people’s virtues,[11] but from this time onward we find him gradually abandoning the attitude of moderation he had maintained during the preceding year, and reverting to the subversive methods he had employed at the outset of the Revolution. Inveighing against the rich and great, appealing always to cupidity and envy, it was principally amongst the women of the Société Fraternelle and the female convicts released during the massacres of September that he found his following, and this dishevelled band that Danton derisively described as the jupons gras of Robespierre[12] filled the tribunes of the Convention and the Jacobin Club, drowning the debates in their clamour.
Danton, on the other hand, never theorized about democracy. Too lazy to put pen to paper, he is almost the only revolutionary leader who owned no journal and wrote no pamphlets ; his speeches, admirably suited to a recruiting platform with their sounding refrains of “ Let us beat the enemy ! ” “ Let us save the country ! ” served merely to electrify the Assembly, especially the tribunes, and afford evidence of no definite or coherent political creed. It is, therefore, by his sayings that we know Danton best—words flung out at impetuous moments, recorded by innumerable contemporaries, and bearing so strong a family resemblance that it is impossible not to believe that some at least are authentic. It was thus that, like Mirabeau, he frankly admitted his own corruptibility. “ Danton,” says Prudhomme, “ was known as a man who displayed little delicacy in revolution ; that is why he was always surrounded by bad characters and swindlers. Here is a remark habitual to him : ‘ The Revolution should profit those who make it, and if the Kings enriched nobles the Revolution should enrich patriots.’ ”[13] We shall find Danton giving vent to the same sentiments up to the very foot of the scaffold. Danton’s own greed for gold led him to believe that the people were to be won by the same means ; money he held to be the great lever by which the revolutionary mobs could be moved to action.[14]
The fact is, Danton was not a politician, but simply a great agitator ; the “ people ” to whom he openly referred as the canaille must be made to serve the purpose of the demagogues, and he moved amongst them with no show of “ fraternity ” like Robespierre or Marat, but, as Garat expressed it, like “ a grand seigneur of the Sans-Culotterie,” scattering largesse and thundering words of command. Robespierre’s scheme of a Socialist State held, therefore, little attraction for Danton, who had no desire to exchange his comfortable flat in Paris and his château at Arcis-sur-Aube for a cottage in a working-man’s settlement.
But, although divided in their ultimate aims—and also secretly hostile to each other—the members of the Triumvirate that headed the Mountain were agreed in regarding a period of anarchy as necessary to the realization of their schemes, and were therefore content to work together in order to destroy existing conditions. For this purpose it was necessary to enlist the aid of the mob—that portion of the people, mainly women, who, having nothing to lose by general confusion, were ready in return for adequate remuneration to stamp and shout for each party in turn.[15]
Buzot has thus described the aspect of the deputations and audiences collected by Marat and Robespierre at the Convention :
“ It seemed as if they had sought in all the slums of Paris and of the large cities for everything that was filthiest, most hideous, and polluted. Dreadful earthen faces, black or copper-coloured, surmounted by a thick tuft of greasy hair, with eyes half sunken in their heads, they gave vent with their fetid breath to the coarsest insults and shrill screams of hungry animals. The tribunes were worthy of such legislators : men whose frightful appearance gave evidence of crime and wretchedness, women whose shameless air expressed the foulest debauchery. When all these, with hands, feet, and voices, made their horrible din, one would have imagined oneself in an assembly of devils.”
Such were the elements that now usurped the power, taking as their watchword the cry that Taine truly calls “ the résumé of the revolutionary spirit ”: “ The will of the people makes the law, and we are the people.” Henceforth the Revolution enters on a new phase, monarchy and aristocracy have both retired from the lists, and the struggle has begun between democracy and ochlocracy, between the people and the populace. And since the demagogues are on the side of the populace, inevitably ochlocracy triumphs, and everywhere, in the tribunes of the Convention and of the Jacobin Club, in the streets and public places, Marat’s rabble, though an infinitesimal minority, holds sway over the great mass of the people.
THE DEATH OF THE KING
It is significant that even at this crisis, when the revolutionary leaders had at last succeeded in obtaining a following amongst the populace, the attempt was not renewed to achieve the death of the King at the hands of the mob. But the new demagogues were too expert crowd exponents not to realize the futility of such a project. Madame Roland might imagine that the Faubourgs of Paris could be incited to regicide ; Marat, Danton, and Robespierre well knew that if the King were to die they themselves must perform the deed. For in this matter even the populace they had enlisted in their service was not to be depended on.
“ The people,” writes a contemporary during the King’s trial, “ even that portion of the people who have so often steeped themselves in blood during the Revolution, does not wish to shed that of the King ; but there is a party to which it is necessary, and at this moment it dominates Paris, and even the Convention.”[16]
Dr. Moore, mingling at this date with the people of Paris, likewise realized that the ferocity attributed to them was confined to their so-called representatives. New fears, he writes, have been expressed in the Convention of massacres taking place in the streets. “ If there is really any danger of such an event, the inhabitants of Paris must be the worst of savages, but the only people I see of a savage disposition are certain members of the Convention and of the Jacobin Club, and a great majority of those who fill the tribunes at both those assemblies ; but the shopkeepers and tradespeople (and I take some pains to be acquainted with their way of thinking) seem to be much the same as I have always known them ; I am persuaded that there is no risk of massacres or assassinations but from a set of wretches who are neither shopkeepers nor tradesmen, but idle vagabonds, hired and excited for the purpose. When I hear it asserted from the tribune of the Convention, or of the Jacobin Society, that the people are impatient for the death of the King, or inclined to murder unfortunate men while they are conducted to prison, and yet can perceive no disposition of that nature among the citizens, I cannot help suspecting that those orators themselves are the people who are impatient for those atrocities, and that they spread the notion that this desire is general among the people on purpose to render it easier to commit them, and to make them more quietly submitted to after they have been committed.”[17]
In vain the Commune marshalled deputations from the revolutionary “ sections ” to the bar of the Assembly to demand “ the death of the tyrant ”; the people in the streets and cafés gave the lie to all such demonstrations. Thereupon Prudhomme, still the King’s implacable enemy, angrily apostrophized them “ Frenchmen, where will all this lead you ? . . . every hour of the day takes away millions of partisans from the Republic to give them to Royalism. . . . Already in your restaurants hired singers screech inane but touching laments on the fate of the tyrant. (This lament to the tune of ‘ Pauvre Jacques ’ begins thus : ‘ O mon people, que t’ai-je fait ? ’ It is being sold in thousands. The hymn of the Marseillais is forgotten for it.) I have seen, yes, I have seen the toper let fall a tear into his wine in favour of Louis Capet. . . . The French Republic is already three-quarters royalized.”[18]
On the 2nd of January 1793 a Royalist play entitled L’Ami des Lois was produced amidst a wild outburst of popular enthusiasm. The piece in itself was dull, but the opportunity it offered for applauding allusions to royalty and the person of the King, and for jeering at the leading demagogues travestied on the stage, drew an immense audience—the crowd struggling to obtain admittance was numbered at 30,000 people. In vain the Père Duchesne proclaimed his Grande Colère against “ the mounte-banks, heretofore actors of the King ”; in vain the younger Robespierre denounced this “ infamous piece ” in which they had the audacity to introduce his brother and “ the excellent citizen Marat ”; in vain Santerre, surrounded by his staff and later 150 Jacobins, sword and pistol in hand, attempted to put a stop to the performance. The people responded with deafening cries of “ L’Ami des Lois ! The piece ! The piece ! Raise the curtain ! ” The voice of Santerre was drowned in shouts of “ Down with the General Mousseux ! Down with the 2nd of September ! We want the piece ! The piece or death ! ” The demagogues were obliged to submit ; the piece was played not once but again, four times in all, amidst scenes of indescribable enthusiasm.[19]
A still stranger scene took place at Bordeaux, where it was not simply a promiscuous crowd of citizens who protested against the designs of the Convention, but the chosen flock on whom the leaders depended for their following. By way of propaganda the Jacobin Society of Bordeaux had invited its members to a “ patriotic play ” called The Republic of Syracuse, or Monarchy Abolished. The sentiments this piece contained having been heartily approved by the leading members of the Club, it was hoped that the public would receive it with equal favour. This is, however, what occurred—the description must be given in the inimitable words of the patriot of Bordeaux, whose letter was read aloud at the Jacobin Club in Paris :
“ On the day of the performance all the seats were filled at a very early hour. The curtain rises and the theatre represents the place of M. Veto ; he is told of the complaints that his people make against him, and of the depredations of Mme. Veto. He gets angry ; an insurrection makes him gentler. The people wish to become free and give themselves a constitution ; a patriot general is placed at the head of the armed forces ; Mme. Veto tries to seduce him, but in the piece she does not succeed as in our Revolution.[20] The Constitution made, the Constitutional Monarch swears and swears again everything they wish, but keeps nothing ; at last the people open their eyes a second time, they see that this monarch is deceiving them ; they attack the Château, take M. and Mme. Veto prisoners, and shut them up in a tower. They are brought to trial and the Senate of Syracuse sends them both to the guillotine. Here begins the fifth act. The guillotine on the stage excites a movement of stupor throughout the hall. Some said, ‘ How can they represent such things ? ’ Women fainted. At last, in the midst of the most absolute silence, M. and Mme. Veto arrive at the foot of the fatal instrument. At the moment they mount the ladder a cry from the people demands mercy for them, and condemns them to perpetual imprisonment. At the cry of ‘ Mercy ! ’ the hall resounded with applause, so much has public opinion deteriorated in that city. So no longer there does one hear the générale beaten or the cry to arms ; flat calm reigns. The patriot Terrasson tried to speak at the Society in favour of Marat, Robespierre, Danton, and others, who are regarded as sedition-mongers ; they would not listen to him . . . the Society passed the resolution that it would suspend all correspondence with the Jacobins of Paris, so long as these members remained amongst them.”[21]
The Convention took a terrible revenge on Bordeaux ten months later.
It will be asked, “ If the people did not wish for the death of the King, why did they not save him ? ” Perhaps if they had known their power they might have done so, but, terrorized as they still were by the September massacres, they no doubt imagined the Commune to be far more powerful than it really was. They could not know, as we know now, that the following on which the leaders depended for support constituted approximately 1-100th part of the population of Paris,[22] and that, had the remaining 99-100th been able to coalesce, they could have swept away the demagogues almost without an effort. Convinced of their own helplessness, they showed the same submission to the decrees of the Convention concerning the King as they displayed when their own lives were at stake eighteen months later. But, above all, they lacked leaders, men of their own class to defend their interests against those of the middle-class men who composed the Convention. A few energetic working-men, placing themselves at the head of the Faubourgs, must have carried the day, for at this stage of the Revolution the demagogues would not have dared to fire on them—the people so far were not crushed, they were only paralysed.
Meanwhile, had they only realized it, the Convention lived in terror of the people. All through the discussions that took place on the fate of the King there runs a haunting fear lest a popular movement should be made in his favour.[23] It was for this reason that Chabot urged the necessity for avoiding a Sunday or Monday for bringing the King to trial, since on those days the people were not at work and would be free to assemble.[24] Robespierre, the better to expedite matters, proposed that the Convention should pass sentence of death without according Louis XVI. the formality of a trial, whilst St. Just advocated simple murder. “ Caesar,” he said, “ was immolated in the open Senate without any further formality than twenty-two dagger thrusts.”
But the Girondins, either from a desire to maintain a reputation for justice, or because they really wished to save the King, insisted on a trial, and the 11th of December was the day fixed for Louis XVI. to appear at the bar of the Convention.
The debates that took place in the Convention must be read in order to realize the utter futility of the charges brought against the King, from Valazé’s accusation of “ monopolizing wheat, coffee, and sugar,” [25] to the diatribes of Robert—convicted later of cornering large quantities of rum [26]—who declared Louis XVI. to be “ guilty of more cruelties than Nero,” of having “ butchered more human beings than his life counted hours or moments,” of “ aspiring to the absurd privilege of bathing in the blood of his fellow-men.” [27] For want of fresh pretexts all the old threadbare grievances were revived—the closing of the Assembly on the day of the Oath of the Tennis Court, the “ orgy of the Guards ” at Versailles on the 1st of October 1789, the flight to Varennes, the “ massacre of the Champ de Mars ” on July 17, 1791 (when the King was a prisoner at the Tuileries), the refusal to sanction the camp of 20,000 men, and so on. The charge of conspiring with foreign powers, that looms so large in the pages of revolutionary historians, played a comparatively small part in the trial, for no proofs whatever were forthcoming. Great hopes had been entertained of finding incriminating documents in the iron cupboard that Roland had discovered at the Tuileries after the 10th of August, where the King had concealed his private papers, but this find proved disappointing, for though it offered to Roland the opportunity for abstracting documents that could have served to establish the innocence of Louis XVI.[28]—and also certain other documents that might have convicted Roland and his party of offering to sell themselves to the Court [29]—it provided not a shred of evidence that the King had been guilty of traitorous intrigues with the enemies of France.[30]
When, finally, Louis XVI. appeared at the bar of the Convention, and the long list of paltry charges, drawn up in the form of an indictment, was read aloud to him, he contented himself with brief and dignified denials ; only when they touched on his most vulnerable point, his conduct towards the people, his serenity momentarily deserted him. Thus at the accusation of Barère that he had attempted to conspire by going to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and distributing alms amongst the poor workmen of the district, his eyes filled with tears as he answered, “ Ah ! monsieur, I have never known greater happiness than in giving to those who were in need.” [31] At this, one of the wretched women amongst Marat’s following in the tribunes burst into loud sobs, exclaiming, “ Ah ! men Dieu, how he makes me weep! ” [32] When, again, he was accused of shedding the people’s blood—the one reproach of all that cut him to the heart—his voice vibrated with emotion as he replied, “ No, monsieur, no, it was not I who shed their blood.” [33]
“ The King’s appearance in the Convention,” says Dr. Moore, “ the dignified resignation of his manner, the admirable promptitude and candour of his answers, made such an evident impression on some of the audience in the galleries that a determined enemy of Royalty, who had his eye upon them, declared that he was afraid of hearing the cry of ‘ Vive le Roi ! ’ issue from the tribunes, and added that if the King had remained ten minutes longer in their sight he was convinced it would have happened : for which reason he was vehemently against his being brought to the bar a second time.” [34]
On the proposal of Pétion the King was allowed to appoint advocates for his defence. No less than a hundred at once offered their services.[35] The King’s choice fell on his old friend Malesherbes, who at the beginning of his reign had co-operated with him in the work of reform, on Désèze, Tronchet, and Target. Target, it seems, had not volunteered, and had the cowardice to refuse the task. At this the poissardes were so indignant that they presented themselves at his door with birch-rods to scourge him, and the wretched Target, warned of their intention, was obliged to fly ; but to Tronchet who accepted they brought flowers and laurels.[36] They would have crowned, too, the head of brave old Malesherbes, that venerable white head that, as the penalty of his devotion, was to fall later upon the scaffold, but Malesherbes declined the honour, and the fishwives had to content themselves with hanging their garlands on his gate.[37]
All these symptoms seriously alarmed the revolutionary leaders, and when on the 26th of December the King appeared at the Convention to hear his defence read aloud by Désèze, immense precautions were taken to prevent the people from coming to his rescue. The whole route from the Temple to the Manège was lined with troops ; a mounted bodyguard as well as one on foot surrounded his carriage, six cannons preceded him and six followed behind, whilst strong patrols paraded the streets.[38]
The assembling of this guard had been no easy matter, for the men of the people had absolutely declined to take part in the proceedings. “ It is said,” writes a contemporary that evening, “ that the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, which are the most thickly populated districts of Paris, refused to-day to form the King’s Guard whilst he was at the Convention, saying that if any harm is to be done to him they will not be accomplices.” [39] It was thus found necessary to form a sort of press-gang, and officers were sent to tear peaceful citizens from their beds and force them to join the escort.[40]
From the outset it was evident that the King’s trial was to be a mere travesty of justice. “ I look for judges ! ” cried his advocate Désèze, “ and I see only accusers ! ” Even the revolutionary leaders themselves secretly recognized the truth of this indictment. The Convention, Prudhomme pointed out to Danton, had not the right to try Louis XVI.: “ If the Parliament of England tried Charles I., it is because it was not a Convention ; the members of the Conventional Assembly cannot be at the same time accusers, jury, and judges.” “ You are right,” answered Danton, “ nor shall we judge Louis XVI.; we shall kill him.” [41]
This was the plan they now proposed to put into practice, and as soon as the King had retired Duhem rose to demand that his condemnation should be discussed without further delay. The evidence brought forward in his defence was thus not even to be considered.
At so monstrous an outrage on humanity and justice one man was found brave enough to protest—Lanjuinais, a Breton, member for Ile et Vilaine, whose courage and eloquence from this moment until the fall of the Gironde provide a striking contrast to the cowardice and treachery of both Girondins and Montagnards. “ You cannot,” Lanjuinais cried boldly, “ remain judges, appliers of the law, accusers, juries for the accusation, juries for the judgement, having all expressed your opinions, having done so, some of you, with a scandalous ferocity ! ” [42]
The voice of Lanjuinais was drowned in howls of indignation. At last, after scenes of indescribable confusion, the Convention decided that the judgement of the King should be discussed. It seems that the Girondins now really wished to save the King, if only to arrest the increasing despotism of the Mountain ; but, too cowardly to protest against his condemnation, they bethought themselves of a way out of the dilemma by proposing an appeal to the people through the primary assemblies. The Montagnards, who knew as well as the Girondins that the verdict of the people would be in favour of the King, naturally offered a furious resistance to the plan. The question was first put to the Convention by the Girondin Salles on the 27th of December in an admirable speech. “ Either,” he said, “ the nation wishes that Louis should die or it does not ; if it wishes it, you all who wish it also, your expectations will not be disappointed ; but if it does not wish it, what right have you to send him to execution contrary to the wish of the nation ? ”
This was, of course, absolutely unanswerable from the point of view of true democracy, but presented no difficulty to the deputies of the Mountain. Every tortuous argument the heart of sophist could devise was brought forward during the seven days that the discussion lasted, to prove that an appeal to the nation would be in reality undemocratic—a betrayal of the people’s trust. “ Virtue,” Robespierre remarked sententiously, “ was always in a minority on earth.” He seemed to have forgotten he had once said that the people were infallible ; on this occasion he evidently feared they might prove “ subject to error.” St. Just, paying an unconscious tribute to the liberty accorded to public opinion by the Old Régime, asked : “ The appeal to the people . . . would that not be bringing back the monarchy ? ” Nothing could be truer. Under the monarchy the poorest of the King’s subjects had enjoyed the right of bringing him petitions ; from St. Louis seated beneath his oak to Louis XVI. receiving the poissardes at Versailles, access had always been granted to “ the people.” But when deputations of poor women gathered around the doors of the Convention to plead for the life of Louis XVI. they were turned away, after waiting long hours, without a hearing,[43] whilst deputies who persisted in demanding an appeal to the people were shouted down with angry cries of “ Death to the traitor ! ” [44] In the streets hawkers shouted, “ Here is the list of the Royalists and aristocrats who voted for the appeal to the people ! ” [45]
For, as usual at a moment of crisis, the revolutionary leaders had recourse to their great expedient—terror.
When the King—against whom nothing had been proved—was finally pronounced “ guilty,” and the appeal to the people was defeated by a majority of 424 to 283 votes, the Mountain put all the machinery of revolution in motion to secure a final verdict of death. Amongst the men employed for this purpose the agents of the Duc d’Orléans were the most active. “ The Orléanistes,” says Montjoie, “ clearly understood that the people were not for them ; they kept the blade unceasingly raised over the heads of the voters ; they surrounded them with assassins.” The deputies of the Gironde, says Madame Roland, were obliged to go about “ armed to the teeth ” in self-defence ;[46] brigands brandishing sticks and sabres pursued them as they left the Convention, crying out, “ His life or yours ! ” [47]
At eight o’clock on the evening of the 16th of January the debate began that was to decide the great question : “ What penalty shall be inflicted on Louis ? ” “ It is impossible,” says Mercier, “ to describe the agitation of that long and convulsive sitting.”
Lehardy opened the proceedings by asking what majority would be necessary for the death sentence to be pronounced. Thereupon Lanjuinais demanded that it should consist in two-thirds of the votes, in accordance with the penal code framed by the Constituent Assembly. But Danton, shrewdly foreseeing that this majority would not be forthcoming, proposed that the Convention should pass a decree ordaining that a majority of one voice should be sufficient—in other words, the law was to be altered to fit the case.
At this Lanjuinais rose again in wrath : “ You say all the time that we are a jury ; well, it is the penal code I invoke, it is the form of trial by jury for which I ask. . . . You have rejected all the forms that perhaps justice and certainly humanity demand, the right of challenging the jury and voting in silence. We seem to be deliberating in a free Convention, but it is beneath the daggers and the cannons of the factions.” And he ended by demanding that three-fourths of the votes should be necessary for condemnation to death.
But the Convention without further discussion decreed that a majority of one vote should suffice.
Then the voting began and continued for twenty-four hours without intermission. One by one the deputies arose, and through the tense silence of the hall the fatal word rang out again and again : “ Death ! ” Some of the more violent—Marat, Frèron, Billaud- Varenne—added vindictively, “ within twenty-four hours ”; several even amongst the Girondins now allowed themselves to be terrorized into voting for immediate death, others pleaded tremblingly for respite. It was reserved for Philippe d’Orléans to give the last touch of infamy to this terrible night. When in the semi-darkness of the hall, illumined only by a few feebly-burning candles, the bloated face of Égalité appeared in the tribune, the Assembly waited breathlessly for the words that were to fall from his lips : “ Solely occupied by my duty, convinced that all those who have violated the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I vote for death.”
At this cowardly betrayal of his kinsman even the Convention shuddered ; a low murmur of indignation ran through the hall ; men rose from their seats with gestures of disgust, crying out incontrollably, “ Oh ! horror ! Oh ! the monster ! ”[48]
The miserable prince had shown his hand at last, had given the lie once and for all to his apologists, who declared him to be the weak and amiable puppet of a faction ; even in the eyes of the regicides he now became a thing of loathing, a pariah to be repudiated by each faction in turn.
The vote of the Duc d’Orléans was of paramount importance in the final decision, for, according to the official report, when the votes came to be counted up there were found to be 360 for imprisonment, banishment, for death with respite or conditional death, and exactly 361 for immediate and unconditional death ; if this were so, then Philippe’s had been the casting vote, and by throwing it into the scale of instant death he murdered the King as surely as if he had stabbed him to the heart with his own hand. But so much jugglery went on behind the scenes, and the votes of many deputies were so vaguely worded, that it is impossible to discover the exact figures.[49] According to a prevailing opinion at the time, there was a real majority of five votes for immediate and unconditional death. “ They murdered him,” Arthur Young wrote indignantly, “ by a majority of five voices, though their law required three-fourths at least for declaring guilt or for pronouncing death—and the majority obtained by the menaces of the assassins paid by Égalité. The consummation of political infamy ! ”
The Convention itself recoiled in shame before the crime it was about to perpetrate. “ The silence of terror,” says Beaulieu, “ reigned during the deliverance of this disastrous judgement, and even long after the President had ceased speaking. It seemed as if the revolutionaries were already plumbing the abyss they had created without being able to discover its depth.”
The same evening the news was brought to the King’s counsels that a majority of five votes had been obtained in favour of death. Thereupon Louis XVI. instantly demanded that an appeal should be made to the people, and Désèze, Tronchet, and Malesherbes came to lay the request before the Convention. Malesherbes, overwhelmed with grief, was unable to utter more than a few broken sentences, but his colleagues forcibly portrayed the iniquity of pronouncing the death sentence contrary to the penal code by means of a decree passed at this same sitting. Robespierre replied that the King’s defenders had no right to attack “ great measures taken for public safety,” and demanded that their appeal should be rejected. This proposal was adopted by the Convention.
The Girondins, now more than ever alarmed at the tyranny of the Mountain, ventured to remonstrate ; Guadet asked that the objections of the King’s defenders should be considered. Buzot two days later protested against condemnation on so diminutive a majority, and even went so far as to declare that the party which desired the immediate death of the King wished to place the Duc d’Orléans on the throne. Thomas Paine represented the “ universal affliction ” the execution of Louis XVI. would create in America, where he was regarded by the people as “ their best friend, the one who had procured them their liberty.”
In the end the Girondins succeeded in carrying the motion that the question of postponing the sentence should be put to the vote. But by this time the whole Assembly was so cowed by the menaces of Orléans and the Mountain that the sentence of immediate death was carried by a majority of 380 to 310. The President then pronounced sentence of death to be executed within twenty-four hours.
Malesherbes has related that when he went to the Temple to break the news to Louis XVI. he found him seated in the semi-darkness, his back turned to the lamp, his elbows resting on a little table, and his face buried in his hands. As the old man entered the King rose and, looking him in the eyes, said solemnly : “ Monsieur de Malesherbes, for two hours I have been trying to discover whether in the course of my reign I have deserved the least reproach from my subjects. Well, I swear to you in all truth as a man about to appear before God that I have always wished for the happiness of my people, that I have never formed a wish opposed to them.”
“ Ah, Sire,” answered Malesherbes with tears, “ I still have hope ; the people know the purity of your intentions, they love you and they feel for you. I found myself, on going out from the debate, surrounded by a number of people who assured me that you would not perish, or at least not until they and their friends had perished themselves. . . .”
“ Do you know these people ? ” Louis XVI. interposed hastily; “ go back to the Assembly, try to find some of them, tell them that I should never forgive them if a drop of blood were shed for me ; I refused to shed it when it might have saved me my throne and my life . . . and I do not repent, no, Monsieur, I do not repent.”
The cause of this unrepentance is not far to seek. Louis XVI. realized that his trust in the people had not been misplaced, for it was not by the people he had been condemned—an appeal to the people must inevitably have saved him. He knew, no doubt, the intrigues that had brought about the fatal sentence. To numberless contemporaries it was evident that the influence of the Duc d’Orléans had contributed even more than that of Robespierre towards this end. According to rumours current at the time a certain Marquis de Lepeletier St. Fargeau had intended to vote against the King’s death, and to induce twenty-five of his fellow deputies to do the same, but at the last moment he and his companions were persuaded by Orléans to throw their weight into the opposite scale.[50] Whether this was so or not, it provides the only explanation to a mysterious incident that occurred the evening before the King’s execution. Lepeletier was dining in a restaurant of the Palais Royal when a man with black hair, dressed in a long grey overcoat, entered. This man was Paris, a member of the King’s old bodyguard ; all day he had wandered about the city, sabre in hand, seeking the Duc d’Orléans in vain.[51] Now he had found Lepeletier, and, going up to him, he accosted him thus : “ You voted for the death of the King ? ” “ Yes, Monsieur, I voted according to my conscience. What matters it to you ? ” But Paris, drawing out his sabre from beneath his cloak, cried, “ Wretch, then you shall vote no more ! ” and he plunged his weapon into the body of Lepeletier.
So little did the citizens who filled the dining-room resent the crime that not a murmur arose, and Paris was allowed to leave the restaurant unmolested.[52]
Such manifestations of public feeling were naturally disquieting to the regicides, and now more than ever they dreaded that a popular movement might be made in favour of the King. On the following day a formidable guard was again summoned to surround him on his way to the Place de la Révolution. “ According to two Marseillais very hostile to the King,” says M. Madelin, “ Paris had been literally placed in a state of siege.” Meanwhile Philippe Égalité, foreseeing that Louis XVI. might succeed in bringing the crowd to his rescue by words spoken from the scaffold, took elaborate precautions against such an eventuality. “ D’Orléans,” says Senart, “ fears that he may speak to the people ; he fears that the people may deliver him, for the head of Capet was necessary to him at any price. There were various rendezvous for the Orléans faction. It was at one of these rendezvous that Santerre swore to D’Orléans, glass in hand, that he would make use of a sure method to prevent Capet from speaking, and thus was formed the plot of the famous roll of drums which occurred at the death of Capet.” [53]
When the wet and dreary morning of January 21 dawned, the city was wrapped in the silence of consternation. “ All the shops were shut ; silent patrols, composed of ill-clad men, moved slowly about the streets, where one met only pale, sad, and gloomy faces ; executioners and victims alike seemed aghast at the cruel sacrifice that was to be consummated ; stupor alone seemed to inhabit Paris. Such was the situation of that famous city, once so brilliant and the rendezvous for all pleasures.” [54]
Mercier, who invariably endeavours to throw on the people the blame for all the crimes of the Revolution, has represented Paris as presenting a normal, even a gay appearance on this dreadful day—a testimony eagerly seized on by revolutionary historians, but which is contradicted by innumerable contemporaries, even by Prudhomme. Fockedey, a member of the Convention, has thus confirmed the evidence of Beaulieu :
“ This day was for France, and above all for Paris, a day of bitterness and grief, of fear and mourning : the capital was in anguish. Almost all the shops and houses were closed, whole families were in tears. Consternation was seen on all the faces one met ; a great number of the National Guards, on foot since the morning, appeared themselves to be going to execution. No, never will the scenes I witnessed on that day be effaced from my memory. How many were the tears I saw flow ! What imprecations I heard against the authors of such a crime. . . . The Assembly that day was silent and gloomy, the voters for regicide were pale and shattered, they seemed to have a horror of themselves.” [55]
As to the poor people of Paris, they could hardly bring themselves to believe that so dreadful a deed could really be accomplished. “ On the 21st of January,” writes the Comtesse de Bohm, “ I saw upon the ramparts people of the lowest classes weeping, showing openly their grief at the outrage that was to take place. ‘ There are too many of them in Paris,’ they said, ‘ they will prevent it.’ The sun pierced through the clouds, shining on this crime. That national sense of shame that will be transmitted from age to age, of which the remorse will become for every Frenchman a personal offence, weighed heavily upon me.”
But the Parisians made no effort to prevent the crime. The little band of Royalists, under the Baron de Batz, that dashed towards the King’s carriage, crying, “ Join with us, you who would save the King ! ” met with neither resentment nor response ; the immense multitude stood by stupefied and mute, hypnotized, it would seem, by the horror of the whole proceeding, for not a cry broke from them as the dark green coach passed between their ranks towards the great Place de la Révolution. Through the windows the outline of the King’s face could be dimly seen beneath the shadow of his large hat, bent downwards to his breviary open at the prayers for the dying. He was, perhaps, the most tranquil man in Paris on that grey January morning. “ God is my comforter,” he had said to his confessor, the Abbé Edgeworth ; “ my enemies cannot take His peace from me.”
Every effort was made by the revolutionary journalists to minimize the King’s courage at the supreme moment. “ Louis,” Le Thermomètre du Jour declared, “ had shown courage and assurance only because he did not believe the sentence would really be carried out, that to the very moment of his death he had reckoned on being saved.” When he realized, however, his delusion, his serenity deserted him, and he “ struggled with the executioner’s assistants, by whom at last he was forcibly tied to the plank of the guillotine.” It was Sanson, the executioner himself who refuted this lie, by coming forward boldly to testify not only to the King’s courage but to the cause that inspired it.
“ Citizen,” he wrote to the editor of the Thermomètre, “ a short absence has prevented me from replying sooner to your article concerning Louis Capet, but here . . . is the exact truth concerning what passed. On alighting from the carriage for the execution he was told that he must take off his coat ; he made some difficulty, saying that he could be executed as he was. On being assured that this was impossible he himself helped to take off his coat. He then made the same difficulty when it came to tying his hands, but he offered them himself when the person who was with him (the Abbé Edgeworth) had said to him that it was a last sacrifice. He inquired whether the drums would go on beating ; we answered that we did not know, which was the truth. He ascended the scaffold, and tried to advance to the front as if he wished to speak, but it was represented to him that the thing was again impossible ; then he allowed himself to be led to the place where he was tied, and where he cried out loudly, ‘ People, I die innocent ! ’ Then turning towards us he said to us, ‘ I am innocent of all that is imputed to me. I desire that my blood may seal the happiness of the French people.’ Those, citizen, were his last and exact words. The kind of little debate which occurred at the foot of the scaffold turned on his not thinking it necessary that his coat should be taken off and his hands tied. He also made the proposal to cut off his own hair.
“ And in order to render homage to truth, he bore all this with a sang-froid and firmness which astonished us all, and I remain convinced that he had derived this firmness from the principles of religion, of which no one could seem more persuaded and imbued than he. You can be sure, citizen, that here is the truth in its fullest light.—I have the honour to be your fellow-citizen,
Not content with maligning the King, the revolutionaries as usual maligned the people. “ After the execution,” says Mercier again, “ they laughed and chattered, they walked home arm-in-arm as if returning from a feast, the theatres remained open as usual throughout the evening.” True, hideous scenes of mirth took place on the Place de la Révolution ; joy shone out exultingly from the face of Orléans, watching the execution from his cabriolet ; around the scaffold brigands danced together, shouting “ Vive la République ! ” A citizen ascending the guillotine plunged his arm into the blood of the King and dashed it in the faces of the crowd. Then once again, like a tiger that has tasted blood, the mob went mad and broke out likewise into dancing ; wild, blood-bespattered figures whirled round in each other’s arms ; all over the great Place de la Révolution the hoarse roar arose, “ Vive la République ! Vive la Liberté ! Vive l’Égalité ! ” [56]
But after this one moment of “ crowd hysteria ” it seems that even the mob came to its senses, and Paris once more relapsed into stupor. The people did not go home rejoicing ; on the contrary, says Lacretelle, they “ returned gloomy and absorbed ; the multitude itself, whether from pity or from resentment at its curiosity being disappointed, loaded Santerre with imprecations for having drowned the last words of the King. All through the day that followed ”—for the execution took place at half-past ten in the morning—“ Paris was silent, almost deserted ; people shut themselves up with their families to weep.” The women, Prudhomme reluctantly admits, were sad, “ which contributed not a little to that gloomy air which Paris presented throughout this day.” As to the theatres, it is true that they were open that evening, but also they were empty, and the managers found themselves obliged to return the money paid for seats.[57] In the streets, say the Two Friends of Liberty “ people dared not look each other in the face . . . the day after the execution they had not recovered from this overwhelming dejection.”
Had France indeed, like Louis XVI. himself, some premonition of the immense misfortunes this day was to bring her ? “ I see the people,” he had said to Cléry on the night of his condemnation, “ given over to anarchy, becoming the victim of all the factions ; I see crimes following one upon another and long dissensions rending France.”
For the people he grieved, knowing well in what hands he was leaving them. Here, in the white light of eternity, we see him at his best, his blunders atoned for by his great sincerity. To the cause of despots he had proved a traitor, to “ aristocracy ” he had shown scant sympathy, but to the people he had been true. In him they lost not their best but their only friend. Carlyle has written of “ the great heart of Danton ”—Danton, whose last words, like those of nearly every one of the demagogues, were to revile the people—for the great heart of Louis XVI. he has nothing but contempt. Yet, of all the men who played their part in the Revolution, there was only one who, realizing that no hope for his life remained, could say from the depths of his heart, as he stood on the threshold of the other world—the platform of the guillotine—“ I desire that my blood may seal the happiness of the French.” That one true patriot, that one man ready to die for France and for the people, was the King.
ENGLAND AND THE DEATH OF THE KING
In England the news of the King’s death was received by all classes with horror. “ I cannot describe to you,” Lord Grenville wrote to Lord Auckland on the 24th of January, “ the universal indignation it has excited here . . . the audience at one of the play-houses stopping the play, and ordering the curtain to be dropped as soon as the news was announced to them.”
The Prince of Wales, hearing of the vote for death given by his former boon-companion Philippe d’Orléans, pulled down the portrait of the duke—a masterpiece by Sir Joshua Reynolds from the wall in Carlton House, and tore it into shreds with his own hands.[58]
But the lovers of true liberty mourned the most profoundly. It was because the murder of Louis XVI. was the greatest crime ever committed against democracy that Arthur Young, that ardent democrat, denounced it in unmeasured terms :
“ This great abomination . . . ought to generate (for the real felicity of the human race) a tighter rein in the jaws of that monster . . . the metaphysical, philosophical, atheistical Jacobin Republican, abhorred for ever for holding out to all the sovereigns of the earth that the only prince who ever voluntarily placed bounds t0 his own power DIED FOR IT ON THE SCAFFOLD, and ruined his people while he destroyed himself. He gave ear to those who told him of abuses ; he wished to ease his people ; he fought popularity . . . he would not shed the blood of traitors, conspirators, and rebels. . . . This damned event, deep written in the characters of hell, has thrown a stupor over mankind.” [59]
In Parliament Pitt spoke of “ the murder of the King ” as “ that dreadful outrage against every principle of religion, of justice, and of humanity, which has created one general sentiment of indignation and abhorrence in every part of this island, and most undoubtedly has produced the same effect in every civilized country . . . it is the foulest and most atrocious deed which the history of the world has yet had occasion to attest.”
And here, for the honour of our country, it is impossible to pass over in silence the accusation brought against Pitt in this connection by an English historian. “ Information,” wrote the late Lord Acton, “ was brought to Pitt from a source that could be trusted, that Danton would save him (the King) for £40,000. When he made up his mind to give the money, Danton replied that it was too late. Pitt explained to the French diplomatist, Maret, afterwards Prime Minister, his motive for hesitation. The execution of the King of France would raise such a storm in England that the Whigs would be submerged.” [60]
In other words, Pitt was willing for the sake of party interests to act as murderer to Louis XVI. And on what does Lord Acton found this monstrous charge ? On the assertion of Maret—a revolutionary emissary to England ! Now, even if Pitt had entertained so dastardly a plan, is it conceivable that he would have confided it to such a man as Maret ? The only grain of truth in the whole story seems to be that Pitt did refuse to bribe Danton, but as he was very well aware of Danton’s true character—was not Bertrand de Molleville in London at the time and able to enlighten him on the financial transactions he had conducted on behalf of the King with that “ thorough patriot ” ?—it is hardly surprising that Pitt should have hesitated to put £40,000 into the pocket of a man who would in all probability make no return. The Revolutionary Tribunal was probably much nearer the mark when it declared that Pitt had assisted Malesherbes financially in defending the King [61]—a course the great statesman may well have held to be more reputable and at the same time more expedient than bribing Danton.
If any members of the British Parliament are to be accused of complicity in the murder of Louis XVI., it is certainly the Whigs ; Pitt, whom the revolutionaries regarded as their arch-enemy, would only have increased their animosity towards the King by interceding for him, but Fox, Sheridan, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Lauderdale, and Lord Stanhope were all on the best of terms with the members of the Convention, and might surely have exerted their influence to avert the crime. With the exception of Lord Stanhope—who, we know, definitely refused to intercede for Louis XVI., giving as his reason that “ new discoveries of his treachery, perfidy, and duplicity ” had just been made [62]—we may do these men the justice to believe that if they refrained from intervention it was because, like Pitt, they knew it would be hopeless.
A rupture between France and England had now become inevitable, for it was evident that the Anarchists of Paris, not content with devastating their own country, proposed to carry out the same process in every other country which they could succeed in entering. On the 19th of November they had issued the following proclamation :
“ The National Convention declares in the name of the French nation that she will accord fraternity and assistance to all peoples who wish to recover their liberty, and charges the Executive Power to give the necessary orders to the generals in order to render assistance to these peoples, and to defend the citizens who have been vexed or who might be so for the cause of liberty.” [63]
This decree, which the Convention ordered to be translated into “ all languages,” was therefore not an appeal merely to the peoples of the countries with which France was then at war, but a call to universal insurrection. A few weeks later the revolutionary leaders explained their intentions towards the countries they had already entered in a further proclamation. On the 15th of December, Cambon, “ in the name of the financial, military, and diplomatic committees,” rose to define the line of conduct the generals of the revolutionary armies were to pursue :
“ It is necessary that we should declare ourselves a revolutionary power in the countries that we enter. . . . Your committees consider that, after expelling the tyrants and their satellites, the generals on entering every ‘ Commune ’ must publish a proclamation, showing the people that we bring them happiness, that they must immediately suppress tithes and feudal rights, and all forms of servitude.
“ But you will have accomplished nothing if you confine yourselves only to these destructions. Aristocracy governs everywhere ; therefore all existing authorities must be destroyed. Nothing of the Old Régime must survive when revolutionary power shows itself.” [64]
This, however, was not to be effected by the will of the people in the invaded countries, who indeed displayed no great enthusiasm for the benefits of French liberty. As in France, deputations and declarations, purporting to express the wishes of the people, were engineered by Jacobin agents,[65] and in no way represented public opinion. So, although it was announced that Belgium desired to embrace revolutionary doctrines and to be united to the French Republic, “ the immense majority of the Belgian population remained attached to its old beliefs,” and regarded the anarchic schemes of the invaders with horror.[66] In Germany the apostles of “ democracy ” met with a like resistance. Mayence boldly protested ; at Frankfort the citizens refused to plant a tree of liberty at the command of Custine.[67] But the revolutionary leaders were not to be baffled by these obstacles ; if the people did not accept “ liberty, equality, and fraternity ” when offered them with honeyed words, these inestimable blessings must be forced on them at the point of the sword.
It was in consequence of this recalcitrance that Cambon in the same speech went on to say : “ But you will have accomplished nothing if you do not loudly declare the severity of your principles against whosoever desires only a half-liberty. You wish that the people against whom you carry arms should be free. If they reconcile themselves with the privileged castes you must not suffer this traffic with tyrants. You must therefore say to the people who wish to preserve the privileged castes, ‘ You are our enemies,’ and then treat them as such, since they desire neither liberty nor equality.”
At the end of this speech, delivered amidst unanimous applause, the Convention issued a further decree to each country entered by their armies, declaring that “ from this moment the French Republic proclaims the suppression of all your magistrates, civil and military, of all the authorities that have governed you, and proclaims in this country the abolition of all the taxes you endure, under whatsoever form they exist,” etc. In a word, every country entered by the French was to be thrown into chaos.[68]
Beside this proclamation it must be admitted that the Manifesto of Brunswick appears almost benign. The Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia had definitely declared therein that they had “ no intention of meddling with the domestic government of France ”; the revolutionaries announced their determination to destroy the existing form of government whether the people desired it or not. The Manifesto of Brunswick, moreover, had repudiated all ideas of annexation ; the revolutionaries made no attempt to conceal the fact that the conversion of the invaded countries to “ democratic ” doctrines was to be but the prelude to incorporation with the French Republic.
The moment the retreat of the foreign armies began, after Valmy, the pretext of carrying on war for the defence of France was abandoned, and the Republic embarked on its career of aggrandizement. Belgium, the Rhine provinces, Savoy, and Nice were all successively annexed without any pretext being offered for these acts of brigandage. Writers who enthuse over the glorious successes of French arms from the battle of Jemmapes onwards would do well to ask themselves by what right the French Republic pursued the invading armies beyond the frontier for the purpose of annexing territory ? It will be answered Louis XIV. had done the same. True, but was not the spirit of the Revolution until 1792 diametrically opposed to the policy of Louis XIV. ? Had not the French democracy itself declared that war was never justified except in self-defence ? only two and a half years earlier—in May 1790—at the Constituent Assembly, a league of perpetual peace had been decreed amidst immense enthusiasm. “ Let all nations be free like ourselves,” a deputy had cried, “ and there will be no more wars ! ” And on the proposal of Robespierre the Assembly formally declared : “ The French nation renounces the idea of undertaking any war with a view of conquest, and will never employ its forces against the liberty of any people.” Yet it was the very men who framed it, Robespierre and his allies, who now repudiated this resolution and advocated pure aggression, and thus the League of Peace proved but the prelude to the greatest war of conquest the civilized world had ever seen. Had not Mirabeau foretold this when, in response to the enthusiasts of 1790, he had declared “ free people to be more eager for war, and democracies more the slaves of their passions than the most absolute autocracies ” ? [69]
It was not, then, as is frequently and falsely stated, that Pitt “ sought a pretext ” for joining “ the coalition of Kings ” against the French Republic ; it was the wanton aggression of the Republic culminating in the seizure of the mouth of the Scheldt and of Antwerp—that in the hands of a dangerous enemy must inevitably prove, as Napoleon perceived, “ a pistol held at the head of England ”; it was the example of inhumanity and injustice offered to Europe by the murder of Louis XVI.; above all it was the declaration of world anarchy published by the Convention, threatening not only England but the whole of civilization, that led Pitt to conclude his speech on the death of Louis XVI. by proposing preparations for war : “ There can be no consideration more deserving the attention of this House than to crush and destroy principles which are so dangerous and destructive of every blessing this country enjoys under its free and excellent constitution. We owe our present happiness and prosperity, which has never been equalled in the annals of mankind, to a mixture of monarchical government. We feel and know we are happy under that form of government. We consider it as our first duty to maintain and reverence the British Constitution.” He went on to present the contrast between England and “ that country (France) exposed to all the tremendous consequences of that ungovernable, that intolerable and destroying spirit, which carries ruin and desolation wherever it goes ! Sirs, this infection can have no existence in this happy land, unless it is imported, unless it is studiously and industriously brought into this country.”
Pitt well knew the efforts that were being made to spread this infection, the insidious influences that emanated from Parliament itself. England has always had her “ Illuminati,” who, holding loyalty and patriotism to be “ narrow-minded prejudices incompatible with universal benevolence,” have ever been ready to plead the cause of their country’s enemies—whether these enemies masqueraded under the name of democracy as in 1793, or rallied round the standard of autocracy as in 1800. Now at this most critical moment this band of antipatriots came forward in defence of the French Jacobins ; Fox, Sheridan, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Lauderdale, Lord Stanhope poured forth floods of oratory to prove that public opinion on the revolutionary leaders had been influenced by “ the absurdities of madmen, the monstrous propositions of the heated imaginations of individuals ”;[70] to show by tortuous sophistries that black was really white ; that if, indeed, crimes had been committed, the best way to express disapproval would be by shaking hands with the criminals. They themselves, honoured by the friendship of such men as Brissot—whom to their indignation Burke at this same sitting described as “ the most virtuous of all pickpockets ”—could answer for the pacific disposition of the French revolutionaries, their ardent desire to retain the good opinion of England. Yet less than three weeks earlier Brissot himself had referred at the Convention to “ the comedy played in the House of Commons by the party of the Opposition ” ! [71] and it was likewise Brissot who, in the following May, justified Pitt for refusing to form an alliance with the French Republic.[72]
But any illusions concerning the conciliatory sentiments of the French revolutionary leaders were abruptly dispelled by a declaration of war on England issued by the Convention two days after this debate took place. As long as possible Pitt had striven to bring the Jacobins of France to reason ; even at the last moment he had made a further attempt at conciliation by agreeing to a conference between Lord Auckland, the British ambassador at the Hague, and Dumouriez, commander-in-chief of the French armies in the Netherlands,[73] but on the very day arranged for the conference to take place the Convention precipitated matters by declaring war and thus incurred the full responsibility for the twenty-two years’ conflict that followed. Yet even now the English admirers of the Jacobins were for conciliation ; even when the overture of Pitt had been thus insolently rejected they pleaded that England should humiliate herself and sue for peace—a peace, Pitt declared, that would be “ precarious and disgraceful. . . . What sort of a peace must that be in which there is no security ? Peace is desirable only in so far as it is secure.” War with the French Republic was finally voted by 270 votes to 44.
These, then, were the causes that led up to the inevitable rupture between France and England. To accuse Pitt of wishing to “ destroy French liberty ” is, therefore, a monstrous calumny ; for in France liberty had completely ceased to exist. Already the blade was suspended over the heads of the Whigs’ supposed allies, the Girondins, and the country was rapidly passing under the most frightful tyranny the civilized world has ever seen—the reign of Robespierre. It was against this atrocious system, it was against anarchy and bloodshed, against cruelty and oppression, that England took up arms. So, by the master hand of Pitt, the ship of State was steered to safety, and England, true to her traditions, entered the lists in the cause of liberty and justice.
THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE
The Girondins had little realized that in voting for the death of the King they had signed their own death-warrant ; that by lending themselves to this monstrous injustice they had helped to frame the system that was to bring about their downfall. If they had only had the courage of their convictions, and persisted in their resolution that an appeal should be made to the people, they would have had public opinion almost unanimously on their side, and could have defied the threats of the Mountain. Their contemptible weakness not only lowered them in the eyes of the multitude, but increased the audacity of their adversaries.
Ever since the beginning of the Convention angry murmurs against the Gironde had emanated continually from the Mountain, and as the months went by grew in volume ; the hall of the Assembly, always tumultuous, became at moments a pandemonium. Of this historians give no idea, but it must be realized in order to follow the true course of the revolutionary movement. For if we picture the Convention as it is habitually represented to us under the guise of a serious Senate sitting in debate on great political questions, and led by statesmen of commanding personalities inspired with pure zeal for the country’s welfare, it is perfectly impossible to understand the nature of the conflict that now arose, and that culminated in the successive slaughter of each faction. We must turn, therefore, to the accounts of contemporaries in order to visualize the fearful scenes of confusion that took place in the Assembly, and the part played by the so-called “ giants of the Convention.” Even the toned-down official reports of the debates afford us glimpses of the strangest incidents—members making simultaneous rushes at the Tribune, frantically disputing who should have the right to speak—“ 60 to 80 deputies advancing in a body on the President’s desk,”—the President ringing his bell to obtain silence, breaking his bell in desperation, breaking three bells in succession,[74] putting on his hat to close the sitting—deputies drawing swords or brandishing pistols, threatening to blow out their brains, to stab themselves to the heart—roars from Danton, Legendre, David, of “ Vile intriguer ! Monster ! Murderer ! Imbecile ! Pig ! ”—Robespierre shrieking above the tumult, “ Kill me or let me be heard ! ”—Marat rushing about the hall like a maniac, crying, “ Let the patriots speak ! ” turning to the right and shouting, “ Be silent, brigand ! ” to the left, “ Be silent, conspirator ! ”—or, again, furious petitioners arriving at the bar of the Assembly, all talking at once, and all at cross purposes—the tribunes filled with brawlers and viragos hired by the opposing factions, shaking sticks and fists at the deputies, spitting on their heads, howling invectives.[75]
What was the reason for these continued dissensions ? If, as the Convention declared, every one wanted a Republic, if, as they had asserted in the past, the King was the sole obstacle to the regeneration of France, why should the overthrow of monarchy and King have proved the signal for a further outbreak of revolution more violent than any that had preceded it ? Why, as the Girondin Gensonné sensibly inquired, should the opposing faction, that is to say, the Mountain, continue “ to declaim against the National Convention and provoke insurrections ? What do they want ? What is their object ? What strange despotism threatens us ? And what kind of government do they propose to give to France ? ”[76] English readers, indoctrinated by Carlyle, will answer : “ The Girondins were now reactionaries ; they wished to arrest the tide of progress ; their schemes of social reform did not go far enough to meet the real needs of the people.” For, according to Carlyle, “ all manner of aristocracies being now abolished,” the conflict that arose was between “ the Girondin formula of a respectable Republic for the Middle Classes ” and the “ Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ” of the Mountain, by which the “ hunger, nakedness, and nightmare oppression lying heavy on twenty-five million hearts ” would be relieved. In these words Carlyle presents an imaginary situation.[77] It is probably true that by 1793 the Girondins had become genuine Republicans—henceforth we find no trace of Orléaniste, Prussian, or English intrigue amongst them ; it is also true that they desired an orderly Republic, but this was to be no more in favour of the “ Middle Classes ” than of the great mass of the people. The Mountain, on the other hand—as represented by Marat, Robespierre and St. Just—no doubt dreamt of a Socialist State for “ the people ” only, but their immediate aim was still anarchy, by which “ hunger and nakedness ” must be immensely aggravated. For Robespierre and Marat were surgeons, not physicians ; their only remedy for all social ills was amputation ; they did not wish to relieve present distress or to put down injustice by legislation, but only to annihilate all existing conditions, and to exterminate all classes of the community except “ the people ” over whom they hoped to rule supreme.
It was therefore the Gironde, not the Mountain, that now came to the relief of hunger and nakedness ; it was Roland who pointed out the real causes of the famine and proposed measures for preventing it,[78] whilst Robespierre contented himself with vague theorizings and ignored offers of supplies.[79] Meanwhile Marat continued to urge the people on to pillage, a method which greatly aggravated the situation by terrifying the shopkeepers and peasants into concealing provisions. It seems, indeed, not improbable that the Mountain pursued the same system in 1793 as the Orléanistes in 1789—that of engineering famine in order to rouse the anger of the people against their political antagonists. Thus a contemporary states that, “ at a sitting of the Comité de Neuf on September 2, 1793, it was decided by Jean Bon Saint André, Drouet, Cambon, and Robespierre, that an insurrection must be excited by means of the difficulty of supplies—and that the Municipality should direct accusations of monopoly against the party of the Girondins, Monarchists, and Brissotins.” [80] It was this accusation of monopoly that in the hands of the Mountain served as a weapon against each rival faction in turn.
Such, then, were the men whom Carlyle represents as the protectors of the hungry and naked. The truth is that the people counted for very little in the great war between the Mountain and the Gironde ; it was not—as Kropotkin, following in the footsteps of Carlyle, falsely represents—such questions as feudal dues, the maximum price of bread, or communal lands that formed the subjects for heated debates at the Convention ; we have only to consult the Moniteur to find that the discussions that took place on these questions occupy a very small amount of space, and never became the occasion for tumultuous scenes. The great accusations levelled by one faction at the other related in no way to the needs of the people, but mainly to the form of government each wished to establish, the Gironde accusing the Mountain of wishing to establish a dictatorship under one of the Triumvirate—Marat, Danton, or Robespierre—the Mountain declaring that the Gironde aimed at a Federative Republic ; at the same time each hurled at the other the reproach of Orléanisme. Meanwhile the personal animosity existing between the members of the two factions, which found expression in recriminations of the most puerile description, made all hope of conciliation vain.
Whilst the politicians wrangled, the people bore their sufferings with admirable patience. Now for the first time at the bakers’ doors were formed those long processions known as “ queues ” that grew in length as the year advanced, and were to continue for two years without intermission. Paris accepted the situation with its usual insouciance. “ The French, who have always made merry over everything, even over their misery and their greatest misfortunes,” says Beaulieu, “ made merry over these gatherings at the bakers’ doors, where they seemed rather to be asking for alms than for goods of which they paid the price. . . . I have seen women spend whole nights at these wretched doors for the sake of having an ounce or two of bad bread which dogs would not care for. Well, the Parisians laughed over these sad gatherings ; they called them queues. Since one was in want of everything one went in the queue for everything—in the bread queue, the meat queue, the soap queue, the candle queue ; there was nothing for which there was not a queue.”[81]
Naturally, under these circumstances, when Marat proposed that the people should take the law into their own hands and pillage the shops, he endeared himself still further to the hearts of the tumultuous elements amongst the populace. “ The capitalists, the stockjobbers, the monopolizers, the tradesmen, the ex-nobles,” he declared in his Journal de la République Française, were to blame for the scarcity of provisions, and nothing but “ the total destruction of that cursed breed could restore tranquillity to the State. . . . Meanwhile let the nation, weary of these revolting disorders, take upon itself to purge the soil of liberty of this criminal race.... The pillage of a few shops, at the doors of which they hanged a few of the monopolizers, would soon put an end to these malpractices. . . .”
The call to plunder was received with enthusiasm, and in the morning of the 25th of February a troop of women marched to the Seine and, after boarding the vessels that contained cargoes of soap, helped themselves liberally to all they required at a price fixed by themselves, that is to say, for almost nothing. Since no notice was taken of these proceedings, a far larger crowd collected at dawn of the following day and set forth on a marauding expedition to the shops. From no less than 1200 grocers the people carried off everything on which they could lay their hands—oil, sugar, candles, coffee, brandy—at first without paying, then, overcome with remorse, at the price they themselves thought proper. In this they displayed a greater sense of morality than their leaders, who doubtless hoped that their enemies, the bourgeois, would be plundered without indemnity ; moreover, the crowd refrained from hanging any of the tradesmen at their shop doors as Marat had proposed. From the Anarchists’ point of view the rising had, therefore, proved a failure.
Marat, when denounced at the Convention for provoking these disorders, retorted in his usual manner by calling his accusers pigs or imbeciles who should be shut up in asylums ;[82] and he could well afford to defy them, for he had the mob now whole-heartedly at his back.
The short-sighted Girondins, illusioned by the fact that the majority of the Convention was with them, under-estimated the force of this coalition. They could not realize that men who appeared in the eyes of all sane contemporaries so contemptible as Marat, so feebly vindictive as Robespierre, so addicted to empty noise as Danton, could end by carrying everything before them. They overlooked the fact that, as Danton himself afterwards expressed it, “ in times of revolution authority remains with the greatest scoundrels ”—that is to say, with the most unscrupulous ; and just as in the past it was the Orléanistes who had held in their hands the machinery of revolution, of which the Girondins had made use, it was now the Anarchists who alone knew how to frame that new engine of destruction—the second Revolutionary Tribunal—the Tribunal of the Terror.[83]
The first Revolutionary Tribunal, created on August 17, 1792, had proved a failure ; the populace were not yet ripe for wholesale executions ; the spectacle of the guillotine had disgusted the humane portion of the people, and disappointed the sanguinary. The massacres of September had therefore been preferred as a method of extermination, and on the 29th of November 1792 the Tribunal was suppressed. But now that the Anarchists could make sure of support from the populace, and the restraining influence of the Girondins had been reduced to nothing, Danton resolved on a further venture. This time the Girondins were not to be spared ; on the contrary, it was they who were to provide the principal victims of the new Tribunal.
As usual, the responsibility for this measure was to be laid at the door of “ the people ”; the same calumnies, the same futile pretexts that had done duty at the massacres of September were again employed.
On the 8th of March Danton and Lacroix, who had returned from a mission to the army in Belgium, appeared at the Convention with an alarming report on the military situation. The troops had been almost totally routed ; treachery on the part of their officers could alone explain the state of affairs ; the remedy lay in raising fresh forces, but before marching on the enemy the patriots must exterminate traitors at home.
That, as in September, no connection whatever existed between so-called “ traitors ” in Paris and the armies abroad is of course obvious, but Danton, like Mirabeau, excelled in rendering the flimsiest pretexts plausible, and in concealing sanguinary designs beneath a flood of high-sounding oratory. The great speeches of Danton that have gone down to posterity as trumpet-calls to patriotism were mostly delivered at a moment when he was meditating some fresh plan for slaughtering his fellow-countrymen. Thus, just as “ audacity and yet more audacity ” had been the signal for the massacres of September, another famous phrase heralded the inauguration of the Revolutionary Tribunal. “ What matters my reputation ? Let France be free and my name for ever dishonoured ! (Que la France soit libre et que mon nom soit flétri à jamais !).” Stirring words truly in the ears of posterity, less stirring in those of contemporaries to whom such exclamations had by long use become familiar. The demagogy, says Mercier, had “ created for itself a language to deceive and seduce the multitude. I have heard it shouted in my ear, ‘ Let the French perish as long as liberty triumphs ! ’ I have heard another cry out at a section, ‘ Yes, I could take my head by the hair, I could cut it off and give it to the despot ; I could say to him, Tyrant, this is the action of a free man ! ’ This sublimity of extravagance was composed for the populace ; it was understood and it succeeded. . . .” [84]
The famous exclamation of Danton was a phrase of this order, and, in the sense in which it is usually accepted, meaningless. What connection can be found between the reputation of Danton and the success of French arms in Belgium ? Why should his name be dishonoured by France becoming free ? But when we understand the real intention that lay behind the words, we find them pregnant with meaning. Was not Danton’s reputation to be for ever tarnished, his name for ever dishonoured, by the creation of that sanguinary Tribunal before which he himself was to be summoned only a year later ? was he not to cry out between his prison bars in an agony of remorse : “ It was on this day I instituted the Revolutionary Tribunal, but I ask pardon for it from God and man ; it was not in order that it should become the scourge of humanity, it was in order to prevent a renewal of the massacres of September ! ” ?
Always, to the end, the same calumny on the people ! The people at the time the Revolutionary Tribunal was inaugurated showed no symptoms whatever of wishing to massacre anybody—had they not refused to carry out the sanguinary suggestions of Marat only a fortnight earlier ? Danton was well aware of this ; he well knew that the thirst for blood existed not amongst the people, but amongst the leaders of the Mountain, the members of the Commune. Indeed, with his usual audacity of speech, he frankly acknowledged his own bloodthirsty intentions. The famous trumpet-call loses something of its splendour when quoted with its less lofty sequel : “ What matters my reputation ? Let France be free and my name for ever dishonoured ! I have consented to be called a drinker of blood ! Well, let us drink the blood of the enemies of humanity ! ”
Later in the evening, when the light in the hall of the Convention was growing dim, Danton sprang again into the tribune, and his great voice rolled out through the semi-darkness : “ It is important to take judicial measures to punish the counter-revolutionaries, since it is on their account that this tribunal is to be substituted for the supreme tribunal of the people’s vengeance. The enemies of liberty lift audacious heads . . . in seeing the honest citizen at his fireside, the artisan in his workshop, they have the stupidity to think themselves in a majority. Well, snatch them yourselves from popular vengeance ; humanity commands you ! ”
Suddenly, whilst the thunderous tones of Danton still quivered in the air, another voice was heard ; one word, one only, but filled with terrible import, rang out through the stillness of the spell-bound assembly : “ September ! ” It was again Lanjuinais, the one brave man who had dared to defend the King against the injustice of the Convention, who now arose in defence of the people against the calumnies of the great demagogue. The shaft had found its mark ; for a moment Danton faltered, became confused, then, quickly recovering himself, summoned more audacity to his aid, piled calumny on calumny :
“ Since some one has dared,” he shouted, “ to recall those bloody days over which every good citizen has groaned, I will say, I myself, that if a tribunal had then existed, the people who have often been so cruelly reproached for those days would not have stained them with blood. . . . Let us profit by the mistakes of our predecessors . . . let us be terrible to prevent the people from being terrible ! ”
Never was hypocrisy more flagrant. Who had accused the people of responsibility for the September days but Danton and his colleagues of the Commune ? By every other party, by Girondins and Royalists alike, the people had been absolved from all complicity ; not a single reproach had been uttered against any but the real authors of the crime.[85]
The brazen effrontery of Danton won the day ; the Revolutionary Tribunal was decreed in spite of the protests of Lanjuinais and the Girondins, and on the 6th of April held its first sitting at the Palais de Justice. The Court was composed of five judges, ten jurymen—twelve had been ordained, but were not forthcoming—and the Public Accuser, whose name was to strike a deeper terror into the hearts of the Parisians than even that of Robespierre—Fouquier Tinville.
On the opening day of the dread Tribunal, Fouquier alone seems to have entered with zest into the proceedings ; the populace, whose ferocity it had been declared impossible to restrain, behaved with lamentable weakness. When the first victim, a gentleman of Poitou named Des Maulans, was summarily condemned to death for emigration, “ the immense majority of the audience, particularly the women,” says M. Lenôtre in his admirable description of the scene, “ could not imagine that a man who had done no harm to any one should be condemned to death,” and, as the fatal sentence was repeated by each judge in turn, the crowd burst out into weeping, “ silently at first, then with much noise,” and, their emotion communicating itself to the judges and jury, the whole court was shaken by a storm of sobbing, shoulders heaved, handkerchiefs were pressed to eyes and lips, men turned away their faces to hide their tears.[86]
Yet so potent was the spell cast over all minds by the authors of these tragic happenings, so skilfully had they impressed upon the multitude the necessity for “ severity ” towards the “ enemies of the country,” that no one seems to have thought of stopping the proceedings, and all resigned themselves to what followed as to the inevitable.
Day after day further victims were sent to the guillotine—an ex-Brigadier-General named Blanchelarde ; Gabriel de Guiny, a naval lieutenant ; a young cabman called Mangot, who proclaimed himself a Royalist ; Bouché, a travelling dentist, who said that “ the Convention were brigands ” (sic) (la Convention étoit des brigand), and continued to call out “ Vive Louis XVII. ! au f. . . . la République ! ” after his condemnation ; an aged soldier who, under the influence of drink, had said that “ France was too large for a Republic ”; a poor old cook called Catherine Clère, who had cried out “ Vive le Roi ! ” in the street at midnight, and had added in the hearing of passers-by that “ all that rabble who dictated laws to decent people should be massacred.” [87]
Truly a formidable band of conspirators ! That it was for such as these the Revolutionary Tribunal had been instituted no one could seriously imagine ; moreover, the leaders of the Mountain now showed their hand by publicly designating who were the real enemies of the country it was necessary to destroy.
At the same moment that the Revolutionary Tribunal began its sittings, Camille Desmoulins published his terrible indictment of the Girondins under the title of Histoire des Brissotins, ou Fragment de l’Histoire secrète de la Révolution sur la Faction d’Orléans et le Comité anglo-prussien et les six premiers Mois de la République. Revolutionary historians, to whom the facts revealed in this pamphlet are exceedingly unpalatable, have endeavoured to prove that Camille did not intend to be taken seriously, that he had allowed himself to be carried away by his whimsical imagination, that he was overcome with contrition when he discovered that taunts he had merely launched in sarcasm served as real grounds of accusation against his political antagonists. But there is not a shred of evidence to confirm this convenient theory.
Camille Desmoulins, original only in his style, was always the echo of a stronger mind. Once it was Mirabeau who had served as his inspiration, now it was Robespierre and Danton, later it was to be Danton only. In this Histoire des Brissotins the influence of Robespierre is plainly visible, and indeed, in his speech against the Brissotins only a few days later, Robespierre followed precisely the same line of argument as his disciple Camille.
To suppose that these accusations were suggested to Robespierre by Camille’s pamphlet would be absurd ; not to the feather-headed Camille can we attribute the relentless logic, the ingenious chain of evidence, by which the Brissotins are convicted of complicity in the past with three of the great revolutionary intrigues—the Orléaniste conspiracy, the intrigue with Prussia, the intrigue with the Jacobins of England. In these illuminating pages, perhaps the most brilliant Desmoulins ever wrote, the workings of the first two revolutions are mercilessly unveiled—the Orléaniste influence behind the so-called popular movement on the 12th of July 1789, the collusion of Mirabeau with the Duc d’Orléans at the march on Versailles, the accusations brought against the King and Queen for holding “ an Austrian committee ” by men who were themselves members of an Anglo-Prussian committee, the visits of Pétion to London in order to enlist the aid of his English allies, the support given to the Brissotins by the Whigs, the proposal of Carra to place the Duke of Brunswick on the throne of France, the persistent attempts to form an alliance with Prussia, the gold received from Frederick William, the negotiations with the Prussians at the camp of La Lune that resulted in the retreat of the invading armies after Valmy,—no Royalist has ever shown up the Revolution so completely. What wonder that revolutionary historians prefer to dismiss the revelations of this enfant terrible as an absurdity ?
It was not till much later that Camille realized that, in giving away the secrets of the first two Revolutions, he had given away his own share in the Orléaniste intrigue ; nor did he dream that a year later Robespierre, through the mouth of St. Just, would bring against Danton and himself precisely the same accusations of Orléanisme that he had brought against the Girondins. At present he thought only of destroying the rival faction. “ This work will send them to the guillotine ! I will answer for it !” he said to Prudhomme, giving him a copy of the pamphlet. “ That may be,” answered Prudhomme calmly ; “ so much the worse for you. Your turn will come. . . .” “ Bah ! ” said Camille, “ we have the people with us ! ” [88] He had forgotten, as every demagogue in turn forgot throughout the Revolution, that, in the words of Mirabeau, “ it is but a step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock ! ” To-day the populace of Robespierre was with him, to-morrow they would be with Robespierre only, and he might scream to them in vain from the tumbril to save him.
To Robespierre the pamphlet of Desmoulins served a double purpose, for it helped to rid him of both the factions he detested—the Girondins and the Duc d’Orléans, with his few remaining supporters. With his usual ingenuity he used one faction to destroy another, and we cannot doubt that it was owing to his influence that the Girondins on the 6th of April succeeded in obtaining the banishment of Philippe Égalité, the Marquis de Sillery, and Choderlos de Laclos, in spite of the protests of Marat. Three days later the whole Orléans family were sent to Marseilles and imprisoned. Thus was the principal bone of contention removed from Paris, and Robespierre could concentrate all his energies on overthrowing the Girondins. On the 10th of April he boldly demanded that they should all be summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal ; at the same time Marat published an address, inciting the people to save the country by getting rid of “ all traitors and all conspirators.” The Girondins retaliated by accusing Marat of “ provoking disorders, and of attempting to destroy the Convention,” and so great was the indignation of the great majority of the Assembly at Marat’s incendiary proclamation that they actually succeeded in obtaining a summons against him to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
But the movement was doomed to failure ; Marat had on his side all the turbulent elements of Paris, all the machinery of insurrection ; the jury, obedient to the dictates of Fouquier, declared Marat innocent, and the “ Friend of the People,” smothered in wreaths and roses, was borne triumphantly from the Palais de Justice on the shoulders of the crowd.
Of all the grotesque scenes of the Revolution this was perhaps the strangest—the malignant dwarf wrapped in a ragged coat of faded green, surmounted by an ermine collar yellow with age and dingy from long contact with his neck, the filthy handkerchief that usually bound his head for once discarded, and in its place a crown of laurels slipping down over the black and greasy hair, lending a still greener tint to the sickly pallor of his countenance. And the smile of Marat—that was enough to strike a chill to the stoutest heart ! Dr. Moore has described the sensation of horror that overcame him in the Convention at the sight of “ Marat attempting pleasantry ”; now he must have appeared more hideous still as, with withered cheeks creased into smiles, with mouth distended, he bent forward, holding out his arms to the people as if to press them to his heart.
The devotees presented an appearance worthy of the idol they carried ; all the jupons gras of Robespierre were there, nodding dishevelled heads in response to his greetings, throwing vinous kisses ; sans-culottes drunk with joy, cut-throats of September shouting, “ Vive Marat ! Long live the friend of the people ! ” [89]
This time popular dementia had gone too far, and the result of the “ triumph of Marat ” was to produce a wave of reaction. When the “ Friend of the People ” presented himself at his section he met with so hostile a reception that he was obliged to beat a hasty retreat. Nearly every evening crowds marched through the streets shouting, “ Down with the Anarchists ! Long live the nation ! Long live the law ! ” [90]
Good citizens, who had kept away from their sections on account of the anarchic schemes discussed there, now returned, to throw their weight into the scale of law and order ; a deputation from three sections arrived at the Convention to denounce “ the brigands who have dared to raise the standard of revolt, and who under the perfidious mask of patriotism wish to kill liberty.” [91] The speech was received with applause from a large majority of the deputies, and on the proposal of Barère, who had not yet thrown in his lot with the Mountain, the Convention decreed that an extraordinary committee should be formed, composed of twelve members, to inquire into the measures adopted by the Council of the Commune and the sections of Paris, and also into the operations of the Comité de Salut Public and its accessory, the Comité de Sûreté Générale.[92]
These two sanguinary committees—the great committees of the Terror—had only recently become a power. The former, which had originated in 1792 as the Comité de Défense Générale, took the further title “ et de Salut Public ”—under which name alone it was henceforth known—on the 6th of April 1793, the same day that the Revolutionary Tribunal began its sittings, whilst the latter, although subordinate to the Comité de Salut Public, had existed since 1789 as a Comité d’Information, assuming the name of Comité de Sûreté Générale in May 1792.
Hitherto the Comité de Salut Public had included men of all parties—Danton, Sieyés, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Pétion, and others—but the restraint imposed on its operations by the Girondins exasperated Danton against the faction he had saved from the massacres of September, and he resolved on their destruction. Moreover, since seven out of the twelve members elected to the new Commission des Douze were Girondins, and the rest neutrals, it became evident that their inquiries into the workings of the two committees would act as a further check on the schemes of the Anarchists. For six months the Girondins had now held up the course of the Terror which, but for them, would doubtless have formed the sequel to the September massacres. Therefore the Girondins must not be simply overthrown, but put out of existence. It was this that in the eyes of the Anarchists necessitated the rising of the 31st of May.
That a massacre of the whole faction was now contemplated by the Commune cannot be doubted. Dutard, the secret agent of the minister Garat, records that “ this moment is terrible, and much resembles that which preceded the 2nd of September.” [93] And indeed, on the 23rd of May, a further deputation from the section of La Fraternité came to the Convention to reveal the fact that at a meeting of the Council of the Commune, to which several of their members had succeeded in gaining admittance, it had been proposed that thirty-two deputies of the Gironde should be “ made to disappear from the face of the globe,” or “ Septemberized.” [94] This, according to a deputy from Brittany to whom the plan had been confided, was to be followed by a further massacre of 8000 people.[95] Thereupon the Commission des Douze ordered the arrest of Hébert, the deputy attorney of the Commune, and author of the bloodthirsty journal, Le Père Duchesne ; also of his two colleagues, Varlet and Dobsent. The same evening Hébert and Dobsent were imprisoned at the Abbaye.
The Commune retaliated with “ a deputation from sixteen sections of Paris ” demanding the release of the oppressed patriots ; meanwhile the women of the Société Fraternelle rushed through the streets armed with red flags, urging the people to march on the Abbaye and deliver Hébert—an appeal to which the people declined to respond.
The hall of the Convention at the Tuileries, which it had occupied since the 10th of May, became again the scene of indescribable confusion ; deputations poured in continuously ; the petitioners, unable to find room in the places reserved for them, overflowed into the seats of the deputies, many of whom, overcome with fatigue, had retired for the night. Then, amidst the howls of the crowd, Hérault de Séchelles proposed the liberation of Hébert and his colleagues, and the suppression of the Commission des Douze. A few deputies, joined by the petitioners, voting as if they were the legal representatives whose places they occupied, succeeded in carrying the motion.
But the next day the Convention, restored to its normal conditions, reinstated the Commission des Douze by a majority of 259 votes.
“ You have decreed the counter-revolution,” cried Collot d’Herbois ; “ I demand that the Statue of Liberty should be veiled ! ”
This decision of the Convention gave the signal for battle, and immediately the Commune proceeded to put the revolutionary machine in motion—no easy matter, for Paris in general was singularly calm, and two days were necessary to prepare the rising.[96]
This is not the place to describe in detail the movement known as “ the Revolution of the 31st of May,” which was in reality simply a duel between the two opposing factions, and as such belongs to the history of the Convention, not to the story of the great popular outbreaks of the Revolution. No other great day of tumult was so completely artificial. When on the morning of the 31st Paris awoke to the sound of the tocsin, armed forces summoned from the sections assembled mechanically, women gathered on their doorsteps “ to see the insurrection pass,” but no one knew what all the stir was about.[97]
Throughout the day the Convention was surrounded with troops, who, for the most part, had no idea why they were there and whom they were protecting. Meanwhile deputations from the sections streamed into the hall, some to demand the suppression of the Commission des Douze and the arrest of the Girondins, others to protest in their favour. Amongst the latter was the section of the Butte des Moulins, and in retaliation for its spirited action the Commune despatched messengers wearing municipal scarves to Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau to rouse the inhabitants with the news that members of this section had formed a centre of counter-revolution at the Palais Royal, and were wearing the white cockade of royalty.[98] The men of the Faubourgs who had been under arms for some hours, waiting for orders, marched off obediently with their cannon, and on arrival at the Palais Royal found indeed a battalion of the Butte des Moulins encamped there with detachments from other sections sent to their support—for what purpose no one seemed to know.
The folly of the whole proceeding now occurred to the men of the Faubourgs, who, after placing their cannon in position and ranging themselves in battle order, decided that before beginning to fire on their fellow-citizens it would be as well to discover whether there was any real cause de guerre between them. Accordingly a deputation was sent to verify the accusations of the agitators, and, as might be expected, the whole alarm was discovered to be needless—no white cockades were to be seen, the tricolour was flaunted everywhere, on hats and in the form of banners. Then amidst cries of “ Long live the Republic ! ” the gates were thrown open, and the opposing battalions fell into each others’ arms, swearing eternal friendship.[99]
This sort of thing was always apt to occur when the people were left to themselves to settle matters, and no agitators were at hand to stir them up to violence. On this occasion Santerre, who excelled in the art of exciting revolutionary troops, was absent from Paris, and Hanriot, who had been illegally made commander-general by the Commune, was at the head of the forces that surrounded the Convention.
As an insurrection, therefore, the 31st of May had proved a failure just as the Affaire Réveillon, the first march on Versailles, and the 20th of June had proved failures for want of popular support. Always throughout the Revolution the same abortive movement before each outbreak, the same miss-fire preceding the explosion !
At the Convention the Commune had succeeded in again obtaining the suppression of the Commission des Douze, but had been unable to secure the arrest of the Girondins. So a further insurrection must be attempted, and all the following day was occupied in preparation. In the evening Marat appeared at the Commune and, after giving the order to the Council to begin the movement, proceeded himself to ring the tocsin. The same night the Anarchists struck their first decisive blow at the party of the Gironde by the arrest of Madame Roland, who, during the absence of her husband, was seized by emissaries of the Commune and led to prison at the Abbaye. The next morning, June 2, all Paris was again under arms, the tocsin rang out, an armed force of 80,000 men assembled, but amongst these 80,000, says the deputy Meillan, “ 75,000 did not know why they had been made to take up arms,” [100] nor, owing to the skilful organization of the Commune, was it possible for them to discover.
For Hanriot, well aware that the honest citizens of Paris would not co-operate in the real purpose of the day—the destruction of the Girondins—had been careful to place the troops formed by the sections at a distance from the Château, some in the Place Louis XV. beyond the swing-bridge, which was closed between them and the garden, others in the Carrousel separated by a wooden barrier from the court of the Tuileries.[101] Meanwhile his picked force of four to five thousand insurgents—including a number of German mercenaries belonging to the legion of Rosenthal under orders to march on La Vendée, whose total ignorance of the French language rendered them docile instruments of the Commune [102]—formed a cordon immediately around the Château to which all the avenues were occupied by his officers or agents, “ who had received orders to suffer no communication between the hall (of the Convention) and the court or garden.” [103] By this means the troops of the sections were powerless to intervene, whilst the great mass of the people that had as usual assembled to look on was kept in complete ignorance of what was passing.[104] On the part of the people the 2nd of June was thus the same absolutely blind movement as the abortive rising that had preceded it two days earlier.
If only the Girondins had stood their ground on this critical day it is probable that the victory would have remained with them, but now that their own fate was at stake they displayed the same pusillanimity they had shown at the trial of the King. Instead of bringing their eloquence to bear on the situation, the leading members of the Gironde, including Brissot and Vergniaud, dared not venture into the Convention, but sought refuge at the house of Meillan near by. Meillan himself, and also Barbaroux and Isnard, remained at their post in the Assembly, but it was left to Lanjuinais, who was not a Girondin, to act as the principal defender of the faction with which during these days he associated himself as the champion of liberty. In the name of the people the courageous Breton now denounced the efforts of the factions to create disorders. “ You calumniate Paris ! You insult the people !” cried the Mountain. “ No,” answered Lanjuinais, “ I do not accuse Paris ; Paris is good-hearted, Paris is oppressed by a few scoundrels.”
Legendre the butcher, rushing upon Lanjuinais, attempted to drag him from the tribune, but, quelled by the sang-froid of his opponent, retreated discomfited, and only returned to the assault when reinforced by Drouet of Varennes fame, the younger Robespierre, and Jullien. A hand-to-hand struggle ensued, and Lanjuinais remained master of the situation. The craven Girondins, hearing of this momentary victory, attempted to reach the hall of the Convention and rally around Lanjuinais, but it was too late. A fresh deputation of the Commune arrived on the scene to demand their arrest, and departed shouting, “ To arms ! Let us save the country ! ”—a battle-cry echoed with fury by the tribunes.
Meanwhile Hanriot’s troops had closed around the Château and the mob had taken possession of the halls, corridors, and staircases ; the women-followers of Marat and Robespierre, constituting themselves doorkeepers, forcibly prevented the exit of deputies. At this Danton, who never believed in allowing the canaille—particularly the female canaille—to take command of the situation, grew indignant,[105] and when at last the news reached the Assembly that armed sentinels had been placed at the doors of the hall, it was on the proposal of Danton’s ally, Lacroix, that the Convention despatched an usher to Hanriot demanding that the armed forces should be withdrawn from the Château. Hanriot replied briefly, “ Tell your b—— president that he and his Assembly can be d——d (dis à ton f. . . . président que je me f. . . . de lui et de son Assemblée), and that if it does not deliver up the Twenty-Two to me within an hour I will blast it with cannon.”
Barère then proposed that the Convention should make a display of independence by going out to face the army of insurgents, and thereupon the whole Assembly, with Herault de Séchelles at its head, descended the great staircase by which Louis XVI. had left the Tuileries on the 10th of August, and filed out into the courtyard where Hanriot awaited them at the head of his men. The half-drunken commander again demanded that “ the Twenty-Two ” should be surrendered. Herault refused, and the deputies surrounding him, inspired with sudden courage, cried out, “ They want victims ! Let them kill us all ! ” Then Hanriot, grasping his sabre, turned to his troops and shouted, “ Cannoniers, to your guns ! ” But no one obeyed the order to fire. The men remained immovable—Hérault and a fellow-deputy who went boldly towards them saw that “ their eyes and attitude gave evidence of no evil design.”
The truth is that the multitude was opposed to the insurgents ; one of the sections of Paris actually pointed its cannon on the troops of Hanriot at the same moment that Hanriot’s cannon were pointed on the members of the Convention.[106] It was therefore once again the people who ranged themselves on the side of law and order, and Hanriot, disconcerted by their attitude, was unable to carry out his sanguinary designs.
The troops, drawn up in the garden on the other side of the Château, whither the Assembly now made its way, seemed equally averse to bloodshed, and contented themselves with crying out, “ Vive la Montagne ! Vive la Convention ! ” and from time to time, “ Vive Marat ! ” At this moment Marat himself, followed by the crowd of little ragged boys that his grotesque appearance frequently attracted,[107] appeared on the scene, shrieking imperiously to Herault, “ In the name of the people I charge you to return to your post, which you have basely deserted.” And he added significantly, “ Let the faithful deputies return to their posts ! ” [108] In other words, let the sheep be divided from the goats and the members of the Mountain retire into safety, whilst their opponents remain outside to be butchered. Hérault and his colleagues had evidently thwarted the designs of Marat by joining themselves to the Girondins who had been singled out as victims, but now, merged in the crowd of deputies, could not be distinguished by the insurgents. Such, however, was the authority the wretched dwarf had acquired that, obedient to the word of command, the Montagnards turned towards the Tuileries, leaving the Girondins to their fate, but the Girondins, seeing the snare, retreated likewise, and the whole Assembly, followed by Marat, re-entered the hall of the Convention and resumed the sitting.
Couthon, the friend of Robespierre, then proposed a decree against the Twenty-Two and the members of the Commission des Douze, but the parade round the courts and garden of the Tuileries had evidently convinced the leaders that violent measures would not meet with popular support, for it was no longer the imprisonment of the Girondins their opponents demanded, but simply their suspension, after which they were to be left in their own houses under supervision—a surprisingly mild conclusion to three days’ insurrection !
The list of the proscribed deputies was then read aloud, and meanwhile Marat repeatedly intervened, adding certain names and ordering others to be removed without even consulting the Convention. “ It was then,” says Meillan, “ that we understood all the power of Marat ”—well for them if they had realized it earlier, and stood together as one man to resist it.
Now at the eleventh hour the Assembly made one expiring effort to assert its independence ; several members rose to declare that “ they were not free, and that they refused to vote surrounded by bayonets and cannon ”—a resolution in which no less than two-thirds of the Convention finally concurred.
The Mountain, not to be beaten, solved the difficulty by simply voting without them, and the majority, “ thus becoming simple spectators, left the Montagnards to pass the decree, supported by a great number of strangers who, as on the 27th of May, had placed themselves in the seats of the legislators whose functions they had usurped.”[109]
So, by a violation of law and justice as flagrant as that which had brought about the condemnation of the King, the Girondins fell victims to the Revolution they had helped to prepare. And just as Louis XVI. on the eve of his death had seen in one prophetic moment the future that awaited France, brave Lanjuinais, proscribed with the faction whose cause he had defended, foretold the terrible era of which this day was to be the prelude in his last words from the tribune : “ I see civil war kindled in my country, spreading its ravages everywhere and rending France. I see the horrible monster of the dictatorship advancing over piles of ruins and corpses, swallowing you each up in turn, and overthrowing the Republic ! ”
THE TERROR IN THE PROVINCES
Exactly as Lanjuinais had prophesied, the fall of the Gironde proved the signal for civil war. All over France a great wave of indignation arose, and within a few months the whole country was in a blaze from one end to the other.
In La Vendée, Royalist and Catholic to the core, the fire had broken out two months earlier ; the civil constitution of the clergy and continued persecution of all who remained attached to religion, the massacres of September, and finally the execution of the King, had each in turn roused the people’s fury, and now 100,000 peasants, armed with forks and sticks, were marching in defence of the church and monarchy, led by the priests and few remaining nobles they had forcibly placed at their head.[110]
Lyon likewise rose in revolt just before the final overthrow of the Gironde. The splendid city reduced to misery by the Revolution, its commerce ruined, its inhabitants starving for want of work, had nevertheless submitted to the Republic, but when an emissary of the Mountain, Chalier, a disciple of Marat, was sent to Lyon to propagate anarchy and set up a revolutionary tribunal, the sections of the town all combined against the Convention, and on the 29th of May a bloody battle took place in the streets between the National Guards of Lyon and the gunners enlisted in the service of the Mountain, which ended in the arrest of Chalier. Then came the new of the rising in Paris on June 2, and the victory of the Mountain. Thereupon Lyon boldly declared that it no longer recognized the Convention, and called its citizens to arms.
Meanwhile Bordeaux had risen in defence of its liberties, for with glaring injustice, when its deputies the Girondins were expelled from the Convention, the department had been invited to name no others in their places. Bordeaux was, therefore, now unrepresented in the Convention, and had every right to protest—indeed it had protested for some months before the 31st of May—against the treatment of its representatives by their adversaries of the Mountain.[111] Now on the 6th of June the Council-General of the city forwarded a threatening address to the Convention, and summoned Lyon and Dijon to combine in the fight for liberty.
Throughout the south-east of France the fire of revolt was spreading likewise : Toulon opposed a vigorous resistance to the dictates of the Mountain ; Marseilles, once dominated by the most violent revolutionaries, had also turned against it, and, summoning Lyon, Normandy, and La Vendée to its aid, announced its intention of marching on Paris. Calvados, Caen, and Evreux, in Normandy, were organizing revolt ; Dauphiné and Franche-Comté were in arms—altogether no less than sixty departments had risen against the tyranny of the Convention.[112] Such was the attitude of the twenty-five millions of France who, according to Carlyle, looked to the Mountain for salvation—as a matter of fact at least three-quarters of the population were violently opposed to it, and the remaining quarter was mainly terrorized into submission.
At the same time the people were by no means whole-heartedly on the side of the Girondins. Buzot, Pétion, Isnard, Barbaroux, and others of the faction, who escaped from Paris after their expulsion from the Convention and attempted to rally the provinces around them, failed entirely in their rôle of popular leaders. To the ruminating minds of the peasants, the aims of one Republican faction were indistinguishable from another ; they were ready to oppose the bloodshed and anarchy advocated by the Mountain, but the ideal Republic offered them by the Girondins in no way roused their enthusiasm. The truth is that France remained at heart monarchic, partly by conviction and partly by habit. For in every country the characteristic of the true people is hatred of innovation, and against this prejudice the Republicans of both factions contended in vain. The correspondence of revolutionary emissaries to the provinces frequently breathes a spirit of despair : “ The labourer is estimable, but he is a very bad patriot in general ;” [113] and from Marseilles, “ In spite of our efforts to republicanize the people . . . our trouble and fatigue are almost fruitless. . . . The mind of the public is still detestable amongst the proprietors, artisans, and day-labourers ;” [114] in Alsace “ Republican sentiments are still in the cradle, fanaticism is extreme and unbelievable ; the spirit of the inhabitants is in no way revolutionary. . . .” [115] No one, however, has described the utter failure of the Girondins to convert the people to Republicanism better than Buzot himself : “ One must not dissemble ; the majority of the French people sighed after the monarchy and the Constitution of 1791. . . . Can one believe that the events of June 2 (1793), the misery, persecution, and assassinations that followed, made the majority of France change its opinion ? No, but in the towns they pretend to be ‘sans-culotte,’ because those who are not are guillotined ; in the country places they obey the most unjust summons to serve (in the army), because those who do not go are guillotined. The guillotine, that is the great reason for everything. . . . This people is Republican by blows of the guillotine. But look closely at things, penetrate into the homes of families, sound all hearts, and if they dare open themselves to you, you will read there hatred against the government that fear imposes on them, you will see that all their desires, all their hopes, tend towards the Constitution of 1791.” [116] And again : “ The honest inhabitants of the countryside confound the crimes committed in the Revolution of 1793 with the Revolution itself ; they abhor the Republic, and those who tyrannize over them in its name ; they regret and sigh for the return . . . of a gentler and more peaceable régime. . . . In the towns, where fear has withered all hearts, where commerce and industry are for ever annihilated, where it is a crime to live in any degree of comfort or to show any decency in one’s tastes or manners . . . every citizen . . . in all classes . . . bitterly regretted the past.” Indeed, Buzot himself is at last forced to arrive at this conclusion : “ Amidst the abyss of evils into which this superb empire is precipitated by licence and misery one is almost reduced to desiring the return of ancient despotism, since it is uncertain whether the French could now bear the moderate regime of the Constitution of 1791.” [117]
It was thus in La Vendée alone that real enthusiasm prevailed ; there the people, inspired by passionate devotion to cherished traditions, were at one with their seigneurs, whilst in the other provinces dominated by the Girondins the people took up arms in a cause that was not their own. Ostensibly they were fighting for the Republic, in reality they craved for the old familiar things the Republic had taken from them. What cared the peasants of France for the promise of a government modelled on Athens or Sparta that was to replace the antiquated monarchy, for the enlightened philosophy that was to compensate them for the destruction of their ancient faith ?
The Girondins themselves could not fail to perceive the failure of their efforts to inspire the people ; everywhere it was the Royalists who secured the largest following. Even in Republican centres Royalist generals led out the troops—at Lyon, Virieu and Précy ; at Bordeaux, De Puisaye ; even Wimpfen, beloved of the Normans, though avowedly a Republican, was believed by Louvet to be a Royalist at heart. The Girondins at Caen in Normandy—Louvet, Guadet, Buzot, and others—watched these symptoms with alarm and, rather than combine with their rivals to overthrow the Mountain, diverted their energies to opposing the progress of Royalism. Thus amongst the leaders of the people there was no co-ordination, and amongst the various elements that made up the population no unity of purpose that alone could have ensured success. Owing to these dissensions the movement was from the first doomed to failure, and the triumph of the Mountain seemed assured.
It was then that a girl who lived at Caen, Marie Charlotte Corday, resolved to take the law into her own hands and save the country by striking down the author of all the ills that were desolating France. For to Charlotte, as to many inhabitants of provincial towns, it was Marat who appeared as the incarnation of the Terror that now held France in its grip ; Marat once removed, she imagined that the other leaders of the Mountain might return to sentiments of humanity. If Charlotte had been a Girondin, as certain writers have supposed, she would probably have thought otherwise, for to the Girondins Marat seemed merely a “ loathsome reptile,” far less to be feared than Robespierre, whom they regarded as their chief antagonist of the Mountain. It is therefore improbable that when Charlotte went to request Barbaroux for introductions to some of his friends in Paris, she confided to him the object of her journey—“ if,” as Louvet said, “ she had consulted us, would it have been against Marat that we should have directed her stroke ? ” Undoubtedly no—Robespierre would have been the victim, Barbaroux, moreover, could have told her that in slaying Marat she was sacrificing herself needlessly, for Marat was already dying of a lingering disease, and had, indeed, only a short time to live.
This Charlotte did not know when she set forth for Paris on that morning of July 9, and all the way she pictured to herself the execution of the great deed as she had planned it. The letter to Duperret, the friend of Barbaroux, was to procure her admittance to the Convention, and there in the midst of the Assembly, on the summit of the Mountain, she meant to deal the mortal blow that was to rid the world of Marat.
It was not until she reached Paris that she heard that the “ Friend of the People ” was too ill to attend the Convention. For some weeks already he had retired from public life, and the fearful irritation of his skin obliged him to sit perpetually in a bath with wet compresses around his head. The precise nature of his malady is not stated by his biographers, but according to the delegates from the Jacobin Club who were sent to visit him it was simply an acute attack of “ patriotism.” The madness of Maratisme is nowhere better exemplified than in the following report published by the Society : “ We have just been to see our brother Marat. . . . We found him in his bath, a table, inkstand, and newspapers around him, occupying himself unremittingly with public affairs. It is not a disease . . . it is a great deal of compressed patriotism squeezed into a very small body ; the violent efforts of patriotism exuding from every part are killing him.” [118]
This was the vision that confronted Charlotte Corday when, on the evening of July 13, she succeeded, in spite of the opposition of Marat’s mistress, Simonne Evrard, in obtaining admission to the fateful bathroom. If she had expected to see a monster she must have found her wildest imaginings surpassed now that she was brought face to face with the reality. Out of the opening of the slipper bath appeared the withered neck, the misshapen shoulders, the puny arms of the People’s Friend, and above them that monstrous head swathed in its compresses of vinegar and cold water—truly an awful and a hideous sight. A fainter heart than Charlotte’s must have quailed, a nerve of less tried steel than hers must have failed at this tremendous moment—have kept her rooted to the threshold, or driven her shuddering backwards through the door and down the narrow staircase, out—out—into the pure air of Heaven. But Charlotte, wholly concentrated on her purpose, had risen above such human weaknesses, and she went straight forward, calm as the summer evening outside the window, and sat down beside Marat.
Charlotte Corday did not kill Marat as Marat killed his victims, without a trial. She gave him now, at the last moment, a chance to prove that it was not he who had raised scaffolds all over France, that it was not by his orders that innocent victims were led daily to their death. So when he asked for news of Caen, she spoke of the Girondin deputies who had taken refuge there, mentioning them by name. And at that Marat croaked out with a frightful laugh :
“ I will have them all guillotined within a week ! ”
Then rumour had not lied—Marat was indeed the sanguinary monster he had been represented in the provinces ! Out of his own mouth he was convicted. Charlotte hesitated no longer, and grasping her knife she plunged it straight into his heart. The deed was done ; henceforth, as she said, she was to know peace.
The serenity she displayed at her trial amazed the world no less than the courage that had led her to carry out her enterprise. “ Who had inspired you with so much hatred against Marat ? ” the President asked her. “ I did not need the hatred of others, I had enough of my own.” “ In killing him what did you hope ? ” “ To restore peace to my country.” “ Do you think you have killed all the Marats ? ” “ That one dead, the others will perhaps be afraid.”
Never for a moment does it seem to have occurred to Charlotte that her action could be regarded as murder. When Fouquier Tinville observed suspiciously, “ You must be well practised in this kind of crime,” she cried out in horror, “ The monster ! He takes me for an assassin ! ”
The truth is that Charlotte did not feel she had killed a human being, but rather that she had exorcised an evil spirit who had cast a spell over the capital. “ It is only in Paris,” she said to her judges, “ that people’s eyes are bewitched on account of Marat ; in the other departments he is regarded as a monster.”
And, indeed, the more we study Marat the more we feel a sensation of unreality creeping over us. Can such a being really have existed outside the pages of a medieval legend ? Robespierre, Danton, Billaud, even Carrier we can believe in as physiological possibilities, but Marat is a phenomenon to be explained by no natural laws : the shuddering repulsion he inspired in all normal beholders, the unholy fascination he exercised over those who fell beneath his power, the fearful rapidity with which immediately after death that hideous body crumbled to corruption, yet around which knelt crowds of worshippers, blaspheming Christ and crying out, “ Oh, sacred heart of Marat ! ”—all these things belong surely to the region of the supernatural, and can only be accounted for by a belief in demoniacal possession. Exclude this hypothesis and Marat remains an insoluble mystery—unique in the annals of mankind.
At any rate, whether we believe in the powers of darkness or not, the phase on which the revolutionary movement now entered could not have been surpassed in devilry if evil spirits hitherto caged in the body of Marat had been loosed over France. Until now the atrocities committed have been traceable to perfectly tangible causes—to Orléaniste intrigue ; to the personal ambitions of the leaders ; to excitement, delusion, or drink on the part of the populace ; but from the autumn of 1793 all political aims seem to be swallowed up in a wild rage for destruction ; the scenes of horror taking place everywhere appear to serve no definite purpose, but, like the convulsions of a madman, to spring from a mind in delirium.
Yet if we examine the movement closely we shall find that there was nevertheless a method in the madness ; that through this frightful period of the Terror there ran a system founded on the same political doctrines that had produced the massacres of September. This is what Collot d’Herbois meant when he said : “ The 2nd of September is the Credo of our liberty ”; in other words, the massacres in the prisons formed simply the prelude to a general scheme of destruction. At this earlier date, as we have seen, the idea of the leaders was to amputate the gangrened limb formed by the aristocracy and clergy ; now that these two categories had been practically destroyed, the same operation must be carried out on those other portions of the body to which the gangrene had spread.
First on the list came, then, the prosperous bourgeoisie, the peculiar object of Marat’s hatred—a hatred he had communicated to Robespierre and Hébert, who, after the death of Marat, were left to carry on the campaign against this obnoxious class. Thus we find Robespierre writing : “ Internal dangers come from the bourgeois ; in order to conquer the bourgeois we must rouse the people, we must procure arms for them and make them angry.” [119] Hébert went further : “ The virtue of the holy guillotine,” he wrote, “ will gradually deliver the Republic from the rich, the bourgeois, the spies, the fat farmers, and the worthy tradesmen as from the priests and aristocrats. They are all devourers of men.”
This campaign against commerce was again the direct outcome of Illuminism, for it was Weishaupt who had first denounced the “ mercantile tribe ” as capable of exercising “ the most formidable of despotisms.” [120] Accordingly war was now waged with particular ferocity on the manufacturing towns. In August the revolutionary troops surrounded Lyon, where the authorities, exasperated by the sanguinary propaganda of Chalier, had ended by condemning this disciple of Marat to death. The siege lasted until the 9th of October 1793, when, reduced by famine, Lyon was obliged to surrender, and it was then decided that the magnificent city, once the pride of France, must be demolished. “ The name of Lyon,” cried Barère at the Convention, “ must no longer exist, you will call it Ville-Affranchie.” On the ruins he proposed to erect a monument bearing the words, “ Lyon made war on liberty ; Lyon is no more.” Thereupon the Convention passed the decree : “ The town of Lyon shall be destroyed ; every part of it inhabited by the rich shall be demolished, only the dwellings of the poor shall remain.”
Emissaries were then sent to carry out the task ; the paralytic Couthon, borne on a litter about the city, struck with a silver hammer the buildings destined to destruction, saying as he did so, “ In the name of the law I demolish you,” and instantly masons set to work upon the task. Meanwhile orators incited the working-classes to violence : “ What are you doing, pusillanimous workmen, in these industrial occupations by which opulence degrades you ? Come out of this servitude and confront the rich man who oppresses you . . . overthrow his fortune, overthrow these edifices, the wreckage belongs to you. It is thus that you will rise to that sublime equality, the basis of true liberty, the vigorous principle of a warrior people to whom commerce and arts should be unnecessary.” [121]
It will be seen, therefore, that there was no question of readjusting relations between employers and employed ; the whole industrial system was simply to be destroyed whilst the workers were left to starve upon the ruins.
Yet even when commerce had gone the way of aristocracy, “ and pride of wealth no longer violated the principles of ‘ sublime equality,’ ” yet another centre of gangrene still remained—the educated classes. It was here that Robespierre displayed particular energy. Men of talent had always been abhorrent to him—hence his inveterate animosity towards the Girondins. Unable himself to rise out of the crowd of little lawyers amongst whom he had made his debut in Paris, he could not forgive success achieved by eloquence or literary ability.[122] To the Incorruptible wealth offered little or no temptation ; but superiority of talent roused in him an envy that bordered on insanity, and it was mainly owing to his influence that a campaign against intellect, art, and education was now inaugurated. “ All highly educated men were persecuted,” said Fourcroy later to the Convention ; “ it was enough to have some knowledge, to be a man of letters, in order to be arrested as an aristocrat. . . . Robespierre . . . with atrocious skill, rent, calumniated . . . all those who had given themselves up to great studies, all those who possessed wide knowledge . . . he felt that no educated man would ever bend the knee to him.” [123]
This war on education was even carried out against the treasures of science, art, and literature. Manuel proposed to demolish the Porte Saint-Denis ; Chaumette wanted to kill all the rare animals in the Museum of Natural History ; Hanriot proposed to burn the Bibliothèque Nationale, and his suggestion was repeated at Marseilles ; the other decemvirs, taking up the cry, added, “ Yes, we will burn all the libraries, for only the history of the Revolution and the laws will be needed.” And although the great National Library of Paris survived, thousands of books and valuable pictures all over France were destroyed or sold for next to nothing.[124]
Not only education but politeness in all forms was to be destroyed. By a decree of the Commune on the 21st of August 1792 the titles of “ Monsieur ” and “ Madame ” had been formally abolished, and the words “ Citoyen ” or “ Citoyenne ” substituted, and in order to satisfy the exponents of equality it had now become necessary to assume a rough and boorish manner, to present an uncultivated appearance. A refined countenance, hands that bore no marks of manual labour, well-brushed hair, clean and decent garments, were regarded with suspicion—to make sure of keeping one’s head on one’s shoulders it was advisable that it should be unkempt. Thus, says Beaulieu, “ those who had been born with a gentle exterior . . . were obliged to distort their faces, to quicken their movements, so as to look as if they formed a part of those ferocious bands that had been loosed against them. Our dandies had allowed their moustaches to grow long : they had ruffled their hair, soiled their hands, and put on repulsive clothes. Our philosophers, our men of letters, wore large bristling caps from which hung long fox-tails that floated on their shoulders ; some dragged great wheeled sabres along the pavement ; they were taken for Tartars. Paris was no longer recognizable ; one would have said that all the bandits of Europe had replaced its brilliant population.” [125]
In a word, it was now not merely war on nobility, on wealth, on industry, on art, and on intellect ; it was war on civilization. France was to return to a state of savagery. Insane as the project may seem, we must recognize it nevertheless to be the logical outcome of the desire for absolute equality. But unfortunately, when the equalizing process reached this stage, an unexpected difficulty occurred. The aristocracy of birth had long since been humbled to the dust ; the aristocracy of wealth was reduced to beggary ; the aristocracy of intellect concealed itself beneath a rude exterior ; yet, after all, aristocracy still survived triumphantly, for lo ! it had taken refuge amongst the people. “ Nowhere,” says Taine, “ are there so many suspects as amongst the people ; the shop, the farm, and the workshops contain more aristocrats than the presbytery or the château. In fact, according to the Jacobins, the cultivators are nearly all aristocrats ; all the tradesmen are essentially counter-revolutionary . . . the butchers and bakers . . . are of an insufferable aristocracy.” [126] “ The women of the market,” writes a government spy, “ except a few who are bribed, or whose husbands are Jacobins, curse, swear, rave, and fume ; but they dare not speak too loud, because they are all afraid of the revolutionary committee and the guillotine.” “ This morning,” said a shopkeeper, “ I had four or five of them here. They do not wish to be called ‘ citizenesses ’ any longer. They say they spit on the Republic.” [127] In the provinces matters were still worse ; not only had reverence for religion and the King survived, but everywhere respect for superiority and successful enterprise prevailed—the good bourgeois whose business had prospered, the worthy mayor renowned for his benevolence, the working-man who had “ got on in the world,” all these in the eyes of country-folk seemed more deserving of esteem than the drunkard or the wastrel. How was perfect equality to be achieved if the people themselves persisted in raising one man above another ?
It is easy to imagine the despair that seized on the surgeons who had embarked on the great scheme of eliminating gangrene when they discovered its existence in this most vital point of the body. Yet, nothing daunted, they grasped their instruments and set to work once more ; if “ the people ” themselves were gangrened, then the people too must come under the knife—the blade of the guillotine must fall alike on the neck of noble, priest, or peasant.
So on the 5th of September the word went forth from the Commune of Paris : “ Let us make Terror the order of the day ! ” [128] In order to carry out this system it was necessary to reconstruct the government. Already the first Constitution framed on the cahiers had been swept away and replaced by the anarchic code known as the “ Constitution de l’An II.” without further reference to the desires of the people. But now the Anarchists had recourse to a still more arbitrary measure, and on the 10th of October the Convention, entirely dominated by the Mountain, acceded to the proposal of St. Just that a “ provisional revolutionary government ” should be proclaimed, in which every department of the State was to be placed under the control of the Comité de Salut Public. The members of this committee—which included Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just, Barère, Billaud-Varenne, Collot d’Herbois, Jean Bon St. André, Carnot, Prieur de la Marne, and Lindet—were thus to be made the absolute rulers of France ; to their authority the “ executive power, the ministers, the generals, and the constituted bodies ” were to be subjugated ;[129] and since it was by the Incorruptible that they themselves were controlled, the reign of Robespierre may be said to have begun from this moment.
The Terror in the provinces was thus entirely the work of the Comité de Salut Public. Emissaries were now sent out by the committee to the towns and provinces that had risen against the Mountain, with instructions to show no mercy to the “ counter-revolutionaries.” The better to ensure a rigorous application of the new régime these men were usually chosen to act in couples, “ one to check the other ”—in reality to goad each other on to violence. Thus when at Bordeaux, Tallien, under the influence of the beautiful Térésia Cabarrus, showed signs of relenting, Ysabeau performed the office of denunciator ;[130] at Lyon, Collot d’Herbois urged on Fouché ; at Toulon, Fréron incited Barras, and so each emissary, terrorized by his colleague, attempted to outdo him in ferocity.
The atrocities that took place all over France from October 1793 onwards require volumes to be realized in their full horror, and can only be briefly summarized here.
At Bordeaux, then, owing to the intervention of Térésia, only 301 people fell victims to the guillotine, which took “ patriotic journeys ” to that city ; starvation and terror were, therefore, the means by which it was finally reduced to submission. But at Lyon the population was literally mowed down in hundreds ; carts filled with women, old and young, plied daily to the scaffold. But the guillotine proved too slow a method of extermination, and the method of “fusillades” was then adopted ; young citizens tied together in couples were driven to the “ Brotteaux ” and blown into fragments by rifle and cannon fire. The Rhône, that received at least 2000 corpses, ran so red with blood that Ronsin, the general of the revolutionary armies, informed the Cordeliers in Paris of its utility in conveying a message of warning to the counter-revolutionaries all over the South.[131]
The South, however, needed no warning. Toulon, crushed and starved by the régime of Fréron and Barras, had opened its gates in desperation to the English on the 29th of August—“ treachery ” never to be forgiven it. Yet there were certainly extenuating circumstances. “ It was necessary,” wrote Isnard, who was then at Toulon, “ to yield either to the Mountain or to Admiral Hood. The former brought us scaffolds, the latter promised to shatter them ; the former gave us famine, the latter offered us provisions ; Fréron brought us the Constitution of 1793, written by the executioner at the dictation of Robespierre, Hood promised to put us under the laws promulgated by the Constituent Assembly. A few intriguers profited by these circumstances to tempt the multitude led astray by hunger and despair ; it had the weakness to prefer bread to death, the Constitution of 1791 to the anarchic code of 1793.”
Toulon paid heavily for its frailty when, on the 17th of December, the town was recaptured by the army of the Republic. Fréron, mounted on a horse, “ surrounded by cannons, troops, and a hundred maniacs, adorers of the god Marat,” ordered citizens selected at random to be lined up against the walls and shot. “ Fréron gives the signal, the charge rings out from every side, the murder is accomplished. The ground is drenched in blood, the air resounds with cries of despair, the dying roll back upon the corpses. Suddenly, by order of the tyrant, a voice cries, ‘ Let those who are not dead arise.’ The wounded raise themselves in the hope that help will be brought to them, a fresh discharge is made, and steel gathers those that fire has spared.” [132]
After this Fréron complacently announced that 800 Toulonnais had perished in the fusillade, whilst at the same time 200 heads fell by the guillotine. These methods, repeated until the spring of 1794, resulted, according to Prudhomme, in the death of no less than 14,325 men, women, and children ; and whether this figure is excessive or not the fact remains that by the 9th of Thermidor the population of Toulon was reduced from 29,000 to 7000 inhabitants.[133]
All over Provence men were hunted down like wild beasts ; the prophecy of the Scriptures seemed now to be fulfilled—“ for those that were in the cities fled into the mountains, crying to the rocks to cover them, and hiding in dens and caves of the earth.”
At Marseilles the death-roll was comparatively light ; only about 240 victims had mounted the scaffold by January of 1794, and the Comité de Salut Public in Paris found it necessary to issue a reprimand to the Public Accuser of that city : “ In Paris . . . the art of guillotining has attained perfection. Sanson and his pupils guillotine with so much rapidity . . . they expedited twelve in thirteen minutes. Send, then, the executioner of Marseilles to Paris in order to take a course of guillotining with his colleague Sanson, or we shall never get through. You must know that we shall never let you want for game for the guillotine ; and a great number must be despatched.” [134]
In the small town of Orange, however, 318 victims were disposed of in a very short space of time, whilst in the north at Arras and Cambrai, under the reign of the apostate priest, Joseph Lebon, between 1500 and 2000 perished. In the province of Anjou alone the number of people killed without a trial has been estimated at 10,000.[135]
La Vendée as the stronghold of Royalism, when finally vanquished in October, could not of course hope for mercy, and the plan of the Convention, “ to transform this country into a desert,” [136] was adopted. “ We are able to say to-day,” wrote the Republican envoys, “ that La Vendée no longer exists. A profound silence reigns at present in the land occupied by the rebels. One could travel far in these parts without encountering a man or a cottage, for we have left nothing behind us but ashes and piles of corpses.” [137]
But of all the towns of France it was at Nantes in Brittany that the worst atrocities were committed, in spite of the fact that here the bourgeoisie had welcomed the Revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, “ and, indeed, had actually taken up arms against La Vendée.” [138] Unhappily, in the organizer of the campaign against Nantes the Comité de Salut Public had found a man after its own heart. Like “ his divinity Marat,” Jean Baptiste Carrier embodied in his person the whole principle of the Terror ; like Marat, physically abnormal with his lean misshapen figure, his long cadaverous face and bloodshot eyes, Carrier exhibited perpetually the same convulsive fury that had characterized the People’s Friend—indeed it is probable that he too was the victim of homicidal mania. Carrier thought, spoke, dreamt incessantly of killing ; “ I have seen him,” a contemporary declared, “ cutting candles in two with his sabre as if they were the heads of aristocrats.” Even his colleagues trembled to approach him for fear of his “ sudden angers, his bellowings like those of a famished wild beast.”
In order to carry out the vengeance of this maniac upon the unfortunate city, three companies of bandits, selected for their ferocity, had been recruited. The first of these, which Carrier had named after his idol, “ the company of Marat,” consisted of sixty members who had sworn on enrolment to carry out the doctrines of the People’s Friend ; the second, known as the “ American Hussars,” was composed of negroes and mulattos ; the third, which was called the “ Germanic Legion,” had been formed with German mercenaries and deserters. Thus, as Taine observes, “ it was necessary, in order to find men for the work, to descend not only to the lowest ruffians of France, but to brutes of foreign race and speech. . . .” [139]
The services of the two last companies were utilized principally for brutality towards women and children ; an eye-witness related that on one occasion he saw the corpses of no less than seventy-five girls aged from 16 to 18 who had been shot down by the German legion. Carrier entertained a peculiar hatred for children—“ they are whelps,” he said, “ they must be destroyed,” and he gave orders that they should be butchered without mercy. The details of these massacres far surpass in horror anything that took place in Paris during the height of the Terror ; there young children at least were spared, but at Nantes they perished miserably in hundreds. The annals of savagery can show nothing more revolting—poor little peasant boys and girls thrust beneath the blade of the guillotine, mutilated because they were too small to fit the fatal plank ; 500 driven all at once into a field outside the city and shot down, clubbed and sabred by the assassins round whose knees they clung, weeping and crying out for mercy.[140]
Finally the executioner grew weary of the slaughter and declared he could go on no longer ; even the fusillades proved too slow a method of extermination, and it was then that Carrier embarked on the scheme which for all time has rendered his name infamous—the noyades, or wholesale drownings in the Loire.
The first experiment was made on about ninety old priests, who were placed on board a galliot in charge of several Marats—as the members of the Marat company were knownand when in mid-stream those men, obedient to orders, burst open the ports and sank the barge to the bottom of the river. This delighted Carrier—“ I have never laughed so much,” he declared, “ as when I saw the faces those —— made as they died.” [141] The incident, when reported to the Convention, met with no remonstrance ; Hérault de Séchelles, in fact, wrote to Carrier congratulating him on “ his energy and talent in the art of revolution,” [142] whilst Robespierre, we know, heartily approved.[143] Carrier, thus encouraged, set to work on a larger scale. The cargo-load of gangrene in the form of clergy had proved but the prelude ; now “ the people ” were to provide the victims. So through those bitter December nights crowds of poor women, armed with the little bundles of possessions that peasants in flight are wont to carry with them, some clasping babies to their breasts, some leading little children by the hand, were driven out into the cold and darkness, they knew not whither ; only when they found themselves on the bank of the river where the great barges waited the hideous truth dawned on them. Then all at once they burst into tears and lamentations, crying out, “ They are going to drown us, and they will not bring us to trial ! ” Many holding their babies closer refused to give them up to strangers, and bore them with them in their arms down beneath the dark waters of the Loire. These perhaps were wisest, for many of those poor children, whom stronger-minded mothers had placed in sympathetic arms held out to them, were seized by Carrier’s agents and herded into the ghastly Entrepôt, or prison of the city, to die of cold and pestilence.
The noyades, which Carrier playfully described as “ bathing-parties,” offered a fresh field to his inventive genius, and by way of variety he now devised the plan of stripping men and women to the skin, tying them together in couples and throwing them thus bound into the Loire. Carrier called this “ Republican marriages.” [144]
Such was the Reign of Terror at Nantes, during which the number of victims that perished by drowning was estimated by one member of Carrier’s committee at 6000, by another at 9000, whilst Prudhomme estimates the number of people killed by drownings, fusillades, the guillotine and pestilence, at the appalling figure of 32,000.
What must have been the death-roll for all France during the Terror ? Prudhomme places it at no less than 1,025,711 (including losses through civil war), Taine at nearly half a million in the eleven provinces of the West alone. But on this point it is impossible to speak with any certainty. We only know that the massacres were wholesale and, what is more important, indiscriminate. For not only were the victims of the fusillades and noyades almost exclusively taken from amongst the people—“ creatures of no account,” said Goullin, one of Carrier’s aides—but no attempt was made to discover their political opinions. Some were Royalists, others Republicans ; the greater number probably held no views on politics at all, but lived like simple country folk, without a thought beyond their daily needs. The necessity for destroying gangrene cannot, therefore, have applied to them, and we must seek a further development in the scheme of the revolutionary leaders to explain this amazing paradox—the massacring of the people in the name of democracy.
1. Danton to the Comité de Defense Générale (see Robinet, Procés des Dantonistes).
2. “ It was only in Paris that the question of the Republic was considered. . . . In 1792 there are no principles (of Republicanism). They can only abolish the monarchy by advocating the deposition (of the King). They dare not proclaim the Republic ” (Madelin, p. 266).
3. Moniteur, xiv. 8.
4. A working-man, a tiler of Saint-Leu, named Gillequint, himself a convinced Republican, thus admirably summed up the matter in an address to his fellow-citizens some months later : “ The Sovereign (i.e. the people) must be free in his opinion. Are we free to manifest ours ? At the opening of the sittings of the Convention . . . a member proposed the abolition of the monarchy. Without examination, without discussion, the monarchy was abolished by a decree. . . . This decree was not sanctioned by the people, and since it is recognized that no decree can be made law without the sanction of the people, it should only have been carried out provisionally.” For this expression of opinion Gillequint was guillotined on the 5th of Messidor, An 11. (Wallon, Tribunal révolutionnaire, iv, 386-388).
5. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 216 ; Pagès, ii. 10-14 ; Deux Amis, viii. 326 ; Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, v. 24-27. These passages, written at about the same date, 1796 and 1797 ; should be carefully compared, and will be found to be almost identical it is evident that each expressed the current opinion of the day.
6. Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, xiii. 522. It was at this moment that the Duc d’Orléans was said to have declared to the Commune that he was not the son of the last Duc d’Orléans but of the duchess’s coachman. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 251 ; Peltier, La Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 9 ; Playfair’s History of Jacobinism, p. 604 ; posthumous works of Lord Orford, Historic Doubts, ii. 250 ; Les Fils de Philippe Égalité, by G. Lenôtre, p. 2.
7. “ From the day the Revolution began,” says Kropotkin, “ Marat took to bread and water, not figuratively speaking, but in reality.” No authority is given for this astonishing assertion. The researches of M. Lenôtre reveal, however, that at his flat in the Rue des Cordeliers, Marat was waited on by four women—his mistress, his sister, the portress, and the cook. Why a cook for bread and water ? Moreover, on the evening of his death, when during the visit of Charlotte Corday, his mistress, Simonne Evrard, entered the bathroom, she removed from the window-sill two dishes containing sweetbreads and brains for the evening meal—by no means a meagre menu for the Friend of the People at a moment when hungry crowds were drawn up outside his door waiting for crusts of bread (Paris révolutionnaire, by G. Lenôtre, p. 219). This confirms the story current amongst the people later that, although Marat’s frugality had been vaunted, his table “ was every day splendidly served and never consisted of less than eight dishes, end that she who called herself his wife was seen to buy objects of great luxury, either for his table or for other purposes. . . . (Schmidt, Tableaux de Paris, ii. 167).
8. L’Ami du Peuple, No. 681.
9. Ibid. No. 539.
10. That Robespierre did not believe in government by the people has been admirably explained by M. Louis Blanc—who does not believe in it himself (see his Histoire de la Révolution, viii. 269).
11. Thus : “ In the matter of genius and civism the people are infallible, whilst every one else is subject to great errors ” (Article de Robespierre, Buchez et Roux, xiv. 268). “ The motives of the people are always pure ; they cannot do otherwise than love the public good ” etc. (Robespierre à ses Commettants, ii. 285).
12. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution. v. 124.
13. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 162.
14. “ Danton during his brief apparition at the ‘ Comité de Salut Public ’ instituted that odious power of gold, that frightful system of corruption that bought speech or silence. . . . ‘ Get money given you,’ said Danton to Garat, ‘ and do not spare it ; the Republic will always have enough.’ . . . To corrupt and to be corrupted was for him the whole science of our morals, all the probity of the century. . . .” (ibid. v. 78-80).
15. “ Applauders and murmurers are to be had at all prices ; and as females are more noisy and to be had cheaper than males, you will observe there are generally more women than men in the tribunes ” (Dr. Moore’s Journal, i. 211 ; see also Pagès, ii. 29).
16. M. de Bernard à sa Femme, date of December 27, 1792, in Lettres d’Aristocrates, by Pierre de Vaissière, p. 582.
17. Moore’s Journal, ii. 249.
18. Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, xiv. 52.
19. Journal d’un Bourgeois, by Edmond Biré, i. 383.
20. Lafayette seduced by Marie Antoinette !—Marie Antoinette who had cried out, “ Better perish than be saved by Lafayette ! ” There is no limit to the absurdities circulated by the Jacobins.
21. Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iv. 619.
22. Statement of a government reporter in June 1793 : “ There are not 3000 decided revolutionaries in Paris ” (Paris pendant la Révolution, by Adolphe Schmidt, p. 21).
23. “ Those who wished his death were in constant dread of a return of humanity and affection in the hearts of the people towards him, and therefore were at great pains to fill the tribunes with persons hired to make an outcry against him : and they were so apprehensive on this subject as to suspect those very agents of relenting ” (Moore’s Journal, ii. 528).
24. Buchez et Roux, xxi. 202.
25. “ Premier Rapport de Valazé,” November 6, Moniteur, xiv. 401.
26. Essais de Beaulieu, iv. 228.
27. Ibid.
28. Moore’s Journal, ii. 614.
29. Mémoires de Lafayette, iii. 381.
30. Beaulieu, iv. 267 ; Moore’s Journal, ii. 468 ; see also the selections from these papers published by Buchez et Roux, xvii. 259.
31. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 224 ; Moore’s Journal, ii. 512.
32. Éloge historique et funèbre de Louis XVI., by Montjoie, p. 247.
33. Beaulieu, iv. 274 ; Lettres d’Aristocrates, by Pierre de Vaissière, p. 584.
34. Moore’s Journal, ii. 529.
35. Letter from M. Bernard to his wife in Lettres d’Aristocrates, by Pierre de Vaissière, p. 578.
36. Moore’s Journal, ii. 526 ; Lettres d’Aristocrates, pp. 571, 581.
37. Lettres d’Aristocrates, by Pierre de Vaissière, p. 581.
38. Ibid. p. 577.
39. Ibid. p. 580.
40. Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, xiv. 3, 4.
41. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, v. 120.
42. Buchez et Roux, xxii. 63 ; Moniteur, xiv. 849.
43. Journal d’un Bourgeois, by Edmond Biré, i. 409.
44. Ibid. p. 407.
45. Buchez et Roux, xxiii. 154.
46. Madelin, p. 284.
47. Lacretelle, Histoire de la Convention ; see also Mémoires de Carnot, i. 293 : “ Louis XVI. would have been saved if the Convention had not debated beneath daggers.”
48. Buchez et Roux, xxiii. 180 ; Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 237 ; Moore, ii. 577, 580 ; Deux Amis, xii. 16.
49. The figures published by the official Procès-Verbal (see Buchez et Roux, xxiii. 206, and Mortimer Ternaux, v. 462, not the Moniteur which is incorrect) are as follows :
Total number of deputies, 749. Absent, 28 ; refused to vote, 5. Total number of voters, therefore, = 721.
For imprisonment or banishment, 286. For irons 2. For death, with sentence postponed, 46. For death, but also, on the proposal of Mailhe, for discussion on postponement, 26, (360). For immediate death, without discussion on postponement, 361.
The conclusion of the President that the majority was of 387 to 334 was arrived at by adding the 26 votes for death with discussion on postponement to those for immediate death. This is obviously incorrect, and M. Mortimer Ternaux and Mr. Croker (Essays on the French Revolution, p. 362) are, therefore, right in stating that there was a majority of one. Both Ferrières and Dr. Moore, however, say that there were 319 votes for imprisonment or banishment. Fockedey, a member of the Convention, says 334. (See Documents pour servir à l’Histoire de la Révolution Française, published by Charles d’Héricault, ii. 143.) These figures would reduce the votes for death still further, and result in a majority against death. Indeed the secretary Manuel afterwards declared this was the case (Mémoires Secrets de D’Allonville, iii. 139).
50. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 232 ; Pagès, ii. 69.
51. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, i. 175 ; Dauban, La Demagogie en 1793, p. 27.
52. Journal d’un Bourgeois, by Edmond Biré, ii. 5.
53. Certain contemporaries declared that it was not Santerre who finally ordered the roll of drums (see Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 240), but the Comte d’Aya, a natural son of Louis XV. Beaulieu, however (Essais, iv. 353), and most reliable authorities state that it was Santerre ; moreover, Santerre admitted it himself. See “ Relation du Municipal Goret,” in La Captivité et la Mort de Marie Antoinette, by G. Lenôtre, p. 146.
54. Beaulieu, iv. 349.
55. “ Souvenirs du Conventionnel Fockedey,” published in Documents pour servir à l’Histoire de la Révolution Française, by Charles d’Héricault, vol. ii. p. 142. On this point see also the contemporary evidence quoted by Edmond Biré, Journal d’un Bourgeois, i. 451.
56. Diurnal de Beaulieu ; Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, xiv. 205.
57. Gorsas in the Courier des Departements for January 28, 1793. See Journal d’un Bourgeois, by Edmond Biré, i. 453.
58. Moniteur for February 6, 1793.
59. The Example of France, Appendix, p. 10.
60. Essays on the French Revolution, p. 254. Note here the value of Lord Acton’s judgement as a historian, for, after admitting that Danton was actuated solely by mercenary motives in the matter of the King’s death, he afterwards observes : “ There was not in France a more thorough patriot than Danton,” ibid. p. 282.
61. Trial of Malesherbes, in Bulletin de Tribunal révolutionnaire.
62. The Life of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, by Ghita Stanhope and G.P. Gooch, p. 119.
63. Moniteur, xiv. 517.
64. Moniteur, xiv. 762.
65. Immediately on Dumouriez’s arrival in the towns of Belgium Jacobin Clubs were inaugurated under his auspices (Mortimer Ternaux, Histoire de la Terreur, v. 14, 61). It seems that large sums of money were also lavished on the inhabitants, for later on, when Danton was asked to account for the sum of 100,000 écus he had spent on his mission to Belgium—and which the Girondins suspected him of appropriating—Danton replied that the money had been spent in “ executing the decree of December 15 ”—that is to say, in bribing the Belgians to vote for union with the French Republic (Séance of April 1, 1793 ; Mortimer Ternaux, op. cit. v. 20).
66. Ibid. p. 61. See also letter of Lord Auckland written from the Hague to Lord Loughborough on January 6, 1793 : “ The spirit of Jacobinism makes no progress. In Italy and Germany it is the abhorrence even of the lowest ranks. In Brabant and Flanders the French are now infinitely more hated than the Austrians ” (Correspondence of Lord Auckland, ii. 485).
67. Mortimer Ternaux, v. 19.
68. Moniteur, xiv. 762.
69. Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution Française, ii. 86-89.
70. Speech of Lord Lauderdale (Parl. Hist. xxx. 326). These words of Lord Lauderdale were a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth, for Lord Lauderdale was himself in Paris with Dr. Moore during the September massacres, and Dr. Moore’s evidence on the atrocities of which they were witnesses has been already quoted in this book. See also speech of Lord Lansdowne (Parl. Hist. xxx. 329), and Lord Stanhope’s “ Protest against a War with France ” (ibid. p. 336).
71. “ Rapport fait par Brissot sur les Dispositions du Gonvernement britannique,” Bouchez et Roux, xxiii. 81. See also speech of Kersaint on January 1, 1793, referring to the intrigues of Fox in “ trying to profit by circumstances in order to seize the government,” etc. (Buchez et Roux, xxiii. 366).
72. “ What has occasioned this last war ? There are three causes for it : 1st, The absurd and impolitic decree of the 19th of November, which very justly excited uneasiness in foreign cabinets. . . 2nd, The massacres of September. . . . 3rd, The death of Louis. . . . It is madness or imbecility itself to reckon upon a peace, or upon allies, while we are without a constitution. There is no making an alliance, there is no treating with anarchy ” (J.P. Brissot à ses Commettants).
73. Speeches of Pitt and Lord Grenville (Parl. Hist. xxx. 351, 399).
74. Moore, ii. 297.
75. Moniteur, xiv. 80 ; Buchez et Roux, xxii. 461-464, xxiv. 296, xxv. 323, xxvii. 144, 145 ; Beaulieu, v. 126 ; Mémoires de Mme. Roland, ii. 304 ; Dauban, La Demagogie en 1793, p. 66.
76. Buchez et Roux, xxii. 391.
77. Note Carlyle’s inconsequence here, for whilst pouring sarcasms on “ the respectably-washed middle-classes,” represented by the Girondins, it is for Madame Roland, the soul of the Gironde and the embodiment of pretentious middle-classness, that he reserves his deepest admiration, whilst for Marat, the soul of the Mountain, and the apostle of unwashed Fraternity, he has nothing but loathing and contempt. This instance goes to show that Carlyle wrote mainly for effect regardless of truth or logic.
78. See Roland’s sensible report (published by Buchez et Roux, xxi. 199), in which he points out that the price of bread being lower in Paris than in the surrounding provinces, buyers are attracted to the capital ; he proposes, therefore, to raise the price of bread in Paris, and to assist the poor out of the public funds to meet the increased expense. Compare this with Robespierre’s speech to the Convention of December 2, 1792 (Buchez et Roux, xxii. 178), in which he can find nothing more practical to say than that “ everything which is indispensable for preserving life is common property,” an axiom interpreted by the people, under the guidance of Marat, into laying violent hands on all foodstuffs that came their way. Undoubtedly there were still monopolizers as there had always been, and the succeeding revolutionary governments dealt with them less effectually than the Old Régime, but the methods of the Anarchists increased their number. “ The dearness of bread,” wrote Brissot in 1793, “ is produced by the scarcity of the markets and the want of the circulation of grain. . . . What stops this circulation ? The eternal declamations of the anarchists against men of property, or against merchants, whom they mark out by the name of monopolizers ; the eternal petitions of ignorant men who call for a rate upon grain. The labouring man fears he will be plundered or have his throat cut, and he leaves his ricks untouched ” (J.P. Brissot à ses Commettants).
79. See the Mémoires de Brissot, note on p. 63, which mentions two letters from American corn-merchants written to Robespierre in October and November 1793 offering supplies of grain. To these Robespierre did not reply. Courtois in his Rapport says the offer was refused (Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, etc. i. 21).
80. Fortescue Historical MSS. ii. 457. The Socialist, Gracchus Babeuf, employed in the Supply Department of the Commune, formally accused Robespierre and the Comité de Salut Public of having organized a Pacte de Famine in order to starve Paris. For this Babeuf and all the employés in the Supply Department were thrown into prison at the Abbaye.
81. Beaulieu, v. 117 ; Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, ii. 92.
82. Prudhomme, Crimes, v. 37.
83. This Tribunal was at first known officially as the “ Tribunal Extraordinaire,” and not till later as the “ Tribunal Révolutionnaire,” but Beaulieu says it was habitually referred to in private conversation under the latter name, particularly by Robespierre and his friends, soon after its inauguration on March 10, 1793 (Essais de Beaulieu, v. 103).
84. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, i. 25.
85. “ It is universally known,” writes Dr. Moore, “ that the Girondists exculpate the citizens of Paris from the horrid crimes of September ; whereas Robespierre, St. André, Tallien, Chabot, Bazire, and all that party, assert that the massacres were committed by the people. But as, at the same time, St. André always calls them ‘ le bon peuple,’ Marat says ‘ he carries them in his heart,’ and Robespierre declares ‘ he would willingly sacrifice his life for them,’ the populace consider this faction as their friends, and look on Roland and the Girondists as their calumniators ” (Moore’s Journal, ii. 427).
86. Lenôtre, Le Tribunal révolutionnaire, pp. 84, 85.
87. Wallon, Le Tribunal révolutionnaire, i. 93, 110, 133, 140.
88. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, vi. 272.
89. Michelet, quoting Le Publiciste de la République Française, says that the women of the market were amongst the crowd, but this seems improbable in view of their attitude at the King’s trial three months earlier, and on May 2 the Government agent, Dutard, reports to Garat that their attitude towards the Revolution is still the same : “ It seems that these women, if they were not afraid of the guillotine for themselves, would cry in unison, ‘ Vive le Roi ! ’ ” (Schmidt, ii. 173).
90. Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 215.
91. Ibid. p. 237.
92. I give the names of these committees in the original French, since there is no exact equivalent in English. The Comité de Salut Public is frequently referred to by English writers as the Committee of Public Safety, but this is misleading, for “ safety ” is the English for sûreté, not for salut. The nearest equivalent for salut would be “ salvation,” but this would not be an exact rendering of the French word.
93. Schmidt, ii. 218.
94. Ibid. i. 250.
95. Beaulieu, v. 120 ; Letters of Helen Maria Williams (1795), p. 42.
96. Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 321.
97. Ibid. p. 329 ; Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, i. 164.
98. Dauban, La Demagogie en 1793, p. 209 ; Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 351.
99. Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 352, 365 ; Beaulieu, v. 132.
100. Dauban, La Demagogie en 1793, p. 218.
101. Ibid. pp. 214, 218 ; Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 391 ; Letters of Helen Maria Williams (1795), p. 41.
102. Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 379.
103. Letters of Helen Maria Williams, p. 41.
104. Ibid. ; Mortimer Ternaux, vii. 384.
105. The role of Danton on this occasion is difficult to explain. He had certainly co-operated in the movement to overthrow the Girondins, yet now he seemed inclined to oppose it. Meillan accounts for his attitude by saying he had begun to fear the Municipality.
106. Rapport de Dutard à Garat, Schmidt, ii. 11.
107. Beaulieu, v. 145.
108. Dauban, La Demagogie en 1793, p. 222.
109. Dauban, La Demagogie en 1793, p. 223.
110. It is customary for revolutionary historians to make out that the priests and nobles incited the Vendéens to revolt ; this is absolutely untrue ; the movement was entirely a peasant rising—the nobles in certain cases showed reluctance to act as leaders. See Beaulieu, vi. 52.
111. Buchez et Roux, xxiii. 279.
112. La Demagogie en 1793, by C.A. Dauban, p. 239.
113. Legros, La Révolution telle qu’elle est, i. 366 (letter from Prieur de la Marne to the Comité de Salut Public).
114. Archives des Affaires Étrangères, quoted by Taine, La Révolution, viii. 53.
115. Ibid. p. 54.
116. Aux Amis de la Vérité, by F.N.L. Buzot, pp. 32-34.
117. Mémoires de Buzot, p. 19.
118. Journal des Débats, July 16, 1793.
119. Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, ii. 15.
120. Histoire de la Révolution, by Louis Blanc, ii. 91.
121. Beaulieu, v. 405.
122. “ Writers must be proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the people ” (Note in Robespierre’s handwriting, published in Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, ii. 13). See also Pages, ii. 19, and Letters of Helen Maria Williams (1794), p. 115.
123. Moniteur for the 14th Fructidor, An ii.; also Rapport de Grégoire on same date : “ Dumas said all clever men should be guillotined. . . The system of persecution against men of talents was organized. . . They cried out in the sections, ‘ Beware of that man, for he has written a book ! ’ ”
124. Taine, viii. 206 ; Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, ii. 141 ; Mémoire sur le Vandalisme, by Grégoire.
125. Beaulieu, v. 281.
126. Taine, viii. 180.
127.Rapport de Dutard à Garat (Minister of the Interior), June 24, 1793, Schmidt, ii. 87.
128. Buchez et Roux, xxix. 43.
129. Ibid. p. 172.
130. Mémoires de Madame de la Tour du Pin, ii. 345.
131. Prudhomme, Crimes, vi. 49, 50. Cadillot, a correspondent of Robespierre, placed the number of executions at Lyon at 6000 (Taine, viii. 126).
132. Description given by Isnard, who was amongst the wounded. Beaulieu, v. 449 ; Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, vi. 157.
133. Madelin, p. 335.
134. Prudhomme, Crimes, vi. 128.
135. Taine, viii. 131.
136. Letter of the emissary Francastel to General Grignon (Taine, viii. 131).
137. Mortimer Ternaux, viii. 196.
138. J.B. Carrier, by Alfred Lallie, p. 57.
139. Taine, viii. 110 ; Beaulieu, vi. 92, 93 ; Les Noyades de Nantes, by G. Lenôtre.
140. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, vi. 314.
141. Ibid. p. 323 ; Procés de Carrier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 184.
142. Beaulieu, vi. 98.
143. See Lallié, op. cit. p. 230 ; also statement of Laignelot to the Convention that he informed Robespierre of the horrors taking place at Nantes, to which Robespierre replied : “ Carrier is a patriot ; this was necessary at Nantes ” (Moniteur du 3 Frimaire, An iii. vol. xxii. 380).
144. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, vi. 335 ; Beaulieu, vi. 100 ; Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 149. And Kropotkin, that arch-calumniator of the people, dares to attribute the noyades of Nantes to the Breton Peasants ! See The Great French Revolution, p. 458.