The World's Greatest Books - Volume 12 Part 13

"Well, then, thou shouldst depart."

"Depart!" he repeated, curling his lip disdainfully, "Depart! Can we carry your country away on the sole of our shoe?"

On Germinal 10, as the revolutionary calendar went (March 31, 1796), he was informed that his arrest was being discussed in the Committee of Public Safety. His arrest gave rise to general excitement, to a sombre anxiety. Danton and the rest of the accused were brought before the revolutionary tribunal. They displayed an audacity of speech and a contempt of their judges wholly unusual. They were taken to the Conciergerie, and thence to the scaffold.

They went to death with the intrepidity usual at that epoch. There were many troops under arms, and their escort was numerous. The crowd, generally loud in its applause, was silent. Danton stood erect, and looked proudly and calmly around. At the foot of the scaffold he betrayed a momentary emotion. "Oh, my best beloved--my wife!" he cried.

"I shall not see thee again!" Then suddenly interrupting himself: "No weakness, Danton!"

Thus perished the last defender of humanity and moderation; the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time no voice was raised against the dictators.h.i.+p of terror. During the four months following the fall of the Danton party, the committee exercised their authority without opposition or restraint. Death became the only means of governing, and the republic was given up to daily and systematic executions.

Robespierre, who was considered the founder of a moral democracy, now attained the highest degree of elevation and of power. He became the object of the general flattery of his party; he was the _great man_ of the republic. At the Jacobins and in the Convention his preservation was attributed to "the good genius of the republic" and to the _Supreme Being_, Whose existence he had decreed on Floreal 18, the celebration of the new religion being fixed for Prairial 20.

But the end of this system drew near. The committees opposed Robespierre in their own way. They secretly strove to bring about his fall by accusing him of tyranny.

Naturally sad, suspicious, and timid, he became more melancholy and mistrustful than ever. He even rose against the committee itself. On Thermidor 8 (July 25, 1794), he entered the Convention at an early hour.

He ascended the tribunal, and denounced the committee in a most skilful speech. Not a murmur, not a mark of applause welcomed this declaration of war.

The members of the two committees thus attacked, who had hitherto remained silent, seeing the Mountain thwarted and the majority undecided, thought it time to speak. Vadier first opposed Robespierre's speech and then Robespierre himself. Cambon went further. The committees had also spent the night in deliberation. In this state of affairs the sitting of Thermidor 9 (July 27) began.

Robespierre, after attempting to speak several times, while his voice was drowned by cries of "Down with the tyrant!" and the bell which the president, Thuriot, continued ringing, now made a last effort to be heard. "President of a.s.sa.s.sins," he cried, "for the last time, will you let me speak?"

Said one of the Mountain: "The blood of Danton chokes you!" His arrest was demanded, and supported on all sides. It was now half-past five, and the sitting was suspended till seven. Robespierre was transferred to the Luxembourg. The commune, after having ordered the gaolers not to receive him, sent munic.i.p.al officers with detachments to bring him away.

Robespierre was liberated, and conducted in triumph to the Hotel de Ville. On arriving, he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. "Long live Robespierre! Down with the traitors!" resounded on all sides. But the Convention marched upon the Hotel de Ville.

The conspirators, finding they were lost, sought to escape the violence of their enemies by committing violence on themselves. Robespierre shattered his jaw with a pistol shot. He was deposited for some time at the Committee of Public Safety before he was transferred to the Conciergerie; and here, stretched on a table, his face disfigured and b.l.o.o.d.y, exposed to the looks, the invectives, the curses of all, he beheld the various parties exulting in his fall, and charging upon him all the crimes that had been committed.

On Thermidor 10, about five in the evening, he ascended the death-cart, placed between Henriot and Couthon, mutilated like himself. His head was enveloped in linen, saturated with blood; his face was livid, his eyes were almost visionless. An immense crowd thronged round the cart, manifesting the most boisterous and exulting joy. He ascended the scaffold last. When his head fell, shouts of applause arose in the air, and lasted for some minutes.

Thermidor 9 was the first day of the revolution it which those fell who attacked. This indication alone manifested that the ascendant revolutionary movement had reached its term. From that day the contrary movement necessarily began.

From Thermidor 9, 1794, to the summer of 1795, the radical Mountain, in its turn, underwent the destiny it had imposed on others--for in times when the pa.s.sions are called into play parties know not how to come to terms, and seek only to conquer. From that period the middle cla.s.s resumed the management of the revolution, and the experiment of pure democracy had failed.

THOMAS CARLYLE

History of the French Revolution

Carlyle's "History of the French Revolution" appeared in 1837, some three years after the author had established himself in London. Never has the individuality of a historian so completely permeated his work; it is inconceivable that any other man should have written a single paragraph, almost a single sentence, of the history. To Carlyle, the story presents itself as an upheaval of elemental forces, vast elemental personalities storming t.i.tanically in their midst, vividly picturesque as a primeval mountain landscape illumined by the blaze of lightning, in a night of storms, with momentary glimpses of moon and stars. Although it was impossible for Carlyle to a.s.similate all the wealth of material even then extant, the "History," considered as a prose epic, has a permanent and unique value. His convictions, whatever their worth, came, as he himself put it, "flamingly from the heart." (Carlyle, biography: see vol. ix.)

_I.---The End of an Era_

On May 10, 1774, "with a sound absolutely like thunder," has the horologe of time struck, and an old era pa.s.sed away. Is it the healthy peace or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France for the next ten years? Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone for ever. There is a young, still docile, well-intentioned king; a young, beautiful and bountiful, well-intentioned queen; and with them all France, as it were, become young. For controller-general, a virtuous, philosophic Turgot.

Philosophism sits joyful in her glittering salons; "the age of revolutions approaches" (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy, blessed ones.

But with the working people it is not so well, whom we lump together into a kind of dim, compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the _canaille_. Singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly. Visible in France is no such thing as a government. But beyond the Atlantic democracy is born; a sympathetic France rejoices over the rights of man. Rochambeaus, Lameths, Lafayettes have drawn their swords in this sacred quarrel; return, to be the missionaries of freedom. But, what to do with the finances, having no Fortunatus purse?

For there is the palpablest discrepancy between revenue and expenditure.

Are we breaking down, then, into the horrors of national bankruptcy?

Turgot, Necker, and others have failed. What apparition, then, could be welcomer than that of M. de Calonne? A man of indisputable genius, even fiscal genius, more or less; of intrinsically rich qualities! For all straits he has present remedy. Calonne also shall have trial! With a genius for persuading--before all things for borrowing; after three years of which, expedient heaped on expedient, the pile topples perilous.

Whereupon a new expedient once more astonishes the world, unheard of these hundred and sixty years--_Convocation of the Notables_. A round gross of notables, meeting in February, 1787; all privileged persons. A deficit so enormous! Mismanagement, profusion, is too clear; peculation itself is hinted at. Calonne flies, storm-driven, over the horizon. To whom succeeds Lomenie-Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse--adopting Calonne's plans, as Calonne had proposed to adopt Turgot's; and the notables are, as it were, organed out in kind of choral anthem of thanks, praises, promises.

Lomenie issues conciliatory edicts, fiscal edicts. But if the Parlement of Paris refuse to register them? As it does, entering complaints instead. Lomenie launches his thunderbolt, six score _lettres de cachet;_ the Parlement is trundled off to Troyes, in Champagne, for a month. Yet two months later, when a royal session is held, to have edicts registered, there is no registering. Orleans, "Equality" that is to be, has made the protest, and cut its moorings.

The provincial parlements, moreover, back up the Paris Parlement with its demand for a States-General. Lomenie hatches a c.o.c.katrice egg; but it is broken in premature manner; the plot discovered and denounced.

Nevertheless, the Parlement is dispersed by D'Agoust with Gardes Francaises and Gardes Suisses. Still, however, will none of the provincial parlements register.

Deputations coming from Brittany meet to take counsel, being refused audience; become the _Breton Club_, first germ of the _Jacobins'

Society_. Lomenie at last announces that the States-General shall meet in the May of next year (1789). For the holding of which, since there is no known plan, "thinkers are invited" to furnish one.

_II.---The States-General_

Wherewith Lomenie departs; flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief. The archbishop is thrown out, and M. Necker is recalled. States-General will meet, if not in January, at least in May.

But how to form it? On the model of the last States-General in 1614, says the Parlement, which means that the _Tiers Etat_ will be of no account, if the n.o.blesse and the clergy agree. Wherewith terminates the popularity of the Parlement. As for the "thinkers," it is a sheer snowing of pamphlets. And Abbe Sieyes has come to Paris to ask three questions, and answer them: _What is the Third Estate? All. What has it hitherto been in our form of government? Nothing. What does it want? To become something_.

The grand questions are: Shall the States-General sit and vote in three separate bodies, or in one body, wherein the _Tiers Etat_ shall have double representation? The notables are again summoned to decide, but vanish without decision. With those questions still unsettled, the election begins. And presently the national deputies are in Paris. Also there is a sputter; drudgery and rascality rising in Saint-Antoine, finally repressed by Gardes Suisses and grapeshot.

On Monday, May 4, is the baptism day of democracy, the extreme unction day of feudalism. Behold the procession of processions advancing towards Notre--our commons, n.o.blesse, clergy, the king himself. Which of these six hundred individuals in plain white cravat might one guess would become their king? He with the thick black locks, s.h.a.ggy beetle-brows and rough-hewn face? Gabriel Honore Riqueti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller, the type Frenchman of this epoch, as Voltaire of the last. And if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these six hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; complexion of an atrabiliar shade of pale sea-green, whose name is Maximilien Robespierre?

Coming into their hall on the morrow, the commons deputies perceive that they have it to themselves. The n.o.blesse and the clergy are sitting separately, which the n.o.blesse maintain to be right; no agreement is possible. After six weeks of inertia the commons deputies, on their own strength, are getting under way; declare themselves not _Third Estate_, but _National a.s.sembly_. On June 20, shut out of their hall "for repairs," the deputies find refuge in the tennis court! take solemn oath that they will continue to meet till they have made the const.i.tution.

And to these are joined 149 of the clergy. A royal session is held; the king propounds thirty-five articles, which if the estates do not confirm he will himself enforce. The commons remain immovable, joined now by the rest of the clergy and forty-eight n.o.blesse. So triumphs the Third Estate.

War-G.o.d Broglie is at work, but grapeshot is good on one condition! The Gardes Francaises, it seems, will not fire; nor they only. Other troops, then? Rumour declares, and is verified, that Necker, people's minister, is dismissed. "To arms!" cries Camille Desmoulins, and innumerable voices yell responsive. Chaos comes. The Electoral Club, however, declares itself a provisional munic.i.p.ality, sends out parties to keep order in the streets that night, enroll a militia, with arms collected where one may. Better to name it _National Guard_! And while the crisis is going on, Mirabeau is away, sad at heart for the dying, crabbed old father whom he loved.

Muskets are to be got from the Invalides; 28,000 National Guards are provided with matchlocks. And now to the Bastile! But to describe this siege perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. After four hours of world-bedlam, it surrenders. The Bastile is down. "Why," said poor Louis, "that is a revolt." "Sire," answered Liancourt, "it is not a revolt; it is a revolution."

On the morrow, Louis paternally announces to the National a.s.sembly reconciliation. Amid enthusiasm, President Bailly is proclaimed Maire of Paris, Lafayette general of the National Guard. And the first emigration of aristocrat irreconcilables takes place. The revolution is sanctioned.

Nevertheless, see Saint-Antoine, not to be curbed, dragging old Foulon and Berthier to the lantern, after which the cloud disappears, as thunder-clouds do.

_III.---Menads and Feast of Pikes_

French Revolution means here the open, violent rebellion and victory of disemprisoned anarchy against corrupt, worn-out authority; till the frenzy working itself out, the uncontrollable be got harnessed. A transcendental phenomenon, overstepping all rules and experience, the crowning phenomenon of our modern time.

The National a.s.sembly takes the name Const.i.tuent; with endless debating, gets the rights of man written down and promulgated. A memorable night is August 4, when they abolish privilege, immunity, feudalism, root and branch, perfecting their theory of irregular verbs. Meanwhile, seventy-two chateaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone. Ill stands it now with some of the seigneurs. And, glorious as the meridian, M. Necker is returning from Bale.

Pamphleteering, moreover, opens its abysmal throat wider and wider, never to close more. A Fourth Estate of able editors springs up, increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable.