The French Revolution Part 8

It was at this moment that in Paris the guillotine, working more slowly but more steadily than Fouche's cannon and grape, was claiming some of its most ill.u.s.trious victims. From the 12th to the 15th of October, the Revolutionary Tribunal had to deal with the case of Marie Antoinette.

The Queen, who had been treated with increased severity since the execution of the King, supported the attacks of the pitiless public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, with firmness and dignity. The accusations against her were of the same general character as those against Louis, and require no special comment. But an incident of the trial brought out some of the most nauseous aspects of the Hebert regime.

The Commune had introduced men of the lowest type at {197} the Temple, had placed the Dauphin in the keeping of the infamous cobbler Simon, had attempted to manufacture filthy evidence against the Queen. Hebert went into the witness box to sling mud at her in person, and it was at that moment only, with a look and a word of reply that no instinct could mistake, that she forced a murmur of indignation or sympathy from the public. Robespierre was dining when he heard of the incident, and in his anger with Hebert broke his plate over the table.

The Queen went to the guillotine, driven in an open cart, on the 16th. A week later the Girondins went to trial, twenty-one deputies, among them Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne and Boyer Fonfrede. Their trial lasted five days, and among its auditors was Camille Desmoulins,--Desmoulins, whose pamphlets had helped place his unfortunate opponents where they stood, Desmoulins, whose heart, whose generosity was stirred, who already was revolting against terrorism, who was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of remorse when sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced against the men of the Gironde. It was the first revolt of opinion against the reign of terror, the first {198} perceptible movement of the conscience of France, and it was to send Desmoulins himself to the guillotine.

The Girondins went to the scaffold on the 31st of October. The Duc d'Orleans on the 6th of November; four days later Madame Roland, who met death perhaps a little pedantically but quite n.o.bly; then, on the 12th, Bailly. Of the Girondins who had escaped from Paris several committed suicide, Roland on receiving news of his wife's death; others within the next few months, Condorcet, Petion, Buzot.

In this same month of November 1793 was introduced the Revolutionary Calendar, of which more will be said in the last chapter.[1] The holy seventh day disappeared in favour of the anti-clerical tenth day, Decadi; Saints' days and Church festivals were wiped out. This new departure was a step forward in the religious question which, a few weeks later, brought about an acute crisis.

Between October and December the climax and the turn were reached in the Vendean war. After heavy fighting in October Henri de La Rochejacquelein had invaded Brittany, defeating the Republicans at Chateau Gontier {199} on the 25th. Rossignol now had under his orders the garrison of Mainz and two excellent subordinates in Kleber and Marceau, who succeeded, in spite of their commander, in wresting success at last. On the 13th of December a tremendous struggle took place at Le Mans in which the Vendeens were beaten after a loss of about 15,000 men. Kleber gave them no respite but a few days later cut up the remnants at Savenay. Although fighting continued long afterwards this proved the end of the Vendean grand army.

These victories were immediately followed by judicial repression. The _conventionnel_ Carrier organized a Revolutionary Tribunal at Nantes, and committed worse horrors than Fouche had at Lyons. Finding a rate of 200 executions a day insufficient he invented the noyade. River barges were taken, their bottoms were hinged so as to open conveniently, and prisoners, tied in pairs, naked and regardless of s.e.x, were taken out in them, and released into the water. At Nantes, like at Arras and several other points, the proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunals and of the gangs who worked the prisons, were marked by gross immorality in dealing with the women prisoners. At Nantes, Carrier, {200} most thorough and most infamous of the Terrorists, is said to have caused the death of 15,000 persons in four months.

The fury of the Revolution, which turned to frenzy and dementia at Nantes, blazed into a marvellous flame of patriotic energy on the frontiers. Nearly half a million men were enrolled in the course of 1793. A new volunteer battalion was added to each battalion of the old army, the new unit being named a _demi-brigade_. Rankers were pushed up to high command, partly by political influence, partly for merit.

Jourdan, an old soldier, a shop-keeper, became general of the army of the north, and on the 15th of October defeated Coburg at Wattignies. The brilliant Hoche, ex-corporal of the French guards, was placed at the head of the army of the Moselle. Pichegru, the son of a peasant, took over the army of the Rhine. Under these citizen generals new tactics replaced the old. Pipe-clay and method gave way to Sans-culottism and dash. The greatest of the generals of the Revolution said: "I had sooner see a soldier without his breeches than without his bayonet." Rapidity, surprise, the charging column, the helter-skelter pursuit, were the innovations of {201} the new French generals. They translated into terms of tactics and strategy, Danton's famous apostrophe, "Audacity, more audacity, yet more audacity!"

[1] See Chap. XVII.

{202}

CHAPTER XIV

THERMIDOR

Danton had fallen fast in popularity and influence since the moment when, after the fall of the Gironde, he had appeared to dominate the situation. On the 12th of October, weary, sick at heart, disgusted at the triumph of the Hebertists, he had left Paris and, apparently retiring from politics, had gone back to his little country town of Arcis-sur-Aube. There a month later Robespierre sought him out, and invited him to joint action for pulling down Hebert. With Robespierre this meant no more than that Danton could help him, not that he would ever help Danton, and doubtless the latter realized it; but the bold course always drew him, and he accepted. Danton returned to Paris on the 21st of November.

Robespierre had been moved to this step by an alarming development of Hebertism. Anti-clericalism, hatred of the priest,--and among other things the priest stood behind the {203} Vendeen,--Voltairianism, materialism, all these elements had come to a head; and the clique who worked the Commune had determined that the triumph of the Revolution demanded the downfall of Catholicism, which was, as it seemed, equivalent to religion. A wave of atheism swept through Paris. To be atheistic became the mark of a good citizen. Gobel, the archbishop, and many priests, accepted it, and renounced the Church. Then a further step was taken. On the 10th of November the Cathedral of Notre Dame was dedicated to Reason, a handsome young woman from the opera personifying the G.o.ddess. Two weeks later, just as Danton reached Paris, the Commune closed all the churches of the city for the purpose of dedicating them to the cult of Reason.

Robespierre, like most of the men of the Revolution, was an enemy of the Church; but he was not an atheist. On the contrary he accepted in a very literal, dogmatic and zealous way the doctrines of Rousseau, his prophet not only in politics but in religion. To Robespierre the Hebertist cult of Reason was as gross blasphemy as it was to the most ardent Catholic, and the Jacobin leader had nerved himself for a struggle to destroy that cult. That was why he had appealed to Danton, {204} though he knew that if Danton joined him in the fight it would not be for conscience, for a religious motive, but solely to destroy Hebert and perhaps to regain control of the Committee of Public Safety.

This last possibility Robespierre risked.

The two allies immediately opened their campaign against Hebert. In the Convention Danton, with rather hollow rhetoric, declaimed in favour of popular festivals at which incense should be offered to the Supreme Being. Robespierre at the Jacobins, allowing his venom to master his logic, declared: "Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a Supreme Being who guards injured innocence and who punishes triumphant crime is democratic. . . . If G.o.d did not exist we should have to invent Him."

It was just at this moment, when Hebertism and terrorism appeared interchangeable terms, and when the two most powerful men of the a.s.sembly had simultaneously turned against Hebertism, that Desmoulins stepped forward as the champion of the cause of mercy, to pull down Hebert, and with Hebert the guillotine. Early in December he brought out a newspaper once more, _Le Vieux Cordelier_, and in that boldly attacked the gang of thieves and {205} murderers who were working the politics of the city of Paris. Public opinion awakened; voices were raised here and there; presently pet.i.tions began to flow in to the Convention. The tide was unloosened. How far would it go?

Robespierre, crafty, cunning, s.h.i.+fty, at first cautiously used Desmoulins for his purposes. But when Danton himself, the arch-terrorist, bravely accepted the doctrine of clemency, Robespierre began to draw back. At the end of December the return of Collot d'Herbois from his ma.s.sacres at Lyons stiffened Robespierre, and rallied the Committee of Public Safety more firmly to the policy of terror. For some weeks a desperate campaign of words was fought out inch by inch, Danton and Desmoulins las.h.i.+ng out desperately as the net closed slowly in on them; and it was not till the 20th of February 1794 that they received the death stroke. It was dealt by St. Just.

St. Just, a doctrinaire and puritan nearly as fanatical as his chief, possessed what Robespierre lacked,--decision, boldness, and a keen political sense. On his return from a mission to the armies he had found in Paris the situation already described, and decided immediately to strike hard, at once, and at all the {206} opponents of his party.

The first measures were aimed at Hebert and the Commune, for St. Just judged that they were ripe for the guillotine. A decree was pushed through the Convention whereby it was ordered that the property of all individuals sent to the scaffold under the _Loi des suspects_ should be distributed to the poor _sans-culottes_. This infamous enactment was intended to cut from under the feet of the Commune any popular support it still retained.

At St. Just's provocation the attacked party closed its ranks,--the Commune, the ministers, the Cordeliers, Hebert, Hanriot. Proclamations were issued for a new insurrection. But Paris was getting weary of insurrections, wearier still of the obvious blackguardism and peculation of the Hebertists, weariest of the perpetual drip of blood from the guillotine. No insurrection could be organized. For some days the opponents remained at arm's length. Finally on the 17th of March the Committee of Public Safety ordered the arrest of Hebert, Pache, Chaumette and a number of their prominent supporters, and was almost surprised to find that the arrest was carried out with virtually no opposition. Paris raised not a finger to defend them, and contentedly {207} watched them go to the guillotine a week later.

It was otherwise with Danton. St. Just gave him no time. With the Committee and the Convention well in hand he struck at once, less than a week after Hebert had been despatched. He read a long accusation against Danton to the Convention, and that body weakly voted his arrest. Danton, Desmoulins, and some of their chief supporters were hurried to prison; and from prison to the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the 2d, 3rd and 4th of April they were tried by the packed bench and packed jury of that expeditious inst.i.tution. But so uncertain was the temper of the vast throng that filled the streets outside, so violently did Danton struggle to burst his bonds, that for a moment it seemed as though the immense reverberations of his voice, heard, it is said, even across the Seine, might awaken the force of the people, as so often before, and overthrow the Jacobin rule. A hasty message to the Committee of Public Safety,--a hasty decree rushed through the Convention,--and Danton's voice was quelled, judgment delivered before the accused had finished his defence. On the next day Danton and Desmoulins went to the guillotine together,--Paris very hushed at the immensity and suddenness {208} of the catastrophe. Desmoulins was gone, the leader of the revolt against the monarchy in 1789, the generous defender of the cause of mercy in 1794; and Danton was gone, with all his sins, with all his venality, the most powerful figure of the Revolution, more nearly the Revolution itself than any man of his time.

Complete triumph! As Robespierre, St. Just and Couthon looked about them, the three apostles leading France down the narrow path of civic virtue, they saw nothing but prostrate enemies. The power of the Commune was gone, and in its stead the Committee of Public Safety virtually ruled Paris. Danton, the possible dictator, the impure man ready to adjust compromises with the enemies of liberty, lax in conscience and in action, Danton too was down. The solid phalanx of the Jacobin Club, the remnant of the Commune, the Revolutionary Tribunal, stood solidly arrayed behind Robespierre; and the Convention voted with perfect regularity and unanimity every decree it was asked for.

But this att.i.tude of the Convention only represented the momentary paralysis of fear. No one would venture on debate, leave alone opposition. Men like Sieyes attended punctiliously day after day, month after month, and {209} never opened their lips,--only their eyes, watching the corner of the Mountain, whence the reeking oracle was delivered. In the city it was the same. The cafes, so tumultuous and excited at the opening of the Revolution, are oppressively silent now.

A crowd gathers in the evening to hear the gazette read, but in that crowd few dare to venture a word, an opinion; occasional whispers are exchanged, the list of those sent to the guillotine is eagerly listened to, and then all disperse.

And the prisons are full,--of aristocrats, of suspects, of wealthy bourgeois. Those who have money occasionally buy themselves out, and generally succeed in living well; while outside the prison doors, angry, half-demented women revile the aristocrats who betray the people and who, even in prison, eat delicate food and drink expensive wines.

Among the prisoners there is some light-heartedness, much demoralization, with here and there, at rare intervals, a Madame Roland or an Andre Chenier, to keep high above degradation their minds and their characters. And every day comes the heartrending hour of the roll call for the Revolutionary Tribunal which with so many means death.

The Tribunal itself, loses more and more {210} any sense of legality it had at the outset. Its procedure still carries a semblance of legal method, but it is really an automatic machine for affixing a legal label on political murders. And the Tribunal, as it progresses in its career, becomes more and more insane in its hatred of the party it seeks to destroy, of the anti-revolutionist, of the aristocrat. Is it not recorded that it ordered the arrest of a little girl of 13, Mlle.

de Chabannes, suspect "because she had sucked the aristocratic milk of her mother." The Tribunal acquitted one person in every five; up to the fall of Danton it had sent about 1,000 persons to the guillotine; during the three months of Robespierre's domination it was to send another 1,600, increasing its activity by hysterical progression. When Thermidor was reached, about thirty individuals was the daily toll of the executioner.

Robespierre triumphant immediately revealed all his limitations; he was not a successful statesman; he was only a successful religionist. His first care, therefore, was to attend to the dogma of the French people.

He proposed that Decadi should be converted into a new Sabbath; he caused the dregs of the Hebertists, including Gobel, to be indicted for {211} atheism when their turn came for the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Robespierre sending a renegade Archbishop of Paris to the scaffold for atheism marks how very far the Revolution had moved since the days of the States-General at Versailles.

On the 7th of May, a month after Danton's death, Robespierre delivered a long speech before the Convention, a speech that marks his apogee.

It was a high-flown rhapsody on civic morality and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious att.i.tude, his universal church of nature. In that church, nature herself is the chief priest and there is no need of an infamous priesthood. Its ritual is virtue; its festivals the joy of a great people. Therefore let the Convention decree that the Cult of the Supreme Being be established, that the duty of every citizen is to practise virtue, to punish tyrants and traitors, to succour the unfortunate, to respect the weak, to defend the oppressed, to do good unto others. Let the Convention inst.i.tute compet.i.tions for hymns and songs to adorn the new cult; and let the Committee of {212} Public Safety,--that hara.s.sed and overburdened committee,--adjudicate, and reward the successful hymnologists.

The Convention listened in silence, disgust, silent rebellion,--but bowed its head. The new cult appealed to very few. Here and there an intellectual Rousseauist accepted it, but the ma.s.s did what mankind in all countries and ages has done, refused to reason out what was a religious and therefore an emotional question. To the vast majority of Frenchmen there was only one choice, Catholicism or non-catholicism, and the cult of the Supreme Being was just as much non-catholicism as that of Reason.

Robespierre, blind and satisfied, went on his way rejoicing. On the 8th of June, as President of the Convention, he took the chief part in a solemn inauguration of the new religion. There were statues, processions, bonfires, speeches, and Robespierre, beflowered, radiant in a new purple coat, pontificating over all. But beneath the surface all was not well. The Convention had not been led through the solemn farce without protest. Words of insult were hissed by more than one deputy as Robespierre pa.s.sed within earshot, and the Jacobin leader realized fully that behind the {213} docile votes and silent faces currents of rage and protest were stirring. For this, as for every ill, there was but one remedy, to sharpen the knife.

Two days later, on the 10th, new decrees were placed before the Convention for intensifying the operations of the Revolutionary Tribunal. New crimes were invented "spreading discouragement, perverting public opinion"; the prisoner's defence was practically taken away from him; and, most important, members of the Convention lost their inviolability. The Convention voted the decree, but terror had now pushed it to the wall and self-defence automatically sprang up.

From that moment the Convention nerved itself to the inevitable struggle. Billaud, Collot and Barere, the _impures_ of the Committee of Public Safety, looked despairingly on all sides of the Convention for help to rid themselves of the monster, whose tentacles they already felt beginning to twine about them.

Just at this critical moment a trivial incident arose that pierced Robespierre's armour in its weakest joint, and that crystallized the fear of the Convention into ridicule,--ridicule that proved the precursor of revolt. Catherine Theot, a female spiritualist, or medium, as we {214} should call her at the present day, highly elated at the triumph of the Supreme Being over the unemotional G.o.ddess of Reason, had made Robespierre the hero of her half-insane inspirations.

She now announced to her credulous devotees that she was the mother of G.o.d, and that Robespierre was her son. It became the sensation of the day. Profiting by the temporary absence of St. Just with the army in the Netherlands, the Committee of Public Safety decided that Catherine Theot was a nuisance and a public danger, and must be arrested.

Robespierre, intensely susceptible to ridicule, not knowing what to do, pettishly withdrew from the Convention, confined himself to his house and the Jacobin Club, and left the Committee to carry out its intention. Every member of the Convention realized that this was a distinct move against Robespierre.

St. Just was with Jourdan's army in the north, and for the moment all eyes were fixed on that point. The campaign of 1794 might be decisive.

France and Austria had put great armies in the field. The latter now controlled the belt of frontier fortresses, and if, pus.h.i.+ng beyond these, she destroyed the French army, Paris and the Revolution might soon be at an end. As the campaign opened, {215} however, fortune took her place with the tricolour flag. Minor successes fell to Moreau, Souham, Macdonald, Vandamme. In June the campaign culminated. The armies met south of Brussels at Fleurus on the 25th of that month. For fifteen hours the battle raged, Kleber with the French right wing holding his ground, the centre and left slowly driven back. But at the close of the day the French, not to be denied, came again. Jourdan, with St. Just by his side, drove his troops to a last effort, regained the lost ground, and more. The Austrians gave way, turned to flight, and one of the great victories of the epoch had been won. In a few hours the glorious news had reached Paris, and in Paris it was interpreted as an evil portent for Robespierre.

For if there existed something that could possibly be described as a justification for terrorism, that something was national danger and national fear. Ever since the month of July 1789 there had been a perfect correspondence between military pressure on Paris and the consequent outbreak of violence. But this great victory, Fleurus, seemed to mark the complete triumph of the armies of the Republic; all danger had been swept away, so {216} why should terror and the guillotine continue? As the captured Austrian standards were paraded in the Tuileries gardens and presented to the Convention on a lovely June afternoon, every inclination, every instinct was for rejoicing and good will. The thought that the cart was still steadily, lugubriously, wending its way to the insatiable guillotine, appeared unbearable.

From this moment the fever of conspiracy against Robespierre coursed rapidly through the Convention. Some, like Sieyes, were statesmen, and judged that the turn of the tide had come. Others, like Tallien or Joseph Chenier, were touched in their family,--a brother, a wife, a sister, awaiting judgment and the guillotine. Others feared; others hoped; and yet others had vengeance to satisfy, especially the remnants of Danton's, of Brissot's and of Hebert's party. St. Just saw the danger of the situation and attempted to cow opposition. He spoke threateningly of the necessity for a dictators.h.i.+p and for a long list of proscriptions.

It was the most silent member of the Committee of Public Safety, Carnot, who brought on the crisis. Affecting an exclusive concern for the conduct of the war and perfunctorily {217} signing all that related to internal affairs, he was secretly restive and anxious to escape from the horrible situation. Prompted by some of his colleagues, he ordered, on the 24th of July, that the Paris national guard artillery should go to the front. This was taking the decisive arm out of the hands of Hanriot, for Hanriot had made his peace with Robespierre, had survived the fall of Hebert, and was still in command of the national guard.

There could be no mistaking the significance of Carnot's step. On the same night Couthon loudly denounced it at the Jacobins, and the club decided that it would pet.i.tion the Convention to take action against Robespierre's enemies. Next day Barere replied. He read a long speech to the Convention in which, without venturing names, he blamed citizens who were not heartened by the victories of the army and who meditated further proscriptions. On the 26th, the 8th of Thermidor, Robespierre reappeared in the a.s.sembly, and ascended the tribune to reply to Barere.

Robespierre felt that the tide was flowing against him; instinct, premonitions, warned him that perhaps his end was not far off. In this speech--it was to be his last before the Convention--the melancholy note prevailed. {218} There was no effort to conciliate, no attempt at being politic, only a slightly disheartened tone backed by the iteration which France already knew so well:--the remedy for the evil must be sought in purification; the Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, must be purged.

Under the accustomed spell the Convention listened to the end. The usual motions were put. Robespierre left the a.s.sembly. It was voted that his speech should be printed; and that it should be posted in all the communes of France. For a moment it looked as though the iron yoke were immovably fixed. Then Cambon went to the tribune, and ventured to discuss Robespierre's views. Billaud followed. And presently the Convention, hardly realizing what it had done, rescinded the second of its two votes. Robespierre's speech should be printed, but it should not be placarded on the walls.

At the Jacobin Club the rescinded vote of the Convention conveyed a meaning not to be mistaken. Robespierre repeated his Convention speech, which was greeted with acclamations. Billaud and Collot were received with hoots and groans, were driven out, and were erased from the list of members. Through the night {219} the Jacobins were beating up their supporters, threatening insurrection; and on their side the leaders of the revolt attempted to rally the members of the Convention to stand firmly by them.

The next day was the 9th of Thermidor. St. Just made a bold attempt to control the situation. Early in the morning he met his colleagues of the Committee of Public Safety and, making advances to them, promised to lay before them a scheme that would reconcile all the divergent interests of the Convention. While the Committee awaited his arrival he proceeded to the body of the Convention, obtained the tribune, and began a speech. Realizing how far the temper of the a.s.sembly was against him, he boldly opened by denouncing the personal ambitions of Robespierre, and by advocating moderate courses--but he had not gone far when the members of the Committee, discovering the truth, returned to the Convention, and set to work with the help of the revolted members, to disconcert him. St. Just had perhaps only one weakness, but it was fatal to him on the 9th of Thermidor, for it was a weakness of voice. He was silenced by interruptions that constantly grew stormier. Billaud followed him {220} and made an impa.s.sioned attack on the Jacobins. Robespierre attempted to reply. But Collot d'Herbois was presiding, and Collot declined to give Robespierre the tribune.

The din arose; shouts of "Down with the tyrant, down with the dictator," were raised. Tallien demanded a decree of accusation.

Members pressed around the Jacobin leader, who at this last extremity tried to force his way to the tribune. But the way was barred; he could only clutch the railings, and, asking for death, looking in despair at the public galleries that had so long shouted their Jacobin approval to him, he kept crying: "La mort! la mort!" He had fallen.