Fatherland in Danger.
Or rather we will say, this Senatorial war might have lasted
long; and Party tugging and throttling with Party might have
suppressed and smothered one another, in the ordinary bloodless
Parliamentary way; on one condition: that France had been at
least able to exist, all the while. But this Sovereign People has
a digestive faculty, and cannot do without bread. Also we are at
war, and must have victory; at war with Europe, with Fate and
Famine: and behold, in the spring of the year, all victory
deserts us.
Dumouriez had his outposts stretched as far as Aix-la-Chapelle,
and the beautifullest plan for pouncing on Holland, by stratagem,
flat-bottomed boats and rapid intrepidity; wherein too he had
prospered so far; but unhappily could prosper no further.
Aix-la-Chapelle is lost; Maestricht will not surrender to mere
smoke and noise: the flat-bottomed boats must launch themselves
again, and return the way they came. Steady now, ye rapidly
intrepid men; retreat with firmness, Parthian-like! Alas, were it
General Miranda’s fault; were it the War-minister’s fault; or
were it Dumouriez’s own fault and that of Fortune: enough, there
is nothing for it but retreat,—well if it be not even flight; for
already terror-stricken cohorts and stragglers pour off, not
waiting for order; flow disastrous, as many as ten thousand of
them, without halt till they see France again.[620] Nay worse:
Dumouriez himself is perhaps secretly turning traitor? Very sharp
is the tone in which he writes to our Committees. Commissioners
and Jacobin Pillagers have done such incalculable mischief;
Hassenfratz sends neither cartridges nor clothing; shoes we have,
deceptively “soled with wood and pasteboard.” Nothing in short is
right. Danton and Lacroix, when it was they that were
Commissioners, would needs join Belgium to France;—of which
Dumouriez might have made the prettiest little Duchy for his own
secret behoof! With all these things the General is wroth; and
writes to us in a sharp tone. Who knows what this hot little
General is meditating? Dumouriez Duke of Belgium or Brabant; and
say, Egalité the Younger King of France: there were an end for
our Revolution!—Committee of Defence gazes, and shakes its head:
who except Danton, defective in suspicion, could still struggle
to be of hope?
And General Custine is rolling back from the Rhine Country;
conquered Mentz will be reconquered, the Prussians gathering
round to bombard it with shot and shell. Mentz may resist,
Commissioner Merlin, the Thionviller, “making sallies, at the
head of the besieged;”—resist to the death; but not longer than
that. How sad a reverse for Mentz! Brave Foster, brave Lux
planted Liberty-trees, amid _ça-ira_-ing music, in the snow-slush
of last winter, there: and made Jacobin Societies; and got the
Territory incorporated with France: they came hither to Paris, as
Deputies or Delegates, and have their eighteen francs a-day: but
see, before once the Liberty-Tree is got rightly in leaf, Mentz
is changing into an explosive crater; vomiting fire, bevomited
with fire!
Neither of these men shall again see Mentz; they have come hither
only to die. Foster has been round the Globe; he saw Cook perish
under Owyhee clubs; but like this Paris he has yet seen or
suffered nothing. Poverty escorts him: from home there can
nothing come, except Job’s-news; the eighteen daily francs, which
we here as Deputy or Delegate with difficulty “touch,” are in
paper _assignats_, and sink fast in value. Poverty,
disappointment, inaction, obloquy; the brave heart slowly
breaking! Such is Foster’s lot. For the rest, Demoiselle
Théroigne smiles on you in the Soirees; “a beautiful brownlocked
face,” of an exalted temper; and contrives to keep her carriage.
Prussian Trenck, the poor subterranean Baron, jargons and jangles
in an unmelodious manner. Thomas Paine’s face is red-pustuled,
“but the eyes uncommonly bright.” Convention Deputies ask you to
dinner: very courteous; and “we all play at _plumsack_.”[621] “It
is the Explosion and New-creation of a World,” says Foster; “and
the actors in it, such small mean objects, buzzing round one like
a handful of flies.”—
Likewise there is war with Spain. Spain will advance through the
gorges of the Pyrenees; rustling with Bourbon banners; jingling
with artillery and menace. And England has donned the red coat;
and marches, with Royal Highness of York,—whom some once spake of
inviting to be our King. Changed that humour now: and ever more
changing; till no hatefuller thing walk this Earth than a denizen
of that tyrannous Island; and Pitt be declared and decreed, with
effervescence, “_L’ennemi du genre humain_, The enemy of
mankind;” and, very singular to say, you make an order that no
Soldier of Liberty give quarter to an Englishman. Which order
however, the Soldier of Liberty does but partially obey. We will
take no Prisoners then, say the Soldiers of Liberty; they shall
all be “Deserters” that we take.[622] It is a frantic order; and
attended with inconvenience. For surely, if you give no quarter,
the plain issue is that you will get none; and so the business
become as broad as it was long.—Our “recruitment of Three Hundred
Thousand men,” which was the decreed force for this year, is like
to have work enough laid to its hand.
So many enemies come wending on; penetrating through throats of
Mountains, steering over the salt sea; towards all points of our
territory; rattling chains at us. Nay worst of all: there is an
enemy within our own territory itself. In the early days of
March, the Nantes Postbags do not arrive; there arrive only
instead of them Conjecture, Apprehension, bodeful wind of Rumour.
The bodefullest proves true! Those fanatic Peoples of La Vendée
will no longer keep under: their fire of insurrection, heretofore
dissipated with difficulty, blazes out anew, after the King’s
Death, as a wide conflagration; not riot, but civil war. Your
Cathelineaus, your Stofflets, Charettes, are other men than was
thought: behold how their Peasants, in mere russet and hodden,
with their rude arms, rude array, with their fanatic Gaelic
frenzy and wild-yelling battle-cry of _God and the King_, dash at
us like a dark whirlwind; and blow the best-disciplined Nationals
we can get into panic and _sauve-qui-peut!_ Field after field is
theirs; one sees not where it will end. Commandant Santerre may
be sent thither; but with non-effect; he might as well have
returned and brewed beer.
It has become peremptorily necessary that a National Convention
cease arguing, and begin acting. Yield one party of you to the
other, and do it swiftly. No theoretic outlook is here, but the
close certainty of ruin; the very day that is passing over must
be provided for.
It was Friday the eighth of March when this Job’s-post from
Dumouriez, thickly preceded and escorted by so many other
Job’s-posts, reached the National Convention. Blank enough are
most faces. Little will it avail whether our Septemberers be
punished or go unpunished; if Pitt and Cobourg are coming in,
with one punishment for us all; nothing now between Paris itself
and the Tyrants but a doubtful Dumouriez, and hosts in
loose-flowing loud retreat!—Danton the Titan rises in this hour,
as always in the hour of need. Great is his voice, reverberating
from the domes:—Citizen-Representatives, shall we not, in such
crisis of Fate, lay aside discords? Reputation: O what is the
reputation of this man or of that? _Que mon nom soit flétri, que
la France soit libre_, Let my name be blighted; let France be
free! It is necessary now again that France rise, in swift
vengeance, with her million right-hands, with her heart as of one
man. Instantaneous recruitment in Paris; let every Section of
Paris furnish its thousands; every section of France! Ninety-six
Commissioners of us, two for each Section of the Forty-eight,
they must go forthwith, and tell Paris what the Country needs of
her. Let Eighty more of us be sent, post-haste, over France; to
spread the fire-cross, to call forth the might of men. Let the
Eighty also be on the road, before this sitting rise. Let them
go, and think what their errand is. Speedy Camp of Fifty thousand
between Paris and the North Frontier; for Paris will pour forth
her volunteers! Shoulder to shoulder; one strong universal
death-defiant rising and rushing; we shall hurl back these Sons
of Night yet again; and France, in spite of the world, be
free![623]—So sounds the Titan’s voice: into all Section-houses;
into all French hearts. Sections sit in Permanence, for
recruitment, enrolment, that very night. Convention
Commissioners, on swift wheels, are carrying the fire-cross from
Town to Town, till all France blaze.
And so there is Flag of _Fatherland in Danger_ waving from the
Townhall, Black Flag from the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral; there
is Proclamation, hot eloquence; Paris rushing out once again to
strike its enemies down. That, in such circumstances, Paris was
in no mild humour can be conjectured. Agitated streets; still
more agitated round the Salle de Manége! Feuillans-Terrace crowds
itself with angry Citizens, angrier Citizenesses; Varlet
perambulates with portable-chair: ejaculations of no measured
kind, as to perfidious fine-spoken _Hommes d’état_, friends of
Dumouriez, secret-friends of Pitt and Cobourg, burst from the
hearts and lips of men. To fight the enemy? Yes, and even to
‘freeze him with terror, _glacer d’effroi;_’ but first to have
domestic Traitors punished! Who are they that, carping and
quarrelling, in their jesuitic most _moderate_ way, seek to
shackle the Patriotic movement? That divide France against Paris,
and poison public opinion in the Departments? That when we ask
for bread, and a Maximum fixed-price, treat us with lectures on
Free-trade in grains? Can the human stomach satisfy itself with
lectures on Free-trade; and are we to fight the Austrians in a
moderate manner, or in an immoderate? This Convention must be
_purged_.
‘Set up a swift Tribunal for Traitors, a Maximum for Grains:’
thus speak with energy the Patriot Volunteers, as they defile
through the Convention Hall, just on the wing to the
Frontiers;—perorating in that heroical Cambyses’ vein of theirs:
beshouted by the Galleries and Mountain; bemurmured by the
Right-side and Plain. Nor are prodigies wanting: lo, while a
Captain of the Section Poissonnière perorates with vehemence
about Dumouriez, Maximum, and Crypto-Royalist Traitors, and his
troop beat chorus with him, waving their Banner overhead, the eye
of a Deputy discerns, in this same Banner, that the _cravates_ or
streamers of it have Royal fleurs-de-lys! The Section-Captain
shrieks; his troop shriek, horror-struck, and “trample the Banner
under foot:” seemingly the work of some Crypto-Royalist Plotter?
Most probable;[62]—or perhaps at bottom, only the _old_ Banner of
the Section, manufactured prior to the Tenth of August, when such
streamers were according to rule![625]
History, looking over the Girondin Memoirs, anxious to
disentangle the truth of them from the hysterics, finds these
days of March, especially this Sunday the Tenth of March, play a
great part. Plots, plots: a plot for murdering the Girondin
Deputies; Anarchists and Secret-Royalists plotting, in hellish
concert, for that end! The far greater part of which is
hysterics. What we do find indisputable is that Louvet and
certain Girondins were apprehensive they might be murdered on
Saturday, and did not go to the evening sitting: but held council
with one another, each inciting his fellow to do something
resolute, and end these Anarchists: to which, however, Pétion,
opening the window, and finding the night very wet, answered
only, ‘_Ils ne feront rien_,’ and “composedly resumed his
violin,” says Louvet:[626] thereby, with soft Lydian
tweedledeeing, to wrap himself against eating cares. Also that
Louvet felt especially liable to being killed; that several
Girondins went abroad to seek beds: liable to being killed; but
were not. Further that, in very truth, Journalist Deputy Gorsas,
poisoner of the Departments, he and his Printer had their houses
broken into (by a tumult of Patriots, among whom red-capped
Varlet, American Fournier loom forth, in the darkness of the rain
and riot); had their wives put in fear; their presses, types and
circumjacent equipments beaten to ruin; no Mayor interfering in
time; Gorsas himself escaping, pistol in hand, “along the coping
of the back wall.” Further that Sunday, the morrow, was not a
workday; and the streets were more agitated than ever: Is it a
new September, then, that these Anarchists intend? Finally, that
no September came;—and also that hysterics, not unnaturally, had
reached almost their acme.[627]
Vergniaud denounces and deplores; in sweetly turned periods.
Section Bonconseil, _Good-counsel_ so-named, not Mauconseil or
_Ill-counsel_ as it once was,—does a far notabler thing: demands
that Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, and other denunciatory
fine-spoken Girondins, to the number of Twenty-two, be put under
arrest! Section Good-counsel, so named ever since the Tenth of
August, is sharply rebuked, like a Section of Ill-counsel;[628]
but its word is spoken, and will not fall to the ground.
In fact, one thing strikes us in these poor Girondins; their
fatal shortness of vision; nay fatal poorness of character, for
that is the root of it. They are as strangers to the People they
would govern; to the thing they have come to work in. Formulas,
Philosophies, Respectabilities, what has been written in Books,
and admitted by the Cultivated Classes; _this_ inadequate
_Scheme_ of Nature’s working is all that Nature, let her work as
she will, can reveal to these men. So they perorate and
speculate; and call on the Friends of Law, when the question is
not Law or No-Law, but Life or No-Life. Pedants of the
Revolution, if not Jesuits of it! Their Formalism is great; great
also is their Egoism. France rising to fight Austria has been
raised only by Plot of the Tenth of March, to kill Twenty-two of
_them!_ This Revolution Prodigy, unfolding itself into terrific
stature and articulation, by its own laws and Nature’s, not by
the laws of Formula, has become unintelligible, incredible as an
impossibility, the waste chaos of a Dream.” A Republic founded on
what they call the Virtues; on what we call the Decencies and
Respectabilities: this they will have, and nothing but this.
Whatsoever other Republic Nature and Reality send, shall be
considered as not sent; as a kind of Nightmare Vision, and thing
non-extant; disowned by the Laws of Nature, and of Formula. Alas!
Dim for the best eyes is this Reality; and as for these men, they
will not look at it with eyes at all, but only through “facetted
spectacles” of Pedantry, wounded Vanity; which yield the most
portentous fallacious spectrum. Carping and complaining forever
of Plots and Anarchy, they will do one thing: prove, to
demonstration, that the Reality will not translate into their
Formula; that they and their Formula are incompatible with the
Reality: and, in its dark wrath, the Reality will extinguish it
and them! What a man _kens_ he _cans_. But the beginning of a
man’s doom is that vision be withdrawn from him; that he see not
the reality, but a false spectrum of the reality; and, following
that, step darkly, with more or less velocity, downwards to the
utter Dark; to Ruin, which is the great Sea of Darkness, whither
all falsehoods, winding or direct, continually flow!
This Tenth of March we may mark as an epoch in the Girondin
destinies; the rage so exasperated itself, the misconception so
darkened itself. Many desert the sittings; many come to them
armed.[629] An honourable Deputy, setting out after breakfast,
must now, besides taking his Notes, see whether his Priming is in
order.
Meanwhile with Dumouriez in Belgium it fares ever worse. Were it
again General Miranda’s fault, or some other’s fault, there is no
doubt whatever but the “Battle of Nerwinden,” on the 18th of
March, is lost; and our rapid retreat has become a far too rapid
one. Victorious Cobourg, with his Austrian prickers, hangs like a
dark cloud on the rear of us: Dumouriez never off horseback night
or day; engagement every three hours; our whole discomfited Host
rolling rapidly inwards, full of rage, suspicion, and
_sauve-qui-peut!_ And then Dumouriez himself, what his intents
may be? Wicked seemingly and not charitable! His despatches to
Committee openly denounce a factious Convention, for the woes it
has brought on France and him. And his speeches—for the General
has no reticence! The Execution of the Tyrant this Dumouriez
calls the Murder of the King. Danton and Lacroix, flying thither
as Commissioners once more, return very doubtful; even Danton now
doubts.
Three Jacobin Missionaries, Proly, Dubuisson, Pereyra, have flown
forth; sped by a wakeful Mother Society: they are struck dumb to
hear the General speak. The Convention, according to this
General, consists of three hundred scoundrels and four hundred
imbeciles: France cannot do without a King. ‘But we have executed
our King.’ ‘And what is it to me,’ hastily cries Dumouriez, a
General of no reticence, ‘whether the King’s name be _Ludovicus_
or _Jacobus?_’ ‘Or _Philippus!_’ rejoins Proly;—and hastens to
report progress. Over the Frontiers such hope is there.