Like a Thunder-Cloud.
But the grand, and indeed substantially primary and generic
aspect of the Consummation of Terror remains still to be looked
at; nay blinkard History has for most part all but _over_looked
this aspect, the soul of the whole: that which makes it terrible
to the Enemies of France. Let Despotism and Cimmerian Coalitions
consider. All French men and French things are in a State of
Requisition; Fourteen Armies are got on foot; Patriotism, with
all that it has of faculty in heart or in head, in soul or body
or breeches-pocket, is rushing to the frontiers, to prevail or
die! Busy sits Carnot, in _Salut Public;_ busy for his share, in
“organising victory.” Not swifter pulses that Guillotine, in
dread systole-diastole in the Place de la Révolution, than smites
the Sword of Patriotism, smiting Cimmeria back to its own
borders, from the sacred soil.
In fact the Government is what we can call Revolutionary; and
some men are “_à la hauteur_,” on a level with the circumstances;
and others are not _à la hauteur_,—so much the worse for them.
But the Anarchy, we may say, has _organised_ itself: Society is
literally overset; its old forces working with mad activity, but
in the inverse order; destructive and self-destructive.
Curious to see how all still refers itself to some head and
fountain; not even an Anarchy but must have a centre to revolve
round. It is now some six months since the Committee of _Salut
Public_ came into existence: some three months since Danton
proposed that all power should be given it and “a sum of fifty
millions,” and the “Government be declared Revolutionary.” He
himself, since that day, would take no hand in it, though again
and again solicited; but sits private in his place on the
Mountain. Since that day, the Nine, or if they should even rise
to Twelve have become permanent, always re-elected when their
term runs out; _Salut Public, Sûreté Générale_ have assumed their
ulterior form and mode of operating.
Committee of Public Salvation, as supreme; of General Surety, as
subaltern: these like a Lesser and Greater Council, most
harmonious hitherto, have become the centre of all things. They
ride this Whirlwind; they, raised by force of circumstances,
insensibly, very strangely, thither to that dread height;—and
guide it, and seem to guide it. Stranger set of Cloud-Compellers
the Earth never saw. A Robespierre, a Billaud, a Collot, Couthon,
Saint-Just; not to mention still meaner Amars, Vadiers, in
_Sûreté Générale:_ these are your Cloud-Compellers. Small
intellectual talent is necessary: indeed where among them, except
in the head of Carnot, busied organising victory, would you find
any? The talent is one of instinct rather. It is that of divining
aright what this great dumb Whirlwind wishes and wills; that of
willing, with more frenzy than any one, what all the world wills.
To stand at no obstacles; to heed no considerations human or
divine; to know well that, of divine or human, there is one thing
needful, Triumph of the Republic, Destruction of the Enemies of
the Republic! With this one spiritual endowment, and so few
others, it is strange to see how a dumb inarticulately storming
Whirlwind of things puts, as it were, its reins into your hand,
and invites and compels you to be leader of it.
Hard by, sits a Municipality of Paris; all in red nightcaps since
the fourth of November last: a set of men fully “on a level with
circumstances,” or even beyond it. Sleek Mayor Pache, studious to
be safe in the middle; Chaumettes, Héberts, Varlets, and Henriot
their great Commandant; not to speak of Vincent the War-clerk, of
Momoros, Dobsents, and such like: all intent to have Churches
plundered, to have Reason adored, Suspects cut down, and the
Revolution triumph. Perhaps carrying the matter _too_ far? Danton
was heard to grumble at the civic strophes; and to recommend
prose and decency. Robespierre also grumbles that in overturning
Superstition we did not mean to make a religion of Atheism. In
fact, your Chaumette and Company constitute a kind of
Hyper-Jacobinism, or rabid “Faction _des Enragés;_” which has
given orthodox Patriotism some umbrage, of late months. To “know
a Suspect on the streets:” what is this but bringing the _Law of
the Suspect_ itself into ill odour? Men half-frantic, men zealous
overmuch,—they toil there, in their red nightcaps, restlessly,
rapidly, accomplishing what of Life is allotted them.
And the Forty-four Thousand other Townships, each with
revolutionary Committee, based on Jacobin Daughter Society;
enlightened by the spirit of Jacobinism; quickened by the Forty
Sous a-day!—The French Constitution spurned always at any thing
like Two Chambers; and yet behold, has it not verily got Two
Chambers? National Convention, elected for one; Mother of
Patriotism, self-elected, for another! Mother of Patriotism has
her Debates reported in the _Moniteur_, as important
state-procedures; which indisputably they are. A Second Chamber
of Legislature we call this Mother Society;—if perhaps it were
not rather comparable to that old Scotch Body named _Lords of the
Articles_, without whose origination, and signal given, the
so-called Parliament could introduce no bill, could do no work?
Robespierre himself, whose words are a law, opens his
incorruptible lips copiously in the Jacobins Hall. Smaller
Council of _Salut Public_, Greater Council of _Sûreté Générale_,
all active Parties, come here to plead; to shape beforehand what
decision they must arrive at, what destiny they have to expect.
Now if a question arose, Which of those Two Chambers, Convention,
or Lords of the Articles, was the _stronger?_ Happily they as yet
go hand in hand.
As for the National Convention, truly it has become a most
composed Body. Quenched now the old effervescence; the
Seventy-three locked in ward; once noisy Friends of the Girondins
sunk all into silent men of the Plain, called even “Frogs of the
Marsh,” _Crapauds du Marais!_ Addresses come, Revolutionary
Church-plunder comes; Deputations, with prose, or strophes: these
the Convention receives. But beyond this, the Convention has one
thing mainly to do: to listen what _Salut Public_ proposes, and
say, Yea.
Bazire followed by Chabot, with some impetuosity, declared, one
morning, that this was not the way of a Free Assembly. ‘There
ought to be an Opposition side, a _Côté Droit_,’ cried Chabot;
‘if none else will form it, I will: people say to me, You will
all get guillotined in your turn, first you and Bazire, then
Danton, then Robespierre himself.’[718] So spake the Disfrocked,
with a loud voice: next week, Bazire and he lie in the Abbaye;
wending, one may fear, towards Tinville and the Axe; and “people
say to me”—what seems to be proving true! Bazire’s blood was all
inflamed with Revolution fever; with coffee and spasmodic
dreams.[719] Chabot, again, how happy with his rich Jew-Austrian
wife, late Fraulein Frey! But he lies in Prison; and his two
Jew-Austrian Brothers-in-Law, the Bankers Frey, lie with him;
waiting the urn of doom. Let a National Convention, therefore,
take warning, and know its function. Let the Convention, all as
one man, set its shoulder to the work; not with bursts of
Parliamentary eloquence, but in quite other and serviceable ways!
Convention Commissioners, what we ought to call Representatives,
“_Représentans_ on mission,” fly, like the Herald Mercury, to all
points of the Territory; carrying your behests far and wide. In
their “round hat plumed with tricolor feathers, girt with flowing
tricolor taffeta; in close frock, tricolor sash, sword and
jack-boots,” these men are powerfuller than King or Kaiser. They
say to whomso they meet, Do; and he must do it: all men’s goods
are at their disposal; for France is as one huge City in Siege.
They smite with Requisitions, and Forced-loan; they have the
power of life and death. Saint-Just and Lebas order the rich
classes of Strasburg to “strip off their shoes,” and send them to
the Armies where as many as “ten thousand pairs” are needed.
Also, that within four and twenty hours, “a thousand beds” are to
be got ready;[720] wrapt in matting, and sent under way. For the
time presses!—Like swift bolts, issuing from the fuliginous
Olympus of _Salut Public_ rush these men, oftenest in pairs;
scatter your thunder-orders over France; make France one enormous
Revolutionary thunder-cloud.