Go Down to.
Tallien’s eyes beamed bright, on the morrow, Ninth of Thermidor
“about nine o’clock,” to see that the Convention had actually
met. Paris is in rumour: but at least we are met, in Legal
Convention here; we have not been snatched seriatim; treated with
a _Pride’s Purge_ at the door. ‘_Allons_, brave men of the
Plain,’ late Frogs of the Marsh! cried Tallien with a squeeze of
the hand, as he passed in; Saint-Just’s sonorous organ being now
audible from the Tribune, and the game of games begun.
Saint-Just is verily reading that Report of his; green Vengeance,
in the shape of Robespierre, watching nigh. Behold, however,
Saint-Just has read but few sentences, when interruption rises,
rapid _crescendo;_ when Tallien starts to his feet, and Billaud,
and this man starts and that,—and Tallien, a second time, with
his: ‘Citoyens, at the Jacobins last night, I trembled for the
Republic. I said to myself, if the Convention dare not strike the
Tyrant, then I myself dare; and with this I will do it, if need
be,’ said he, whisking out a clear-gleaming Dagger, and
brandishing it there: the Steel of Brutus, as we call it. Whereat
we all bellow, and brandish, impetuous acclaim. ‘Tyranny;
Dictatorship! Triumvirat!’ And the _Salut_ Committee-men accuse,
and all men accuse, and uproar, and impetuously acclaim. And
Saint-Just is standing motionless, pale of face; Couthon
ejaculating, ‘Triumvir?’ with a look at his paralytic legs. And
Robespierre is struggling to speak, but President Thuriot is
jingling the bell against him, but the Hall is sounding against
him like an Æolus-Hall: and Robespierre is mounting the
Tribune-steps and descending again; going and coming, like to
choke with rage, terror, desperation:—and mutiny is the order of
the day![753]
O President Thuriot, thou that wert Elector Thuriot, and from the
Bastille battlements sawest Saint-Antoine rising like the
Ocean-tide, and hast seen much since, sawest thou ever the like
of this? Jingle of bell, which thou jinglest against Robespierre,
is hardly audible amid the Bedlam-storm; and men rage for life.
‘President of Assassins,’ shrieks Robespierre, ‘I demand speech
of thee for the last time!’ It cannot be had. ‘To you, O virtuous
men of the Plain,’ cries he, finding audience one moment, ‘I
appeal to you!’ The virtuous men of the Plain sit silent as
stones. And Thuriot’s bell jingles, and the Hall sounds like
Aeolus’s Hall. Robespierre’s frothing lips are grown “blue;” his
tongue dry, cleaving to the roof of his mouth. ‘The blood of
Danton chokes him,’ cry they. ‘Accusation! Decree of Accusation!’
Thuriot swiftly puts that question. Accusation passes; the
incorruptible Maximilien is decreed Accused.
‘I demand to share my Brother’s fate, as I have striven to share
his virtues,’ cries Augustin, the Younger Robespierre: Augustin
also is decreed. And Couthon, and Saint-Just, and Lebas, they are
all decreed; and packed forth,—not without difficulty, the Ushers
almost trembling to obey. Triumvirat and Company are packed
forth, into Salut Committee-room; their tongue cleaving to the
roof of their mouth. You have but to summon the Municipality; to
cashier Commandant Henriot, and launch Arrest at him; to regular
formalities; hand Tinville his victims. It is noon: the
Aeolus-Hall has delivered itself; blows now victorious,
harmonious, as one irresistible wind.
And so the work is finished? One thinks so; and yet it is not so.
Alas, there is yet but the first-act finished; three or four
other acts still to come; and an uncertain catastrophe! A huge
City holds in it so many confusions: seven hundred thousand human
heads; not one of which knows what its neighbour is doing, nay
not what itself is doing.—See, accordingly, about three in the
afternoon, Commandant Henriot, how instead of sitting cashiered,
arrested, he gallops along the Quais, followed by Municipal
Gendarmes, “trampling down several persons!” For the Townhall
sits deliberating, openly insurgent: Barriers to be shut; no
Gaoler to admit any Prisoner this day;—and Henriot is galloping
towards the Tuileries, to deliver Robespierre. On the Quai de la
Ferraillerie, a young Citoyen, walking with his wife, says aloud:
‘Gendarmes, that man is not your Commandant; he is under arrest.’
The Gendarmes strike down the young Citoyen with the flat of
their swords.[754]
Representatives themselves (as Merlin the Thionviller) who accost
him, this puissant Henriot flings into guardhouses. He bursts
towards the Tuileries Committee-room, ‘to speak with
Robespierre:’ with difficulty, the Ushers and Tuileries
Gendarmes, earnestly pleading and drawing sabre, seize this
Henriot; get the Henriot Gendarmes persuaded not to fight; get
Robespierre and Company packed into hackney-coaches, sent off
under escort, to the Luxembourg and other Prisons. This then is
the end? May not an exhausted Convention adjourn now, for a
little repose and sustenance, “at five o’clock?”
An exhausted Convention did it; and repented it. The end was not
come; only the end of the _second-act_. Hark, while exhausted
Representatives sit at victuals,—tocsin bursting from all
steeples, drums rolling, in the summer evening: Judge Coffinhal
is galloping with new Gendarmes to deliver Henriot from Tuileries
Committee-room; and does deliver him! Puissant Henriot vaults on
horseback; sets to haranguing the Tuileries Gendarmes; corrupts
the Tuileries Gendarmes too; trots off with them to Townhall.
Alas, and Robespierre is not in Prison: the Gaoler shewed his
Municipal order, durst not on pain of his life, admit any
Prisoner; the Robespierre Hackney-coaches, in confused jangle and
whirl of uncertain Gendarmes, have floated safe—into the
Townhall! There sit Robespierre and Company, embraced by
Municipals and Jacobins, in sacred right of Insurrection;
redacting Proclamations; sounding tocsins; corresponding with
Sections and Mother Society. Is not here a pretty enough
third-act of a _natural_ Greek Drama; catastrophe more uncertain
than ever?
The hasty Convention rushes together again, in the ominous
nightfall: President Collot, for the chair is his, enters with
long strides, paleness on his face; claps on his hat; says with
solemn tone: ‘Citoyens, armed Villains have beset the
Committee-rooms, and got possession of them. The hour is come, to
die at our post!’ ‘_Oui_,’ answer one and all: ‘We swear it!’ It
is no rhodomontade, this time, but a sad fact and necessity;
unless we _do_ at our posts, we must verily die! Swift therefore,
Robespierre, Henriot, the Municipality, are declared Rebels; put
_Hors la Loi_, Out of Law. Better still, we appoint Barras
Commandant of what Armed-Force is to be had; send Missionary
Representatives to all Sections and quarters, to preach, and
raise force; will die at least with harness on our back.
What a distracted City; men riding and running, reporting and
hearsaying; the Hour clearly in travail,—child not to be _named_
till born! The poor Prisoners in the Luxembourg hear the rumour;
tremble for a new September. They see men making signals to them,
on skylights and roofs, apparently signals of hope; cannot in the
least make out what it is.[755] We observe however, in the
eventide, as usual, the Death-tumbrils faring South-eastward,
through Saint-Antoine, towards their Barrier du Trône.
Saint-Antoine’s tough bowels melt; Saint-Antoine surrounds the
Tumbrils; says, It shall not be. O Heavens, why should it!
Henriot and Gendarmes, scouring the streets that way, bellow,
with waved sabres, that it must. Quit hope, ye poor Doomed! The
Tumbrils move on.
But in this set of Tumbrils there are two other things notable:
one notable person; and one want of a notable person. The notable
person is Lieutenant-General Loiserolles, a nobleman by birth,
and by nature; laying down his life here for his son. In the
Prison of Saint-Lazare, the night before last, hurrying to the
Grate to hear the Death-list read, he caught the name of his son.
The son was asleep at the moment. ‘I am Loiserolles,’ cried the
old man: at Tinville’s bar, an error in the Christian name is
little; small objection was made. The want of the notable person,
again, is that of Deputy Paine! Paine has sat in the Luxembourg
since January; and seemed forgotten; but Fouquier had pricked him
at last. The Turnkey, List in hand, is marking with chalk the
outer doors of tomorrow’s _Fournée_. Paine’s outer door happened
to be open, turned back on the wall; the Turnkey marked it on the
side next him, and hurried on: another Turnkey came, and shut it;
no chalk-mark now visible, the _Fournée_ went without Paine.
Paine’s life lay not there.—
Our fifth-act, of this natural Greek Drama, with its natural
unities, can only be painted in gross; somewhat as that antique
Painter, driven desperate, did the _foam._ For through this
blessed July night, there is clangour, confusion very great, of
marching troops; of Sections going this way, Sections going that;
of Missionary Representatives reading Proclamations by
torchlight; Missionary Legendre, who has raised force somewhere,
emptying out the Jacobins, and flinging their key on the
Convention table: ‘I have locked their door; it shall be Virtue
that re-opens it.’ Paris, we say, is set against itself, rushing
confused, as Ocean-currents do; a huge Mahlstrom, sounding there,
under cloud of night. Convention sits permanent on this hand;
Municipality most permanent on that. The poor Prisoners hear
tocsin and rumour; strive to bethink them of the signals
apparently of hope. Meek continual Twilight streaming up, which
will be Dawn and a Tomorrow, silvers the Northern hem of Night;
it wends and wends there, that meek brightness, like a silent
prophecy, along the great Ring-Dial of the Heaven. So still,
eternal! And on Earth all is confused shadow and conflict;
dissidence, tumultuous gloom and glare; and Destiny as yet shakes
her doubtful urn.
About three in the morning, the dissident Armed-Forces have
_met_. Henriot’s Armed Force stood ranked in the Place de Grève;
and now Barras’s, which he has recruited, arrives there; and they
front each other, cannon bristling against cannon. Citoyens!
cries the voice of Discretion, loudly enough, Before coming to
bloodshed, to endless civil-war, hear the Convention Decree read:
“Robespierre and all rebels Out of Law!”—Out of Law? There is
terror in the sound: unarmed Citoyens disperse rapidly home;
Municipal Cannoneers range themselves on the Convention side,
with shouting. At which shout, Henriot descends from his upper
room, far gone in drink as some say; finds his Place de Grève
empty; the cannons’ mouth turned _towards_ him; and, on the
whole,—that it is now the catastrophe!
Stumbling in again, the wretched drunk-sobered Henriot announces:
‘All is lost!’ ‘_Misérable!_ it is thou that hast lost it,’ cry
they: and fling him, or else he flings himself, out of window:
far enough down; into masonwork and horror of cesspool; not into
death but worse. Augustin Robespierre follows him; with the like
fate. Saint-Just called on Lebas to kill him: who would not.
Couthon crept under a table; attempting to kill himself; not
doing it.—On entering that Sanhedrim of Insurrection, we find all
as good as extinct; undone, ready for seizure. Robespierre was
sitting on a chair, with pistol shot blown through, not his head,
but his under jaw; the suicidal hand had failed.[756] With prompt
zeal, not without trouble, we gather these wretched Conspirators;
fish up even Henriot and Augustin, bleeding and foul; pack them
all, rudely enough, into carts; and shall, before sunrise, have
them safe under lock and key. Amid shoutings and embracings.
Robespierre lay in an anteroom of the Convention Hall, while his
Prison-escort was getting ready; the mangled jaw bound up rudely
with bloody linen: a spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a
table, a deal-box his pillow; the sheath of the pistol is still
clenched convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him: his
eyes still indicate intelligence; he speaks no word. “He had on
the sky-blue coat he had got made for the Feast of the _Être
Suprême_”—O reader, can thy hard heart hold out against that? His
trousers were nankeen; the stockings had fallen down over the
ankles. He spake no word more in this world.
And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Convention adjourns.
Report flies over Paris as on golden wings; penetrates the
Prisons; irradiates the faces of those that were ready to perish:
turnkeys and _moutons_, fallen from their high estate, look mute
and blue. It is the 28th day of July, called 10th of Thermidor,
year 1794.
Fouquier had but to identify; his Prisoners being already Out of
Law. At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of
Paris seen so crowded. From the Palais de Justice to the Place de
la Révolution, for _thither_ again go the Tumbrils this time, it
is one dense stirring mass; all windows crammed; the very roofs
and ridge-tiles budding forth human Curiosity, in strange
gladness. The Death-tumbrils, with their motley Batch of Outlaws,
some Twenty-three or so, from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and
Simon the Cordwainer, roll on. All eyes are on Robespierre’s
Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his
half-dead Brother, and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered; their
“seventeen hours” of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point
their swords at him, to shew the people which is he. A woman
springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand;
waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: ‘The death of thee
gladdens my very heart, _m’enivre de joie;_’ Robespierre opened
his eyes; ‘_Scélérat_, go down to Hell, with the curses of all
wives and mothers!’—At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched
him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes
again opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off
him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw: the jaw fell
powerless, there burst from him a cry;—hideous to hear and see.
Samson, thou canst not be too quick!
Samson’s work done, there burst forth shout on shout of applause.
Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over
France, but over Europe, and down to this Generation. Deservedly,
and also undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou
worse than other Advocates? Stricter man, according to his
Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities, benevolences,
pleasures-of-virtue, and such like, lived not in that age. A man
fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those
incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets
and funeral-sermons! His poor landlord, the Cabinetmaker in the
Rue Saint-Honoré, loved him; his Brother died for him. May God be
merciful to him, and to us.
This is end of the Reign of Terror; new glorious _Revolution_
named _of Thermidor;_ of Thermidor 9th, year 2; which being
interpreted into old slave-style means 27th of July, 1794. Terror
is ended; and death in the Place de la Révolution, were the
“_Tail_ of Robespierre” once executed; which service Fouquier in
large Batches is swiftly managing.