THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE
The disappearance of Louis XVI from the scene left the Mountain and the
Gironde face to face, to wage their faction fight, a fight to the
knife; while France in her armies more nobly maintained her greater
struggle on the frontier. There for a while after Valmy all had
prospered. Brunswick had fallen back to Coblenz. A French army under
the Marquis de Custine had overrun all the Rhineland as far as Mainz.
Dumouriez, transferred from the Ardennes to the Belgian frontier, had
invaded the Austrian Netherlands. On the 6th of November he won a
considerable victory at Jemmappes, and towards the end of December, he
controlled most of the province.
The Convention, elated at these successes, issued decrees proclaiming a
crusade against the European tyrannies, and announcing the propaganda
of the principles of liberty. But in practice the French invasion did
not {171} generally produce very edifying results. Generals and troops
plundered unmercifully, to make up for the disorganization of their own
service and lack of pay, and even the French Government imposed the
expenses of the war on the countries that had to support its horrors.
The close of the year 1792 marked a period of success. The opening of
1793, however, saw the pendulum swing back. New enemies gathered about
France. Sardinia, whose province of Savoy had been invaded, now had a
considerable army in the field. At short intervals after the execution
of Louis, England, Holland, Spain, joined the coalition. And the
Convention light-heartedly accepted this accumulation of war. To face
the storm it appointed in January a committee of general defence of
twenty-five members; but Danton alone would have done better than the
twenty-five. While the trial of the King proceeded he was casting
about for support in the assembly for a constructive policy. He
stretched a hand to the Girondins; they refused it; and Danton turned
back to the Mountain once more, compelled to choose between two
factions the one that was for the moment willing to act with him.
{172} Through February and into March the military situation kept
getting worse, and the Mountain made repeated attacks on the Gironde.
On the 5th of March news reached Paris that the Austrians had captured
Aix-la-Chapelle, and that the French general Miranda had been compelled
to abandon his guns and to retire from before Maestricht, which he was
besieging. Danton, who was in the north, arranging the annexation of
the Netherlands to France, started for Paris at once. On the 14th the
capital heard, with amazement and alarm, that the Vendée had risen in
arms for God and King Louis XVII.
The Vendée was a large district of France, a great part of the ancient
province of Poitou, lying just to the south of the Loire and near the
Atlantic Ocean. A great part of the country was cut up by tracts of
forest and thick and numerous hedges. The peasants were fairly
prosperous, and well-affected to the priests and seigneurs. The latter
were mostly resident landlords, holders of small estates, living near
and on kindly terms with their peasantry. The priests and nobles had
long viewed the Revolution with aversion, an aversion intensified by
the proclamation of the Republic and the execution of the King. And
{173} when, on the 26th of February, the Convention passed an army
ballot law and sent agents to press recruits among the villages of the
Vendée, the peasants joined their natural leaders and rose in arms
against the Government. The Vendéens were, in their own country,
formidable opponents. They had born leaders, men who showed wonderful
courage, dash, and loyalty. They prayed before charging an enemy, and
on the march or in battle sang hymns, always the most irresistible of
battle songs. Their badges were the white flag, the Bourbon lilies,
and the cross. For awhile they swept everything before them.
Danton arrived in Paris on the 8th of March. He immediately attempted
to reconcile the factions of the assembly, and to persuade its members
to turn their wasted vigour into war measures. From neither side did
he receive much encouragement. To his demands for new levies and
volunteer regiments, Robespierre replied that the most urgent step was
to purify the army of its anti-revolutionary elements. To his proposal
that the executive should be strengthened by composing the ministry of
members of the Convention, the Girondins opposed their implacable
suspicion and hatred. But Paris had long been working up {174} its
hostility to the Gironde; an insurrectional committee had just come
into existence that aimed at dealing with them after the fashion in
which it had dealt with Louis on the 10th of August; and the Girondins'
stand against Danton precipitated the outbreak.
On the 9th of March a premature and imperfectly organized insurrection
occurred, directed against the Gironde. The demonstrators marched
against the Convention, but were held in check by a few hundred
well-affected provincial national guards. On the 10th it became known
that Dumouriez was severely pressed by the Austrians and in danger of
being cut off. Under the influence of this news, and with the
Girondins showing little fight because of the event of the day before,
the Convention passed a measure of terrorism; it voted the
establishment of a Revolutionary Tribunal to judge "traitors,
conspirators, and anti-revolutionists." In vain Buzot and other
Girondins pointed out that this meant establishing "a despotism worse
than the old." Danton, unquenchably opportunist, supported the
measure, and it was carried. Immediately after this he left Paris for
the frontier once more. On the 18th of March Dumouriez was severely
defeated at Neerwinden. And now not {175} only was the Vendée in arms,
but Lyons, Marseilles, Normandy, appeared on the point of throwing off
the yoke of Paris and of the Jacobins; the situation looked well-nigh
desperate. A week later the papers published letters of Dumouriez
which showed that ever since the trial of the King the Girondin general
had been factious, that is, had been as much inclined to turn his arms
against Paris as against the Austrians. Danton was now back from the
frontier; he and Robespierre were at once elected to the committee of
general defence; and that committee declared itself in continuous
session.
Extraordinary measures were now passed in quick succession which, added
to the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, made up a formidable
machinery of terrorism. Deputies of the Convention were sent out on
mission to superintend the working of the armies and of the internal
police. They were given the widest powers,--were virtually made
pro-dictators. On the 1st of April was passed a new law of suspects to
reinforce the action of the representatives on mission and of the
Revolutionary Tribunal. On the 6th of April was created the executive
power that Danton urged the need of so pertinaciously; this was the
Committee of {176} Public Safety, a body of nine members of the
Convention, acting secretly, directing the ministers, and having
general control of the executive functions. The Girondins had to
submit to the measure, and their opponents secured control of the
Committee. Among its first members were Danton, Cambon, and Barère.
Just as the Committee of Public Safety came into existence the
situation on the frontier was getting even worse. On the 4th of April
Dumouriez, fearing that the Convention would send him to the
Revolutionary Tribunal, made an attempt to turn his army against the
Government, and failing, rode over into the Austrian lines. At the
same time, Custine was being driven out of Alsace by the Prussians,
who, on the 14th of April, laid siege to Mainz.
With the Mountain immensely strengthened by the formation of the
Committee of Public Safety, the attack on the Girondins increased in
vigour. Robespierre accused them of complicity with Dumouriez in
treasonable intentions against the Republic. The Gironde retaliated,
and, on the 13th of April, succeeded in rallying a majority of the
Convention in a second onslaught against Marat for his incendiary
articles. It was decreed that the _Ami du peuple_ should be sent to
the Revolutionary {177} Tribunal. It was the last success of the
Girondins, and it did not carry them far. The Jacobins closed their
ranks against this assault. They had the Commune and the Revolutionary
Tribunal under their control. The former body sent a petition to the
Convention demanding the exclusion of twenty-two prominent Girondins as
enemies of the Revolution; and a few days later the Tribunal absolved
Marat of all his sins.
Incidentally to the bitter struggle between the two factions, great
questions, social, political, economic, were being debated, though not
with great results. They could really all be brought back to the one
fundamental question which the course of the Revolution had brought to
the surface. What was to be the position of the poor man, and
especially of the poor man in the modern city and under industrial
surroundings,--what was to be his position in the new form of social
adjustment which the Revolution was bringing about? What about the
price of food? the monopoly of capital? the private ownership of
property? Such were some of the questions that underlay the debates of
the Convention in the spring of 1793.
The food question was dealt with in various {178} ways. The famous law
of the Maximum, passed on the 3rd of May, attempted to regulate the
prices of food by a sliding scale tariff. The measure was economically
unsound, and in many ways worked injustice; it alarmed property holders
and alienated them from the Government. On its own initiative the
Commune made great efforts, and with some success, to maintain the food
supply of the city, and to keep down the price of bread. Spending
about 12,000 francs a day, less than half a sou per head, it succeeded
for the most part in keeping bread down to about 3 sous per pound.
But by virtue of what theory of government were the poor entitled to
this special protection? Was the Jacobin party prepared to advance
towards a socialist or collectivist form of government? Of that there
was no sign; and several years were yet to pass before Babeuf was to
give weight to a collectivist theory of the State. There were special
reasons of some force to explain why the Convention, however much it
might be addicted to humanitarian theories, however anxious it might be
to curry favour with the lowest class, should keep a stiff attitude on
the question of collectivism and property. The whole financial system
of the Revolution, endorsed by the {179} Convention as by its
predecessors, was based on the private proprietorship of land and on
increasing the number of small proprietors. Not only was the
Convention bound to maintain the effect of the large sales of national
lands that had already taken place, but the prejudices and temper of
its members made in the same direction. Robespierre, trying to
reconcile the narrow logic of a lawyer with the need of pleasing his
ardent supporters, based his position on a charitable and not on a
political motive: "Public assistance is a sacred debt of Society.
Society is under the obligation of securing a living for all its
members, either by procuring work for them, or by securing the
necessaries of existence to those who are past work."
Although the Convention maintained a conservative attitude in regard to
the question of real property, it was decidedly inclined towards a
confiscatory policy in all that related to personal wealth. This did
not, however, become well marked until after the conclusion of the
great struggle between the Mountain and the Gironde, which entered its
last phase in May.
On the 12th of that month the Convention voted the formation of an army
of _sans-culottes_ for the defence of Paris, a measure of more {180}
significance for the internal than for the external affairs of France.
On the 14th the Gironde made their reply by reading an address of the
city of Bordeaux offering to march to Paris to help the Convention. On
the 15th the Commune proceeded to appoint one of its nominees as
provisional general of the national guard of Paris. And on the
following day the Girondins, alarmed into an attempt at action,
proposed to the assembly that the municipal authorities of Paris should
be removed from office and that the substitutes for the deputies to the
Convention should be assembled at Bourges in case the Convention itself
should be attacked and destroyed. This last proposal was highly
characteristic of the Girondins, heroic as orators, but as members of a
political party always timid of action.
The Committee of Public Safety, already tuned to its higher duties and
viewing the faction fight of the assembly with some slight degree of
detachment, steered a middle and politic course. Barère proposed a
compromise, which the Girondins weakly accepted. But its enemies
continued strenuous action, formed a new insurrectional committee, and
set Hébert's infamous sheet, the _Père Duchesne_, {181} howling for
their blood. This newspaper deserves a few lines.
Hébert, a man of the middle class, after a stormy youth drifted into
revolutionary journalism. With much verve, and a true Voltairian
spirit, he at first took up a moderate attitude, but being a time
server soon discovered that his interest lay in another direction.
From the middle of 1792 he rose rapidly to great popularity by his loud
defence of extreme courses. The _Père Duchesne_, copies of which are
at this day among the greatest of bibliographical curiosities, was
written for the people and in a jargon out-Heroding their own, a
compound of oaths and obscenities. The _Père Duchesne_ was nearly
always in a state of _grande joie_ or of _grande colère_, and at the
epoch we have reached his anger is being continuously poured out, the
filthiest stream of invective conceivable, against the Girondins.
With Marat and Hébert fanning the flames, the insurrectional committee
drew up a new list of 32 suspect deputies. The Committee of Public
Safety, appealed to by the Girondins, ordered the arrest of Hébert. On
the following day, the 25th of May, the Commune demanded his release.
Isnard, one of the {182} Gironde, that day acting as president of the
Convention, answered the deputation of the Commune with unbridled
anger, and concluded by declaring that if Paris dared to lay one finger
on a member of the Convention, the city would be destroyed. There was
in this an unfortunate echo of the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto.
On the 26th Robespierre, at the Jacobin Club, gave his formal assent to
the proposal that an insurrection should be organized against the
Gironde. Two days later Hébert was released, and the Commune and the
committees of the sections began organizing the movement. As a first
step Hanriot, a sottish but very determined battalion leader, was
placed in supreme command of the national guard.
The movement took place on the 31st of May. On that day the Convention
was subjected to the organized pressure of a mob of about 30,000 men,
the greater part national guards. The Convention was not invaded,
however, nor was there any attempt, any desire, to suppress it as an
institution. For the leaders fully realized that it was by maintaining
the Convention as a figurehead that they could continue the fiction
that the Government {183} of France was not local, or Parisian, but
national, or French. But while refraining from a direct attack on the
Convention they subjected it to a pressure so strong and so long
continued that they converted it, as they intended, into an organ of
their will.
For three days Hanriot and his men remained at the doors of the
Convention, and for three days, with growing agitation, the members
within wrestled with the problem thus insistently presented at the
point of bayonets and at the mouth of cannon. Motions of all sorts,
some logical, some contradictory, were presented. Robespierre moved
the arrest of twenty of his colleagues. The Committee of Public
Safety, anxious to retain supreme power, tried for some middle course
that might satisfy the mob. Barère proposed that, to relieve the
Convention from its difficulty, the Girondins should pronounce their
own exclusion from the assembly. The impetuous Isnard, one of the few
attacked members present, accepted. This was on the 2d of June.
On the basis of the self-exclusion of the Girondin deputies the
Committee of Public Safety now believed it could regain control of the
situation, thereby demonstrating that it {184} had formed an inadequate
estimate of Hanriot. It decided to proclaim the suppression of the
insurrectional committee, and it announced this to Hanriot at the same
time as the self-exclusion of the Girondins. But Hanriot, sitting his
horse at the doors of the Convention, was resolute and tipsy, a man of
the sword not to be moved by parliamentary eloquence. He declined to
accept any compromise, and ordered his guns to be brought up and
unlimbered. The Convention was immediately stampeded by this act of
drunken courage. The members attempted to escape. But every avenue,
every street was closed by Hanriot's national guard, and Marat, blandly
triumphant, led the members back to the hall sacred to their
deliberations. There, ashamed and exhausted, at eleven o'clock that
night, the Convention mutilated itself, suspended twenty-two of its
members, and ordered the arrest of twenty-nine others.
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