Let us follow the operations of the new government from top to bottom,
from those of its ruling bodies and leaders, to its assemblies,
committees, delegates, administrators and underlings of every kind
and degree. Like living flesh stamped with a red-hot iron, so will the
situation put one their brows the two marks, each with its own different
depth and discoloration. In vain do they, too, strive to conceal their
scars: we detect under the crowns and titles they assume the brand of
the slave or the mark of the tyrant.
I. The Convention.
The Convention.--The "Plain."--The "Mountain."--Degradation
of Souls.--Parades which the Convention is obligated to
make.
At the Tuileries, the omnipotent Convention sits enthroned in
the theater, converted into an Assembly room. It carries on its
deliberations daily, in grand style. Its decrees, received with blind
obedience, startle France and upset all Europe. At a distance, its
majesty is imposing, more august than that of the Republican senate
in Rome. Near by, the effect is quite otherwise; these undisputed
sovereigns are serfs who live in trances, and justly so, for, nowhere,
even in prison, is there more constraint and less security than on their
benches. After the 2nd of June, 1793, their inviolable precincts, the
grand official reservoir from which legal authority flows, becomes a
sort of tank, into which the revolutionary net plunges and successfully
brings out its choicest fish, singly or by the dozen, and sometimes
in vast numbers; at first, the sixty-seven Girondist deputies, who are
executed or proscribed; then, the seventy-three members of the "Right,"
swept off in one day and lodged in the prison of La Force; next, the
prominent Jacobins:
Osselin, arrested on the 19th of Brumaire, Bazire, Chabot, and Delaunay,
accused by decree on the 24th Brumaire, Fabre d'Eglantine, arrested
on the 24th of Nivôse, Bernard, guillotined on the 3rd of Pluviôse,
Anacharsis Clootz guillotined on the 4th of Germinal, Hérault de
Séchelles, Lacroix, Philippeaux, Camille Desmoulins and Danton,
guillotined with four others on the 10th of Germinal, Simon, guillotined
on the 24th of Germinal, and Osselin, guillotined on the 8th of
Messidor.--Naturally, the others take warning and are careful. At the
opening of the session they are seen entering the hall, looking uneasy,
full of distrust,"[3201] like animals driven into a pen and suspicious
of a trap.
"Each," writes an eye-witness, "acted and spoke with circumspection,
for fear of being charged with some crime: in effect, nothing was
unimportant, the seat one took, a glance of the eye, a gesture, a
murmur, a smile."
Hence, they flock instinctively to the side which is best sheltered, the
left side.
"The tide flowed towards the summit of the Mountain; the right side was
deserted.... Many took no side at all, and, during the session, often
changed their seats, thinking that they might thus elude the spy by
donning a mixed hue and keeping on good terms with everybody. The most
prudent never sat down; they kept off the benches, at the foot of the
tribune, and, on matters getting to be serious, slipped quietly out of
the hall."
Most of them took refuge in their committee-rooms; each tries to be
over-looked, to be obscure, to appear insignificant or absent.[3202]
During the four months following the 2nd of June, the hall of the
Convention is half or three-quarters empty; the election of a president
does not bring out two hundred and fifty voters;[3203] only two hundred,
one hundred, fifty votes, elect the Committees of Public Safety
and General Security; about fifty votes elect the judges of
the Revolutionary Tribunal; less than ten votes elect their
substitutes;[3204] not one vote is cast for the adoption of the decree
indicting the deputy, Dulaure;[3205] "no member rises for or against
it; there is no vote;" the president, nevertheless, pronounces the
act passed and the Marais lets things take their course."--"Marais
frogs"[3206] is the appellation bestowed on them before the 2nd of
June, when, amongst the dregs of the "Center," they "broke" with the
"Mountain;" now, they still number four hundred and fifty, three times
as many as the "Montagnards;" but they purposely keep quiet; their
old name "renders them, so to say, soft; their ears ring with eternal
menaces; their hearts shrivel up with terror;[3207] while their tongues,
paralyzed by habitual silence, remain as if glued to the roofs of their
mouths. In vain do they keep in the back-ground, consent to everything,
ask nothing for themselves but personal safety, and surrender all else,
their votes, their wills and their consciences; they feel that their
life hangs by a thread. The greatest mute among them all, Siéyès,
denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the
protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: "That Siéyès! I
know him. He don't meddle with politics. He does nothing but read his
book. I make his shoes and will answer for him."[3208]
Of course, previous to the 9th of Thermidor, none of them open their
mouths; it is only the "Montagnards" who make speeches, and on the
countersign being given. If Legendre, the admirer, disciple and
confidential friend of Danton, dares at one time interfere in relation
to the decree which sends his friend to the scaffold, asking that he may
first be heard, it is only to retract immediately; that very evening, at
the Jacobin club, for greater security, "he wallows in the mud;"[3209]
he declares "that he submits to the judgment of the revolutionary
Tribunal," and swears to denounce "whoever shall oppose any obstacle
to the execution of the decree."[3210] Has not Robespierre taught him
a lesson, and in his most pedantic manner? What is more beautiful,
says the great moralist, more sublime, than an Assembly which purges
itself?[3211]--Thus, not only is the net which has already dragged out
so many palpitating victims still intact, but it is enlarged and set
again, only, the fish are now caught on the "Left" as well as on the
"Right," and preferably on the topmost benches of the "Mountain."[3212]
And better still, through the law of Prairial 22, its meshes are reduced
in size and its width increased; with such admirable contraption, the
fishpond could not fail to be exhausted. A little before the 9th of
Thermidor, David, who was one of Robespierre's devoted adherents,
himself exclaimed: "Will twenty of us be left on the Mountain?" About
the same time, Legendic, Thuriot, Léonard Bourdon, Tallien, Bourdon de
l'Oise, and others, each has a spy all day long at his heels. There are
thirty deputies to be proscribed and their names are whispered about;
whereupon, sixty stay out all night, convinced that they will be seized
the next morning before they can get up.[3213]
Subject to such a system, prolonged for so many months, people sink down
and become discouraged. "Everybody made themselves small so as to
pass beneath the popular yoke.[3214] Everybody became one of the low
class.... Clothes, manners, refinement, cleanliness, the conveniences
of life, civility and politeness were all renounced."--People wear
their clothes indecently and curse and swear; they try to resemble the
sans-culottes Montagnards "who are profane and dress themselves like so
many dock-loafers;"[3215] at Armonville, the carder, who presides (at a
meeting) wears a woolen cap, and similarly at Cusset, a gauze-workman,
who is always drunk. Only Robespierre dares appear in neat attire; among
the others, who do not have his influence, among the demi-suspects
with a pot-belly, such a residue of the ancient régime might become
dangerous; they do well not to attract the attention of the foul-mouthed
spy who cannot spell;[3216] especially is it important at a meeting to
be one of the crowd and remain unnoticed by the paid claqueurs, drunken
swaggerers and "fat petticoats" of the tribunes. It is even essential
to shout in harmony with them and join in their bar-room dances. The
deputations of the popular clubs come for fourteen months to the bar of
the house and recite their common-place or bombastic tirades, and the
Convention is forced to applaud them. For nine months,[3217] street
ballad-singers and coffee-house ranters attend in full session and sing
the rhymes of the day, while the Convention is obliged to join in the
chorus. For six weeks,[3218] the profaners of churches come to the hall
and display their dance-house buffooneries, and the Convention has not
only to put up with these, but also to take part in them.--Never, even
in imperial Rome, under Nero and Heliogabalus, did a senate descend so
low.
II. Its participation in crime.
How the parades are carried out.--Its slavery and servility
--Its participation in crime.
Observe one of their parades, that of Brumaire 20th, 22nd or 30th, which
masquerade often occurs several times a week and is always the same,
with scarcely any variation.--Male and female wretches march in
procession to the doors of the deputies' hall, still "drunk with the
wine imbibed from chalices, after eating mackerel broiled in patens,"
besides refreshing themselves on the way. "Mounted astride of asses
which they have rigged out in chasuble and which they guide with a
stole," they halt at each low smoking-den, holding a drinking cup in
their hand; the bartender, with a mug in his hand, fills it, and, at
each station, they toss off their bumpers, one after the other, in
imitation of the Mass, and which they repeat in the street in their own
fashion.--On finishing this, they don copes, chasubles and dalmatica,
and, in two long lines, file before the benches of the Convention. Some
of them bear on hand-barrows or in baskets, candelabra, chalices, gold
and silver salvers, monstrances, and reliquaries; others hold aloft
banners, crosses and other ecclesiastical spoils. In the mean time
"bands play the air of the carmagnole and 'Malbrook.'... On the entry
of the dais, they strike up 'Ah! le bel oiseau;'"[3219] all at once the
masqueraders throw off their disguise, and, mitres, stoles, chasubles
flung in the air, "disclose to view the defenders of the country in the
national uniform." Peals of laughter, shouts and enthusiasm, while the
instrumental din becomes louder! The procession, now in full blast,
demands the carmagnole, and the Convention consents; even some of the
deputies descend from their benches and cut the pigeon-wing with the
merry prostitutes.--To wind up, the Convention decrees that it will
attend that evening the fête of Reason and, in fact, they go in a body.
Behind an actress in short petticoats wearing a red cap, representing
Liberty or Reason, march the deputies, likewise in red caps, shouting
and singing until they reach the new temple, which is built of planks
and pasteboard in the choir of Notre Dame. They take their seats in the
front rows, while the Goddess, an old frequenter of the suppers of the
Duc de Soubise, along with "all the pretty dames of the Opera,"
display before them their operatic graces.[3220] They sing the "Hymn
to Liberty," and, since the Convention has that morning decreed that
it must sing, I suppose that it also joined in.[3221] After this there
follows dancing; but, unfortunately, the authorities are wanting for
stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is
present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not
Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal
boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard
scapegraces.--In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost
naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel,"
writhe and stamp, "howling the carmagnole." In the side chapels, which
are "shut off by high tapestries, prostitutes with shrill voices" pursue
their avocation.[3222]--To descend to this low level so barefacedly, to
fraternise with barrier sots, and wenches, to endure their embraces and
hiccoughs, is bad enough, even for docile deputies. More than one half
of them loathed it beforehand and remained at home; after this they do
not feel disposed to attend the Convention.[3223]--But the "Mountain
sends for them, and an officer brings them back;" it is necessary that
they should co-operate through their presence and felicitations in the
profanations and apostasies which follow;[3224] it is necessary that
they should approve of and decree that which they hold in horror, not
alone folly and nonsense, but crime, the murder of innocent people, and
that of their friends.--All this is done. "Unanimously, and with the
loudest applause," the Left, united with the Right, sends Danton to the
scaffold, its natural chieftain, the great promoter and leader of the
Revolution.[3225] "Unanimously, and with the loudest applause,"
the Right, united with the Left, votes the worse decrees of the
Revolutionary government.[3226] "Unanimously," with approving and
enthusiastic cheers, manifesting the warmest sympathy for Collot
d'Herbois, Couthon, and Robespierre,[3227] the Convention, through
multiplied and spontaneous re-elections, maintains the homicidal
government which the Plain detests, because it is homicidal, and which
the Mountain detests, because it is decimated by it. Plain and Mountain,
by virtue of terror, majority after majority, end in consenting to and
bringing about their own suicide: on the 22nd of Prairial, the entire
Convention has stretched out its neck;[3228] on the 8th of Thermidor,
for a quarter of an hour after Robespierre's speech,[3229] it has again
stretched this out, and would probably have succumbed, had not five or
six of them, whom Robespierre designated or named, Bourdon de l'Oise,
Vadier, Cambon, Billaud and Panis, stimulated by the animal instinct of
self-preservation, raised their arms to ward off the knife. Nothing but
imminent, personal, mortal danger could, in these prostrated beings,
supplant long-continued fear with still greater fear. Later on, Siéyès,
on being asked how he acted in these times, replied, "I lived." In
effect, he and others are reduced to that; they succeeded in doing this,
at all costs, and at what a price![3230] His secret notes, his most
private sketches confirm this[3231]...
"On the Committee of March 20, "Paillasse, half drunk, gives a
dissertation on the way to carry on the war, and interrogates and
censures the Minister. The poor Minister evades his questions with café
gossip and a review of campaigns. These are the men placed at the head
of the government to save the Republic!"--"H...., in his distraction,
had the air of a sly fox inwardly smiling at his own knavish thoughts.
Ruit irrevocabile vulgus... Jusque Datum sceleri."--"Are you keeping
silent?"--"Of what use is my glass of wine in this torrent of ardent
spirits?"--
All this is very well, but he did not merely keep silent and abstain. He
voted, legislated and decreed, along with the unanimous Convention; he
was a collaborator, not only passively, through his presence, but also
through his active participation in the acts of the government which he
elected and enthroned, re-elected twelve times, cheered every week,
and flattered daily, authorizing and keeping on to the end its work of
spoliation and massacre.
"Everybody is guilty here," said Carrier in the Convention, "even to the
president's bell."
In vain do they constantly repeat to themselves that they were forced to
obey under penalty of death: the conscience of the purest among them, if
he has any, replies:
"You too, in spite of yourself, I admit; less than others, if you
please, but you were a terrorist, that is to say, a brigand and an
assassin."[3232]
III. The Committee of Public Safety.
The Men who do the work.--Carnot, Prieur de-la-Côte d'Or,
Jean Bon Saint André, Robert Lindet.
On a man becoming a slave, said old Homer, the Gods take away the half
of his soul; the same is true of a man who becomes a tyrant.--In the
Pavilion de Flore, alongside of and above the enslaved Convention, sit
the twelve kings it has enthroned, twice a day,[3233] ruling over it as
well as over France.[3234] Of course, some guarantee is required
from those who fill this place; there is not one of them who is not a
revolutionary of long standing, an impenitent regicide, a fanatic in
essence and a despot through principle; but the fumes of omnipotence
have not intoxicated them all to the same degree.--Three or four of
them, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon St. André, Prieur de la Côte-d'Or and
Carnot, confine themselves to useful and secondary duties; this suffices
to keep them partially safe. As specialists, charged with an important
service, their first object is to do this well, and hence they
subordinate the rest to this, even theoretical exigencies and the
outcries of the clubs.
Lindet's prime object is to feed the departments that are without wheat,
and the towns that are soon to be short of bread.
Prieur's business is to see that biscuits, brandy, clothes, shoes,
gunpowder and arms are manufactured.[3235]
Jean Bon, that vessels are equipped and crews drilled.
Carnot, to draw up campaign plans and direct the march of armies: the
dispatch of so many bags of grain during the coming fortnight to this
or that town, or warehouse in this or that district; the making up of so
many weekly rations, to be deported during the month to certain
places on the frontier; the transformation of so many fishermen into
artillerymen or marines, and to set afloat so many vessels in three
months; to expedite certain Corps of Cavalry, infantry and artillery, so
as to arrive by such and such roads at this or that pass--
These are precise combinations which purge the brain of dogmatic
phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a
man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean
Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering
officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their
shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the
coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the
great American convoy; Carnot, at Watignies, orders Jourdan to make
a decisive move, and, shouldering his musket, marches along with the
attacking column.[3236] Naturally, they have no leisure for speechmaking
in the Jacobin club, or for intrigues in the Convention: Carnot lives in
his own office and in the committee-room; he does not allow himself time
enough to eat with his wife, dines on a crust of bread and a glass of
lemonade, and works sixteen and eighteen hours a day;[3237] Lindet, more
overtasked than any body else, because hunger will not wait, reads every
report himself, and passes days and nights at it;"[3238] Jean Bon, in
wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of coarse bread and a glass of
bad beer,[3239] writes and dictates until his strength fails him, and he
has to lie down and sleep on a mattress on the floor.--Naturally, again,
when interfered with, and the tools in their hands are broken, they are
dissatisfied; they know well the worth of a good instrument, and for
the service, as they comprehend it, good tools are essential, competent,
faithful employees, regular in attendance at their offices, and not at
the club. When they have a subordinate of this kind they defend him,
often at the risk of their lives, even to incurring the enmity of
Robespierre. Cambon,[3240] who, on his financial committee, is also a
sort of sovereign, retains at the Treasury five or six hundred employees
unable to procure their certificate of civism, and whom the Jacobins
incessantly denounce so as to get their places. Carnot saves and employs
eminent engineers, D'Arcon, de Montalembert, d'Obenheim, all of them
nobles, and one of them an anti-Jacobin, without counting a
number of accused officers whom he justifies, replaces, or
maintains.[3241]--Through these courageous and humane acts, they solace
themselves for their scruples, at least partially and for the time
being; moreover, they are statesmen only because the occasion and
superior force makes it imperative, more led by others than leading,
terrorists through accident and necessity, rather than through system
and instinct. If, in concert with ten others, Prieur and Carnot order
wholesale robbery and murder, if they sign orders by twenties and
hundreds, amounting to assassinations, it is owing to their forming
part of a body. When the whole committee deliberates, they are bound,
in important decrees, to submit to the preponderating opinion of
the majority, after voting in the negative. In relation to secondary
decrees, in which there has been no preliminary discussion in common,
the only responsible member is the one whose signature stands first; the
following signatures affixed, without reading the document, are simply
a "formality which the law requires," merely a visa, necessarily
mechanical; with "four or five hundred business matters to attend to
daily," it is impossible to do otherwise. To read all and vote in every
case, would be "a physical impossibility."[3242]--Finally, as things
are, "is not the general will, at least the apparent general
will, that alone on which the government can decide, itself
ultra-revolutionary?"[3243] In other words, should not the five or six
rascals in a State who vociferate, be listened to, rather than a hundred
honest folks who keep their mouths shut? With this sophism, gross as
it is, but of pure Jacobin manufacture, Carnot ends by hoodwinking his
honor and his conscience; otherwise intact, and far more so than
his colleagues, he likewise undergoes moral and mental mutilation;
constrained by the duties of his post and the illusions of his creed,
he succeeded in an inward decapitation of the two noblest of human
faculties, common-sense, the most useful, and the moral sense, the most
exalted of all.
IV. The Statesmen.
Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Couthon and
Saint-Just.--Conditions of this rule.--Dangers to which they
are subject.--Their dissensions.--Pressure of Fear and
Theory.
If such are the ravages which are made in an upright, firm and healthy
personality, what must be the havoc in corrupt or weak natures, in which
bad instincts already predominate!--And note that they are without the
protection provided by a pursuit of some specific and useful objective.
They are "government men," also "revolutionaries" or "the people in
total control;"[3244] they are in actual fact men with an overall
concept of things, also direct these. The creation, organization and
application of Terror belongs wholly to them; they are the constructors,
regulators and engineers of the machine,[3245] the recognized heads of
the party, of the sect and of the government, especially Billaud and
Robespierre, who never serve on missions,[3246] nor relax their hold for
a moment on the central motor. The former, an active politician,
with Collot for his second, is charged with urging on the constituted
authorities, the districts, the municipalities, the national agents,
the revolutionary committees, and the representatives on mission in the
interior.[3247] The latter, a theologian, moralist, titular doctor and
preacher, is charged with ruling the Convention and indoctrinating
the Jacobins with sound principles; behind him stands Couthon, his
lieutenant, with Saint-Just, his disciple and executor of works of
great importance; in their midst, Barère, the Committee's mouthpiece, is
merely a tool, but indispensable, conveniently at hand and always ready
to start whatever drum-beating is required on any given theme in honor
of the party which stuffs his brain. Below these comes the Committee of
General Security, Vadier, Amar, Vouland, Guffroy, Panis, David, Jagot
and the rest, those who undertook, reported on, and acted in behalf of
universal proscription. All these bear the imprint of their service;
they could be recognized by "their pallid hue, hollow and bloodshot
eyes,"[3248] habits of omnipotence stamped "on their brows, and on
their deportment, something indescribably haughty and disdainful. The
Committee of General Security reminded one of the former lieutenants of
police, and the Committee of Public Safety, of the former ministers of
state." In the Convention, "it is considered an honor to talk with them,
and a privilege to shake hands with them; one seems to read one's duty
on their brows." On the days on which their orders are to be converted
into laws "the members of the Committee and the reporter of the bill,
keep people waiting, the same as the heads and representatives of the
former sovereign power; on their way to the Assembly hall, they are
preceded by a group of courtiers who seem to announce the masters of the
world."[3249]--In fact, they reign--but observe on what conditions.
"Make no complaints," said Barère,[3250] to the composer of an opera,
the performance of which had just been suspended: "as times go, you must
not attract public attention. Do we not all stand at the foot of the
guillotine, all, beginning with myself?" Again, twenty years later, in a
private conversation, on being interrogated as to the veritable object,
the secret motive of the Committee of Public Safety, he replied:
"As we were animated by but one sentiment,[3251] my dear sir, that
of self-preservation, we had but one desire, that of maintaining an
existence which each of us believed to be menaced. You had your neighbor
guillotined to prevent your neighbor from guillotining you."[3252]
The same apprehension exists in stouter souls, although there may have
been, along with fear, motives of a less debased order.
"How many times," says Carnot,[3253] "we undertook some work that
required time, with the conviction that we should not be allowed to
complete it!"--"It was uncertain[3254] whether, the next time the clock
struck the hour, we should not be standing before the revolutionary
Tribunal on our way to the scaffold without, perhaps, having had time to
bid adieu to our families.... We pursued our daily task so as not to let
the machine stand still, as if a long life were before us, when it was
probable that we should not see the next day's sun."
It is impossible to count on one's life, or that of another, for
twenty-four hours; should the iron hand which holds one by the throat
tighten its grasp, all will be over that evening.
"There were certain days so difficult that one could see no way
to control circumstances; those who were directly menaced resigned
themselves wholly to chance."[3255]--"The decisions for which we are
so much blamed," says another,[3256] "were not generally thought of
two days, or one day, beforehand; they sprung out of the crisis of the
moment. We did not desire to kill for the sake of killing... but to
conquer at all hazards, remain masters, and ensure the sway of our
principles."--That is true,--they are subjects as well as despots. At
the Committee table, during their nocturnal sessions, their sovereign
presides, a formidable figure, the revolutionary Idea which confers on
them the right to slay, on condition of exercising it against everybody,
and therefore on themselves. Towards two o'clock, or three o'clock in
the morning, exhausted, out of words and ideas, not knowing where to
slay, on the right or on the left, they anxiously turn to this figure
and try to read its will in its fixed eyes.
"Who shall fall to-morrow?"--
Ever the same reply steadily expressed on the features of the impassable
phantom: "the counter-revolutionaries," under which name is comprised
all who by act, speech, thought or inmost sentiment, either through
irritation or carelessness, through humanity or moderation, through
egoism or nonchalance, through passive, neutral or indifferent feeling,
serve well or ill the Revolution.[3257]--All that remains is to add
names to this horribly comprehensive decree. Shall Billaud do it?
Shall Robespierre do it? Will Billaud put down Robespierre's name, or
Robespierre put down Billaud's, or each the name of the other, with
those he chooses to select from among the two Committees? Osselin,
Chabot, Bazire, Julien de Toulouse, Lacroix, Danton, were on them, and
when they left, their heads fell.[3258] Hérault-Séchelles, again, was on
them, maintained in office with honor through the recent approbation
of the Convention,[3259] one of the titular twelve, and on duty when
an order issued by the other eleven suddenly handed him over to the
revolutionary Tribunal for execution.--Whose turn is it now among the
eleven? Seized unawares, the docile Convention unanimously applauding,
after three days of a judicial farce, the cart will bear him to the
Place de la Révolution; Samson will tie him fast, shouters at thirty
sous a day will clap their hands, and, on the following morning, the
popular politicians will congratulate each other on seeing the name of a
great traitor on the bulletin of the guillotined.[3260] To this end, to
enable this or that king of the day to pass from the national Almanac
to the mortuary list, merely required an understanding among his
colleagues, and, perhaps, this is already arrived at. Among whom and
against whom?--It is certain that, as this idea occurs to the eleven,
seated around the table, they eye each other with a shudder they
calculate the chances and turn things over in their minds; words have
been uttered that are not forgotten. Carnot often made this
charge against Saint-Just: "You and Robespierre are after a
dictatorship."[3261] Robespierre replied to Carnot: "I am ready for you
on the first defeat."[3262] On another occasion, Robespierre, in a rage,
exclaimed: "The Committee is conspiring against me!" and, turning to
Billaud, "I know you, now!" Billaud retorted, "I know you too, you are
a counter-revolutionary!"[3263] There are conspirators and
counter-revolutionaries, then, on the committee itself; what can be done
to avoid this appellation, which is a sentence of death?--Silently, the
fatal phantom enthroned in their midst, the Erinyes[3264] through which
they rule, renders his oracle and all take it to heart:
"All who are unwilling to become executioners are conspirators and
counter-revolutionaries."
V. Official Jacobin organs.
Official Jacobin organs.--Reports by Saint-Just are Barère.
--Quality of reports and reporters.
Thus do they march along during twelve months, goaded on by the two
sharp thongs of theory and fear, traversing the red pool which they have
created, and which is daily becoming deeper and deeper, all together
and united, neither of them daring to separate from the group, and each
spattered with the blood thrown in his face by the others' feet. It is
not long before their eyesight fails them; they no longer see their
way, while the degradation of their language betrays the stupor of
their intellect.--When a government brings to the tribune and moves the
enactment of important laws, it confronts the nation, faces Europe,
and takes a historical position. If it cares for its own honor it will
select reporters of bills that are not unworthy, and instruct them
to support these with available arguments, as closely reasoned out as
possible; the bill, discussed and adopted in full council, will show
the measure of its capacity, the information it possesses and its
common-sense.
To estimate all this, read the bills put forth in the name of the
Committee; weigh the preambles, remark the tone, listen to the
two reporters usually chosen, Saint-Just, who draws up the acts of
proscription, special or general, and Barère, who draws up all acts
indifferently, but particularly military announcements and decrees
against the foreigner; never did public personages, addressing France
and posterity, use such irrational arguments and state falsehoods with
greater impudence.[3265]
The former, stiff in his starched cravat, posing "like the Holy Ghost,"
more didactic and more absolute than Robespierre himself, comes and
proclaims to Frenchmen from the tribune, equality, probity, frugality,
Spartan habits, and a rural cot with all the voluptuousness of
virtue;[3266] this suits admirably the chevalier Saint-Just, a former
applicant for a place in the Count d'Artois' body-guard, a domestic
thief, a purloiner of silver plate which he takes to Paris, sells and
spends on prostitutes, imprisoned for six months on complaint of his own
mother,[3267] and author of a lewd poem which he succeeds in rendering
filthy by trying to render it fanciful.--Now, indeed, he is grave; he no
longer leers; he kills--but with what arguments, and what a style![3268]
The young Laubardemont as well as the paid informers and prosecutors
of imperial Rome, have less disgraced the human intellect, for these
creatures of a Tiberius or a Richelieu still used plausible arguments
in their reasoning, and with more or less adroitness. With Saint-Just,
there is no connection of ideas; there is no sequence or march in his
rhapsody; like an instrument strained to the utmost, his mind plays only
false notes in violent fits and starts; logical continuity, the art then
so common of regularly developing a theme, has disappeared; he stumbles
over the ground, piling up telling aphorisms and dogmatic axioms. In
dealing with facts there is nothing in his speech but a perversion
of the truth; impostures abound in it of pure invention, palpable, as
brazen as those of a charlatan in his booth;[3269] he does not
even deign to disguise them with a shadow of probability; as to
the Girondists, and as to Danton, Fabre d'Eglantine and his other
adversaries, whoever they may be, old or new, any rope to hang them with
suffices for him; any rough, knotted, badly-twisted cord he can lay his
hands on, no matter what, provided it strangles, is good enough; there
is no need of a finer one for confirmed conspirators; with the gossip
of the club and an Inquisition catechism, he can frame his bill of
indictment.--Accordingly, his intellect grasps nothing and yields him
nothing; he is a sententious and overexcited declaimer, an artificial
spirit always on the stretch, full of affectations,[3270] his talent
reducing itself down to the rare flashes of a somber imagination, a
pupil of Robespierre, as Robespierre himself is a pupil of Rousseau, the
exaggerated scholar of a plodding scholar, always rabidly ultra,
furious through calculation, deliberately violating both language and
ideas,[3271] confining himself to theatrical and funereal paradoxes, a
sort of "grand vizier"[3272] with the airs of an exalted moralist and
the bearing of the sentimental shepherd.[3273] Were one of a mocking
humor one might shrug one's shoulders; but, in the present state of
the Convention, there is no room for anything but fear. Launched in
imperious tones, his phrases fall upon their ears in monotonous strokes,
on bowed heads, and, after five or six blows from this leaden hammer,
the stoutest are stretched out stupefied on the ground; discussion is
out of the question; when Saint-Just, in the name of the Convention,
affirms anything, it must be believed; his dissertation is a peremptory
injunction and not an effort of reason; it commands obedience; it is
not open to examination; it is not a report which he draws from his coat
pocket, but a bludgeon.
The other reporter, Barère, is of quite another stamp, a "patent-right"
haranguer, an amusing Gascon, alert, "free and easy," fond of a joke,
even on the Committee of Public Safety,[3274] unconcerned in the midst
of assassinations, and, to the very last, speaking of the reign of
Terror as "the simplest and most innocent thing in the world."[3275] No
man was ever less trammeled by a conscience; in truth, he has several,
that of two days ago, that of the previous day, that of the present day,
that of the morrow, of the following day, and still others, as many as
you like, all equally pliant and supple, at the service of the strongest
against the weakest, ready to swing round at once on the wind changing,
but all joined together and working to one common end through physical
instinct, the only one that lasts in the immoral, adroit and
volatile being who circulates nimbly about, with no other aim than
self-preservation, and to amuse himself.[3276]--In his dressing-gown,
early in the morning, he receives a crowd of solicitors, and, with the
ways of a "dandified minister," graciously accepts the petitions handed
to him; first, those of ladies, "distributing gallantries among the
prettiest;" he makes promises, and smiles, and then, returning to
his cabinet, throws the papers in the fire: "There," he says, my
correspondence is done."--He sups twice every decade in his fine house
at Clichy, along with three more than accommodating pretty women; he
is gay, awarding flatteries and attentions quite becoming to an amiable
protector: he enters into their professional rivalries, their spites
against the reigning beauty, their jealousy of another who wears a
blonde wig and pretends "to set the fashion." He sends immediately
for the National Agent and gravely informs him that this
head-dress, borrowed from the guillotined, is a rallying point for
anti-revolutionaries, whereupon, the next day, wigs are denounced at
the Commune-council, and suppressed; "Barère roared with laughter on
alluding to this piece of fun." The humor of an undertaker and the
dexterity of a commercial drummer: he plays with Terror.--In like manner
he plays with his reports, and at this latter exercise, he improvises;
he is never embarrassed; it is simply necessary to turn the faucet and
the water runs. "Had he any subject to treat, he would fasten himself on
Robespierre, Hérault, Saint-Just, or somebody else, and draw them out;
he would then rush off to the tribune and spin out their ideas; "they
were all astonished at hearing their thoughts expressed as fully as
if reflected in a mirror." No individual on the Committee, or in the
Convention, equaled him in promptness and fluency, for the reason that
he was not obliged to think before he spoke: with him, the faculty of
speaking, like an independent organ, acted by itself, the empty brain
or indifferent heart contributing nothing to his loquacity. Naturally,
whatever issues from his mouth comes forth in ready-made bombast, the
current jargon of the Jacobin club, sonorous, nauseous commonplace,
schoolboy metaphors and similes derived from the shambles.[3277] Not
an idea is found in all this rhetoric, nothing acquired, no real mental
application. When Bonaparte, who employed everybody, even Fouché, were
disposed to employ Barère, they could make nothing out of him for lack
of substance, except as a low newsmonger, common spy, or agent engaged
to stir up surviving Jacobins; later on, a listener at keyholes, and
a paid weekly collector of public rumors, he was not even fit for this
vile service, for his wages were soon stopped Napoleon, who, having no
time to waste, cut short his driveling verbiage.--It is this verbiage
which, authorized by the Committee of Public Safety, now forms the
eloquence of France; it is this manufacturer of phrases by the dozen,
this future informer and prison-spy under the empire, this frolicking
inventor of the blonde-wig conspiracy, that the government sends into
the tribune to announce victories, trumpet forth military heroism and
proclaim war unto death. On the 7th of Prairial,[3278] Barère, in the
name of the committee, proposes a return to savage law: "No English or
Hanoverian prisoner shall henceforth be made;" the decree is endorsed by
Carnot and passes the Convention unanimously. Had it been executed, as
reprisals, and according to the proportion of prisoners, there would
have been for one Englishman shot, three Frenchmen hung: honor and
humanity would have disappeared from the camps; the hostilities between
Christians would have become as deadly as among savages. Happily, French
soldiers felt the nobleness of their profession; on the order being
given to shoot the prisoners, a decent sergeant replied:
"We will not shoot--send them to the Convention. If the representatives
delight in killing prisoners--let them do it themselves, and eat them,
too, savages as they are!"
The sergeant, an ordinary man, is not on a level with the Committee,
or with Barère; and yet Barère did his best in a bill of indictment of
twenty-seven pages, full of grand flourishes, every possible ritornello,
glaring falsehood and silly inflation, explaining how "the Britannic
leopard" paid assassins to murder the representatives; how the London
cabinet had armed little Cécile Renault, "the new Corday," against
Robespierre; how the Englishman, naturally barbarous, "is unable to deny
his origins; how he descends from the Carthaginians and Phenicians, and
formerly dealt in the skins of wild beasts and slaves; how his trading
occupation is not changed; how Cesar, formerly, on landing in the
country, found nothing but a ferocious tribe battling with wolves in
the forest and threatening to burn every vessel which would try to land
there; and how he still remains like that." A lecture from a fairground
surgeon who, using bombastic words, recommends extensive amputations,
a fairground-prospectus so crude that it does not even deceive a poor
sergeant,--such is the exposition of motives by a government for the
purpose of enforcing a decree that might have been drawn up by redskins;
to horrible acts he adds debased language, and employs the inept to
justify their atrocities.
VI. Commissars of the Revolution.
Representatives on Mission.--Their absolute power.--Their
perils and their fear.--Fit for their work.--Effect of this
situation.
A hundred or so representatives of the Committee of Public Safety, are
sent to the provinces, "with unlimited power," to establish, enforce or
exacerbate the revolutionary government, and their proclamations at
once explain the nature of this government.[3279]--"Brave and vigorous
sans-culottes!" writes a deputy on leaving a mission and announcing
his successor,[3280] "You seem to have desired a good b... of a
representative, who has never swerved from his principles, that is to
say, a regular Montagnard. I have fulfilled your wishes, and you will
have the same thing in citizen Ingrand. Remember, brave sans-culottes,
that, with the patriot Ingrand, you can do everything, get anything,
cancel whatever you please, imprison, bring to trial, deport and
guillotine every-body and regenerate society. Don't try to play with
him; everybody is afraid of him, he overcomes all resistance and
restores at once the most complete order!"--The representative arrives
at the center of the department by post, and presents his credentials.
All the authorities at once bow to the ground. In the evening, in his
saber and plume, he harangues the popular club, blowing into a flame
the smoldering embers of Jacobinism. Then, according to his personal
acquaintances, if he has any in the place, or according to the votes of
the Committee of General Security, if he is a new-comer, he selects five
or six of the "warmest sans-culottes" there, and, forming them into
a Revolutionary Committee, installs them permanently at his side,
sometimes in the same building, in a room next to his own, where, on
lists or with verbal communications furnished to him, he works with a
will and without stopping.[3281]
First comes a purification of all the local authorities. They must
always remember that "there can be no exaggeration in behalf of the
people; he who is not imbued with this principle, who has not put it in
practice, cannot remain on an advanced post;"[3282] consequently, at the
popular club, in the department, in the district, in the municipality,
all doubtful men are excluded, discharged, or incarcerated; if a few
weak ones are retained provisionally, or by favor, they are berated and
taught their duty very summarily:
"They will strive, by a more energetic and assiduous patriotism, to
atone for the evil committed by them in not doing all the good they
could do."
Sometimes, through a sudden change of scene, the entire administrative
staff is kicked out so as to give place to a no less complete staff,
which the same kick brings up out of the ground. Considering that
"everything stagnates in Vaucluse, and that a frightful moderation
paralyses the most revolutionary measures," Maignet, in one order[3283]
appoints the administrators and secretary of the department, the
national agent, the administrators and council-general of the district,
the administrators, council-general and national agent of Avignon, the
president, public prosecutor and recorder of the criminal court,
members of the Tribunal de Commerce, the collector of the district, the
post-master and the head of the squadron of gendarmerie. And the new
functionaries will certainly go to work at once, each in his office.
The summary process, which has brusquely swept away the first set of
puppets, is going to brusquely install the second one. "Each citizen
appointed to any of the above mentioned offices, shall betake himself
immediately to his post, under penalty of being declared suspect,"
on the simple notification of his appointment. Universal and passive
obedience of governors, as well as of the governed! There are no more
elected and independent functionaries; all the authorities, confirmed or
created by the representative, are in his hands; there is not one among
them who does not subsist or survive solely through his favor; there is
not one of them who acts otherwise than according to his approval or
by his order. Directly, or through them, he makes requisitions,
sequestrates or confiscates as he sees fit, taxes, imprisons, transports
or decapitates as he see fit, and, in his circumscription, he is the
pasha.
But he is a pasha with a chain around his neck, and at short
tether.--From and after December, 1793, he is directed "to conform to
the orders of the Committee of Public Safety and report to it every
ten days."[3284] The circumscription in which he commands is
rigorously "limited;" "he is reputed to be without power in the other
departments,"[3285] while he is not allowed to grow old on his post. "In
every magistrature the grandeur and extent of power is compensated by
the shortness of its duration. Over-prolonged missions would soon be
considered as birthrights."[3286] Therefore, at the end of two or three
months, often at the end of a month, the incumbent is recalled to Paris
or dispatched elsewhere, at short notice, on the day named, in a prompt,
absolute and sometimes threatening tone, not as a colleague one
humors, but as a subordinate who is suddenly and arbitrarily revoked
or displaced because he is deemed inadequate, or "used up." For greater
security, oftentimes a member of the Committee, Couthon, Collot,
Saint-Just, or some near relation of a member of the Committee, a Lebas
or young Robespierre, goes personally to the spot to give the needed
impulsion; sometimes, agents simply of the Committee, taken from outside
the Convention, and without any personal standing, quite young men,
Rousselin, Julien de la Drôme, replace or watch the representative
with powers equal to his.--At the same time, from the top and from the
center, he is pushed on and directed: his local counselors are chosen
for him, and the directors of his conscience;[3287] they rate him
soundly on the choice of his agents or of his lodgings;[3288] they force
dismissals on him, appointments, arrests, executions; they spur him
on in the path of terror and suffering.--Around him are paid
emissaries,[3289] while others watch him gratis and constantly write to
the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, often to denounce
him, always to report on his conduct, to judge his measures and to
provoke the measures which he does not take.[3290]
Whatever he may have done or may do, he cannot turn his eyes toward
Paris without seeing danger ahead, a mortal danger which, on the
Committee, in the Convention, at the Jacobin Club, increases or will
increase against him, like a tempest.--Briez, who, in Valenciennes under
siege, showed courage, and whom the Convention had just applauded and
added to the Committee of Public Safety, hears himself reproached for
being still alive: "He who was at Valenciennes when the enemy took it
will never reply to this question--are you dead?"[3291] He has nothing
to do now but to declare himself incompetent, decline the
honor mistakenly conferred on him by the Convention, and
disappear.--Dubois-Crancé took Lyons, and, as pay for this immense
service, he is stricken off the roll of the Jacobin Club; because he did
not take it quick enough, he is accused of treachery; two days after the
capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety withdraw his powers; three
days after the capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety has him
arrested and sent to Paris under escort.[3292]--If such men after such
services are thus treated, what is to become of the others? After the
mission of young Julien, then Carrier at Nantes, Ysabeau and Tallien at
Bordeaux, feel their heads shake on their shoulders; after the mission
of Robespierre jr. in the East and South, Barras, Fréron and Bernard de
Saintes believe themselves lost.[3293] Fouché, Rovère, Javogue, and how
many others, compromised by the faction, Hébertists or Dantonists, of
which they are, or were belonging. Sure of perishing if their patrons
on the Committee succumb; not sure of living if their patrons keep their
place; not knowing whether their heads will not be exchanged for
others; restricted to the narrowest, the most rigorous and most constant
orthodoxy; guilty and condemned should their orthodoxy of to-day become
the heterodoxy of to-morrow. All of them menaced, at first the hundred
and eighty autocrats who, before the concentration of the revolutionary
government, ruled for eight months boundlessly in the provinces;
next, and above all, the fifty hard-fisted "Montagnards," unscrupulous
fanatics or authoritarian high livers, who, at this moment, tread human
flesh under foot and spread out in arbitrariness like wild boars in a
forest, or wallow in scandal, like swine in a mud-pool.
There is no refuge for them, other than temporary, and temporary refuge
only in zealous and tried obedience, such as the Committee demands proof
of, that is to say, through rigor.--"The Committees so wanted it,"
says later on Maignet, the arsonist of Bédouin; "The Committees did
everything..... Circumstances controlled me. ... The patriotic agents
conjured me not to give way.... I did not fully carry out the most
imperative orders."[3294] Similarly, the great exterminator of Nantes,
Carrier, when urged to spare the rebels who surrendered of their own
accord:
"Do you want me to be guillotined? It is not in my power to save those
people."[3295]
And another time:
"I have my orders; I must observe them; I do not want to have my head
cut off!"
Under penalty of death, the representative on mission is a Terrorist,
like his colleagues in the Convention and on the Committee of Public
Safety, but with a much more serious disturbance of his nervous and his
moral system; for he does not operate like them on paper, at a distance,
against categories of abstract, anonymous and vague beings; his work is
not merely an effort of the intellect, but also of the senses and the
imagination. If he belongs to the region, like Lecarpentier, Barras,
Lebon, Javogue, Couthon, André Dumont and many others, he is well
acquainted with the families he proscribes; names to him are not merely
so many letters strung together, but they recall personal souvenirs
and evoke living forms. At all events, he is the spectator, artisan
and beneficiary of his own dictatorship; the silver-plate and money
he confiscates passes under his eye, through his hands; he sees the
"suspects" he incarcerates march before him; he is in the court-room on
the rendering of the sentence of death; frequently, the guillotine
he has supplied with heads works under his windows; he sleeps in the
mansion of an emigré he makes requisitions for the furniture, linen
and wine belonging to the decapitated and the imprisoned,[3296] lies in
their beds, drinks their wine and revels with plenty of company at
their expense, and in their place. In the same way as a bandit chief who
neither kills nor robs with his own hands, but has murder and robbery
committed in his presence, by which he substantially profits, not
by proxy, but personally, through the well-directed blows ordered
by him.--To this degree, and in such proximity to physical action,
omnipotence is a noxious atmosphere which no state of health can resist.
Restored to the conditions which poisoned man in barbarous times or
countries, he is again attacked by moral maladies from which he was
thenceforth believed to be exempt; he retrogrades even to the strange
corruptions of the Orient and the Middle Ages; forgotten leprosies,
apparently extinct, with exotic pestilences to which civilized lands
seemed closed, reappear in his soul with their issues and tumors.
VII. Brutal Instincts.
Eruption of brutal instincts.--Duquesnoy at Metz.--Dumont at
Amiens.--Drunkards.--Cusset, Bourbotte, Moustier, Bourdon de
l'Oise, Dartigoyte.
"It seems," says a witness who was long acquainted with Maignet, "that
all he did for these five or six years was simply the delirious phase
of an illness, after which he recovered, and lived on as if nothing had
happened."[3297] And Maignet himself writes "I was not made for these
tempests." That goes for everyone but especially for the coarser
natures; subordination would have restrained them while dictatorial
power make the instincts of the brute and the mob appear.
Contemplate Duquesnoy, a sort of mastiff, always barking and biting,
when gorged he is even more furious. Delegate to the army of the
Moselle, and passing by Metz[3298] he summoned before him Altmayer, the
public prosecutor, although he had sat down to dinner. The latter waits
three hours and a half in the ante-chamber, is not admitted, returns,
and, at length received, is greeted with a thundering exclamation:
"Who are you?"
"The public prosecutor," he replies.
"You look like a bishop--you were once a curé or monk--you can't be
a revolutionary.... I have come to Metz with unlimited powers. Public
opinion here is not satisfactory. I am going to drill it. I am going to
set folks straight here. I mean to shoot, here in Metz, as well as in
Nancy, five or six hundred every fortnight."
The same at the house of General Bessières, commandant of the town
encountering there M. Cledat, an old officer, the second in command, he
measures him from head to foot:
"You look like a muscadin. Where did you come from? You must be a bad
republican--you look as if you belonged to the ancient régime."
"My hair is gray," he responds, "but I am not the less a good
republican: you may ask the General and the whole town."
"Be off! Go to the devil, and be quick about it, or I will have you
arrested!"--
The same, in the street, where he lays hold of a man passing, on account
of his looks; the justice of the peace, Joly, certifies to the civism of
this person, and he "eyes" Joly:
"You too, you are an aristocrat! I see it in your eyes! I never make a
mistake."
Whereupon, tearing off the Judge's badge, he sends him to
prison.--Meanwhile, a fire, soon extinguished, breaks out in the army
bakery; officers, townspeople, laborers, peasants and even children form
a line (for passing water) and Duquesnoy appears to urge them on in his
way: using his fists and his foot, he falls on whoever he meets, on an
employee in the commissariat, on a convalescent officer, on two men
in the line, and many others. He shouts to one of them, "You are a
muscadin!" To another:
"I see by your eyes that you are an aristocrat!"
To another:
"You are a bloody beggar, an aristocrat, a rascal,"
and he strikes him in the stomach; he seizes a fourth by his collar
and throws him down on the pavement.[3299] In addition to this, all are
imprisoned. The fire being extinguished, an indiscreet fellow, who
stood by looking on, recommends "the dispenser of blows" to wipe his
forehead." "You can't see straight--who are you? Answer me, I am the
representative." The other replies mildly: "Representative, nothing
could be more respectable." Duquesnoy gives the unlucky courtier a
blow under the nose: "You are disputing--go to prison," "which I did
at once," adds the docile subject.--That same evening, "whereas, in the
conflagration, none of the inhabitants in good circumstances offered
their services in extinguishing the fire,[32100] and none but
sans-culottes came thereto, from the garrison as well as from the
commune," Duquesnoy orders "that a tax of 40,000 livres be imposed on
the commune of Metz, levied on the fortunes of the rich and distributed
among the poor, payable within ten days."[32101]--"Fais-moi f.... dedans
tous ces b... là[32102]," "quatre j...f... à raccourcir;"[32103] At
Arras, as at Metz, the lout is ever the ruffian and the butcher.
Others are either jolly fellows, or blackguards. A certain André Dumont,
an old village attorney, now king of Picardie, or sultan, as occasion
offers, "figures as a white Negro," sometimes jovial, but generally as
a rude hardened cynic, treating female prisoners and petitioners as in
a kermesse.[32104]--One morning a lady enters his ante-room, and
waits amidst about twenty sans-culottes, to solicit the release of her
husband. Dumont appears in a morning-gown, seats himself and listens to
the petitioner.
"Sit down, citoyenne."
He takes her on his lap, thrusts his hand in her bosom and exclaims:
"Who would suppose that the bust of a marchioness would feel so soft to
one of the people's representatives."
The sans-culottes shout with laughter. He sends the poor woman away
and keeps her husband locked up. In the evening he may write to the
Convention that he investigates things himself, and closely examines
aristocrats.--If one is to maintain the revolutionary enthusiasm at a
high level it is helpful to have a drop too much in one's head, and
most of them take precautions in this direction. At Lyons,[32105]
"the representatives sent to ensure the people's welfare, Albitte and
Collot," call upon the Committee of Sequestrations to deliver at their
house two hundred bottles of the best wine to be found, and five hundred
bottles more of Bordeaux red wine, first quality, for table use.--In
three months, at the table of the representatives who devastate
la Vendée, nineteen hundred and seventy-four bottles of wine are
emptied,[32106] taken from the houses of the emigrés belonging to the
town; for, "when one has helped to preserve a commune one has a right to
drink to the Republic." Representative Bourbotte presides at this
bar; Rossignol touches his glass, an ex-jeweler and then a September
massacreur, all his life a debauchee and brigand, and now a
major-general; alongside of Rossignol, stand his adjutants, Grammont, an
old actor, and Hazard, a former priest; along with them is Vacheron, a
good républican, who ravishes women and shoots them when they refuse to
succumb;[32107] in addition to these are some "brilliant" young ladies,
undoubtedly brought from Paris, "the prettiest of whom share their
nights between Rossignol and Bourbotte," whilst the others serve their
subordinates: the entire band, male and female, is installed in a
Hotel de Fontenay, where they begin by breaking the seals, so as t o
confiscate "for their own benefit, furniture, jewelry, dresses,
feminine trinkets and even porcelains."[32108] Meanwhile, at Chantonney,
representative Bourdon de l'Oise drinks with General Tunck, becomes
"frantic" when tipsy, and has patriotic administrators seized in their
beds at midnight, whom he had embraced the evening before.--Nearly all
of them, like the latter, get nasty after a few drinks,--Carrier at
Nantes, Petit-Jean at Thiers, Duquesnoy at Arras, Cusset at Thionville,
Monestier at Tarbes. At Thionville, Cusset drinks like a "Lapithe"
and, when drunk, gives the orders of a "vizier," which orders are
executed.[32109] At Tarbes, Monestier "after a heavy meal and much
excited," warmly harangues the court, personally examines the prisoner,
M. de Lasalle, an old officer, whom he has condemned to death, and signs
the order to have him guillotined at once. M. de Lasalle is guillotined
that very evening, at midnight, by torchlight. The following morning
Monestier says to the president of the court: "Well, we gave poor
Lasalle a famous fright last night, didn't we?" "How a famous fright? He
is executed!" Monestier is astonished--he did not remember having issued
the order.[32110]--With others, wine, besides sanguinary instincts,
brings out the foulest instincts. At Nîmes; Borie, in the uniform of a
representative, along with Courbis, the mayor, Géret, the justice and
a number of prostitutes, dance the farandole around the guillotine. At
Auch, one of the worst tyrants in the South, Dartigoyte, always heated
with liquor "vomited every species of obscenity" in the faces of women
that came to demand justice; "he compels, under penalty of imprisonment,
mothers to take their daughters to the popular club," to listen to his
filthy preaching; one evening, at the theatre, probably after an orgy,
he shouts at all the women between the acts, lets loose upon them his
smutty vocabulary, and, by way of demonstration, or as a practical
conclusion, ends by stripping himself naked.[32111]--This time, the
genuine brute appears. All the clothing woven during the past centuries
and with which civilization had dressed him, the last drapery of
humanity, falls to the ground. Nothing remains but the primitive animal,
the ferocious, lewd gorilla supposed to be tamed, but which still
subsists indefinitely and which a dictatorship, joined to drunkenness,
revives in an uglier guise than in remotest times.
VIII. Delirium.
Approach of madness.--Loss of common-sense.--Fabre, Gaston,
Guiter, in the army of the Eastern Pyrenees.--Baudot, Lebas,
Saint-Just, and the predecessors and successors in the army
of the Rhine.--Furious excitement.--Lebon at Arras, and
Carrier at Nantes.
If intoxication is needed to awaken the brute, a dictatorship suffices
to arouse the madman. The mental equilibrium of most of these new
sovereigns is disturbed; the distance between what the man once was and
what he now is, is too great. Formerly he was a petty lawyer, village
doctor, or schoolmaster, an unknown mover of a resolution in a local
club, and only yesterday he was one voter in the Convention out of
seven hundred and fifty. Look at him now, the arbiter, in one of the
departments, of all fortunes and liberties, and master of five thousand
lives. Like a pair of scales into which a disproportionate weight has
been thrown, his reason totters on the side of pride. Some of them
regard their competency unlimited, like their powers, and having
just joined the army, claim the right of being appointed
major-generals.[32112] "Declare officially," writes Fabre to the
Committee of Public Safety,[32113] "that, in future, generals shall be
simply the lieutenants of the delegates to the Convention." Awaiting the
required declaration, they claim command and, in reality, exercise it.
"I know of neither generals nor privates," says Gaston, a former justice
of the peace, to the officers; "as to the Minister, he is like a bull
in a china shop; I am in command here and must be obeyed." "What are
generals good for?" adds his colleague Guiter; "the old women in our
faubourgs know as much as they do. Plans, formal maneuvers, tents,
camps, redoubts? All this is of no use! The only war suitable to
Frenchmen after this will be a rush with side arms." To turn out
of office, guillotine, disorganize, march blindly on, waste lives
haphazard, force defeat, sometimes get killed themselves, is all they
know, and they would lose all if the effects of their incapacity and
arrogance were not redeemed by the devotion of the officers and the
enthusiasm of the soldiers.--The same spectacle is visible at Charleroy
where, through his absurd orders, Saint-Just does his best to compromise
the army, leaving that place with the belief that he is a great
man.[32114]--There is the same spectacle in Alsace, where Lacoste,
Baudot, Ruamps, Soubrany, Muhaud, Saint-Just and Lebas, through their
excessive rigor, do their best to break up the army and then boast of
it. The revolutionary Tribunal is installed at headquarters, soldiers
are urged to denounce their officers, the informer is promised money and
secrecy, he and the accused are not allowed to confront each other,
no investigation, no papers allowed, even to make exception to the
verdict--a simple examination without any notes, the accused arrested
at eight o'clock, condemned at nine o'clock, and shot at ten
o'clock.[32115]
Naturally, under such a system, no one wants to command; already, before
Saint Just's arrival, Meunier had consented to act as Major-General only
ad interim; "every hour of the day" he demanded his removal; unable
to secure this, he refused to issue any order. The representatives, to
procure his successor, are obliged to descend down to a depot captain,
Carlin, bold enough or stupid enough to allow himself to take
a commission under their lead, which was a commission for the
guillotine.--If such is their presumption in military matters, what
must it be in civil affairs! On this side there is no external check,
no Spanish or German army capable of at once taking them in flagrante
delicto, and of profiting by their ambitious incapacity and mischievous
interference. Whatever the social instrumentality may be--judiciary,
administration, credit, commerce, manufactures, agriculture--they can
dislocate and destroy it with impunity.--They never fail to do this,
and, moreover, in their dispatches, they take credit to themselves for
the ruin they cause. That, indeed, is their mission; otherwise, they
would be regarded as bad Jacobins; they would soon become "suspects;"
they rule only on condition of being infatuated and destructive;
the overthrow of common-sense is with them an act of State grace,
a necessity of the office, and, on this common ground of compulsory
unreason, every species of physical delirium may be set established.
With those that we can follow closely, not only is their judgment
perverted, but the entire nervous apparatus is affected; a permanent
over-excitement and a morbid restlessness has begun.--Consider Joseph
Lebon, son of a sergeant-at-arms, subsequently, a teacher with the
Oratoriens of Beaune, next, curé of Neuville-Vitasse, repudiated as
an interloper by the élite of his parishioners, not respected, without
house or furniture, and almost without a flock.[32116] Two years after
this, finding himself sovereign of his province, his head is
spinning. Lesser events would have made it turn; his is only a
twenty-eight-year-old head, not very solid, without any inside
ballast,[32117] already disturbed by vanity, ambition, rancor, and
apostasy, by the sudden and complete volteface which puts him in
conflict with his past educational habits and most cherished affections:
it breaks down under the vastness and novelty of this greatness.--In
the costume of a representative, a Henry IV hat, tri-color plume, waving
scarf, and saber dragging the ground, Lebon orders the bell to be rung
and summons the villagers into the church, where, aloft in the pulpit in
which he had formerly preached in a threadbare cassock, he displays his
metamorphosis.
"Who would believe that I should have returned here with unlimited
powers!"[32118]
And that, before his counterfeit majesty, each person would be humble,
bowed down and silent! To a member of the municipality of Cambray who,
questioned by him, looked straight at him and answered curtly, and who,
to a query twice repeated in the same terms, dared to answer twice in
the same terms, he says:
"Shut up! You disrespect me, you do not behave properly to the national
representative."
He immediately commits him to prison.[32119]--One evening, at the
theater, he enters a box in which the ladies, seated in front,
keep their places. In a rage, he goes out, rushes on the stage and,
brandishing his great saber, shouts and threatens the audience, taking
immense strides across the boards and acting and looking so much like a
wild beast that several of the ladies faint away:
"Look there!" he shouts, at those muscadines who do not condescend to
move for a representative of twenty-five millions of men! Everybody used
to make way for a prince--they will not budge for me, a representative,
who am more than a king!"[32120]
The word is spoken. But this king is frightened, and he is one who
thinks of nothing but conspiracy;[32121] in the street, in open
daylight, the people who are passing him are plotting against him either
by words or signs. Meeting in the main street of Arras a young girl and
her mother talking Flemish,--that seems to him "suspect." "Where are you
going?" he demands. "What's that to you?" replies the child, who
does not know him. The girl, the mother and the father are sent to
prison.[32122]--On the ramparts, another young girl, accompanied by her
mother, is taking the air, and reading a book. "Give me that book," says
the representative. The mother hands it to him; it is the "History of
Clarissa Harlowe." The young girl, extending her hand to receive back
the book, adds, undoubtedly with a smile: "That is not 'suspect.'" Lebon
deals her a blow with his fist on her stomach which knocks her
down; both women are searched and he personally leads them to the
guard-room.--The slightest expression, a gesture, puts him beside
himself; any motion that he does not comprehend makes him start, as with
an electric shock. Just arrived at Cambray, he is informed that a woman
who had sold a bottle of wine below the maximum, had been released after
a procès-verbal. On reaching the Hotel-de-ville, he shouts out: "Let
everybody here pass into the Consistory!" The municipal officer on duty
opens a door leading into it. Lebon, however, not knowing who he is,
takes alarm. "He froths at the mouth," says the municipal officer, "and
cries out as if possessed by a demon. 'Stop, stop, scoundrel, you are
running off!' He draws his saber and seizes me by the collar; I am
dragged and borne along by him and his men. 'I have hold of him, I have
hold of him!' he exclaims, and, indeed, he did hold me with his teeth,
legs, and arms, like a madman. At last, 'scoundrel, monster, bastard,'
says he, 'are you a marquis?' 'No,' I replied, 'I am a sans-culotte.'
'Ah, well people, you hear what he says,' he exclaims, 'he says that he
is a sans-culotte, and that is the way he greets a denunciation on
the maximum! I remove him. Let him be kicked in prison!'"[32123] It
is certain that the King of Arras and Cambray is not far from a raging
fever; with such symptoms an ordinary individual would be sent to an
asylum.
Not so vain, less fond of parading his royalty, but more savage and
placed in Nantes amidst greater dangers, Carrier, under the pressure
of more somber ideas, is much more furious and constant in his madness.
Sometimes his attacks reach hallucination. "I have seen him," says a
witness, "so carried away in the tribune, in the heat of his harangue
when trying to overrule public opinion, as to cut off the tops of
the candles with his saber," as if they were so many aristocrats'
heads.[32124] Another time, at table, after having declared that France
could not feed its too numerous population, and that it was decided to
cut down the excess, all nobles, magistrates, priests, merchants, etc.,
he becomes excited and exclaims, "Kill, kill!" as if he were already
engaged in the work and ordering the operation.[32125] Even when
fasting, and in an ordinary condition, he is scarcely more cooled
down. When the administrators of the department come to consult with
him,[32126] they gather around the door to see if he looks enraged, and
is in a condition to hear them. He not only insults petitioners, but
likewise the functionaries under him who make reports to him, or take
his orders; his foul nature rises to his lips and overflows in the
vilest terms:
"Go to hell and be damned. I have no time."[32127]
They consider themselves lucky if they get off with a volley of obscene
oaths, for he generally draws his saber:
"The first bastard that mentions supplies, I will cut his head
off."[32128]
And to the president of the military commission, who demands that
verdicts be rendered before ordering executions:
"You, you old rascal, you old bastard, you want verdicts, do you! Go
ahead! If the whole pen is not emptied in a couple of hours I will have
you and your colleagues shot!"
His gestures, his look have such a powerful effect upon the mind
that the other, who is also a "bruiser," dies of the shock a few days
after.[32129] Not only does he draw his saber, but he uses it; among the
petitioners, a boatman, whom he is about to strike, runs off as fast as
he can; he draws General Moulins into the recess of a window and gives
him a cut.[32130]--People "tremble" on accosting him, and yet more in
contradicting him. The envoy of the Committee of Public Safety, Julien
de la Drôme, on being brought before him, takes care to "stand some
distance off, in a corner of the room," wisely trying to avoid the first
spring; wiser still, he replies to Carrier's exclamations with the only
available argument:
"If you put me out of the way to-day, you yourself will be guillotined
within a week!"[32131]
On coming to a stand before a mad dog one must aim the knife straight
at its throat; there is no other way to escape its fangs and slaver.
Accordingly, with Carrier, as with a mad dog, the brain is mastered by
the steady mechanical reverie, by persistent images of murder and death.
He exclaims to President Tronjolly, apropos of the Vendean children:
"The guillotine, always the guillotine!"[32132]
In relation to the drownings:
"You judges must have verdicts; pitch them into the water, which is much
more simple."
Addressing the popular club of Nantes, he says:
"The rich, the merchants, are all monopolizers, all anti-revolutionists;
denounce them to me, and I will have all their heads under the national
razor. Tell me who the fanatics are that shut their shops on Sunday and
I will have them guillotined." "When will the heads of those rascally
merchants fall?"--"I see beggars here in rags; you are as big fools at
Ancenis as at Nantes. Don't you know that the money, the wealth of these
old merchants, belongs to you, and is not the river there?" "My brave
bastards, my good sansculottes your time is come! Denounce them to me!
The evidence of two good sans-culottes is all I want to make the heads
of those old merchants tumble!"--"We will make France a grave-yard
rather than not regenerate it in our own way."[32133]--His steady howl
ends in a cry of anguish:
"We shall all be guillotined, one after the other!"[32134]--
Such is the mental state to which the office of representative on
mission leads. Below Carrier, who is on the extreme verge, the others,
less advanced, likewise turn pale at the lugubrious vision, which is the
inevitable effect of their work and their mandate. Beyond every grave
they dig, they catch a glimpse of the grave already dug for them. There
is nothing left for the gravedigger but to dig mechanically day after
day, and, in the meantime, make what he can out of his place; he can at
least render himself insensible by having "a good time."
IX. Vice.
The development of vice.--Vanity and the need of gambling.--
Collot d'Herbois, Ysabeau, Tallien.--The Robbers.--Tallien,
Javogues, Rovère, Fouché.--Two sources of cruelty.--Need of
demonstrating one's power.--Saint-Just in the Pas-de-Calais
department, and in Alsace.--Collot d'Herbois at Lyons.--
Pressure exercised by the Representatives on the tribunals.
--Pleasure caused by death and suffering.--Monestier, Fouché,
Collot d'Herbois, Lebon and Carrier.