that cannot be effaced, is that at no moment was the danger from foreign
or domestic foe less serious. We may always forgive something to
well-grounded panic. The proscriptions of an earlier date in Paris were
not excessively sanguinary, if we remember that the city abounded in
royalists and other reactionists, who were really dangerous in fomenting
discouragement and spreading confusion. If there ever is an excuse for
martial law, and it must be rare, the French government were warranted
in resorting to it in 1793. Paris in those days was like a city
beleaguered, and the world does not use very harsh words about the
commandant of a besieged town who puts to death traitors found within
his walls. Opinion in England at this very epoch encouraged the Tory
government to pass a Treason Bill, which introduced as vague a
definition of treasonable offence as even the Law of Prairial itself.
Windham did not shrink from declaring in parliament that he and his
colleagues were determined to exact 'a rigour beyond the law.' And they
were as good as their word. The Jacobins had no monopoly either of cruel
law or cruel breach of law in the eighteenth century. Only thirty years
before, opinion in Pennsylvania had prompted a hideous massacre of
harmless Indians as a deed acceptable to God, and the grandson of
William Penn proclaimed a bounty of fifty dollars for the scalp of a
female Indian, and three times as much for a male. A man would have had
quite as good a chance of justice from the Revolutionary Tribunal, as
at the hands of Braxfield, the Scotch judge, who condemned Muir and
Palmer for sedition in 1793, and who told the government, with a brazen
front worthy of Carrier or Collot d'Herbois themselves, that, if they
would only send him prisoners, he would find law for them.
We have no sympathy with the spirit of paradox that has arisen in these
days, amusing itself by the vindication of bad men. We think that the
author of the Law of Prairial was a bad man. But it is time that there
should be an end of the cant which lifts up its hands at the crimes of
republicans and freethinkers, and shuts its eyes to the crimes of kings
and churches. Once more, we ought to rise into a higher air; we ought to
condemn, wherever we find it, whether on the side of our adversaries or
on our own, all readiness to substitute arbitrary force for the
processes of ordered justice. There are moments when such a readiness
may be leniently judged, but Prairial of 1794 was not one of them either
in France or in England. And what makes the crime of this law more
odious, is its association with the official proclamation of the State
worship of a Supreme Being. The scene of Robespierre's holy festival
becomes as abominable as a catholic Auto-da-fé, where solemn homage was
offered to the God of pity and loving-kindness, while flame glowed round
the limbs of the victims.
* * * * *
Robespierre was inflamed with resentment, not because so many people
were guillotined every day, but because the objects of his own enmity
were not among them. He was chagrined at the miscarriage of his scheme;
but the chagrin had its root in his desire for order, and not in his
humanity. A good man--say so imperfectly good a man as Danton--could not
have endured life, after enacting such a law, and seeing the ghastly
work that it was doing. He could hardly have contented himself with
drawing tears from the company in Madame Duplay's little parlour, by his
pathetic recitations from Corneille and Racine, or with listening to
melting notes from the violin of Le Bas. It is commonly said by
Robespierre's defenders that he withdrew from the Committee of Public
Safety, as soon as he found out that he was powerless to arrest the
daily shedding of blood. The older assumption used to be that he left
Paris, and ceased to be cognisant of the Committee's deliberations. The
minutes, however, prove that this was not the case. Robespierre signed
papers nearly every day of Messidor--(June 19 to July 18) the
blood-stained month between Prairial and Thermidor--and was thoroughly
aware of the doings of the Committee. His partisans have now fallen back
on the singular theory of what they style moral absence. He was present
in the flesh, but standing aloof in the spirit. His frowning silence was
a deadlier rebuke to the slayers and oppressors than secession.
Unfortunately for this ingenious explanation of the embarrassing fact of
a merciful man standing silent before merciless doings, there are at
least two facts that show its absurdity.
First, there is the affair of Catherine Théot. Catherine Théot was a
crazy old woman of a type that is commoner in protestant than in
catholic countries. She believed herself to have special gifts in the
interpretation of the holy writings, and a few other people as crazy as
herself chose to accept her pretensions. One revelation vouchsafed to
her was to the effect that Robespierre was a Messiah and the new
redeemer of the human race. The Committee of General Security resolved
to indict this absurd sect. Vadier,--one of the roughest of the men whom
the insurrections of Paris had brought to the front--reported on the
charges to the Convention (27 Prairial, June 15), and he took the
opportunity to make Robespierre look profoundly ridiculous. The
unfortunate Messiah sat on his bench, gnawing his lips with bitter rage,
while, amid the sneers and laughter of the Convention, the officers
brought to the bar the foolish creatures who had called him the Son of
God. His thin pride and prudish self-respect were unutterably affronted,
and he quite understood that the ridicule of the mysticism of Théot was
an indirect pleasantry upon his own Supreme Being. He flew to the
Committee of Public Safety, angrily reproached them for permitting the
prosecution, summoned Fouquier-Tinville, and peremptorily ordered him to
let the matter drop. In vain did the public prosecutor point out that
there was a decree of the Convention ordering him to proceed.
Robespierre was inexorable. The Committee of General Security were
baffled, and the prosecution ended. 'Lutteur impuissant et fatigué,'
says M. Hamel, the most thoroughgoing defender of Robespierre, upon
this, 'il va se retirer, moralement du moins.' Impotent and wearied! But
he had just won a most signal victory for good sense and humanity. Why
was it the only one? If Robespierre was able to save Théot, why could he
not save Cécile Renault?
Cécile Renault was a young seamstress who was found one evening at the
door of Robespierre's lodging, calling out in a state of exaltation that
she would fain see what a tyrant looked like. She was arrested, and upon
her were found two little knives used for the purposes of her trade.
That she should be arrested and imprisoned was natural enough. The times
were charged with deadly fire. People had not forgotten that Marat had
been murdered in his own house. Only a few days before Cécile Renault's
visit to Robespierre, an assassin had fired a pistol at Collot d'Herbois
on the staircase of his apartment. We may make allowance for the
excitement of the hour, and Robespierre had as much right to play the
martyr, as had Lewis the Fifteenth after the incident of Damiens' rusty
pen-knife. But the histrionic exigencies of the chief of a faction ought
not to be pushed too far. And it was a monstrous crime that because
Robespierre found it convenient to pose as sacrificial victim at the
Club, therefore he should have had no scruple in seeing not only the
wretched Cécile, but her father, her aunt, and one of her brothers, all
despatched to the guillotine in the red shirt of parricide, as agents of
Pitt and Coburg, and assassins of the father of the land. This was
exactly two days after he had shown his decisive power in the affair of
the religious illuminists. The only possible conclusion open to a plain
man after weighing and putting aside all the sophisms with which this
affair has been obscured, is that Robespierre interfered in the one case
because its further prosecution would have tended to make him
ridiculous, and he did not interfere in the other, because the more
exaggerated, the more melodramatic, the more murderous it was made, the
more interesting an object would he seem in the eyes of his adorers.
The second fact bearing on Robespierre's humanity is this. He had
encouraged the formation and stimulated the activity of popular
commissions, who should provide victims for the Revolutionary Tribunal.
On the Second of Messidor (June 20) a list containing one hundred and
thirty-eight names was submitted for the ratification of the Committee.
The Committee endorsed the bloody document, and the last signature of
the endorsement is that of him, who had resigned a post in his youth
rather than be a party to putting a man to death. As was observed at the
time, Robespierre in doing this, suppressed his pique against his
colleagues, in order to take part in a measure, that was a sort of
complement to his Law of Prairial.
From these two circumstances, then, even if there were no other, we are
justified in inferring that Robespierre was struck by no remorse at the
thought that it was his law which had unbound the hands of the horrible
genie of civil murder. His mind was wholly absorbed in the calculations
of a frigid egoism. His intelligence, as we have always to remember, was
very dim. He only aimed at one thing at once, and that was seldom
anything very great or far-reaching. He was a man of peering and
obscured vision in face of practical affairs. In passing the Law of
Prairial, his designs--and they were meritorious and creditable designs
enough in themselves--had been directed against the corrupt chiefs, such
as Tallien and Fouché, and against the fierce and coarse spirits of the
Committee of General Security, such as Vadier and Voulland. Robespierre
was above all things a precisian. He had a sentimental sympathy with the
common people in the abstract, but his spiritual pride, his pedantry,
his formalism, his personal fastidiousness, were all wounded to the very
quick by the kind of men whom the Revolution had thrown to the surface.
Gouverneur Morris, then the American minister, describes most of the
members of the two Committees as the very dregs of humanity, with whom
it is a stain to have any dealings; as degraded men only worthy of the
profoundest contempt. Danton had said: 'Robespierre is the least of a
scoundrel of any of the band.' The Committee of General Security
represented the very elements by which Robespierre was most revolted.
They offended his respectability; their evil manners seemed to tarnish
that good name which his vanity hoped to make as revered all over
Europe, as it already was among his partisans in France. It was
indispensable therefore to cut them off from the revolutionary
government, just as Hébert and as Danton had been cut off. His
colleagues of Public Safety refused to lend themselves to this.
Henceforth, with characteristically narrow tenacity, he looked round for
new combinations, but, so far as I can see, with no broader design than
to enable him to punish these particular objects of his very just
detestation.
The position of sections and interests which ended in the Revolution of
Thermidor, is one of the most extraordinarily intricate and entangled in
the history of faction. It would take a volume to follow out all the
peripeteias of the drama. Here we can only enumerate in a few sentences
the parties to the contest and the conditions of the game. The reader
will easily discern the difficulty in Robespierre's way of making an
effective combination. First, there were the two Committees. Of these
the one, the General Security, was thoroughly hostile to Robespierre;
its members, as we have said, were wild and hardy spirits, with no
political conception, and with a great contempt for fine phrases and
philosophical principles. They knew Robespierre's hatred for them, and
they heartily returned it. They were the steadfast centre of the
changing schemes which ended in his downfall. The Committee of Public
Safety was divided. Carnot hated Saint Just, and Collot d'Herbois hated
Robespierre, and Billaud had a sombre distrust of Robespierre's
counsels. Shortly speaking, the object of the Billaudists was to retain
their power, and their power was always menaced from two quarters, the
Convention and Paris. If they let Robespierre have his own way against
his enemies, would they not be at his mercy whenever he chose to devise
a popular insurrection against them? Yet if they withstood Robespierre,
they could only do so through the agency of the Convention, and to fall
back upon the Convention would be to give that body an express
invitation to resume the power that had, in the pressure of the crisis a
year before, been delegated to the Committee, and periodically renewed
afterwards. The dilemma of Billaud seemed desperate, and events
afterwards proved that it was so.
If we turn to the Convention, we find the position equally distracting.
They, too, feared another insurrection and a second decimation. If the
Right helped Robespierre to destroy the Fouchés and Vadiers, he would be
stronger than ever; and what security had they against a repetition of
the violence of the Thirty-first of May? If the Dantonists joined in
destroying Robespierre, they would be helping the Right, and what
security had they against a Girondin reaction? On the other hand, the
Centre might fairly hope, just what Billaud feared, that if the
Committee came to the Convention to crush Robespierre, that would end in
a combination strong enough to enable the Convention to crush the
Committees.
Much depended on military success. The victories of the generals were
the great strength of the Committee. For so long it would be difficult
to turn opinion against a triumphant administration. 'At the first
defeat,' Robespierre had said to Barère, 'I await you.' But the defeat
did not come. The plotting went on with incessant activity; on one hand,
Robespierre, aided by Saint Just and Couthon, strengthening himself at
the Jacobin Club, and through that among the sections; on the other, the
Mountain and the Committee of General Security trying to win over the
Right, more contemptuously christened the Marsh or the Belly, of the
Convention. The Committee of Public Safety was not yet fully decided how
to act.
At the end of the first week of Thermidor, Robespierre could endure the
tension no longer. He had tried to fortify his nerves for the struggle
by riding, but with so little success that he was lifted off his horse
fainting. He endeavoured to steady himself by diligent pistol-practice.
But nothing gave him initiative and the sinews of action. Saint Just
urged him to raise Paris. Some bold men proposed to carry off the
members of the Committee bodily from their midnight deliberations.
Robespierre declined, and fell back on what he took to be his greatest
strength and most unfailing resource; he prepared a speech. On the
Eighth of Thermidor he delivered it to the Convention, amid intense
excitement both within its walls and without. All Paris knew that they
were now on the eve of one more of the famous Days; the revolution of
Thermidor had begun.
The speech of the Eighth Thermidor has seemed to men of all parties
since a masterpiece of tactical ineptitude. If Robespierre had been a
statesman instead of a phrasemonger, he had a clear course. He ought to
have taken the line of argument that Danton would have taken. That is to
say, he ought to have identified himself fully with the interests and
security of the Convention; to have accepted the growing resolution to
close the Terror; to have boldly pressed the abolition of the Committee
of General Security, and the removal from the Committee of Public Safety
of Billaud, Collot, Barère; to have proposed to send about fifty persons
to Cayenne for life; and to have urged a policy of peace with the
foreign powers. This was the substantial wisdom and real interest of the
position. The task was difficult, because his hearers had the best
possible reasons for knowing that the author of the Law of Prairial was
a Terrorist on principle. And in truth we know that Robespierre had no
definite intention of erecting clemency into a rule. He had not mental
strength enough to throw off the profound apprehension, which the
incessant alarms of the last five years had engendered in him; and the
only device, that he could imagine for maintaining the republic against
traitors, was to stimulate the rigour of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
If, however, Robespierre lacked the grasp which might have made him the
representative of a broad and stable policy, it was at least his
interest to persuade the men of the Plain that he entertained no designs
against them. And this is what in his own mind he intended. But to do it
effectively, it was clearly best to tell his hearers, in so many words,
whom he really wished them to strike. That would have relieved the
majority, and banished the suspicion which had been busily fomented by
his enemies, that he had in his pocket a long list of their names, for
proscription. But Robespierre, having for the first time in his life
ventured on aggressive action without the support of a definite party,
faltered. He dared not to designate his enemies face to face and by
name. Instead of that, he talked vaguely of conspirators against the
republic, and calumniators of himself. There was not a single bold,
definite, unmistakable sentence in the speech from first to last. The
men of the Plain were insecure and doubtful; they had no certainty that
among conspirators and calumniators he did not include too many of
themselves. People are not so readily seized by grand phrases, when
their heads are at stake. The sitting was long, and marked by changing
currents and reverses. When they broke up, all was left uncertain.
Robespierre had suffered a check. Billaud felt that he could no longer
hesitate in joining the combination against his colleague. Each party
was aware that the next day must seal the fate of one or other of them.
There is a legend that in the evening Robespierre walked in the Champs
Elysées with his betrothed, accompanied as usual by his faithful dog,
Brount. They admired the purple of the sunset, and talked of the
prospect of a glorious to-morrow. But this is apocryphal. The evening
was passed in no lover's saunterings, but amid the storm and uproar of
the Club. He went to the Jacobins to read over again his speech of the
day. 'It is my testament of death,' he said, amid the passionate
protestations of his devoted followers. He had been talking for the last
three years of his willingness to drink the hemlock, and to offer his
breast to the poniards of tyrants. That was a fashion of the speech of
the time, and in earlier days it had been more than a fashion of speech,
for Brunswick would have given them short shrift. But now, when he
talked of his last testament, Robespierre did not intend it to be so if
he could prevent it. When he went to rest that night, he had a tolerably
calm hope that he should win the next day's battle in the Convention,
when he was aware that Saint Just would attack the Committees openly and
directly. If he would have allowed his band to invade the Pavillon de
Flore, and carry off or slay the Committees who sat up through the
night, the battle would have been won when he awoke. His friends are
justified in saying that his strong respect for legality was the cause
of his ruin.
Men in all ages have had a superstitious fondness for connecting awful
events in their lives with portents and signs among the outer elements.
It was noticed that the heat during the terrible days of Thermidor was
more intense than had been known within the memory of man. The
thermometer never fell below sixty-five degrees in the coolest part of
the night, and in the daytime men and women and beasts of burden fell
down dead in the streets. By five o'clock in the morning of the Ninth
Thermidor, the galleries of the Convention were filled by a boisterous
and excited throng. At ten o'clock the proceedings began as usual with
the reading of correspondence from the departments and from the armies.
Robespierre, who had been escorted from his lodgings by the usual body
of admirers, instead of taking his ordinary seat, remained standing by
the side of the tribune. It is a familiar fact that moments of appalling
suspense are precisely those in which we are most ready involuntarily to
note a trifle; everybody observed that Robespierre wore the coat of
violet-blue silk and the white nankeens in which a few weeks previously
he had done honour to the Supreme Being.
The galleries seemed as enthusiastic as ever. The men of the Plain and
the Marsh had lost the abject mien with which they usually cowered
before Robespierre's glance; they wore a courageous air of judicial
reserve. The leaders of the Mountain wandered restlessly to and fro
among the corridors. At noon Tallien saw that Saint Just had ascended
the tribune. Instantly he rushed down into the chamber, knowing that
the battle had now begun in fierce earnest. Saint Just had not got
through two sentences, before Tallien interrupted him. He began to
insist with energy that there should be an end to the equivocal phrases
with which Paris had been too long alarmed by the Triumvirate. Billaud,
fearing to be outdone in the attack, hastily forced his way to the
tribune, broke into what Tallien was saying, and proceeded dexterously
to discredit Robespierre's allies without at once assailing Robespierre
himself. Le Bas ran in a fury to stop him; Collot d'Herbois, the
president, declared Le Bas out of order; the hall rang with cries of 'To
prison! To the Abbey!' and Le Bas was driven from the tribune. This was
the beginning of the tempest. Robespierre's enemies knew that they were
fighting for their lives, and this inspired them with a strong and
resolute power that is always impressive in popular assemblies. He still
thought himself secure. Billaud pursued his accusations. Robespierre, at
last, unable to control himself, scaled the tribune. There suddenly
burst forth from Tallien and his partisans vehement shouts of 'Down with
the tyrant! down with the tyrant!' The galleries were swept by a wild
frenzy of vague agitation; the president's bell poured loud incessant
clanging into the tumult; the men of the Plain held themselves firm and
silent; in the tribune raged ferocious groups, Tallien menacing
Robespierre with a dagger, Billaud roaring out proposals to arrest this
person and that Robespierre gesticulating, threatening, yelling,
shrieking. His enemies knew that if he were once allowed to get a
hearing, his authority might even yet overawe the waverers. A
penetrative word or a heroic gesture might lose them the day. The
majority of the chamber still hesitated. They called for Barère, in
whose adroit faculty for discovering the winning side they had the
confidence of long experience. Robespierre, recovering some of his calm,
and perceiving now that he had really to deal with a serious revolt,
again asked to be heard before Barère. But the cries for Barère were
louder than ever. Barère spoke, in a sense hostile to Robespierre, but
warily and without naming him.
Then there was a momentary lull. The Plain was uncertain. The battle
might even now turn either way. Robespierre made another attempt to
speak, but Tallien with intrepid fury broke out into a torrent of louder
and more vehement invective. Robespierre's shrill voice was heard in
disjected snatches, amidst the violent tones of Tallien, the yells of
the president calling Robespierre to order, the murderous clanging of
the bell. Then came that supreme hour of the struggle, whose tale has
been so often told, when Robespierre turned from his old allies of the
Mountain, and succeeded in shrieking out an appeal to the probity and
virtue of the Right and the Plain. To his horror, even these despised
men, after a slight movement, remained mute. Then his cheeks blanched,
and the sweat ran down his face. But anger and scornful impatience
swiftly came back and restored him. _President of assassins_, he cried
out to Thuriot, _for the last time I ask to be heard. Thou canst not
speak_, called one, _the blood of Danton chokes thee_. He flung himself
down the steps of the tribune, and rushed towards the benches of the
Right. _Come no further_, cried another, _Vergniaud and Condorcet sat
here_. He regained the tribune, but his speech was gone. He was reduced
to the dregs of an impotent and gasping voiceless gesticulation, like
the strife of one in a nightmare.