THE FALL OF THE HÉBERTISTS AND DANTONISTS.
♦The Army.♦
While the internal condition of France was such as has been described,
her enemies were being successfully held in check on the frontiers.
After the great conscription decreed by the Convention in August had
been effected, there were in all some million of men in arms. The
nation might hate and despise its fanatic, tyrannical, and cruel
Government, but it none the less remained proud of the changes which
the revolution had effected, and was ready to endure the heavy yoke
laid on it for the sake of defending France against interference from
abroad. The nation was in reality far more truly represented by the
army than by the Government. The soldiers, like the mass of those
who stayed at home, were intensely enthusiastic in defence of their
country, but took no part in the strife of internal factions. The
Government was fully alive to the fact that it had not, except in a
passive sense, the support of the large forces which necessity had
compelled it to bring together, and the leaders in Paris lived always
with the fear before them that some general would follow the example
of Dumouriez, and turn against his employers. The Hébertists sought
to weed out of the army all officers who by birth belonged to the old
nobility. Such were cashiered by hundreds, and their places given to
men from the ranks. Even these new officers, however, became objects of
suspicion if they displayed military capacity, and won the affection
of their men; and the generals were on the merest pretext condemned
of treachery or treason by the revolutionary court, and were sent to
the scaffold. Deputies in mission acted as spies on the conduct of all
superior officers, reported their words and actions to the Committee
of Public Safety, attended at military councils, and were held by
the soldiers in more awe than the commander-in-chief. All the more
important movements of the armies were directed from Paris, where the
plans of campaigns were laid down by Carnot, one of the members of the
Committee of Public Safety. Carnot had been educated as a military
engineer, and his considerable abilities were made available by his
indefatigable energy and his intense enthusiasm for his work. In the
face of the many obstacles which the disorganisation of the Government
presented, he devoted himself entirely to the task of organising the
armies, and of insuring that the war which extended over so wide a
field should be conducted with intelligence and method. The success
which the French attained was undoubtedly in great part owing to his
unremitting exertions. Hitherto the army had been divided into two
bodies, distinguished from one another by pay, uniform, and system of
advancement--namely, troops of the line which had formed the army of
the monarchy, and new battalions raised since the beginning of the war.
♦The French Army.♦ In February 1793, the Convention had determined
to abolish these distinctions, and to fuse in common regiments the
troops of the line and the new recruits, and the operation was actually
carried into effect during the following winter. Thus, in place of the
old royal army there had come into existence a wholly new army, the
creation of the revolution. The troops lacked training and discipline,
but were ready to fight continually against superior numbers, had
confidence in their officers, and were not easily shaken by reverses.
Many officers were unable to read and write, but against this defect
was to be set the advantage that military talent rapidly found its way
to the front. Two-thirds of the regimental officers were elected by
those whom they were to command, one-third was advanced by time of
service. The appointment of the generals the Government reserved to
itself.
[Illustration: THE RHINE
E. Weller.
]
♦Campaign in Belgium.♦
After the surrender of Condé and Valenciennes, the forces of the allies
in Flanders separated. The Duke of York, against Coburg’s desire, went
west to lay siege to Dunkirk, while Coburg himself invested Le Quesnoi.
The Duke’s forces were in two divisions. He himself with 20,000 men
besieged Dunkirk; 15,000 Hanoverians under Freitag remained a few miles
inland to watch the enemy. The commander of the garrison opened the
dykes and flooded the country, cutting off communication between the
two divisions, and confining the Duke’s retreat eastwards to Furnes,
along the sea coast. The French General Houchard, bringing together
50,000 men, overpowered Freitag’s 15,000 at the village of Hondschoote,
and drove them back on Furnes (September 8). The Duke of York, hastily
raising the siege, effected by a night march his retreat to Furnes, and
afterwards rejoined the Austrians. Houchard, accused of treason and
of neglecting to follow up his victory, was guillotined. In his place
was appointed General Jourdan, who in 1791 had entered the army as a
volunteer. Le Quesnoi surrendered to Coburg, and the allies next laid
siege to Maubeuge. Jourdan, bringing together a large force, defeated
at Wattignies 18,000 Austrians, stationed south of the river to guard
against his advance (October 16). Coburg in consequence raised the
siege, and the armies on both sides retired into winter quarters. The
allies during the campaign had won three French fortresses--Condé,
Valenciennes, and Le Quesnoi.
♦Campaign on the Rhine.♦
After the fall of Mainz the war on the Rhine had flagged. The Austrians
proposed to turn south and conquer Alsace, the Prussians to lay siege
to Saarlouis. The Austrian plan was adopted, but not vigorously
pursued. At Berlin the final settlement of affairs in Poland was
regarded as being of more importance to Prussia than anything that
might happen in France; and the advisers of Frederick William were
unwilling that Prussian troops should shed their blood in conquering
Alsace for the Emperor. The French occupied a strong position behind
the Lauter, called the lines of Weissenburg. After many weeks’ delay
these lines were stormed by a combined attack of the Austrian and
Prussian forces (October 11–13). The Austrian general Wurmser then
pressed on southwards, eager to reach Strasburg; while Brunswick, who
knew that he would give offence at Berlin if he engaged the Prussian
troops in a winter campaign in Alsace, blockaded Landau, and began
to take up winter quarters in the Vosges. The allied army in this
quarter was consequently spread out in a long thin line, extending
from Kaiserslautern to Hagenau and Dussenheim. The French forces,
divided into two armies, were commanded by two young and talented
generals--the Rhine army by Pichegru, the Moselle army by Hoche. Hoche
at first made ineffectual efforts to storm Brunswick’s positions round
Kaiserslautern, while Pichegru attacked the Austrians. Directed by
Carnot, Hoche then placed a portion of his army at Pichegru’s disposal,
after which a fierce and unremitting assault was opened on Wurmser’s
positions. The Austrian line, broken through and surrounded, gave
way on all sides. Wurmser, casting the blame of the disaster on the
Prussians, retreated across the Rhine, and Brunswick was compelled
to follow him. The siege of Landau was thus raised, and the French
reoccupied Spires and Worms (December).
The victory of Wattignies, and still more the expulsion of the allies
from Alsace, affected the relations of the factions which were
struggling for ascendancy in Paris. The Montagnards resented the
subserviency in which they were held by the Commune and by the two
Committees; and as the danger of invasion decreased, the stronger grew
their desire to shake off the oppressive yoke which they had laid
upon themselves by the expulsion of the Girondists. Only a very few
of their number really entertained the same ideas as the Hébertists;
whilst outside the Committees of Public Safety and General Security,
there was scarcely a deputy who did not resent the tyranny exercised by
these Committees. Yet the Montagnards could not regain independence.
They could not appeal to the deputies of the centre, who crouched in
subservience even greater than their own before the Committees and the
Commune. They were themselves without courage or union. All sense of
political honour was dead, and in order to avoid giving offence, where
to do so was dangerous, men were prepared to retract their own words,
and to sacrifice their fellows without compunction. Some Montagnards,
instigated by fear for their own lives, obtained the adoption of a
decree to the effect that the Convention would suffer its members to
speak in self-defence when charges were made against them (November
10). A few days afterwards, on the demand of the Committee of Public
Safety, the Convention repealed this decree, and ordered the arrest of
four deputies, including its proposers against whom a general charge of
conspiring against the Republic was laid by the Committee.
♦The work of the Convention.♦
Happily, this tale of crouching submission to tyranny does not fill
the whole of the annals of the Convention. Men ordinarily silent in
the Convention sought shelter in private committees appointed for the
preparation of special laws. In these, Montagnards and deputies of the
centre still worked side by side, elaborating legislative projects for
the advance of education, the reform of the civil law, the improvement
of agriculture, the draining of marshes, the suppression of mendicity
and the relief of the poor, and others of similar character. Although
much of their labour produced no results, still a considerable
amount of most important legislation was effected, which dated its
commencement from the times when the Girondists had been in power, and
which was far more truly characteristic of the Convention as a body
than the bloody laws which it passed at the dictation of the Committee
of Public Safety speaking in the name of the Jacobins and of the
Commune.
The Constituent Assembly had retained, until the proprietors could be
compensated, feudal duties presumed to be due for a grant of land. The
Legislative Assembly, following a theory which had been entertained by
many lawyers--that land was originally free--had decreed the abolition
of all duties without indemnity, except in cases where the proprietors
could prove the original title, showing that the duties were really
due for a grant of land. This as a rule was impossible, the duties
being due by prescription only. The new law gave rise to suits, and
the Convention destroyed the last vestiges of the feudal system by
decreeing the abolition without indemnity of all duties which bore a
feudal character. Before the ejection of the Girondists entails were
abolished, and parents were also prohibited from making wills favouring
one child more than another. Parents were now further prohibited from
giving more than a tenth of their property to strangers, or more than
a sixth to collateral relations. Illegitimate children were put on the
same footing as legitimate. The Legislative Assembly had instituted
civil marriages, and had permitted divorce, on the mere ground of
incompatibility of temper, with the consent of both parties. A new
civil code, clear and simple, and in accordance with the legislation
of the revolutionary Assemblies, was being prepared to take the place
of the chaos of old laws and customs. The work, however, was but in
progress, and the new code was not promulgated by the Convention. Negro
slavery was abolished, and men of colour in the colonies received the
rights of French citizens. A decree was passed for the establishment
of primary schools to be maintained by the State. Instruction was
to be gratuitous, attendance compulsory, and no religious teaching
allowed. Laws were also passed for the institution of three schools
of medicine and a school of natural history at Paris. But little was
in reality effected for the instruction of any class. Money and power
were both wanting. Instigated by its Committee of Public Instruction,
the Convention repeatedly ordered the preservation of the valuable
monastic libraries. None the less, the books were neglected, plundered,
and scattered. Primary schools, if opened, were, in the country,
unattended. Of higher education little was to be had. Suspected of
reactionary tendencies, all academies and learned societies had been
broken up. Most colleges had disappeared; a few dragged on a feeble
existence.
♦Cambon’s financial measures.♦
By the side of the two committees of Government, the Committee of
Finance occupied an important and, to some extent, an independent
position. The Committee of Public Safety possessed no member prepared
to undertake the direction of the finances, and it was therefore
obliged to leave the initiative to others. The deputy Cambon, who sat
on the confines of the Mountain, practically occupied the position of
Minister of Finance; and several laws introduced by him were adopted,
designed to restore equilibrium between expenditure and revenue, and
to prevent increase in the number of assignats in circulation. The
State possessed a large number of creditors, some lenders before the
revolution, others since; whilst to others compensation was due for
abolished offices. All these creditors were put on the same footing.
Capital, if due to them, was made irrecoverable, and in all cases five
per cent. interest given. The old titles were destroyed and the new
entered in a common book, called the Great Book of the Public Debt.
The State gained by the operation, more especially in the case of
loans contracted before the revolution, often on very onerous terms. A
new source of revenue was sought in the imposition of a forced loan,
according to the law passed in the spring. The lenders were to be
repaid in confiscated lands. This loan was expected to bring in the
large sum of 43,750,000_l._, and assignats to that amount were to be
withdrawn from circulation.
Efforts to restore the finances were, however, as fruitless as efforts
to advance education. While millions were being squandered in the
departments, taxes imposed by the Convention remained unpaid. The
forced loan never brought in more than eight millions. Cambon vainly
reiterated complaints that but little of the sums irregularly raised
in the departments ever reached the treasury. So long as the Commune
exercised power, it was impossible for the Convention to take any
effectual steps for the enforcement of its decrees.
Thus it came about from a variety of causes that the existing
Government gave dissatisfaction to many of those who took part in it.
Even the most cruel and unprincipled of the Montagnards resented their
subservient position. The institution of the Worship of Reason gave
offence to many of them. The wanton waste of property and destruction
of life going on in the chief commercial towns of France, in Lyons,
Toulon, Bordeaux, and Nantes, excited disgust if not pity. Now that the
country was no longer in any immediate danger of invasion, men, before
indifferent as to what was done so long as the enemy was repulsed,
awoke to the horror of the scenes that were being enacted round them.
The Dantonists sincerely desired to stay the action of the guillotine.
Having been pushed aside, since the reconstitution of the Committee
of Public Safety in July, by men more fanatic and sanguinary than
themselves, they were visited by remorse as they experienced their
powerlessness to hold in check passions which they had themselves
helped to unloose. ‘I cannot forget,’ wrote Desmoulins, warmly attached
to his own wife and child, ‘that the men they are killing by thousands
have also wives and children.’
♦The Hébertists attacked by Robespierre.♦
Besides creating discontent in the Mountain, the ascendancy of the
Commune gave dissatisfaction to the Committee of Public Safety, and in
particular to Robespierre. Robespierre was opposed to the principles of
which Hébert had declared himself the special champion. He put himself
forward, indeed, as being as well as Hébert the people’s friend, but
between neither the aims nor the characters of the two men did any real
similarity exist. Robespierre had no sympathy for a movement which
idolised ignorance, rags, and vice, and made the Republic the prey
of bands of rapacious and unscrupulous adventurers. While Hébert, by
the adoption of rude manners and coarse language, sought popularity,
Robespierre always maintained propriety both in language and in dress,
continuing even to wear his hair powdered, as had been the custom of
educated men under the monarchy. Further, the atheistic doctrines which
Hébert professed were to Robespierre essentially repugnant. Robespierre
was a theist of the school of Rousseau, and Rousseau had said that men
could not be good citizens who did not believe in a special providence
and in a future life, and that atheism was the one doctrine the public
profession of which no wise legislator would tolerate.
In the Jacobins Robespierre attacked Hébert and the Commune on the
ground of their intolerance. Those, he said, who persecute priests are
more fanatic than the priests themselves. Atheism is aristocratic.
The idea of a Supreme Being who watches over oppressed innocence and
punishes triumphant crime is wholly popular. If God did not exist, we
should have to invent him.
Thus, both by principle and ambition, Robespierre was urged on to seek
the destruction of the Hébertists and of the Commune. His colleagues
on the two committees, though most of them disliked him personally,
and were afraid of his gaining increased ascendancy for himself,
shared his desire to break the power of the Commune. As they grew more
accustomed to the exercise of authority, they became impatient at
having to share it with a body whose will had always to be taken into
consideration, and by whose action their own was often thwarted. The
Montagnards hated the tyranny of the two committees, but they hated
the tyranny of the Commune yet more, and were willing to take part in
overthrowing it, neglectful of the probability that by so doing they
would yet more securely rivet the chains in which the committees held
them. In the Convention the Hébertist generals and agents in La Vendée
were incessantly accused of misconduct and incapacity, and of being
responsible for whatever reverses had taken place. A law was passed
intended to centralise power in the hands of the two committees, and
to deprive the Commune of the instruments by means of which it secured
ascendancy in the departments. The revolutionary committees of Paris
were put under the supervision of the Committee of General Security.
The Commune was deprived of the right of sending agents into the
departments. The revolutionary army of Paris was for the time left in
existence, through fear lest if an attempt were made to disband it, it
might rise against the Convention, but the revolutionary armies in the
departments were to be suppressed. No taxes were to be imposed without
the sanction of the Convention. The law officers belonging to districts
and municipalities, hitherto elected, were made dependent on the
central Government, and received the name of national agents (December
4).
♦Struggle between Dantonists and Hébertists.♦
About the same time that this law was adopted, Desmoulins, encouraged
by Robespierre, began the publication of a paper, the _Old Cordelier_,
in which he first confined himself to denouncing the Hébertists, but
went on to denounce the Terror itself as a great deception, and to
compare the state of things in France to that which prevailed under
the worst of the Roman emperors. The law of treason, he said, was
extended to words; the inhabitants of towns were killed in masses.
Grief, pity, looks of disapprobation, silence itself, constituted State
crimes. It was a crime to be rich; a crime to give shelter to a friend.
Is it possible, he asked, that the state of things which constituted
despotism and the worst of governments when Tacitus wrote, constitutes
to-day liberty and the best of possible worlds? You wish to exterminate
your enemies by the guillotine. What folly! For every man you kill you
make ten new enemies. If we do not understand by liberty the carrying
out of principles, never was there an idolatry so stupid as ours, nor
one that costs more. Liberty is no operatic singer promenading in a red
cap. Liberty is happiness, equality, justice, the Declaration of Rights
itself. If I am to recognise her presence, open the prison doors to
those 200,000 citizens whom you call ‘suspected.’
Thus was the Commune attacked on three sides at once--by Montagnards,
who desired the independence of the Convention; by the Committee of
Public Safety, which sought the extension of its own authority; and by
Dantonists, who sought to hold in check the Terror. Hébert was afraid
to enter into contention with Robespierre. By the atheistic movement
he had sought and attained notoriety, but its active supporters were
few, and there was no probability that any considerable body of men
would rally round him in its defence. Chaumette, at the Commune, made
a speech on the folly of attempting to suppress religious opinions by
force. Hébert went further, and made a formal denial of atheism at the
Jacobins. But while seeking to curry favour with Robespierre, Hébert
and his followers opened the more vehement attack on the Dantonists.
Here they were surer of their ground, for all who had been actively
engaged in the work of destruction dreaded the first step of reaction,
lest vengeance should overtake themselves. The Cordeliers erased the
names of Danton and Desmoulins from their list of members. Collot,
the director of the atrocities committed at Lyons, who had returned
to Paris in December, expressed amazement that the first who spoke of
clemency had not been sent to the scaffold. Amongst the twelve men who
formed the Committee of Public Safety no good understanding existed.
Six concerned themselves with special branches of administration, but
took no part in directing the general action of the Government. The
remaining six were not all of one mind. Couthon and St. Just were
devoted adherents of Robespierre. Barère, originally a deputy of the
centre, and a temporiser between the Mountain and the Gironde, was
indifferent whether Robespierre or Hébert succumbed, so long as he
found himself on the winning side. Billaud and Collot, who acted
together, were the two most sanguinary men on the committee. They
were connected with the Hébertists. They had no quarrel with the
establishment of the Worship of Reason, and dreaded, by the destruction
of Hébert, to give Robespierre an opportunity of domineering over
themselves. As members of the committee, however, they disliked
the rivalry of the Commune, and they were besides afraid both of
Robespierre’s enmity and of the triumph of the Dantonists. Accordingly,
they were prepared to sacrifice Hébert, so long as they could secure
themselves against reaction by putting Danton to death as well. On
his side, Robespierre was prepared to sacrifice Danton. He could not
join the Dantonist reaction against the Terror without imperilling
his influence at the Jacobins, and forcing Collot and Billaud to make
common cause with Hébert. Moreover, were the Hébertists suppressed
by the triumph of the Dantonists, Robespierre would have to face
the contingency of the Mountain shaking off the control of the two
committees.
♦Robespierre and the Jacobins.♦
The Jacobin club was the field where the battle between Robespierre and
Hébert was first fought out. In this society, which was Robespierre’s
stronghold, Hébert was powerless to contend against him. Many of the
frequenters of the club were indeed Hébertists, but their influence
was small compared with that of Robespierre and his supporters. All
the small tradesmen and artisans who, uninfluenced by sordid motives,
still took interest in political affairs, idolised Robespierre. While
Hébert had the adherence of the unprincipled and vicious only, who were
sure to abandon him in time of peril, Robespierre had the affection of
partisans ready to stand by him, and in case of need to die for him.
His undoubted integrity, his constant talk of virtue and morality, the
reserve of his manner, the very dryness of his language, made a deep
impression upon sincere but narrow and fervent minds. The rough men
and women who frequented the galleries of the Jacobins listened to him
with rapt attention, and applauded his words with such hearty energy
that persons who ventured amongst them without imitating their conduct
became objects of remark. The society which Robespierre thus dominated
was a real political power, and had for long been the instrument by
aid of which he had been able to assume precedence of his colleagues
in the Committee of Public Safety. Every resolution the club adopted
the Convention had ultimately to adopt; and every individual whom the
club proscribed, were he a minister, a general, a deputy, or any other,
went in the course of a few days to prison and the guillotine. No man
was regarded as a good patriot who was not a Jacobin, and hundreds of
persons who never entered the place had, for the sake of security,
inscribed their names as members.
♦Fall of Hébertists and Dantonists.♦
Robespierre, as his habit was before he was sure of his path, adopted
an undecided attitude between the Hébertists and the Dantonists,
blaming the extreme, whether of excess or of moderation. The Hébertists
sought to strengthen their position in the club by attacking the
Dantonists; and it was only owing to Robespierre’s protection that
Desmoulins and others who had demanded the adoption of a more clement
policy, were able to maintain their footing in the society. Finally,
Robespierre secured his end by abandoning the Dantonists as victims to
the fanaticism and cruelty of his followers, whilst he openly sought
the proscription of the Hébertists. One after another, persons who had
either professed atheism or had displayed feelings of humanity, were
deprived of membership. The club became the tool of the Committee of
Public Safety, and none but the satellites of Robespierre and Collot
breathed freely in it. The Dantonists had no support to which to look
but the feeble and disunited Mountain. No one trusted his neighbour,
and each dreaded to oppose the will of the two committees, lest he
should afterwards be abandoned to their vengeance. Although the
Hébertists appeared more formidable, the danger of their being able
to overpower their adversaries was small. They could no longer rely
for support on the forces which had been at their disposal in July and
August. After the passing of the maximum laws they had played their
last card, and had no means left by which to move the populace to take
their side. On the contrary, it had become a constant effort on the
part of the Commune to prevent the gathering together of hungry crowds
in the streets, which might lead to a perfectly genuine explosion of
popular fury directed against itself. Every vestige of free political
life had been stamped out. The general assemblies of the sections only
met twice a week, and those attending them were paid. Clubs to which
many members belonged were viewed with suspicion and discountenanced.
The great maximum law of September, fixing prices at a third above what
they were in 1790, had ruined so many persons that it was abandoned as
untenable. A new law took as a basis the real cost of each article in
the place of production, allowed a certain percentage for carriage,
ten per cent. for the wholesale, and five per cent. for the retail
dealer. The tariff for Paris, which was published in March, excited
great discontent. Of the needier supporters of the Commune many had now
acquired booty or office, and hesitated to risk their lives by taking
up the cause of Hébert against Robespierre. The Committee of Public
Safety bid for the support of the idle and hungry by two laws, the one
(February 26) ordering the sequestration of property belonging to the
enemies of the revolution, the second (March 3) promising that means
should be taken to make provision for destitute patriots out of the
sequestered property. An attempt, headed by the Cordeliers, to get up
an insurrection against the Convention and the two committees failed.
Hébert and eighteen others were arrested and condemned to death by the
revolutionary court on the usual absurd charge of seeking to destroy
the Convention and to restore monarchy (March 24). A few days after
their execution came the turn of the Dantonists. Danton, Desmoulins,
and two other deputies were arrested in the night. The Convention
abandoned them on the demand of St. Just, without a voice speaking
in their defence (March 31). Danton, forewarned, had made no effort
to save himself. Can a man, he replied when urged to fly, take his
country with him on the soles of his shoes? By the court which he had
himself taken part in instituting, he and his friends were condemned as
monarchists and traitors to the Republic. No documents were produced,
and the accused were not suffered to make their defence. ‘On such a
day,’ said Danton in prison, ‘I caused to be erected the revolutionary
court. I ask pardon of God and man.’ Shortly afterwards a new batch
of victims was brought to the scaffold, some Hébertists, others
Dantonists. Amongst them was the widow of Hébert and the young widow
of Desmoulins, with whom, as well as with her husband, Robespierre had
lived on terms of close intimacy.