THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
♦Dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety.♦
The members of the Committee of Public Safety now concentrated all the
powers of government in their own hands. The Mountain was crushed
with Danton, the Commune with Hébert. The deputies in mission, who
before had joined the Hébertist party, now sought to guard their heads
by pursuing whatever line of action was indicated to them by the
committee. The Commune was reconstituted and placed under the direction
of two men devoted to Robespierre--its mayor, Fleuriot-Lescot, and
its national agent, Payan. The partisans of Hébert on civil and
revolutionary committees were replaced. The system of popular election
was abandoned even in form, and all reappointments were made either
by the committee itself, or by the Convention at its dictation. The
ministries were abolished, and the ministerial departments divided
between twelve commissions, on which new men were placed.
♦Aims of Robespierre.♦
Reports of the execution of the Hébertists penetrated the prison
walls, and aroused hope that the Terror itself was to come to an end.
Such hopes rapidly proved delusive. The dictatorship of the Committee
of Public Safety, founded by terror, rested on terror alone. Collot
and Billaud had no other thought than to perpetuate their rule by
continuing the system already in force. Robespierre was equally cruel,
not, as in their case, from mere disregard of the amount of blood
shed, but because he aimed at more, and regarded the guillotine as the
most facile instrument for the attainment of his ends. He could not be
satisfied with that which satisfied Billaud and Collot. Already the
most prominent man on the committee, he sought the first place in the
Republic, and to figure before Europe as the maintainer of virtue and
the regenerator of his country. He had learned of Rousseau to regard
as utterly hateful the state of society in the midst of which he had
grown up with its division of classes and glaring contrasts between
knowledge and ignorance, indolence and toil, luxury and squalor. Had
the power been his, he would have destroyed every vestige of it by
fusing all classes into one, abolishing vice and ignorance, with the
extremes of wealth and poverty, and giving to all citizens similar
interests, habits and pleasures. This ideal, which was Rousseau’s,
was always present in Robespierre’s mind, veiling from him his own
ambition; but it was vague, and he had no definite conception of
the manner in which its realisation should be attempted. He was not
a thinker or an organiser. Rousseau had suggested education and
legislation as possible means of regeneration. To these Robespierre
added nothing but the guillotine, the principle of extermination of
opponents. All who stood in his light he proscribed one after another,
as they appeared before him--the noble, the capitalist, the merchant,
the free-trader, the atheist, the fanatic, the merciful, the moderate,
the corrupt, the extortionate, and even the neutral man, until at last
the people whose praises were constantly on his lips dwindled down in
his mind to be no more than the Robespierrists, a few hundred ignorant
and credulous but fervent supporters and admirers.
♦St. Just.♦
Behind Robespierre was St. Just, a young man a little over twenty,
fanatic, self-confident and intolerant. In thought he was more
audacious than Robespierre, and his conceptions were more definite. He
was probably the most thorough-going disciple of Rousseau in France.
Like his master, he based his conceptions of what the government of
a great state ought to be on the institutions of the petty republics
of antiquity, and of all those republics the one which he selected
for imitation was, strangely enough, that of aristocratic Sparta.
But it was the despotism of Sparta, not its aristocracy, which he
admired. By means of Spartan institutions he thought to remould the
habits and customs of his countrymen. All boys were to be brought up
together in common schools. Every man was to marry, and every man to
work. Every man was to have friends, and to make every year a public
declaration of their names in the temple of the Supreme Being. If he
committed a crime, his friends were to be banished from the Republic.
In short, by aid of laws and state institutions of this character,
St. Just believed it possible to give to the French people simple,
frugal, and industrious habits. Circumstances, he said, were of
no importance, except to men who fear death. Meanwhile, until the
necessary institutions should be established and the habits and beliefs
of his countrymen transformed, St. Just, like Robespierre, fell back
on the guillotine in order to get rid of those who stood in the way of
the accomplishment of his ideal. Until men were virtuous in his sense
of the word, the Republic could rest upon terror alone. What, asked
this young, fanatical, and unscrupulous theorist, would those have who
reject alike as principles of government virtue and terror?
Besides fanaticism and love of power, there existed a material motive
for the continuance of the Terror. Resources were secured for the
service of the State. As soon as a person was imprisoned his capital
was sequestered and his revenue confiscated. When he was condemned
to die, the capital itself was confiscated. But the promise held out
before the arrest of the Hébertists, that provision should be made
for the indigent out of sequestered property, was never carried into
effect. Further, purchasers of state lands lost their lives by scores,
and thus national property came a second time into the market as
security for the paper money. Cynical words ascribed to Barère exactly
expressed the satisfaction felt by many at these financial results of
the guillotine. ‘We coin money,’ he was reported to have said, ‘on the
Place de la Révolution.’
The result of the dictatorship of the committee and of Robespierre’s
ascendancy was, therefore, that the Terror was reduced to a system.
Those who hoped for a return to a more clement policy were grievously
disappointed. The revolutionary army of Paris was disbanded. Special
courts in the departments, with the exception of some twenty, were
suppressed, and political prisoners sent to Paris for trial. Justice,
probity, and virtue were declared to be the order of the day, and the
penalties of imprisonment and death were suspended over the heads of
those who defrauded the Republic. The bands of villains, which, under
the name of revolutionary armies, were still the curse of several
departments, were broken up and their leaders sent to the scaffold.
Encouragement was promised to trade and agriculture, and the release
ordered of artisans and labourers in country districts against whom no
definite charges had been brought. The number of executions at Paris
rose in proportion as it decreased in the departments, from 60 to 155,
and then to 354 a month. In Bordeaux, Arras, and other towns where
special courts were retained, executions were recommenced. A new court
was established by the committee at Orange, which in forty-two sittings
condemned to death 331 persons, imprisoned 98, and acquitted 159. Five
Girondist outlaws still hiding in the Gironde were hunted out. Guadet
and Barbaroux were executed at Bordeaux, the bodies of Pétion and Buzot
were found dead in a field.
♦War in La Vendée.♦
In La Vendée a war of extermination was being carried on. After the
destruction of the great Vendean army in December, the country was
quiet through exhaustion, and by the adoption of a clement policy the
insurrection might have been brought to an end. But at the Commune,
where Hébert was still in power, the idea had been entertained of
annihilating the inhabitants and of confiscating their land. Under the
command-in-chief of Turreau, a man as brutal as Collot himself, twelve
columns marched into the interior from different points, killing all
living things that came in their way, and destroying villages, farms,
crops, ovens, and corn-mills. Even towns which they did not occupy
were pillaged and burnt, and those inhabitants who had throughout
supported the Republic were required to quit the country on pain of
being themselves treated as brigands. The war flared up again on all
sides. The population of entire villages, taking their goods and stock
with them, sought refuge in their forests, whence they carried on an
incessant guerilla warfare against the enemy. The isolated republican
posts were either stormed or starved out. If the soldiers had corn they
had no means of grinding it, because all the mills had been destroyed.
Supplies from Saumur and Nantes were cut off on the way. The men fell
ill by thousands, and the reduction of the country appeared less near
completion than when Turreau’s columns first began their work of
destruction.
♦The Hague Treaty.♦
After the disastrous ending of the Rhine campaign in December 1793,
the alliance between Austria and Prussia practically came to an end.
Prussia having acquired her so-called compensation in Poland, her
generals and diplomatists were desirous of bringing the war with France
to a speedy termination. The country was poor, and without interest in
its continuation. An important consideration, however, restrained the
Government from rashly entering on a peace policy. Prussia was bound,
for the sake of her headship in North Germany, to protect the northern
States against invasion. The King, moreover, had personally a strong
disinclination to desert the coalition before the existing government
in France was overthrown. A middle path was found. Prussia declared
her readiness to leave her army on the Rhine if the allies would bear
the cost of its maintenance. The lesser States of the Empire showed
no alacrity in responding to this appeal, while Austria refused to be
a party to any arrangement for the payment of a Prussian army. After
the experience of the last campaign, Thugut did not credit Prussia
with the intention of rendering any material assistance, and foresaw
that if Austria held back, England would undertake to bear the burden.
The ministers of George III. were making strenuous efforts to hold
the coalition together. They were intent on extending the colonial
empire of England, and while France was engaged in hostilities with
half the continent, it was impossible for her to defend her colonies.
Accordingly, a treaty was signed at the Hague between Malmesbury on the
English side and Haugwitz on the Prussian, by which England undertook,
together with Holland, to supply Prussia with a monthly sum for the
maintenance of 62,000 men (April 19).
♦Insurrection in Poland.♦
This treaty was hardly signed when news reached Berlin that the
Poles were in arms. The Polish Diet had been forced, at the time of
the second partition, not merely to relinquish provinces to Russia
and Prussia, but to sign a treaty which placed in subjection to
Russia that portion of the country still left nominally independent.
King Stanislaus was the tool of Catherine, and his Government was
supported by 40,000 Russians. Discontent permeated the country. The
inhabitants of the towns regretted the reformed constitution of May
1791, overthrown by the influence of Catherine (p. 98). The lesser
nobility was bitterly hostile to Russian domination; the army, still
30,000 strong, resented its degradation. The standard of revolt was
now raised on all sides. At Warsaw the populace, uniting with insurgent
Polish regiments, drove out the Russian garrison with heavy loss
of life (April 18). Yet, in spite of the enthusiasm with which the
insurrection was begun, and the patriotic spirit animating its leaders,
Potocki and Kosciusko, there was but little probability of final
success. The Poles, torn by internal faction, were unable to present
a united front against the common foe. Many of the upper nobility
were in Russian pay. Three powerful neighbours--Austria, Prussia,
and Russia--did but need a pretext for the accomplishment of a final
partition and the effacement of Poland from the map. Frederick William,
with 50,000 troops, at once marched into the country, and, joining with
the Russians, laid siege to Warsaw (July 13).
These events reacted sensibly on military operations in the West.
England and Prussia had had different objects in view when they entered
into the treaty of the Hague. The English Government expected that the
Prussian army would fight in Belgium; the King of Prussia intended
that it should merely secure the Empire against invasion by blocking
the passage of the Rhine. The Polish insurrection had heightened the
aversion of Prussian generals and ministers to the French war. They
refused to allow their army to leave the Rhine, urging the forcible
plea that the Empire would be exposed to invasion. They further made
the quarrel with England which broke out on this ground an excuse for
taking no active steps whatever to attack the enemy. In May, indeed,
their army had advanced in the direction of Alsace, and had driven the
French from Kaiserslautern and the neighbouring positions. But from
that time it remained inactive, and thus the French were able to send
large additional forces to combat the allies in Belgium.
♦Campaign in Belgium.♦
The Committee of Public Safety had abetted the insurrection of the
Poles, and had sought, though without result, to stir up war on the
Danube as well as on the Vistula, by subsidising the Porte to attack
Austria. Carnot, aware of the differences existing between Austria and
Prussia, arranged the campaign on the supposition that no vigorous
enemy would be found on the Rhine. He designed to confine offensive
operations to Belgium, where he hoped to overpower the allies by
superiority of numbers, and to threaten Holland and England with
invasion. The seat of war may be roughly divided into three divisions:
first, the country between the rivers Meuse and Sambre; secondly, the
country between the Sambre and the Scheldt; and thirdly, Flanders
between the Scheldt and the sea. This long line of territory the
allies had to defend with 160,000 against 300,000 men. Their generals
had no superior talents enabling them to contend with success against
such odds as these. The Duke of York, who had again been appointed to
command the English troops, because he was the son of George III.,
had neither military knowledge nor capacity. Coburg followed without
reserve the strategy of the day, which was to put an opposing body of
men opposite each body of the enemy, and to defend every locality which
had once been occupied. The idea of gaining victory by bringing an
overpowering force to bear upon a weak point of the enemy’s line did
not suggest itself to him or his staff, and his plan of operations was
confined to maintaining his positions and capturing French fortresses.
The allies were still in occupation of the three
fortresses--Valenciennes, Condé, and Le Quesnoi--which they had taken
in the preceding year. Between Valenciennes and Bavay was the Austrian
centre; their right wing occupied Flanders, their left guarded the
line of the Sambre. Carnot’s plan was to make use of his numerical
superiority, first to shatter the enemy’s wings, and then, attacking
his centre both in front and in flank, to drive him out of Belgium. The
Austrians began hostilities by laying siege to Landrecies. Pichegru,
with 100,000 men, advanced into Flanders, and defeated the allied right
wing at Turcoing (April 18). He next laid siege to Ypres, and the
allies, after an ineffectual attempt to relieve the town, retreated
behind the Scheldt. On the Sambre the allied forces were equal in
number to the French, both armies being about 50,000 strong; and here,
while Pichegru was conquering Flanders, an effectual stand was made
against the repeated efforts of the French generals to get a footing on
the north side of the river and to invest Charleroi. But the continued
inactivity of the Prussians enabled Carnot to send 50,000 men from the
Rhine to the Sambre, so as to outnumber the allies on this side also.
Charleroi was invested, and capitulated (June 25). The following day
Coburg, who had arrived from the centre with reinforcements and was
unaware of the surrender, attacked the French positions at Fleurus
and the neighbouring villages (June 26). The battle lasted the whole
day, without decided result; and Coburg, on hearing that Charleroi had
already surrendered, did not renew the struggle. The evacuation of
Belgium followed these disasters. Coburg withdrew behind the Meuse,
and the Duke of York, with the English and Dutch troops, retreated
into Brabant. The French laid siege to those fortresses in France and
Flanders in which the allies had left garrisons.
After the allies had been thus driven from Belgium, all danger of
invasion was over, and men would be more ready to call in question
the authority of a Government which it might soon be possible to
resist without rendering France weak in the presence of a dangerous
enemy. Robespierre had ever been keenly alive to the possibility of
the Government being overthrown by some victorious general, and he
followed the successes of the armies with an excessively jealous eye.
At this time, although he occupied the first place in the Committee of
Public Safety, he was not content with his position, but was seeking
to draw the reins of government more closely into his own grasp, and
to make himself independent of his colleagues. They had no means of
combating him. The Commune and the Jacobins, the two main wheels by
which the revolutionary Government was kept in action, were now under
his control. He established a special police office, which encroached
on the functions of the Committee of General Security. He sent special
agents into the departments as spies on the conduct of the deputies in
mission, who were to make private reports to himself. Above all, he
sought to obtain a basis to his authority wanting to his rivals, by
asserting the necessity of laying the foundations of morality and duty
in spiritual beliefs. In thus acting, if Robespierre was instigated by
personal ambition, he was instigated also by the desire to put into
practice, at whatever risk to himself, the principles which he had
learned of Rousseau. ♦The worship of the Supreme Being.♦ Under his
inspiration the Convention decreed that the French people recognised
a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. A new worship was
inaugurated by a festival in honour of the Supreme Being, held in the
Champ de Mars. The Convention took part in the ceremonies. Robespierre,
at the time president, walked first, dressed in a sky-blue coat, and
holding in his hand a large bunch of flowers, fruits, and corn. Arrived
at the Champ de Mars he set fire to figures representing atheism and
egoism. As they burnt, the figure of wisdom rose out of the flames.
Hymns were sung, and the ground strewn with flowers by children (June
8).
♦Revolutionary Court reorganised.♦
For a moment expectation prevailed that this recognition of a Supreme
Being would be followed by a revival of sentiments of humanity.
The case proved otherwise. The festival was barely over when the
Convention, in accordance with a project drawn up by Robespierre,
reorganised the revolutionary court (June 10). The calling of
witnesses, hearing of counsel, and other forms long since only
partially observed, were formally abolished. The prisoners were brought
before the court in batches of twenty, thirty, or fifty at a time.
A short vaguely-worded charge was read. The president asked each
person his or her name and one or two questions. No evidence on either
side was heard. The jury condemned the accused in a body. To make as
quick as possible the work of judicial massacre, Robespierre’s agents
invented a story that the prisoners were conspiring to save themselves
by assassinating the members of the Convention, and on this charge
persons belonging to every condition of life, brought together from all
quarters of France, were sent pell mell to the scaffold. From the time
of its institution in March 1793 to the passing of this law on June 10,
1794, the court had condemned to death 1,259 persons; after June 18, in
less than seven weeks, it caused the execution of 1,368 persons.
The reorganisation of this court, which Robespierre, by the
reappointment of judges and jurymen, endeavoured to convert into his
special instrument, spread alarm on every side. At this time, indeed,
terror prevailed in official circles to an extent that it would be
difficult to exaggerate. There was no opposition to the Government.
In the Jacobins, the Commune, the Convention, the Sections, no
propositions were made that did not accord with the views of the two
committees. In the Commune, the National agent Payan travestied the
language of Robespierre, as Robespierre in the Convention the language
of Rousseau. In the departments party strife was suppressed as it was
in Paris. The clubs, few of which now numbered more than forty or fifty
members, followed without a will of their own the cue given them from
Paris. All over the country festivals in honour of the Supreme Being
took the place of festivals in honour of Reason. Although Robespierre
proclaimed principles of religious toleration, he neither desired nor
suffered their observance. It is possible that he would never have
ventured, as Hébert had done, to proscribe the Catholic worship, but
the work having been done for him, circumstances would not permit him
to seek supporters by again allowing the celebration of those rites
which still had the affection of the nation. He was at the head of a
Government which could not retrace a step without extreme danger of
weakening its own authority, and it was only by continuing the system
already in force that it was possible for him, as he could not fail
to be aware, to carry his social ideas into practice. Hence the feast
of the Supreme Being, in place of leading to a revival of principles
of humanity, had been followed by a sharpening of the Terror. On the
pretext of maintaining public order, the Catholic worship remained
prohibited. The tyranny weighed down the oppressors along with the
oppressed. Men were imprisoned and sent to the scaffold indifferently
for acts of mercy, knavery, or extravagance. The denouncer of to-day
was the denounced of to-morrow. Municipalities and administrative
bodies trembled before clubs and revolutionary committees; these, in
turn, before deputies in mission; deputies in mission before the two
committees; and the members of the committees before one another.
However high a man’s place in the revolutionary hierarchy, he could not
shelter his best friends or nearest relatives without risking his own
head.
♦Insurrection of Thermidor 10.♦
Violent discords broke out within the Committee of Public Safety.
Robespierre’s efforts to raise himself excited the indignation of his
colleagues; for the more powerful he became, the more insecure was the
tenure on which their own lives rested. On the other hand, Robespierre
was nervous, envious, and suspicious, and the higher he rose the more
eager he became to shed the blood of his enemies, and of those who
stood in the way of his rising higher still. The Montagnards hated him.
Those who had walked behind him at the feast of the Supreme Being had
not been able to restrain themselves from uttering insulting words.
‘Formerly he was master’, one was heard to say, ‘and now he must be God
as well.’ Some, aware that they were objects of his special enmity,
were plotting obscurely against him. Of the twelve members of the
Committee of General Security all but two were his enemies. Supported
by Couthon and St. Just, Robespierre proposed in the Committee of
Public Safety a proscription of several members of the Mountain and of
the Committee of General Security. Billaud and Collot opposed. Consent
would have been suicidal, since they were called on to sacrifice their
own supporters. The cowardly Barère hesitated which side to join. One
member of the Committee of Public Safety had been guillotined with the
Dantonists. The remaining five, though it was not their desire to shed
blood, were accustomed to give their signatures without questioning on
the demand of the governing members, and thus incurred responsibility
for all that took place. They had more in common with Robespierre than
with Collot, since they too cared for order as well as power; but,
while submitting to his ascendancy, they loathed and despised him.
Carnot, who was one of these, and whose success at the head of the war
administration made Robespierre envious, and who could not conceal his
antipathy for Robespierre and St. Just, was marked out for destruction.
The threatened members of the Committee of General Security, afraid
that Billaud and Collot would sacrifice them sooner than come to an
open breach with Robespierre, sought to defend themselves by combining
with the threatened Montagnards. Within the Committee of Public Safety
efforts were made to come to an understanding, but without success.
Robespierre, aware that his enemies were conspiring against him,
determined to strike first, and to secure dictatorship for himself by
replacing his opponents on the two committees by partisans of his own.
There appeared to be little doubt of the result. The Convention had
less reason to support Billaud and Collot than himself. They had been
fully as sanguinary as he; and when Collot in the Convention had once
proposed to send to the scaffold seventy-three deputies of the right
who had been imprisoned for signing protests against the ejection of
the Girondists, he had opposed and saved their lives. In case of a
struggle he had material force at his command, his opponents none.
The Jacobins and the Commune were both his; the national guard, now
called the armed force, was under the command of Henriot, a partisan
of his own. The cannoniers of each section formed a paid force, of
which every man had been selected by the Commune. Robespierre opened
the attack by a long speech in the Convention, in which he complained
of the traitors who spread calumnies against himself (July 26). He
threatened many, but named none. It was a fatal mistake, for each man
in the Convention fancied it possible that his name might be on the
list of proscription. Despair gave courage to the plotters to struggle
for their lives. They belonged to all parties. Some were Hébertists,
others Dantonists, others independent Montagnards. Most were inferior
in character to the man who attacked them. Amongst them were members of
the Committee of General Security, such as the cowardly and ferocious
Vadier and Amar, and the most brutal members of the Convention--Fouché,
who had slaughtered at Lyons, Tallien at Bordeaux, Fréron at
Marseilles, Carrier at Nantes.
When, on the following day, Thermidor 10 (July 27), St. Just ascended
the tribune, he was interrupted almost before he opened his lips.
Shouts were raised of ‘Down, down with the tyrant!’ as Robespierre,
gesticulating and menacing, strove to make himself heard above the
din. The President, a Dantonist, Thuriot, incessantly rang his bell.
The struggle went on for hours. ‘President of assassins’, cried
Robespierre, sinking under exhaustion, ‘for the last time I demand the
right of speech.’ He appealed to the Plain, the members who had been
mere tools in the hands of the strongest party, and who had been mute
against the Mountain since the ejection of the Girondists. But the
Plain, seeing that he was no longer powerful, joined his enemies; and
when it was proposed to arrest himself, his brother, Couthon, and St.
Just, its members rose in a body to confirm the condemnation of the man
before whom they had so long trembled.
All four were conducted to prison. Yet victory so far was merely a
parliamentary one. An attempt to arrest Henriot gave warning of danger
to Robespierre’s partisans outside the Convention. The Municipality
summoned the armed force to the Hôtel de Ville, and sent agents into
the sections to stir up an insurrection. The two Robespierres, St.
Just, and Couthon were released from prison and taken to the Hôtel
de Ville. But excess of tyranny had left isolated those by whom it
had been exercised. The Robespierrists were ardent in the defence
of their leader; but they were but a mere handful, even amidst the
Terrorists. The members of the civil and revolutionary committees,
wishing to secure their heads, waited to declare for the Commune
until they had assurance that the Commune would win. The Convention
outlawed Henriot, Robespierre, and his companions, and sent deputies
into the sections to gain their support. The few who still attended
the assemblies of the sections were eager to fling off the yoke with
which they were oppressed. When they understood that the quarrel was
between Robespierre and the Convention, they sent messengers to recall
the battalions of national guards already at the Hôtel de Ville. The
deputy Barras, appointed by the Convention to command in Henriot’s
place, invested, about two at night, the nearly-deserted building
without encountering opposition. Those within were surprised where
they sat. Robespierre, with his jaw painfully fractured by a pistol
shot--it is uncertain whether the wound was inflicted by his own or by
the hand of another--was taken to the Committee of Public Safety, and
left lying upon a table, exposed to the taunts of every gazer. Being
already outlawed, Robespierre, his brother, Couthon, and St. Just, with
eighteen other persons, were executed as soon as day arrived, without
form of trial. During the two following days more than eighty of
Robespierre’s followers, including a large number of the members of the
Commune, were sent to the scaffold.