FALL OF THE MONTAGNARDS.
♦Reaction.♦
It is calculated that during the fourteen months which had elapsed
since the ejection of the Girondists, about 16,000 persons had perished
throughout France by the sentence of revolutionary courts. With the
proscription of the Robespierrists the Terror as a system of government
came to an end. Collot and Billaud, in overthrowing Robespierre, had
deprived themselves of the two main engines by which the machinery of
the Terror had been kept in motion. After the execution of its members
the Commune had been broken up, and the Jacobins were enfeebled. The
Mountain at once asserted its independence of the two committees; the
Plain, in turn, asserted its independence of the Mountain. From this
time the committees were renewed by a fourth every month, and the
outgoing members rendered incapable of immediate re-election. Within a
few weeks all the men who conducted the Government during the Terror
had resigned or had been deprived of office.
The fall of Robespierre and of the committees was felt as much in
Paris as it was in the Convention. No sooner did the incessant action
of the guillotine cease than the revolutionary authorities fell into
contempt, and the revolutionary laws, which the Terror alone had
sustained, ceased to be observed. There was again freedom of action, of
speech, and of the press. Hundreds and thousands of young men collected
in the sections and public places, declaring war on the Jacobins,
and demanding the release of friends and relations, the abolition
of revolutionary committees, the imprisonment and trial of their
late oppressors. They belonged to all ranks of life, but were mostly
skilled artisans, clerks in offices, shopmen, tradesmen, and sons of
nobles and capitalists. As in 1789, the agitation had its centre in
the Palais Royal, and, as then, found its leaders in young authors
and journalists. In the departments the reaction proceeded with equal
rapidity. Nowhere was any attempt made to resist the new revolution.
The names of Robespierre and Couthon were given over to execration by
the same men who a week before had made a show of delight in honouring
them. The petty tyrant of yesterday, ejected from office, went to join
his victims in prison; and, as in Paris, all classes of the population
speedily took advantage of the relaxation of the Terror to slip their
necks free of the yoke of the revolutionary laws.
Upon the destruction of the dictatorship of the committees, supreme
power reverted to the Convention. That body, however, had as little
coherence now as it had had in the first months of its existence. The
restitution of its liberty split it into numerous sections. It was
torn by violent party spirit, and had no determinate policy or aim,
but drifted onwards, following not directing the course of events.
All agreed in condemnation of Robespierre, but in that alone. The
Montagnards were divided amongst themselves. Only a small minority
was prepared to maintain in its entirety the Terror as a system
of government--Billaud and Collot and their companions in office,
who feared for their own lives. A few, such as Romme and Soubrany,
resolutely opposed social and economical changes which would, in the
end, lead to the return of the middle-class to power. Others again,
as the financier Cambon and the Dantonist Thuriot, struggled to
maintain the ascendancy of the Mountain over the Plain, but declared
war on Billaud and Collot, who, following in the course of Hébert and
Robespierre, sought, by aid of clubs and revolutionary committees,
to tyrannise over the Mountain. The Thermidorians, so-called from the
name of the revolutionary month in which the new revolution had been
effected, Tallien, Fréron, and others of the men who had conspired to
destroy Robespierre, took up a position between the Mountain and the
Plain, and for the time possessed the leadership of the Convention;
but they had no policy except that of yielding sufficiently to public
opinion to maintain ascendancy, and at the same time of holding in
check the reaction so as to prevent its reaching themselves. One after
another demands made by the anti-Terrorist press and by gatherings
in the Palais Royal were complied with. The Jacobin Club, the resort
of Collot, Billaud, and their partisans, was closed (November 12).
The Revolutionary Committees were reduced in number and shorn of
their powers. Thousands of prisoners were released and their property
restored to them. Throughout the country new men were placed in office,
while members of revolutionary committees and other inferior tools of
the Terror were imprisoned by hundreds. A trial going on before the
Revolutionary Court at Paris revealed in all their horrible details the
massacres committed at Nantes, and raised a cry for vengeance against
Carrier. Abandoned by the Thermidorians and almost the entire Mountain,
Carrier was sent before the court for trial, and thence in his turn to
the scaffold (December). Billaud, Collot, and other marked Terrorists,
already denounced in the Convention by Danton’s friends, felt that
danger was every day drawing nearer to themselves. Their fate was to
all appearance sealed by the readmission to the Convention (December 8)
of seventy-three deputies of the right, imprisoned in 1793 for signing
protests against the expulsion of the Girondists.
By the return of these deputies the complexion of the Assembly was
entirely altered. It was they who had formed the phalanx which had
supported the Gironde, and they now sought to undo the work of the
Convention since the insurrection by which their party had been
overwhelmed. They demanded that confiscated property should be restored
to the relatives of persons condemned by the revolutionary courts; that
emigrants who had fled in consequence of Terrorist persecutions should
be allowed to return; that those deputies proscribed on June 2, 1793,
who yet survived, should be recalled to their seats. The Mountain,
as a body, violently opposed even the discussion of such questions.
The Thermidorians split into two divisions. Some in alarm rejoined
the Mountain; while others, headed by Tallien and Fréron, sought
their safety by coalescing with the returned members of the right.
A committee was appointed to report on accusations brought against
Collot, Billaud, Barère, and Vadier (December 27, 1794). In a few weeks
the survivors of the proscribed deputies entered the Convention amidst
applause (March 8, 1795), and it was clear that, in spite of every
effort made by the left to delay a decision, the four accused men would
be called upon to account for the tyranny that had been exercised by
the two committees unless the Convention were overpowered by force.
♦The revolt of Germinal 12.♦
There was at this time great misery prevalent in Paris, and imminent
peril of insurrection. After Robespierre’s fall, maximum prices were
no longer observed, and assignats were only accepted in payment
of goods at their real value compared with coin. The result was a
rapid rise in prices, so that in December prices were double what
they had been in July, and were continuing to rise in proportion as
assignats decreased in value. The policy pursued by the Convention
tended of necessity to hasten the depreciation of the paper money.
Girondists, Thermidorians, and a portion of the Mountain concurred in
denouncing the economic system imposed on the Convention by Hébert and
Robespierre. The system of requisitions was gradually abandoned, the
armies were again supplied by contract, and the maximum laws, already
a dead letter, were repealed (December 24). The abolition of maximum
prices and requisitions increased the already lavish expenditure of the
Government, which, to meet the deficit in its revenues, had no resource
but to create more assignats, and the faster these were issued the
faster they fell in value and the higher prices rose. In July 1794,
they had been worth 34 per cent. of their nominal value. In December
they were worth 22 per cent., and in May 1795, they were worth only 7
per cent. Want of food was the more acutely felt owing to the winter
having been one of great severity. The Seine was covered for weeks with
ice, and wood and coal were, like other articles, dear and scarce. All
persons living on fixed incomes suffered intensely. Even those who
lived on wages were seriously affected. Wages had indeed risen, but not
in proportion to prices. Starvation prices prevailed. Workmen earned
from five to eleven shillings a day in paper money, while a multitude
of State officials, pensioners and creditors, received no more than
from three to six shillings a day. Yet at this time a pound of bread
cost eight shillings, of rice thirteen, of sugar seventeen, and other
articles were all proportionately dear. It is literally true that more
than half the population of Paris was only kept alive by occasional
distributions of meat and other articles at low prices, and the daily
distribution of bread at three-halfpence a pound. In February, however,
this source of relief threatened to fail. Farmers preferred to send
their corn anywhere else than to Paris, where only paper money was
to be had. It was only with extreme difficulty that the Government,
which since the annihilation of the Commune had supplied Paris with
bread, performed its task. The rations fell from one pound to half a
pound, and soon to a few ounces per head. Numerous deaths took place,
the result of destitution or actual starvation. An insurrection,
however, though constantly threatened, for weeks failed to break out.
One cause was that the people had grown hopeless of improving their
condition by insurrection; another, that those journalists, clerks,
and others, who at the opening of the revolution had incited popular
movements, were now, although suffering themselves, found on the
other side, and were prepared to fight in defence of the Convention,
which they none the less detested, sooner than endure a revival of
the Terror. Material suffering offered, however, a ready handle for
Terrorist agitators; and as the peril of insurrection increased, so
too, within the Convention, did the violence of party strife. The
Mountain, threatened with proscription, sought to turn the position of
the right and to obtain credit outside, by demanding the immediate end
of provisional government and the putting in force of the democratic
constitution promulgated by the Convention in 1793, after the ejection
of the Girondists. On April 1, or Germinal 12, bread riots, begun by
women, broke out in every section. Bands collected and forced their
way into the Convention, shouting for bread, but offering no violence
to the deputies. Occasionally the demand was made for the release of
imprisoned patriots and for the Constitution of 1793. The crowd was
already dispersing when forces arrived from the sections and cleared
the House. The insurrection was a spontaneous rising for bread, without
method or combination. The Terrorists had sought, but vainly, to obtain
direction of it. Had they succeeded, the Mountain would have had an
opportunity of proscribing the right. Their failure gave the right
the opportunity of proscribing the left. The transportation to Cayenne
of Billaud, Collot, Barère, and Vadier was decreed, and the arrest of
fifteen other Montagnards, accused without proof, in several cases
without probability, of having been accomplices of the insurgents. The
Thermidorians showed themselves more vindictive than the Girondists,
and it was on the proposition of Tallien that amongst those proscribed
were included Thuriot and Cambon, men whose hands, compared with his
own, were clear of blood.
The insurrection of Germinal 12 gave increased strength to the party
of reaction. The Convention, in dread of the Terrorists, was compelled
to look to it for support. The bands of young men who assembled in the
Palais Royal, called ‘Fréron’s army,’ often rendered useful service by
clearing the Tuileries Gardens of discontented and threatening groups.
Already the dress, language, and manners in vogue during the Terror
were laid aside. Red caps gave place to hats. The habit of addressing
strangers by the familiar ‘thou,’ and the use of the word ‘citizen,’
were dropped in drawing-rooms. No Jacobin could set foot in the Palais
Royal without experiencing insults and blows. Busts of Marat, which had
been set up in every public building, were pulled down and broken, and
both theatres and streets became the scene of incessant riots.
♦Reaction in the Departments.♦
In the departments famine, disorder, and crime prevailed, as well as
in Paris. In all towns a large portion of the population was kept
alive by daily distributions of bread. The country was exhausted
by the war burdens laid on it. Requisitions for the armies had
drained one department after another of horses, carts, corn, and
men. Nevertheless, destitution was not so great in rural districts
as in towns. Corn growers, since the fall of Robespierre, had made
large profits, while every peasant sold his wine or other produce at
prices as high in proportion as the price of bread. From the first
the reaction proceeded in the departments with a more rapid step and
in bolder form than in Paris which was subjected to the restraining
influences exercised by the presence of the Convention. Everywhere,
except in Paris, municipal bodies had, as early as in January, suffered
churches to be reopened and Mass again to be celebrated. Without
the Terror it was as impossible to maintain the proscription of the
Catholic worship as it was to enforce the observance of maximum laws.
A minority in the Convention, composed of Catholics and Liberals,
desired to carry into practice those principles of religious toleration
which the Convention in theory had always maintained and had publicly
announced in opposition to Hébert, but which for so many months it had
neglected to put in practice. The majority, whatever their repugnance
to a revival of sacerdotal influence, recognised the hopelessness of
resisting the popular movement. Since the beginning of the Revolution
the idea of the separation of Church and State had gained ground. The
constitutional clergy desired to be allowed to reorganise the Church
without any interference by the State. The mass of deputies were
unwilling to recognise the Catholic as the national religion, lest
by so doing they should enable the Church the more readily to regain
ascendency. A compromise was arrived at. The Convention declared that
the public exercise of all forms of worship was permissible, but that
henceforth the State would provide neither buildings nor funds for
any religious body. Small pensions, however, varying from 35_l._ to
52_l._, which under the Terror had been accorded to bishops and priests
who had resigned their offices were granted to the whole body of the
Constitutional clergy. Further, various restrictions were laid on the
public exercise of religion. No ceremonies might be performed outside
the building set apart for worship, whether in streets, burial grounds,
hospitals, or prisons. Ecclesiastics might not wear a special dress out
of doors, and even the ringing of bells was prohibited (February 22).
♦The White Terror.♦
Though their position was far more precarious--for none of the
laws against them had been repealed--nonjurors, as well as the
Constitutional clergy, resumed their functions. With the connivance of
municipal bodies they had come in numbers out of their hiding-places,
or had returned to France from abroad. In the departments of the
south-east, where the Royalists had always possessed a strong
following, emigrants of all descriptions readily made their way back;
and here the opponents of the Republic, instigated by a desire for
vengeance or merely by party spirit, commenced a reaction stained
by crimes as atrocious as any committed during the course of the
revolution. Young men belonging to the upper and middle classes were
organised in bands bearing the name of companies of Jesus and companies
of the Sun, and first at Lyons, then at Aix, Toulon, Marseilles, and
other towns, they broke into the prisons and murdered their inmates
without distinction of age or sex. Besides the Terrorist and the
Jacobin, neither the Republican nor the purchaser of State lands was
safe from their knives; and in the country numerous isolated murders
were committed. This lawless and brutal movement, called the White
Terror in distinction to the Red Terror preceding Thermidor 9, was
suffered for weeks to run its course unchecked, and counted its victims
by many hundreds, spreading over the whole of Provence, besides the
departments of Rhône, Gard, Loire, Ain, and Jura.
♦Insurrection of Prairial.♦
Neither deputies in mission nor administrative officers attempted
to arrest the assassins or to bring them to justice. The Convention
expressed indignation, but took no active measures for the maintenance
of law and order. In fact, men still lived in incessant fear of a
revival of the Terror, and hence for the time they regarded with
indifference the reaction in the south, in spite of its Royalist
tendencies. After the insurrection of Germinal, the condition of the
people at Paris remained unchanged. The rations of bread on occasions
fell as low as a couple of ounces. Jacobins and other agents of
the Terror did their utmost to direct the ever-swelling flood of
discontent against the Convention. On May 20, or Prairial 1, a second
insurrection broke out, fiercer, more extended, and more persistent
than the preceding one. The insurgents, men and women, broke into
the Convention clamouring for bread, and insulting and reproaching
the deputies without distinction of party. With cries for bread were
joined cries for the Constitution of 1793, but the crowd was without
leaders, and barely knew its own ends, still less by what means to
seek their realisation. On the arrival of battalions of the national
guard in support of the Convention, a general combat took place
within the Chamber, in which the defenders of the Convention were at
first worsted. A deputy, Feraud, who sought to protect the President,
Boissy d’Anglas, from insult, was wounded by the populace and dragged
outside, his head cut off and paraded on a pike through the streets.
Many deputies fled. A few Montagnards, threatened by the mob and urged
by the frightened deputies on the right, put to the vote the demands
raised by voices in the crowd, such as the release of imprisoned
patriots and the reconstitution of the Committees of Government. The
insurgents, who were now appeased, began to disperse, when more
national guards arrived and drove away those who still remained.
Victory, however, was not secured. The Faubourg St. Antoine remained
in insurrection, and the next day directed the mouths of its cannon
upon the Tuileries. The Convention only secured its safety by promising
to provide bread, and to put in force the Constitution of 1793. In
the meantime, however, 4,000 troops of the line were being brought to
Paris. These, with a selected force of national guards, surrounded
the insurgent faubourg. To a population supported upon rations, there
was no choice between yielding or starving. They yielded, giving up
arms and cannon (May 23). The Convention made use of its triumph to
destroy the Mountain and to secure itself against a repetition of the
late scenes. A decree for the disarmament of agents of the Terror
furnished a pretext for taking pikes and guns from the hands of the
people, and the national guard was reorganised so as to exclude from
active service the poorer sections of the population. Many hundred
persons were imprisoned. The revolutionary court had already been
dissolved. For the sake of summary procedure a military commission was
instituted, which sat for more than two months, and condemned to death
between thirty and forty persons, and as many more to imprisonment or
transportation. The proscription of the Mountain comprised in all more
than sixty deputies. Of those who formed the Committees of Government
during the Terror, Carnot and one other alone were spared. ‘Carnot,’
said a voice, when his arrest was proposed, ‘has organised victory.’
Many of the proscribed effected their escape. A few committed suicide.
The remainder suffered transportation or death.