LAST STRUGGLES OF THE GIRONDISTS.
1792-1793
The Jacobins resolve to bring the king to trial.--Famine in
Paris.--Suspicions against the Girondists.--Baseness of the
Jacobins.--Peril of the Girondists.--Anxious deliberations.--Vile
intrigue of the Jacobins.--Madame Roland accused.--Madame Roland
before the Assembly.--Her dignified demeanor.--Madame Roland's defense
of herself.--She is acquitted by acclamation.--Madame Roland's
triumph.--Chagrin of her enemies.--Festival of the Girondists.--Toast
of Vergniaud.--Classical allusion.--Clamors for the king's death.--The
king brought before the Convention.--Dismal day.--Menaces of the
mob.--Danton, Marat, and Robespierre.--Trial of the king.--Proposition
of Robespierre.--Vote of Vergniaud.--Vote of the Girondists.--Indignation
at the king's death.--The Revolutionary Tribunal.--Unlimited powers of
the Revolutionary Tribunal.--Atrocious cruelties.--Embarrassments of
M. Roland.--He sends in his resignation.--Attempts to assassinate the
Rolands.--Entreaties of friends.--Firmness of Madame Roland.--Roland's
influence in the departments.--Plots against the Girondists.--Meetings
at Madame Roland's.--Insurrections in favor of the monarchy.--Jacobin
insurrection.--Portentous mutterings.--Precautions of the
Girondists.--Intrepidity of Vergniaud.--Power of prayer.--"Horrible
hope."--The power of the Girondists gone.
The Jacobins now resolved to bring the king to trial. By placards
posted in the streets, by inflammatory speeches in the Convention, in
public gatherings, and in the clubs, by false assertions and slanders
of every conceivable nature, they had roused the ignorant populace to
the full conviction that the king was the author of every calamity now
impending. The storm of the Revolution had swept desolation through
all the walks of peaceful industry. Starvation, gaunt and terrible,
began to stare the population of Paris directly in the face. The
infuriated mob hung the bakers upon the lamp-posts before their own
doors for refusing to supply them with bread. The peasant dared not
carry provisions into the city, for he was sure of being robbed by the
sovereign people, who had attained the freedom of committing all
crimes with impunity. The multitude fully believed that there was a
conspiracy formed by the king in his prison, and by the friends of
royalty, to starve the people into subjection. Portentous murmurs were
now also borne on every breeze, uttered by a thousand unseen voices,
that the Girondists were accomplices in this conspiracy; that they
hated the Revolution; that they wished to save the life of the king;
that they would welcome the army of invasion, as affording them an
opportunity to reinstate Louis upon the throne. The Jacobins, it was
declared, were the only true friends of the people. The Girondists
were accused of being in league with the aristocrats. These suspicions
rose and floated over Paris like the mist of the ocean. They were
every where encountered, and yet presented no resistance to be
assailed. They were intimated in the Jacobin journals; they were
suggested, with daily increasing distinctness, at the _tribune_. And
in those multitudinous gatherings, where Marat stood in filth and rags
to harangue the miserable, and the vicious, and the starving, they
were proclaimed loudly, and with execrations. The Jacobins rejoiced
that they had now, by the force of circumstances, crowded their
adversaries into a position from which they could not easily extricate
themselves. Should the Girondists vote for the death of the king, they
would thus support the Jacobins in those sanguinary measures, so
popular with the mob, which had now become the right arm of Jacobin
power. The glory would also all redound to the Jacobins, for it would
not be difficult to convince the multitude that the Girondists merely
submitted to a measure which they were unable to resist. Should the
Girondists, on the other hand, true to their instinctive abhorrence of
these deeds of blood, dare to vote against the death of the king, they
would be ruined irretrievably. They would then stand unmasked before
the people as traitors to the Republic and the friends of royalty.
Like noxious beasts, they would be hunted through the streets and
massacred at their own firesides. The Girondists perceived distinctly
the vortex of destruction toward which they were so rapidly circling.
Many and anxious were their deliberations, night after night, in the
library of Madame Roland. In the midst of the fearful peril, it was
not easy to decide what either duty or apparent policy required.
The Jacobins now made a direct and infamous attempt to turn the rage
of the populace against Madame Roland. Achille Viard, one of those
unprincipled adventurers with which the stormy times had filled the
metropolis, was employed, as a spy, to feign attachment to the
Girondist party, and to seek the acquaintance, and insinuate himself
into the confidence of Madame Roland. By perversions and exaggerations
of her language, he was to fabricate an accusation against her which
would bring her head to the scaffold. Madame Roland instantly
penetrated his character, and he was repulsed from her presence by the
most contemptuous neglect. He, however, appeared before the Assembly
as her accuser, and charged her with carrying on a secret
correspondence with persons of influence at home and abroad, to
protect the king. She was summoned to present herself before the
Convention, to confront her accuser, and defend herself from the
scaffold. Her gentle yet imperial spirit was undaunted by the
magnitude of the peril. Her name had often been mentioned in the
Assembly as the inspiring genius of the most influential and eloquent
party which had risen up amid the storms of the Revolution. Her
talents, her accomplishments, her fascinating conversational
eloquence, had spread her renown widely through Europe. A large number
of the most illustrious men in that legislative hall, both ardent
young men and those venerable with age, regarded her with the most
profound admiration--almost with religious homage. Others, conscious
of her power, and often foiled by her sagacity, hated her with
implacable hatred, and determined, either by the ax of the guillotine
or by the poniard of the assassin, to remove her from their way.
The aspect of a young and beautiful woman, combining in her person and
mind all the attractions of nature and genius, with her cheek glowing
with heroic resolution, and her demeanor exhibiting the most perfect
feminine loveliness and modesty, entering this vast assembly of
irritated men to speak in defense of her life, at once hushed the
clamor of hoarse voices, and subdued the rage of angry disputants.
Silence the most respectful instantly filled the hall. Every eye was
fixed upon her. The hearts of her friends throbbed with sympathy and
with love. Her enemies were more than half disarmed, and wished that
they, also, were honored as her friends. She stood before the bar.
"What is your name?" inquired the president.
She paused for a moment, and then, fixing her eye calmly upon her
interrogator, in those clear and liquid tones which left their
vibration upon the ear long after her voice was hushed in death,
answered,
"Roland! a name of which I am proud, for it is that of a good and an
honorable man."
"Do you know Achille Viard?" the president inquired.
"I have once, and but once, seen him."
"What has passed between you?"
"Twice he has written to me, soliciting an interview. Once I saw him.
After a short conversation, I perceived that he was a spy, and
dismissed him with the contempt he deserved."
The calm dignity of her replies, the ingenuous frankness of her
manners, and the manifest malice and falsehood of Viard's accusation,
made even her enemies ashamed of their unchivalrous prosecution.
Briefly, in tremulous tones of voice, but with a spirit of firmness
which no terrors could daunt, she entered upon her defense. It was the
first time that a female voice had been heard in the midst of the
clamor of these enraged combatants. The Assembly, unused to such a
scene, were fascinated by her attractive eloquence. Viard, convicted
of meanness, and treachery, and falsehood, dared not open his lips.
Madame Roland was acquitted by acclamation. Upon the spot the
president proposed that the marked respect of the Convention be
conferred upon Madame Roland. With enthusiasm the resolution was
carried. As she retired from the hall, her bosom glowing with the
excitement of the perfect triumph she had won, her ear was greeted
with the enthusiastic applause of the whole assembly. The eyes of all
France had been attracted to her as she thus defended herself and her
friends, and confounded her enemies. Marat gnashed his teeth with
rage. Danton was gloomy and silent. Robespierre, vanquished by charms
which had so often before enthralled him, expressed his contempt for
the conspiracy, and, for the last time, smiled upon his early friend,
whom he soon, with the most stoical indifference, dragged to the
scaffold.
The evening after the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment
of the Republic, when there was still some faint hope that there might
yet be found intelligence and virtue in the people to sustain the
Constitution, the Girondists met at Madame Roland's, and celebrated,
with trembling exultation, the birth of popular liberty. The
Constitution of the United States was the _beau ideal_ of the
Girondists, and, vainly dreaming that the institutions which
Washington and his compatriots had established in Christian America
were now firmly planted in infidel France, they endeavored to cast the
veil of oblivion over the past, and to spread over the future the
illusions of hope. The men here assembled were the most illustrious of
the nation. Noble sentiments passed from mind to mind. Madame Roland,
pale with emotion, conscious of the perils which were so portentously
rising around them, shone with a preternatural brilliance in the
solemn rejoicing of that evening. The aged Roland gazed with tears of
fond affection and of gratified pride upon his lovely wife, as if in
spirit asking her if all the loftiest aspirations of their souls were
not now answered. The victorious Republicans hardly knew whether to
sing triumphant songs or funeral dirges. Vergniaud, the renowned
orator of the party, was prominent above them all. With a pale cheek,
and a serene and pensive smile, he sat in silence, his mind evidently
wandering among the rising apparitions of the future. At the close of
the supper he filled his glass, and rising, proposed to drink to the
eternity of the Republic. Madame Roland, whose mind was ever filled
with classic recollections, scattered from a bouquet which she held in
her hand, some rose leaves on the wine in his glass. Vergniaud drank
the wine, and then said, in a low voice, "We should quaff cypress
leaves, not rose leaves, in our wine to-night. In drinking to a
republic, stained, at its birth, with the blood of massacre, who knows
but that we drink to our own death. But no matter. Were this wine my
own blood, I would drain it to liberty and equality." All the guests,
with enthusiasm, responded, "_Vive la Republique!_" After dinner,
Roland read to the company a paper drawn up by himself and wife in
reference to the state of the Republic, which views were to be
presented the next day to the Convention.
The royal family were still in the dungeons of the Temple, lingering
through the dreary hours of the most desolate imprisonment. Phrensied
mobs, rioting through the streets of Paris, and overawing all law,
demanded, with loudest execrations, the death of the king. A man
having ventured to say that he thought that the Republic might be
established without shedding the blood of Louis, was immediately
stabbed to the heart, and his mutilated remains were dragged through
the streets of Paris in fiendish revelry. A poor vendor of pamphlets
and newspapers, coming out of a reading-room, was accused of selling
books favorable to royalty. The suspicion was crime, and he fell,
pierced by thirty daggers. Such warnings as these were significant and
impressive, and few dared utter a word in favor of the king.
It was the month of January, 1793, when the imprisoned monarch was
brought into the hall of the Convention for his trial. It was a gloomy
day for France, and all external nature seemed shrouded in darkness
and sorrow. Clouds of mist were sweeping through the chill air, and a
few feeble lamps glimmered along the narrow avenues and gloomy
passages, which were darkened by the approach of a winter's night.
Armed soldiers surrounded the building. Heavy pieces of artillery
faced every approach. Cannoneers, with lighted matches, stood at their
side, ready to scatter a storm of grape-shot upon every foe. A mob of
countless thousands were surging to and fro through all the
neighboring streets. The deep, dull murmurings of the multitude
swelled in unison with the sighings of the storm rising upon the
somber night. It was with no little difficulty that the deputies could
force their way through the ocean of human beings surrounding the
Assembly. The coarse garb, the angry features, the harsh voices, the
fierce and significant gestures, proclaimed too clearly that the mob
had determined to have the life of the king, and that, unless the
deputies should vote his death, both king and deputies should perish
together. As each deputy threaded his way through the thronging
masses, he heard, in threatening tones, muttered into his ear deep and
emphatic, "_His death or thine!_"
Persons who were familiar with the faces of all the members were
stationed at particular points, and called out aloud to the multitude
the names of the deputies as they elbowed their way through the
surging multitudes. At the names of Danton, Marat, Robespierre, the
ranks opened to make way for these idols of the populace, and shouts
of the most enthusiastic greeting fell upon their ears. When the names
of Vergniaud, Brissot, and others of the leading Girondists were
mentioned, clinched fists, brandished daggers, and angry menaces
declared that those who refused to obey the wishes of the people
should encounter dire revenge. The very sentinels placed to guard the
deputies encouraged the mob to insult and violence. The lobbies were
filled with the most sanguinary ruffians of Paris. The interior of the
hall was dimly lighted. A chandelier, suspended from the center of
the ceiling, illuminated certain portions of the room, while the more
distant parts remained in deep obscurity. That all might act under the
full sense of their responsibility to the mob, Robespierre had
proposed and carried the vote that the silent form of ballot should be
rejected, and that each deputy, in his turn, should ascend the
tribune, and, with a distinct voice, announce his sentence. For some
time after the voting commenced it was quite uncertain how the
decision would turn. In the alternate record of the vote, _death_ and
_exile_ appeared to be equally balanced. All now depended upon the
course which the Girondists should pursue. If they should vote for
death, the doom of the king was sealed. Vergniaud was the first of
that party to be called to record his sentence. It was well known that
he looked with repugnance and horror upon the sanguinary scenes with
which the Revolution had been deformed, and that he had often avowed
his sympathy for the hard fate of a prince whose greatest crime was
weakness. His vote would unquestionably be the index of that of the
whole party, and thus the life or death of the king appeared to be
suspended from his lips. It was known that the very evening before,
while supping with a lady who expressed much commiseration for the
captives in the Temple, he had declared that he would save the life of
the king. The courage of Vergniaud was above suspicion, and his
integrity above reproach. Difficult as it was to judge impartially,
with the cannon and the pikes of the mob leveled at his breast, it was
not doubted that he would vote conscientiously.
As the name of Vergniaud was called, all conversation instantly
ceased. Perfect silence pervaded the hall, and every eye was riveted
upon him. Slowly he ascended the steps of the tribune. His brow was
calm, but his mouth closely compressed, as if to sustain some firm
resolve. He paused for a moment, and the Assembly was breathless with
suspense. He contracted his eyebrows, as if again reflecting upon his
decision, and then, in a low, solemn, firm voice, uttered the word
"_Death_."
The most profound silence reigned for a moment, and then again the low
murmur of suppressed conversation filled the hall. Vergniaud descended
from the tribune and disappeared in the crowd. All hope for the king
was now gone. The rest of the Girondists also voted for death, and
Louis was condemned to the scaffold.
This united vote upon the death of the king for a short time mingled
together again the Girondists and the Jacobins. But the dominant
party, elated by the victory which they had gained over their
adversaries, were encouraged to fresh extortions. Perils increased.
Europe was rising in arms against the blood-stained Republic. The
execution of the king aroused emotions of unconquerable detestation in
the bosoms of thousands who had previously looked upon the Revolution
with favor. Those who had any opulence to forfeit, or any position in
society to maintain, were ready to welcome as deliverers the allied
army of invasion. It was then, to meet this emergency, that that
terrible Revolutionary Tribunal was organized, which raised the ax of
the guillotine as the one all-potent instrument of government, and
which shed such oceans of innocent blood. "Two hundred and sixty
thousand heads," said Marat, "must fall before France will be safe
from internal foes." Danton, Marat, and Robespierre were now in the
ascendency, riding with resistless power upon the billows of mob
violence. Whenever they wished to carry any measure, they sent forth
their agents to the dens and lurking-places of degradation and crime,
and surrounded and filled the hall of the Assembly with blood-thirsty
assassins. "Those who call themselves _respectable_," said Marat,
"wish to give laws to those whom they call the _rabble_. We will teach
them that the time is come in which the _rabble_ is to reign."
This Revolutionary Tribunal, consisting of five judges, a jury, and a
public accuser, all appointed by the Convention, was proposed and
decreed on the same evening. It possessed unlimited powers to
confiscate property and take life. The Girondists dared not vote
against this tribunal. The public voice would pronounce them the worst
of traitors. France was now a charnel-house. Blood flowed in streams
which were never dry. Innocence had no protection. Virtue was
suspicion, suspicion a crime, the guillotine the penalty, and the
confiscated estate the bribe to accusation. Thus there was erected, in
the name of liberty and popular rights, over the ruins of the French
monarchy, a system of despotism the most atrocious and merciless under
which humanity has ever groaned.
Again and again had the Jacobins called the mob into the Assembly, and
compelled the members to vote with the poniards of assassins at their
breasts. Madame Roland now despaired of liberty. Calumny, instead of
gratitude, was unsparingly heaped upon herself and her husband. This
requital, so unexpected, was more dreadful to her than the scaffold.
All the promised fruits of the Revolution had disappeared, and
desolation and crime alone were realized. The Girondists still met in
Madame Roland's library to deliberate concerning measures for averting
the impending ruin. All was unavailing.
The most distressing embarrassments now surrounded M. Roland. He could
not abandon power without abandoning himself and his supporters in the
Assembly to the guillotine; and while continuing in power, he was
compelled to witness deeds of atrocity from which not only his soul
revolted, but to which it was necessary for him apparently to give his
sanction. His cheek grew pale and wan with care. He could neither eat
nor sleep. The Republic had proved an utter failure, and France was
but a tempest-tossed ocean of anarchy.
Thus situated, M. Roland, with the most melancholy forebodings, sent
in his final resignation. He retired to humble lodgings in one of the
obscure streets of Paris. Here, anxiously watching the progress of
events, he began to make preparations to leave the mob-enthralled
metropolis, and seek a retreat, in the calm seclusion of La Platière,
from these storms which no human power could allay. Still, the
influence of Roland and his wife was feared by those who were
directing the terrible enginery of lawless violence. It was well known
by them both that assassins had been employed to silence them with the
poniard. Madame Roland seemed, however, perfectly insensible to
personal fear. She thought only of her husband and her child.
Desperate men were seen lurking about the house, and their friends
urged them to remove as speedily as possible from the perils by which
they were surrounded. Neither the sacredness of law nor the weapons of
their friends could longer afford them any protection. The danger
became so imminent that the friends of Madame Roland brought her the
dress of a peasant girl, and entreated her to put it on, as a
disguise, and escape by night, that her husband might follow after
her, unencumbered by his family; but she proudly repelled that which
she deemed a cowardly artifice. She threw the dress aside, exclaiming,
"I am ashamed to resort to any such expedient. I will neither disguise
myself, nor make any attempt at secret escape. My enemies may find me
always in my place. If I am assassinated, it shall be in my own home.
I owe my country an example of firmness, and I will give it."
She, however, was so fully aware of her peril, and each night was
burdened with such atrocities, that she placed loaded pistols under
her pillow, to defend herself from those outrages, worse than death,
of which the Revolution afforded so many examples. While the influence
of the Girondists was entirely overborne by the clamors of the mob in
Paris, in the more virtuous rural districts, far removed from the
corruption of the capital, their influence was on the increase. The
name of M. Roland, uttered with execrations in the metropolis by the
vagabonds swarming from all parts of Europe, was spoken in tones of
veneration in the departments, where husbandmen tilled the soil, and
loved the reign of law and peace. Hence the Jacobins had serious cause
to fear a reaction, and determined to silence their voices by the
slide of the guillotine. The most desperate measures were now adopted
for the destruction of the Girondists. One conspiracy was formed to
collect the mob, ever ready to obey a signal from Marat, around the
Assembly, to incite them to burst in at the doors and the windows, and
fill the hall with confusion, while picked men were to poniard the
Girondists in their seats. The conspiracy was detected and exposed but
a few hours before its appointed execution. The Jacobin leaders,
protected by their savage allies, were raised above the power of law,
and set all punishment at defiance.
A night was again designated, in which bands of armed men were to
surround the dwelling of each Girondist, and assassinate these foes of
Jacobin domination in their beds. This plot also was revealed to the
Girondists but a few hours before its destined catastrophe, and it was
with the utmost difficulty that the doomed victims obtained
extrication from the toils which had been wound around them.
Disastrous news was now daily arriving from the frontiers. The most
alarming tidings came of insurrections in La Vendee, and other
important portions of France, in favor of the restoration of the
monarchy. These gathering perils threw terror into the hearts of the
Jacobins, and roused them to deeds of desperation. Though Madame
Roland was now in comparative obscurity, night after night the most
illustrious men of France, battling for liberty and for life in the
Convention, ascended the dark staircase to her secluded room, hidden
in the depth of a court of the Rue de la Harpe, and there talked over
the scenes of the day, and deliberated respecting the morrow.
The Jacobins now planned one of those horrible insurrections which
sent a thrill of terror into every bosom in Paris. Assembling the
multitudinous throng of demoniac men and women which the troubled
times had collected from every portion of Christendom, they gathered
them around the hall of the Assembly to enforce their demands. It was
three o'clock in the morning of the 31st of May, 1793, when the dismal
sounds of the alarm bells, spreading from belfry to belfry, and the
deep booming of the insurrection gun, reverberating through the
streets, aroused the citizens from their slumbers, producing universal
excitement and consternation. A cold and freezing wind swept clouds of
mist through the gloomy air, and the moaning storm seemed the
appropriate requiem of a sorrow-stricken world. The Hotel de Ville was
the appointed place of rendezvous for the swarming multitudes. The
affrighted citizens, knowing but too well to what scenes of violence
and blood these demonstrations were the precursors, threw up their
windows, and looked out with fainting hearts upon the dusky forms
crowding by like apparitions of darkness. The rumbling of the wheels
of heavy artillery, the flash of powder, with the frequent report of
firearms, and the uproar and the clamor of countless voices, were
fearful omens of a day to dawn in blacker darkness than the night. The
Girondists had recently been called in the journals and inflammatory
speeches of their adversaries the Rolandists. The name was given them
in recognition of the prominent position of Madame Roland in the
party, and with the endeavor to cast reproach upon her and her
husband. Through all the portentous mutterings of this rising storm
could be heard deep and significant execrations and menaces, coupled
with the names of leading members of the Girondist party. "Down with
the aristocrats, the traitors, the Rolandists!" shouted incessantly
hoarse voices and shrill voices, of drunken men, of reckless boys, of
fiendish women.
The Girondists, apprehensive of some movement of this kind, had
generally taken the precaution not to sleep that night in their own
dwellings. The intrepid Vergniaud alone refused to adopt any measure
of safety. "What signifies life to me now?" said he; "my blood may be
more eloquent than my words in awakening and saving my country. I am
ready for the sacrifice." One of the Girondists, M. Rabout, a man of
deep, reflective piety, hearing these noises, rose from his bed,
listened a moment at his window to the tumult swelling up from every
street of the vast metropolis, and calmly exclaiming, "Illa suprema
dies," _it is our last day_, prostrated himself at the foot of his
bed, and invoked aloud the Divine protection upon his companions, his
country, and himself. Many of his friends were with him, friends who
knew not the power of prayer. But there are hours in which every soul
instinctively craves the mercy of its Creator. They all bowed
reverently, and were profoundly affected by the supplications of their
Christian friend. Fortified and tranquilized by the potency of prayer,
and determining to die, if die they must, at the post of duty, at six
o'clock they descended into the street, with pistols and daggers
concealed beneath their clothes. They succeeded, unrecognized, in
reaching the Convention in safety.
One or two of the Jacobin party were assembled there at that early
hour, and Danton, pale with the excitement of a sleepless night,
walking to and fro in nervous agitation, greeted his old friends with
a wan and melancholy smile. "Do you see," said Louvet to Gaudet, "what
horrible hope shines upon that hideous face?" The members rapidly
collected. The hall was soon filled. The Girondists were now helpless,
their sinews of power were cut, and the struggle was virtually over.
All that remained for them was to meet their fate heroically and with
an unvanquished spirit.