It is well known, that during the revolutionary troubles of France,
not only all the churches were closed, but the Catholic and Protestant
worship entirely forbidden; and, after the constitution of 1795, it
was at the hazard of one's life that either the mass was heard, or
any religious duty performed. It is evident that Robespierre, who
unquestionably had a design which is now generally understood, was
desirous, on the day of the fête of the Supreme Being, to bring back
public opinion to the worship of the Deity. Eight months before,
we had seen the Bishop of Paris, accompanied by his clergy, appear
voluntarily at the bar of the Convention, to abjure the Christian
faith and the Catholic religion. But it is not as generally known,
that at that period Robespierre was not omnipotent, and could not
carry his desires into effect. Numerous factions then disputed with
him the supreme authority. It was not till the end of 1793, and the
beginning of 1794, that his power was so completely established that
he could venture to act up to his intentions.
Robespierre was then desirous to establish the worship of the Supreme
Being, and the belief of the immortality of the soul. He felt that
irreligion is the soul of anarchy, and it was not anarchy but
despotism which he desired; and yet the very day after that
magnificent fête in honour of the Supreme Being, a man of the highest
celebrity in science, and as distinguished for virtue and probity as
philosophic genius, Lavoisier, was led out to the scaffold. On the day
following that, Madame Elizabeth, that Princess whom the executioners
could not guillotine, till they had turned aside their eyes from the
sight of her angelic visage, stained the same axe with her blood!--And
a month after, Robespierre, who wished to restore order for his own
purposes--who wished to still the bloody waves which for years had
inundated the state, felt that all his efforts would be in vain if
the masses who supported his power were not restrained and directed,
because without order nothing but ravages and destruction can prevail.
To ensure the government of the masses, it was indispensable that
morality, religion, and belief should be established--and, to affect
the multitude, that religion should be clothed in external forms. "My
friend," said Voltaire, to the atheist Damilaville, "after you have
supped on well-dressed partridges, drunk your sparkling champaigne,
and slept on cushions of down in the arms of your mistress, I have
no fear of you, though you do not believe in God.---But if you are
perishing of hunger, and I meet you in the corner of a wood, I would
rather dispense with your company." But when Robespierre wished to
bring back to something like discipline the crew of the vessel which
was fast driving on the breakers, he found the thing was not so easy
as he imagined. To destroy is easy--to rebuild is the difficulty. He
was omnipotent to do evil; but the day that he gave the first sign
of a disposition to return to order, the hands which he himself
had stained with blood, marked his forehead with the fatal sign of
destruction.
--_Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes._
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