The character of Danton has more widely impressed the world than that of
any other revolutionary leader, because it contained elements
permanently human, independent of the democratic theory of the time, and
necessary neither to the support of that theory nor to the criticism of
it.
The character of Danton appeals to that sense in man which is interested
in action, and which in the field of letters takes the form of drama.
His vigour, his personal strength of mind and body, the individuality of
his outline, arrest equally the man who loves the Revolution, and the
man who hates it, and the man who is quite indifferent to its success or
failure.
It is on this very account that historians, especially foreign
historians, have tended to misinterpret the man. Thus Carlyle, who has
great intuition in the matter, yet makes him out farmer-like--which he
certainly was not; Michelet, fascinated by his energy, presents him as
something uncouth, and in general those who would describe Danton stand
at a distance, as it were, where his loud voice and forcible gesture may
best be appreciated; but a man to be seen truly must be seen in
intimacy.
Danton was essentially a compound of two powerful characters in man. He
was amative or constructive, and at the same time he not only possessed
but liked to exercise lucidity of thought. The combination is among the
strongest of all those that go to build up human personalities.
That which was amative and constructive in him, his virility if you
will, brought him into close touch with reality; he knew and loved his
own country, for instance, and infinitely preferred its happy survival
to the full development of any political theory. He also knew and loved
his fellow countrymen in detail and as persons; he knew what made a
Frenchman weak and what made him strong. The vein of Huguenotry, though
he did not know it for what it was, he disliked in his compatriots. On
the other hand, the salt and freshness of the French was native to him
and he delighted in it; the freedom of their expression, the noise of
their rhetoric, and the military subsoil of them, were things to all of
which he immediately responded. He understood their sort of laughter,
nor was he shocked, as a man less national would have been, at their
peculiarly national vices, and in especial their lapses into rage. It is
this which must account for what all impartial judgment most blames in
him, which is, his indifference to the cruelties, his absorbed interest
in foreign and military affairs, at the moment of the Massacres of
September.
This touch with reality made him understand in some fashion (though only
from without) the nature of the Germans. The foolish mania of their
rulers for mere territorial expansion unaccompanied by persuasion or the
spread of their ideas, he comprehended. The vast superiority of their
armies over the disorganised forces of the French in 1792 he clearly
seized: hence on the one hand his grasp of their foreign policy, and on
the other his able negotiation of the retreat after Valmy. He also
understood, however, and more profoundly, the rapid self-organisation of
which his own countrymen were capable, and it was upon this knowledge
that his determination to risk the continuance of the war reposed. It
should be remarked that both in his military and in his quasi-military
action he was himself endowed in a singular degree with that power of
immediate decision which is characteristic of his nation.
His lucidity of thought permitted him to foresee the consequences of
many a revolutionary decision, and at the same time inclined him to a
strong sympathy with the democratic creed, with the doctrine of
equality, and especially with the remoulding of the national
institutions--particularly his own profession of the law--upon simple
lines. He was undoubtedly a sincere and a convinced revolutionary, and
one whose doctrine more permeated him than did that of many of his
contemporaries their less solid minds. He was not on that account
necessarily republican. Had some accident called his genius into play
earlier in the development of the struggle, he might well, like
Mirabeau, with whom he presents so curious a parallel, have thought it
better for the country to save the Monarchy.
It must always be remembered that he was a man of wide culture and one
who had achieved an early and satisfactory professional success; he was
earning a sound income at the moment of his youthful marriage; he read
English largely and could speak it. His dress was not inexpensive, and
though somewhat disordered (as it often is with men of intense energy
and constant gesture) it never gave an impression of carelessness or
disarray. He had many and indifferent intellectual interests, and was
capable, therefore, of intelligent application in several fields. He
appreciated the rapid growth of physical science, and at the same time
the complexity of the old social conditions--too widely different from
contemporary truths.
To religion he was, of course, like all men of that time, utterly
indifferent, but unlike many of them he seized the precise proportion of
its remaining effect upon certain districts and certain sections of the
countrysides. There has been a tendency latterly to exaggerate the part
which Freemasonry played in the launching of him; he was indeed a member
of a masonic lodge, as were, for that matter, all the men, conspicuous
or obscure, democratic or utterly reactionary, who appeared upon the
revolutionary stage: probably the king, certainly old aristocrats like
the father of Madame de Lamballe, and the whole host of the middle
class, from men like Bailly to men like Condorcet. But it is reading
history backwards, and imagining the features of our own time to have
been present a century ago, to make of Masonry the determining element
in his career.
Danton failed and died from two combined causes: first his health gave
way, secondly he obtruded his sanity and civilian sense into the heated
fury and calculated martial law of the second year of the Republic. To
both that fury and that calculation he was an obstacle; his opposition
to the Terror lost him the support of the enthusiasts, but it was the
interference which such a judgment made in the plans of the soldiers,
and notably of Carnot, that determined his condemnation and death. He
also, like Mirabeau, will undoubtedly increase as the years proceed,
and, if only as a representative of the national temper, become more and
more the typical figure of the Revolution in action.