No character in the Revolution needs for its comprehension a wider
reading and a greater knowledge of the national character than
Robespierre’s.
Upon no character does the comprehension of the period more depend, and
none (for reasons I will give in a moment) has been more misunderstood,
not only in the popular legend but in the weighed decisions of competent
historians.
So true is this that even time, which (in company with scholarship)
usually redresses such errors, has not yet permitted modern authors to
give a true picture of the man.
The reason of so conspicuous a failure in the domain of history is this:
that side by side with the real Robespierre there existed in the minds
of all his contemporaries _save those who actually came across him in
the junctions of government_, a legendary Robespierre--a Robespierre
popularly imagined; and that this imaginary Robespierre, while it (or
he) has proved odious to posterity, seemed, while he lived, a
fascinating portrait to the man himself, and therefore he accepted it.
For Robespierre, though just, lacked humility.
The problem is an exceedingly subtle as well as an exceedingly difficult
one. The historian, as he reads his authorities, has perpetually to
distinguish between what is strong and what is weak evidence, and to
recall himself, as he reads, to reality by a recollection of what
Robespierre himself was. If he does not do so he falls at once into the
legend; so powerful is that legend in the numbers that supported it, and
so strongly did Robespierre himself support it by his own attitude. The
legendary Robespierre may be described in a very few lines.
Conceive a man sincerely convinced of the purest democratic theory, a
man who cared for nothing else but the realisation of that theory, and
who had never sacrificed his pursuit of its realisation in the State to
any personal advantage whatsoever. This man, trusted by the people and
at last idolised by them, becomes more and more powerful. He enters the
governing body (the Committee of Public Safety), he is the master both
within and without that body, and uses his mastery for establishing an
ideal democracy which shall recognise the existence of God and repose
upon civic virtue; and to establish this ideal he has recourse to
terror. He finds that human defections from his ideal are increasingly
numerous: he punishes them by death. The slaughter grows to be enormous;
the best of Democrats are involved in it; at last it can be tolerated no
longer, his immediate subordinates revolt against him in the Committee,
he is outlawed, fails to raise a popular rebellion in his favour in
Paris, is executed, and his system of terror falls to the ground.
This picture, though purely legendary in tone, contains not only much
truth, but truth of precisely that sort which conspires to make credible
what is false in the whole.
Robespierre was sincerely attached to the conception of an ideal
democracy; he was incorruptible in the pursuit of it--and to be a
politician and incorruptible amounts to something like what the Church
calls heroic virtue in a man. He _did_ enter the Committee of Public
Safety; he _did_ support the Terror, and when he was overthrown the
Terror _did_ come to an end. Where, then, does the legend differ from
the truth?
In these capital points, which change it altogether: that Robespierre
was not the chief influence in the Committee of Public Safety, _i.e._
the all powerful executive of the Republic; that he did not desire the
Terror, that he did not use it, that he even grew disgusted with it, and
that, in general, he was never the man who governed France.
It need hardly be pointed out how such a truth destroys such a legend.
The whole nature of the twelve months between the summer of 1793 and the
summer of 1794 must vary according as we regard them as Robespierrean or
no: and they were not Robespierrean.
What were they then, and why has the error that Robespierre was then
master, arisen?
Those months, which may be roughly called the months of the Terror,
were, as we shall see later in this book, months of martial law; and the
Terror was simply martial law in action--a method of enforcing the
military defence of the country and of punishing all those who
interfered with it or were supposed by the Committee to interfere with
it.
No one man in the Committee was the author of this system, but the one
most determined to use it and the one who had most occasion to use it,
was undoubtedly the military organiser, Carnot. Side by side with him
one man, such as Barrère, supported it because it kept up the Committee
of Public Safety which gave him all his political position. Another,
such as Saint-Just, supported it because he believed that the winning of
the war (in which he took an active part) would secure democracy
everywhere and for ever. Another, such as Jean Bon, supported it from
the old sectarian bitterness of the Huguenot. But of all men in the
Committee, Robespierre supported the Terror least, and was most
suspected by his colleagues--and increasingly suspected as time went
on--of desiring to interfere with the martial system of the Terror and
to modify it.
Why, then, was Robespierre popularly identified with the Terror, and
why, when he was executed, did the Terror cease?
Robespierre was identified with the Terror because he was identified
with the popular clamour of the time, with the extreme democratic
feeling of the time, and its extreme fear of a reaction. Robespierre
being the popular idol, had become also the symbol of a popular frenzy
which was supposed to be ruling the country. But that frenzy was not
ruling the country. What was ruling the country was the Committee of
Public Safety, in which Carnot’s was the chief brain. Robespierre was
indeed the idol of the populace; he was in no way the agent of their
power or of any power.
Why, when he fell, did the Terror cease if he were not its author?
Because the Terror was acting under a strain; it was with the utmost
difficulty that this absolute, intolerant and intolerable martial system
could be continued when once the fear of invasion was removed. For some
weeks before Robespierre fell the victories had begun to render it
unnecessary. When the Committee saw to it that Robespierre should be
outlawed by the Parliament, they knocked away, without knowing it, the
keystone of their own policy; it was _his_ popular position which made
_their_ policy possible. When he was destroyed they suddenly found that
the Terror could no longer be maintained. Men had borne with it because
of Robespierre, falsely imagining that Robespierre had desired it.
Robespierre gone, men would not bear with it any more.
Now, finally, if Robespierre himself had always felt opposed to the
system of the Terror, why did he not take the lead in the popular
reaction against it?
He had his opportunity given him by Danton in December 1793--seven
months before his own catastrophe. The Committee determined to put
Danton out of the way because Danton, in appealing for mercy, was
weakening the martial power of their government. Robespierre might have
saved Danton: he preferred to let him be sacrificed. The reason was that
Robespierre wrongly believed popularity to lie upon the side of the
Terror and against Danton; he was in no way a leader (save in rhetoric
and in rhetoric directed towards what men already desired), and his own
great weakness or vice was the love of popular acclaim.
Later on, in the summer of 1794, when he actually began to move against
the Terror, he only did so privately. He so misread men that he still
believed the Terror to be popular, and dared not lose his popular name.
A man by nature as sincere as crystal, he was tempted to insincerity in
this major thing, during the last months of his life, and he yielded
completely to the temptation. For the sake of his memory it was
deplorable, and deplorable also for history. His weakness has been the
cause of an historical error as grave as any that can be discovered in
modern letters, and at the same time has wholly maligned him to
posterity.
A factor in Robespierre’s great public position which is often forgotten
is the great effect of his speeches. That men should still debate, after
so vast a change in taste, whether those speeches were eloquent or no,
is a sufficient proof of their effect. He spoke in an ordered and a
reasoned manner, which bored the fine spirits of the earlier
Parliaments, but well suited the violent convictions of the later
Revolution. His phraseology, his point of view, just jumped with that of
his audience. He could express what they felt, and express it in terms
which they knew to be exact, and which they believed to be grand. For
his manner was never excessive, and those excessive men who heard him in
an excessive mood, were proud to know that their violence could be
expressed with so much scholarship and moderated skill.
By birth he was of the smaller gentry, though poor. It is an indication
of his character that he had thought of taking Orders, and that in early
youth literary vanity had affected him. He has left no monument; but
from the intensity of his faith and from his practice of it, his name,
though it will hardly increase, will certainly endure.