the sanguinary and precarious years 1793–94. Following the results of
the revolution and its excesses all Europe had combined against France,
and only the utmost concentration of internal forces made victory
against such a coalition possible. The National Convention placed the
direction of affairs in the hands of a committee of nine, among whom
were Danton, Robespierre, Marat and St. Just, and this Committee
saved France. They formed and sent into the field the volunteer armies
which, at first unorganized, gradually obtained ascendancy over the
experienced coalition troops and finally drove them from the field.
Everything that might work injury to the troops at the front was
ruthlessly put aside. Hundreds of aristocrats followed the King and
Queen to the scaffold. Murder was the order of the day and thinned
out not only the friends of the old régime, but also the ranks of the
revolutionaries themselves. The earliest of these to fall in connection
with the King’s execution was Le Pelletier, formerly the Comte de St.
Fargeau, a member of the Convention, who was murdered by a member of
the King’s body-guard on the eve of the execution of the King, on
January 20, 1793, because he had voted for the King’s death. Busts of
Le Pelletier and Brutus were placed in the Palace of Justice, and David
quickly completed a fine painting of the victim which he offered to the
Convention in the following terms: “Fellow Citizens, each one of us is
responsible to the Fatherland for those gifts which nature has bestowed
on us; diverse though their expression may be, the goal is the same
for us all. Every true patriot should use every means to inspire his
fellow citizens and bring before them at all times the great examples
of heroism and virtue. I am moved by these thoughts in offering to
the National Convention the painting of Michel Le Pelletier who was
murdered in cowardly fashion because he voted for a tyrant’s death.”
Unfortunately this painting has been lost. Le Pelletier’s descendants,
into whose possession it passed, were Royalists, and hid the painting,
destroying the plates and all the engravings which had been made
from it. The reproduction (Fig. 15) was made from the only existing
impression in the Cabinet of Engravings in the Louvre. The composition
is conceived in the grand and austere manner which characterized
David’s work in these days of terror and fanatically exaggerated
idealism.
[Illustration: FIG. 20. MARAT (1793)
_Museum, Brussels_]
Before six months were up another assassination, this time of one
of the leaders of the revolution--Marat--roused the members of the
Convention and the populace to the utmost. Hardly had the news
spread abroad before one of the members of the Convention arose
crying: “Where art thou, David? You made a portrait of Le Pelletier
for posterity when he died for his country, now the occasion has
arisen for another work.” “This too I will do,” David answered, and
produced one of his most moving compositions (Figs. 16 and 20). It
is planned with great power and simplicity, and filled with deep and
tragic feeling, for Marat was his friend. Nothing has aroused more
astonishment than this friendship of David’s for Marat who has been
regarded as the bloodthirsty instigator of the horrors and deviltries
of the revolution. If we look into the matter more closely, however,
we must recognize in Marat qualities which explain the esteem of
men like David. He had remarkable philosophic and scientific gifts.
While his enemies described him as a quack doctor, or, as Carlisle
erroneously states, a veterinary, as a matter of fact his professional
contributions as an oculist were so remarkable that some of his
writings have been reprinted even of late years. Before the revolution
he was the most celebrated oculist of the aristocracy, and the Comte
d’Artois, later Charles X, had appointed him as his personal physician
at a salary of two thousand pounds. His philosophical writings, such
as the three volume _Essays on Man_ which appeared in English and
French, achieved a reputation for him abroad. Although he did not
become a member of the French Academy, on account of his disagreement
with Voltaire and his attack on Newton, no less a person than Goethe
expressed himself concerning this injustice. Benjamin Franklin,
too, was among those who visited Marat and were interested in his
experiments in physics.
On the outbreak of the revolution he abandoned his career as doctor and
scholar to develop an astonishing public zeal founded on his passion
for the new ideas. He influenced the development of the new forms of
government in no small measure, advised against copying the English
constitution with which he had familiarized himself during a stay in
England, and opposed all who attempted to assume Dictatorship, even
Mirabeau, then Lafayette and later General Dumouriez, whose treason he
foresaw before Dumouriez went over to the Austrians and the Girondists.
He voted for the condemnation of the King, whom he accused of treason
to his country, but advised against his condemnation for events which
happened prior to the revolution. That he was not so bloodthirsty as
his opponents would have us believe is proved by his insistence that
Malesherbes, the king’s advisor, should not be condemned with him as he
was “a wise and venerable old man.”
How many of the wild imprecations which were published against his
enemies, and particularly against the nobility in his journal _L’Ami
du Peuple_ may be laid at his door, is a question. This paper was
suppressed at various times, and while Marat was in hiding it appeared
with distorted versions of his opinions given out by his enemies or
supposed friends, in the endeavour to bring discredit on him. The
really established facts concerning him place him in no unfavorable
light. He opposed the Girondists because he opposed a foreign war,
from which he felt not only the Monarchists but those Radicals who
worked in the dark like the Girondists hoped to draw advantage,
and which he felt might result in the establishment of a military
dictatorship. He foresaw the September murders, and demanded the
establishment of a tribunal for the prisoners. This was not done, and
the murders consequently took place.
True his impassioned pen evoked death and destruction upon his
opponents, but he was persecuted all his life and his enemies
retaliated in kind. More than once he fled from death, hiding for
weeks at a time in cellars and in sewers and contracting from lack of
nourishment all sorts of bodily ills which his iron energy enabled him
to disregard. Ill, unable to attend the Convention, although working
all day long, he sought relief in hot baths where he wrote by placing
a board across the bath for his books and papers. With, in any case,
but a short time to live, he fell victim to the murderer’s knife in
the hands of an eccentric and talented young noblewoman, Charlotte
Corday, who hoped to end the revolution by murdering Marat, whereas her
deed had exactly the opposite effect. She belonged to the Girondist
circles whose persecution followed the outbreak of the war and whose
suppression Marat demanded when at first victory seemed doubtful.
Marat was unquestionably a true friend of the people and his published
and spoken convictions were utterly sincere. In spite of his powerful
and completely independent position, for he was affiliated with no
particular party, he rejected every salaried position, every political
distinction and lived in the poorest circumstances, the very bathtub
which he used and which later attained a sort of celebrity as a
curiosity being borrowed from a neighbor. He received petitioners
without number, and endeavoured in the “Letterbox” of his paper, which
he was the first to introduce, to answer the countless questions put
by the people. Charlotte Corday only obtained an interview with him
after several unsuccessful attempts, by pretending that she was seeking
help for a widow with five children. The paper which Marat holds in his
hand in David’s picture was sent in by her to obtain admission, and not
without reason or effect has the artist made these words legible: “13
July, 1793, Charlotte Corday to Citizen Marat.” “To be unfortunate is
to be sure of your assistance.” An order for 25 francs which Marat had
made out for the widow in whose name Charlotte Corday sought his aid
lies on the stool in the foreground. Her dagger seems to have found him
while he affixed his signature to it.
This composition is among David’s finest achievements in its
combination of very simple forms and great expressiveness. We almost
feel the corpse still lives, still breathes. The most touching
naturalness is combined with a truly heroic style comparable to that
of France’s great tragic poets, such as Racine and Corneille. If we
remember that at the time this picture was painted, the elegant Rococo
painters were still producing their piquant compositions, we recognize
that in art as in life a new era had dawned, an art founded on entirely
new conceptions, which built its compositions with large and massive
forms and sought again those depths of inspiration which had entirely
disappeared from the art of the court painters.
David painted still another composition as propaganda for his political
ideals. A thirteen-year-old drummer boy, Joseph Bara, fell in the
battles in the Vendee in December, 1793, and David was commissioned
by the Convention to immortalize the death of this young hero of
the Republic. This painting, now in the Museum at Avignon, although
unfinished, and very simple in conception, has many charming qualities.
French writers have particularly praised the purity and elegance of the
drawing and the beauty of the youthful form; and in fact the swelling
rhythmic line and vivacity of the bodily forms are very pleasing. If,
however, we analyse the essentially novel quality in this art, it lies
in the reduction of the composition to its bare essentials, combined
with a deepened expressiveness. The scene of the battle in which the
boy fell is only lightly indicated. In the background are clouds
which might be cannon smoke, and far to one side the disappearing
form of a standard bearer. The boy presses the republican cockade to
his breast with one hand--there is no other indication of the day’s
realities--everything else is universal, idealistic. The nakedness, the
boy’s idealized features, the wide empty spaces of the background with
its suggestion of a hill--everything is concentrated on the suffering
and inspiration which speak from the lines of the body. The moment of
transition from life to death--which to be sure the friends of the
revolution had ample chance of observing--is wonderfully depicted. We
feel the trembling of the body, the lift of the breast, the stiffening
of the mouth and of the half-closed eyes. The curious color scheme of
the painting, the thin sulphur yellow background, the pale blue shadows
in the figure, the luxuriant dark brown hair and the brightly colored
cockade--contrive a curious effect.
Close bonds of friendship united David to Danton and Robespierre,
the two other leaders of the Reign of Terror, as well as to
Marat--although this applies only to the early days where Danton is
concerned. The break with him is one of the episodes in the painter’s
life which is most difficult to explain although David can hardly
have been alone to blame, for Danton’s violent nature was prone in
moments of passion to transform friends into foes. It is unfortunate,
however, that David did not exhibit more independence in his political
opinions, and that even though he allowed himself to be dragged in
Robespierre’s train, he helped in the downfall of this most stirring of
the revolutionary heroes.
The varying attitudes of revolutionary critics make it even harder to
evaluate Danton’s personality and contribution than that of Marat.
Unlike Marat he was no knight of the pen, but a man of words and deeds,
living fiercely in the passions of the moment, and always at his best
in the times of greatest difficulty.
[Illustration: FIG. 21. ST. JUST (1792)
_Private Possession, Paris_]
[Illustration: FIG. 22. SELF PORTRAIT (1794)
_Louvre, Paris_]
The personal documents which give us intimate glimpses of the
personalities of the other revolutionary leaders are entirely lacking
in Danton’s case. He was too impulsive for this form of expression, or,
in his leisure moments, too lazy. His portraits give one an impression
of the strength and softness, obstinacy and good nature, energy and
procrastination, which characterized this hero of the revolution whose
dramatic fate has been the inspiration of many a poet. His career
was short but glorious. He rose like a meteor from the obscurity of
a provincial law practice to a dominating position, and during the
years 1792 to 1794 his powerful figure was in the foreground and
associated with every important event. His opponents accused him of
cruelty and dishonesty. It is undeniable that he occasionally indulged
his wild impulse to destroy those that opposed him, as witness his
speech, “Revolutions cannot be carried out on tea.” Although the
September murders occurred during his day, his guilt lies rather in not
preventing them, than in any instigation of them. He was occupied at
that time with the formation of the volunteer army, and the monument
erected to his memory by the City of Paris in the eighties, which
depicts him inspiring the citizens with flaming words to departure
for the tottering front, was well deserved. Whatever the faults of
his stormy and excitable nature, he did more than any other to save
his country in a moment of grave danger. So far as his dishonesty is
concerned, he seems now and then to have dealt not all too accurately
with State and private property, but his patriotism was none the
less sincere. We must remember that not all active natures can live
on nothing, like Marat and Robespierre, and that a powerful physical
constitution demands other recreations. Danton had far more love
of life than the dry Robespierre, and liked to be surrounded by his
men and women friends. He finally, to the horror of some historians,
acquired a small country property where he hoped, his labours over,
to retire with wife and children, an ambition destined never to be
fulfilled.
There is in the Museum at Troyes a portrait by David of Danton’s first
wife,[7] the brave Gabrielle, a healthy, capable and intelligent
housewife with black eyes and rosy cheeks--a true type of the new
Bourgeoisie. She seems to have been as cheerful as she was kind, and
gave Danton several children to whom he was tenderly attached. She was
destined not to see his downfall. When in February, 1793, he returned
from the Belgian front, he found that his wife had died and been buried
several days previously. It is characteristic both of his love for her
and his untamed nature that seven days after her death he had both
grave and coffin opened up, embraced the corpse and commissioned a
sculptor friend to make a death mask and a bust of her. His friends had
great difficulty in saving him from an emotional breakdown. Even the
cool Robespierre sought to comfort him in the most feeling manner in a
letter in which he pledges him his devotion and friendship unto death.
How quickly and how passionately they lived, these revolutionaries! A
couple of months later Danton married a sixteen-year-old girl, and a
year after that, Robespierre, who had promised--and undoubtedly with
sincere conviction--to be true to him till death, brought him to the
guillotine.
The dual rule of two temperaments so opposed as Danton’s and
Robespierre’s could not endure for long. One cannot conceive a greater
contrast than that between the robust Danton, who loudly proclaimed
his every thought and the elegant frail Robespierre who was all
self-control and deliberation.
How clever and calculating an actor Robespierre was is shown by the
account of his attempted murder by a young girl after the manner of
Marat’s. The attempt failed. The crowd surged up the stairs to his room
to congratulate him. Robespierre was seated in a corner calmly peeling
an orange. Without a word he looked sternly at the intruding crowd,
till in embarrassment they crept away. In his place Danton undoubtedly
would have launched into an impassioned speech of thanks.
Robespierre and his friend St. Just (Fig. 21) are both men of pleasing
appearance--almost good-looking as compared to Danton’s ugly bull-dog
countenance. They were, especially Robespierre, who wore a wig and
sword to the last, neat and even elegant in their dress, which differed
sharply from Danton’s almost gypsy-like effect.
Unfortunately the “Titan”--so accustomed was he to towering above his
opponents in the Convention and pelting them with his Shakespearian
witticisms--underestimated his puny but quick-witted and accurate
opponent, Robespierre, and before he realized it, he had met his doom.
Just as Danton was about to mitigate the rigours of the Convention’s
procedure, just as he hoped to take things a bit more easily
personally, came his impeachment--plotted so subtly by Robespierre and
his helper St. Just that there was no escape. So desperate a fight did
the giant put up, however, for himself and his friends that it hung by
a thread that his accusers might find themselves ruined in his stead.
After a number of most dubious witnesses had testified against Danton,
St. Just felt it wiser to deny him all defence by having the Court
decide that anyone who conducted himself so offensively toward his
judges as Danton, could be condemned without further hearing. Danton’s
mere presence was enough to dismay the jury, who, moreover, were not
really convinced of his guilt. When they retired, a rumor went about
that he had been acquitted. His accusers, thereupon, rushed to the
jury room and forced the rebellious members to submission. It is here
that our artist, who was a devoted admirer of Robespierre, appears
in no favorable light. He pressed about the jury with other members
of the Convention, and the report runs, called out to those who were
still hesitating, “Do you still believe Danton innocent? Has he not
already been judged by public opinion? Only cowards could so conduct
themselves!” What a fine argument!! One member of the jury burst
into sobs, and, as he could not bring himself to vote for Danton’s
impeachment, he was asked: “Who is more useful to the Republic,
Robespierre or Danton?” “Robespierre,” replied the juryman sobbing.
“Then Danton must go to the guillotine,” was the response.
Then came the day of the execution with its procession of three wagons,
each bearing five or six condemned prisoners, and towering above
them all, Danton looking proudly over the heads of the throng. The
procession passed the little Café de Parnasse where, once upon a time,
he had met his Gabrielle; then the Café de la Regence, and whom did
he see there? It is hard to believe. There sat his former friend, the
traitorous David, busily making a drawing of him (perhaps the drawing
in the museum at Lille, Fig. 17). “Lackey!” Danton called to him in
scorn. Next, as the procession passed Robespierre’s house, Danton
called out, “You will soon follow me! Your house will be torn down, and
men will cast salt upon the earth where it stood.”
Danton tried to the last to cheer the friends around him--the
ordinarily merry Camille Desmoulins who was grieving over his bride,
Lucille; the poet Fabre, who affirmed that one of his accusers, who
was also a poet, would doubtless steal his unprinted manuscripts and
publish them under his own name. “Soon that will no longer worry you,”
said Danton to him. The executions were quickly under way. The sun
was setting, and Danton’s giant figure was silhouetted darkly against
the evening sky. One of his friends wanted to embrace him but the
executioner would not permit it. He wanted to finish his task before
sundown. “Idiot,” said Danton to him, “Will you be able to prevent
our heads from kissing each other in the basket?” For one moment he
flinched when he thought of his young wife, “My beloved, shall I never
see you again?” Then, with an effort, he exclaimed, “Come Danton, let
there be no weakness,” and to the executioner, “Show my head to the
people. It is worth it.” These were his last words.
The curse uttered by Danton as he passed Robespierre’s house was
fulfilled all too quickly. Before five months were up, Robespierre trod
the same path, and the wagon was halted before his house to let the
deposed Dictator see the mob in its fury sprinkling his door with the
blood of a slaughtered ox.
And now the earth began to tremble under David’s feet. He was to the
last a devoted adherent of Robespierre. When the latter on the eve of
his fall read to the Jacobins his defence which ended with the words,
“I am ready to drink the poisoned cup,” David cried out “We will drink
it with you.” He must have been thinking of his portrayal of the death
of Socrates, but he probably hardly realized how imminent was the fall
of the last great leader of the revolution and how very nearly he
himself was involved in that fall.
David, as we know, did not complete his painting of Bara. This was
because he was planning for the Convention a festival in honor of the
fallen drummer boy. He was a great master in the arrangement of such
celebrations. With their carefully designed costumes, massed choirs,
improvised statues and profusion of flowers and patriotic orations,
they must have been astonishingly impressive, comparable only to the
national festivals of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately these artistic
manifestations of the revolution, which constituted an appreciable
part of David’s life work, were in their nature transitory. David
had set the date of the Bara festival for the 10th Thermidor (July
26, 1794). This was the very day of Robespierre’s downfall, and his
execution took place two days later. Through this coincidence of
date--or had David been warned?--he did not attend the sitting of the
Convention on the 10th Thermidor. Had he done so, he would undoubtedly
have been arrested and guillotined with Robespierre’s other adherents.
When he came into the Convention hall three days later he was denounced
by André Dumont and obliged to defend himself. He probably believed the
end had come. He was no orator, and his defect of speech made things
still harder for him. He stood there, pale and fearful, and it is said
a nervous perspiration so dewed his forehead that it dripped down his
coat to the floor. Where now was the courage with which he had offered
to die with Robespierre; with which when Marat was attacked in the
Convention he had once exclaimed: “Kill me in his place!” Yes, it was
undoubtedly easier to make drawings of one’s enemies and former friends
on their road to the guillotine than to defend one’s life before a
tribunal of the people. He made so pitiful an impression that they let
him go. Two days later, however, it was thought wiser to arrest him.
At first his sentence was light and he was allowed to work, but soon,
after another stormy session of the Convention, he was transferred to
the Luxembourg. His imprisonment lasted five months. Toward the end,
conditions were again made easier and he was allowed to work. Then he
was set free, and again, this time at the instigation of his fellow
artists, imprisoned for months. Finally during the general amnesty at
the end of the year 1795 he again obtained his freedom. This was the
end of his political activities. The terrible months of uncertainty
during his imprisonment, when death so often stared him in the face,
must have been a time of spiritual growth for him, for they resulted in
his painting a marvellous series of portraits. His achievement at this
time, and during the following years when the revolution slowly ebbed,
is the greatest of his artistic career.
[Illustration: FIG. 23. WOMAN OF THE REVOLUTION (1795)
_Museum, Lyon_]
[Illustration: FIG. 24. NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL (1797)
_Private Possession, Paris_]
There is first of all a portrait depicting the artist at the period of
his imprisonment (Fig. 22). It is seldom that a self portrait expresses
so vividly the perplexities of a period of terror as do the haunted
eyes of this young fanatic. These eyes have been called evil, and
David himself described as a good artist but an evil man. The moral
equipment of the revolutionaries cannot be summarized in such simple
fashion, however. David’s political opponents hit nearer the mark when
they called him to the defence of Marat, “What does that prove so
far as Marat is concerned? Only the devotion of an honorable man who
is allowing himself to be carried away by excitement.” That David’s
political life was so passionate, may be due in part to the youthful
violence of his friends. Nearly all the revolutionary leaders were in
their early thirties, an age which is apt to be the stormy period of
a man’s life. Old people do not bring about revolutions. David, to be
sure, was forty at the time of its outbreak, but see how youthful he
still looked; and the unspent store of his strength is proved by the
great age to which he lived.