_Dumouriez--His displeasure at the Treatment of the Flemish
Provinces by the Convention--His projects in consequence--Gains
the ill-will of his Army--and is forced to fly to the Austrian
Camp--Lives many years in retreat, and finally dies in
England--Struggles betwixt the Girondists and
Jacobins--Robespierre impeaches the Leaders of the
Girondists--and is denounced by them--Decree of Accusation
against Marat--Commission of Twelve--Marat acquitted--Terror of
the Girondists--Jacobins prepare to attack the Palais Royal, but
are repulsed--Repair to the Convention, who recall the
Commission of Twelve--Louvet and other Girondist Leaders fly
from Paris--Convention go forth in procession to expostulate
with the People--Forced back to their Hall, and compelled to
Decree the Accusation of Thirty of their Body--Girondists
finally ruined--and their principal Leaders perish--Close of
their History._
While the Republic was thus indulging the full tyranny of irresistible
success over the remains of the royal family, it seemed about to sustain
a severe shock from one of its own children, who had arisen to eminence
by its paths. This was Dumouriez, whom we left victor at Jemappes, and
conqueror, in consequence, of the Flemish provinces. These fair
possessions, the Convention, without a moment's hesitation, annexed to
the dominions of France; and proceeded to pour down upon them their
tax-gatherers, commissaries, and every other denomination of spoilers,
who not only robbed without ceremony the unfortunate inhabitants, but
insulted their religion by pillaging and defacing their churches, set
their laws and privileges at contempt, and tyrannized over them in the
very manner, which had so recently induced the Flemings to offer
resistance to their own hereditary princes of the House of Austria.
Dumouriez, naturally proud of his conquest, felt for those who had
surrendered to his arms upon assurance of being well treated, and was
sensible that his own honour and influence were aimed at; and that it
was the object of the Convention to make use of his abilities only as
their implements, and to keep his army in a state of complete dependence
upon themselves.
[Sidenote: PROJECTS OF DUMOURIEZ.]
The general, on the contrary, had the ambition as well as the talents of
a conqueror: he considered his army as the means of attaining the
victories, which, without him, it could not have achieved, and he
desired to retain it under his own immediate command, as a combatant
wishes to keep hold of the sword which he has wielded with success. He
accounted himself strongly possessed of the hearts of his soldiers, and
therefore thought himself qualified to play the part of military umpire
in the divisions of the state, which La Fayette had attempted in vain;
and it was with this view, doubtless, that he undertook that expedition
to Paris, in which he vainly attempted a mediation in behalf of the
King.
After leaving Paris, Dumouriez seems to have abandoned Louis personally
to his fate, yet still retaining hopes to curb the headlong course of
the Revolution.
Two plans presented themselves to his fertile invention, nor can it be
known with certainty to which of them he most inclined. He may have
entertained the idea of prevailing upon the army to decide for the
youthful Dauphin to be their Constitutional King; or, as many have
thought, it may better have suited his personal views to have
recommended to the throne a gallant young prince of the blood, who had
distinguished himself in his army, the eldest son of the miserable Duke
of Orleans.[372] Such a change of dynasty might be supposed to limit the
wishes of the proposed sovereign to that share of power entrusted to him
by the Revolution, since he would have had no title to the crown save
what arose from the Constitution. But, to qualify himself in either case
to act as the supreme head of the army, independent of the National
Convention, it was necessary that Dumouriez should pursue his conquests,
act upon the plan laid down by the ministers at Paris, and in addition
to his title of victor in Belgium, add that of conqueror of Holland. He
commenced, accordingly, an invasion of the latter country, with some
prospect of success. But though he took Gertruydenberg, and blockaded
Bergen-op-Zoom, he was repulsed from Williamstadt; and at the same time
he received information that an army of Austrians, under the Prince of
Saxe-Cobourg, a general of eminence, though belonging to the old
military school of Germany, was advancing into Flanders. Dumouriez
retreated from Holland to make a stand against these new enemies, and
was again unfortunate. The French were defeated at Aix-la-Chapelle, and
their new levies almost entirely dispersed. Chagrined with this
disaster, Dumouriez gave an imprudent loose to the warmth of his
temper. Following the false step of La Fayette, in menacing before he
was prepared to strike, he wrote a letter to the Convention, threatening
the Jacobin party with the indignation of his army. This was on the 12th
March, 1793, and six days afterwards he was again defeated in the battle
of Neerwinden.[373]
It must have been extremely doubtful, whether, in the very pitch of
victory, Dumouriez possessed enough of individual influence over his
army, to have inclined them to declare against the National Convention.
The forces which he commanded were not to be regarded in the light of a
regular army, long embodied, and engaged perhaps for years in difficult
enterprises, and in foreign countries, where such a force exists as a
community only by their military relations to each other; where the
common soldiers knew no other home than their tents, and no other
direction than the voice of their officers; and the officers no other
laws than the pleasure of the general. Such armies, holding themselves
independent of the civil authorities of their country, came at length,
through the habit of long wars and distant conquests, to exist in the
French empire, and upon such rested the foundation-stone of the imperial
throne; but as yet, the troops of the Republic consisted either of the
regiments revolutionized, when the great change had offered commissions
to privates, and batons to subalterns,--or of new levies, who had their
very existence through the Revolution, and whose common nickname of
Carmagnoles,[374] expressed their Republican origin and opinions. Such
troops might obey the voice of the general on the actual field of
battle, but were not very amenable even to the ordinary course of
discipline elsewhere, and were not likely to exchange their rooted
political principles, with all the ideas of license connected with them,
at Dumouriez's word of command, as they would have changed their front,
or have adopted any routine military movement. Still less were they
likely implicitly to obey this commander, when the _prestige_ of his
fortune seemed in the act of abandoning him, and least of all, when they
found him disposed to make a compromise with the very foe who had
defeated him, and perceived that he negotiated, by abandoning his
conquests to the Austrians, to purchase the opportunity or permission of
executing the counter-revolution which he proposed.
Nevertheless, Dumouriez, either pushed on by an active and sanguine
temper, or being too far advanced to retreat, endeavoured, by intrigues
in his own army, and an understanding with the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg,
to render himself strong enough to overset the reigning party in the
Convention, and restore, with some modifications, the Constitution of
1791. He expressed this purpose with imprudent openness. Several
generals of division declared against his scheme. He failed in obtaining
possession of the fortresses of Lisle, Valenciennes, and Condé. Another
act of imprudence aggravated the unpopularity into which he began to
fall with his army. Four commissioners of the Convention[375]
remonstrated publicly on the course he was pursuing. Dumouriez, not
contented with arresting them, had the imprudence to send them to the
camp of the Austrians prisoners, thus delivering up to the public enemy
the representatives of the government under which he was appointed, and
for which he had hitherto acted, and proclaiming his alliance with the
invaders whom he was commissioned to oppose.
[Sidenote: DUMOURIEZ DEFEATED.]
All this rash conduct disunited the tie between Dumouriez and his army.
The resistance to his authority became general, and finally, it was with
great difficulty and danger that he made his escape to the Austrian
camp, with his young friend the Duke de Chartres.[376]
All that this able and ambitious man saved in his retreat was merely his
life, of which he spent some years afterwards in Germany, concluding it
in England, a few years ago, without again making any figure in the
political horizon.[377] Thus, the attempt of Dumouriez, to use military
force to stem the progress of the Revolution, failed, like that of La
Fayette, some months before. To use a medical simile, the imposthume,
was not yet far enough advanced, and sufficiently come to a head, to be
benefited by the use of the lancet.
Meanwhile, the Convention, though triumphant over the schemes of the
revolted general, was divided by the two parties to whom its walls
served for an arena, in which to aim against each other the most deadly
blows. It was now manifest that the strife must end tragically for one
of the parties, and all circumstances pointed out the Girondists as the
victims. They had indeed still the command of majorities in the
Convention, especially when the votes were taken by scrutiny or ballot;
on which occasions the feebler deputies of the Plain could give their
voice according to their consciences, without its being known that they
had done so. But in open debate, and when the members voted _vivâ voce_,
amongst the intimidating cries and threats of tribunes filled by an
infuriated audience, the spirit of truth and justice seemed too nearly
allied to that of martyrdom, to be prevalent generally amongst men who
made their own safety the rule of their own political conduct. The
party, however, continued for several months to exercise the duties of
administration, and to make such a struggle in the Convention as could
be achieved by oratory and reasoning, against underhand intrigue,
supported by violent declamation, and which was, upon the least signal,
sure of the aid of actual brutal violence.
The Girondists, we have seen, had aimed decrees of the Assembly at the
triumvirate, and a plot was now laid among the Jacobins, to repay that
intended distinction by the actual strokes of the axe, or, failing that,
of the dagger.
When the news of Dumouriez's defection arrived, the Jacobins, always
alert in prepossessing the public mind, held out the Girondists as the
associates of the revolted general. It was on them that they directed
the public animosity, great and furious in proportion to the nature of
the crisis. That majority of the Convention, which the traitor Dumouriez
affirmed was sound, and with which he acted in concert, intimated,
according to the Jacobins, the Girondists the allies of his treasons.
They called out in the Convention, on the 8th of March, for a tribunal
of judgment fit to decide on such crimes, without the delays arising
from ordinary forms of pleading and evidence, and without even the
intervention of a jury. The Girondists opposed this measure, and the
debate was violent. In the course of the subsequent days, an
insurrection of the people was prepared by the Jacobins, as upon the
20th June and 10th of August. It ought to have broken out upon the 10th
of March, which was the day destined to put an end to the ministerial
party by a general massacre. But the Girondists received early
intelligence of what was intended, and absented themselves from the
Convention on the day of peril. A body of Federates from Brest, about
four hundred strong, were also detached in their favour by Kevelegan,
one of the deputies from the ancient province of Bretagne, and who was a
zealous Girondist. The precaution, however slight, was sufficient for
the time. The men who were prepared to murder, were unwilling to fight,
however strong the odds on their side; and the mustering of the Jacobin
bravoes proved, on this occasion, an empty menace.
Duly improved, a discovered conspiracy is generally of advantage to the
party against which it was framed. But Vergniaud, when in a subsequent
sitting he denounced to the Convention the existence of a conspiracy to
put to death a number of the deputies, was contented to impute it to the
influence of the aristocracy, of the nobles, the priests, and the
emissaries of Pitt and Cobourg; thus suffering the Jacobins to escape
every imputation of that blame, which all the world knew attached to
them, and to them only. He was loudly applauded. Marat, who rose after
him, was applauded as loudly, and the Revolutionary Tribunal was
established.[378]
Louvet, who exclaims against Vergniaud for his pusillanimity, says, that
the orator alleged in his excuse, "the danger of incensing violent men,
already capable of all excesses." They had come to the boar chase, they
had roused him and provoked his anger, and now they felt, too late, that
they lacked weapons with which to attack the irritated monster. The plot
of the 10th March had been compared to that of the Catholics on the 5th
November, in England. It had been described in the _Moniteur_ as a
horrible conspiracy, by which a company of ruffians, assuming the title
of _de la Glacière_, in remembrance of the massacre of Avignon,
surrounded the hall for two days, with the purpose of dissolving the
National Convention by force, and putting to death a great proportion of
the deputies. Yet the Convention passed over, without effective
prosecution of any kind, a crime of so enormous a dye; and in doing so,
showed themselves more afraid of immediate personal consequences, than
desirous of seizing an opportunity to rid France of the horrible faction
by whom they were scourged and menaced.
[Sidenote: DECREE AGAINST MARAT.]
In the midst of next month the Jacobins became the assailants, proud, it
may be supposed, of the impunity under which they had been sheltered.
Robespierre impeached by name the leaders of the Girondists, as
accomplices of Dumouriez. But it was not in the Convention where
Robespierre's force lay. Guadet, with great eloquence, repelled the
charge, and in his turn denounced Robespierre and the Jacobins. He
proclaimed to the Convention, that they sat and debated under raised
sabres and poniards, which a moment's signal could let loose on them;
and he read from the journal conducted by Marat,[379] an appeal, calling
on the people to rise in insurrection. Fear and shame gave the
Convention momentary courage. They passed a decree of accusation against
Marat, who was obliged to conceal himself for a few days.[380]
Buzot, it may be remarked, censures this decree against Marat as
impolitic, seeing it was the first innovation affecting the
inviolability of the persons of the deputies. In point of principle, he
is certainly right; but as to any practical effects resulting from this
breach of privilege, by reprisals on the other side, we are quite
sceptical. Whatever violence was done to the Girondists, at the end of
the conflict, was sure to have befallen them, whether Marat had been
arrested or not. Precedents were as useless to such men, as a vizard to
one of their ruffians. Both could do their business barefaced.
The Convention went farther than the decree of accusation against Marat;
and for the first time showed their intention to make a stand against
the Jacobins. On the motion of Barrère, they nominated a commission of
twelve members, some Girondists, some neutrals, to watch over and
repress the movements of such citizens as should seem disposed to favour
anarchy.[381]
[Sidenote: INSURRECTION AGAINST GIRONDISTS.]
The Convention were not long of learning the character of the opposition
which they had now defied. Pache, Mayor of Paris, and one of the worst
men of the Revolution, appeared at the bar of the Convention with two
thousand petitioners, as they were called. They demanded, in the name of
the sections, the arrest of twenty-two of the most distinguished of the
Girondist leaders. The Convention got rid of the petition by passing to
the order of the day. But the courage of the anarchists was greatly
increased; and they saw that they had only to bear down with repeated
attacks an enemy who had no fortification save the frail defences of the
law, which it was the pride of the Jacobins to surmount and to defy.
Their demand of proscription against these unfortunate deputies was a
measure from which they never departed; and their audacity in urging it
placed that party on the defensive, who ought, in all reason to have
been active in the attack.
The Girondists, however, felt the extremity to which they were reduced,
and sensible of the great advantage to be attained by being the
assailants in such a struggle, they endeavoured to regain the offensive.
The Revolutionary Tribunal to which Marat had been sent by the decree of
accusation, knew their business too well to convict any one, much less
such a distinguished patriot, who was only accused of stimulating the
people to exercise the sacred right of insurrection. He was honourably
acquitted, after scarcely the semblance of a trial, and brought back to
his place in the Convention, crowned with a civic coronet, and
accompanied by a band of such determined ruffians as were worthy to form
his body-guard. They insisted on filing through the hall, while a huge
pioneer, their spokesman, assured the Convention that the people loved
Marat, and that the cause of Marat and the people would always be the
same.[382]
Meanwhile, the committee of twelve proceeded against the Terrorists with
some vigour. One of the most furious provokers of insurrection and
murder was Hébert, a devoted Jacobin, substitute of the Procureur Syndic
of the Community.[383] Speaking to this body, who now exercised the
whole powers of magistracy in Paris, this man had not blushed to demand
the heads of three hundred deputies. He was arrested and committed to
prison.
This decisive action ought in policy to have been followed by other
steps equally firm. The Girondists, by displaying confidence, might
surely have united to themselves a large number of the neutral party;
and might have established an interest in the sections of Paris,
consisting of men who, though timid without leaders, held in deep horror
the revolutionary faction, and trembled for their families and their
property, if put under the guardianship, as it had been delicately
expressed, of the rabble of the Fauxbourgs. The very show of four
hundred Bretons had disconcerted the whole conspiracy of the 10th of
March; and therefore, with a moderate support of determined men,
statesmen of a more resolute and practised character than these
theoretical philosophers, might have bid defiance to the mere mob of
Paris, aided by a few hundreds of hired ruffians. At the worst they
would have perished in attempting to save their country from the most
vile and horrible tyranny.
The Girondists, however, sat in the Convention, like wild-fowl when the
hawk is abroad, afraid either to remain where they were, or to attempt a
flight. Yet, as they could make no armed interest in Paris, there was
much to induce them to quit the metropolis, and seek a place of free
deliberation elsewhere. France, indeed, was in such a state, that had
these unfortunate experimentalists possessed any influence in almost any
department, they could hardly have failed to bring friends around them,
if they had effected a retreat to it. Versailles seems to have been
thought of as the scene of their adjournment, by those who nourished
such an idea; and it was believed that the inhabitants of that town,
repentant of the part they had played in driving from them the royal
family and the legislative body, would have stood in their defence. But
neither from the public journals and histories of the time, nor from the
private memoirs of Buzot, Barbaroux, or Louvet, does it appear that
these infatuated philosophers thought either of flight or defence. They
appear to have resembled the wretched animal, whose chance of escape
from its enemies rests only in the pitiful cries which it utters when
seized. Their whole system was a castle in the air, and when it vanished
they could only sit down and lament over it. On the other hand, it must
be allowed to the Girondists, that the inefficiency and imbecility of
their conduct was not to be attributed to personal cowardice.
Enthusiasts in their political opinions, they saw their ruin
approaching, waited for it, and dared it; but like that of the monarch
they had been so eager to dethrone, and by dethroning whom they had made
way for their own ruin, their resolution was of a passive, not an active
character; patient and steady to endure wrong, but inefficient where the
object was to do right towards themselves and France.
For many nights, these unhappy and devoted deputies, still possessed of
the ministerial power, were so far from being able to ensure their own
safety, or that of the country under their nominal government, that they
had shifted about from one place of rendezvous to another, not daring to
occupy their own lodgings, and usually remaining, three or four
together, armed for defence of their lives, in such places of secrecy
and safety as they could devise.
It was on the night preceding the 30th of May, that Louvet, with five of
the most distinguished of the Girondist party, had absconded into such
a retreat, more like robbers afraid of the police than legislators, when
the tocsin was rung at dead of night. Rabaud de Saint Etienne, a
Protestant clergyman, and one of the most distinguished of the party for
humanity and resolution, received it as a death-knell, and continued to
repeat, _Illa suprema dies_.
[Sidenote: INSURRECTION OF THE 31ST OF MAY.]
The alarm was designed to raise the suburbs; but in this task the
Jacobins do not seem to have had the usual facilities--at least, they
began by putting their bloodhounds on a scent, upon which they thought
them likely to run more readily than the mere murder or arrest of twenty
or thirty deputies of the Convention. They devised one which suited
admirably, both to alarm the wealthier citizens, and teach them to be
contented with looking to their own safety, and to animate the rabble
with the hope of plunder. The rumour was spread, that the section of La
Butte-des-Moulins, comprehending the Palais Royal, and the most wealthy
shops in Paris, had become counter-revolutionary--had displayed the
white cockade, and were declaring for the Bourbons.
Of this not a word was true. The citizens of the Palais Royal were
disposed perhaps to royalty--certainly for a quiet and established
government--but loved their own shops much better than the House of
Bourbon, and had no intention of placing them in jeopardy either for
king or kaisar. They heard with alarm the accusation against them,
mustered in defence of their property, shut the gates of the Palais
Royal, which admits of being strongly defended, turned cannon with
lighted matches upon the mob as they approached their precincts, and
showed, in a way sufficient to intimidate the rabble of Saint Antoine,
that though the wealthy burgesses of Paris might abandon to the mob the
care of killing kings and changing ministers, they had no intention
whatever to yield up to them the charge of their counters and tills.
Five sections were under arms and ready to act. Not one of the Girondist
party seems to have even attempted to point out to them, that by an
exertion to preserve the independence of the Convention, they might rid
themselves for ever of the domination under which all who had property,
feeling, or education, were rendered slaves by these recurring
insurrections. This is the more extraordinary, as Raffé, the commandant
of the section of La Butte-des-Moulins, had actually marched to the
assistance of the Convention on the 10th of March, then, as now,
besieged by an armed force.
Left to themselves, the sections who were in arms to protect order,
thought it enough to provide against the main danger of the moment. The
sight of their array, and of their determined appearance, far more than
their three-coloured cockades, and cries of "Vive la Republique," were
sufficient to make the insurgents recognise those as good citizens, who
could not be convicted of _incivism_ without a bloody combat.
They were, however, at length made to comprehend by their leaders, that
the business to be done lay in the Hall of the Convention, and that the
exertions of each active citizen were to entitle him to forty _sous_ for
the day's work. In the whole affair there was so much of cold trick, and
so little popular enthusiasm, that it is difficult to believe that the
plotters might not have been countermined and blown to the moon with
their own petard, had there been active spirit or practical courage on
the side of those who were the assailed party. But we see no symptoms of
either. The Convention were surrounded by the rabble, and menaced in the
grossest terms. Under the general terror inspired by their situation,
they finally recalled the Commission of Twelve, and set Hébert at
liberty;--concessions which, though short of those which the Jacobins
had determined to insist upon, were such as showed that the power of the
Girondists was entirely destroyed, and that the Convention itself might
be overawed at the pleasure of whoever should command the mob of
Paris.[384]
The Jacobins were now determined to follow up their blow, by destroying
the enemy whom they had disarmed. The 2d of June was fixed for this
purpose. Louvet, and some others of the Girondist party, did not choose
to await the issue, but fled from Paris. To secure the rest of the
devoted party, the barriers of the city were shut.
On this decisive occasion, the Jacobins had not trusted entirely to the
efficiency of their suburb forces. They had also under their orders
about two thousand Federates, who were encamped in the Champs-Elysées,
and had been long tutored in the part they had to act. They harnessed
guns and howitzers, prepared grape-shot and shells, and actually heated
shot red-hot, as if their purpose had been to attack some strong
fortress, instead of a hall filled with the unarmed representatives of
the people. Henriot, commander-general of the armed force of Paris, a
fierce, ignorant man, entirely devoted to the Jacobin interest, took
care, in posting the armed force which arrived from all hands around the
Convention, to station those nearest to the legislative body, whose
dispositions with regard to them were most notoriously violent. They
were thus entirely surrounded as if in a net, and the Jacobins had
little more to do than to select their victims.
The universal cry of the armed men who surrounded the Convention, was
for a decree of death or outlawry against twenty-two members of the
Girondist party, who had been pointed out, by the petition of Pache, and
by subsequent petitions of the most inflammatory nature, as accomplices
of Dumouriez, enemies of the good city of Paris, and traitors who
meditated a federative instead of an indivisible republic. This list of
proscription included the ministers.
The Convention were in a dreadful situation; it was manifest that the
arm of strong force was upon them. Those who were supposed to belong to
the Girondist party, were struck and abused as they entered the hall,
hooted and threatened as they arose to deliver their opinion. The
members were no longer free to speak or vote. There could be no
deliberation within the Assembly, while such a scene of tumult and fury
continued and increased without.
Barrère, leader, as we have said, of the Plain, or neutral party, who
thought with the Girondists in conscience, and acted with the Jacobins
in fear, proposed one of those seemingly moderate measures, which
involve as sure destruction to those who adopt them, as if their
character were more decisively hostile. With compliments to their good
intentions, with lamentations for the emergency, he entreated the
proscribed Girondists to sacrifice themselves as the unhappy subjects of
disunion in the Republic, and to resign their character of deputies. The
Convention, he said, "would then declare them under the protection of
the law,"--as if they were not invested with that protection, while they
were convicted of no crime, and clothed at the same time with the
inviolability, of which he advised them to divest themselves. It was as
if a man were requested to lay aside his armour, on the promise that the
ordinary garments which he wore under it should be rendered
impenetrable.
But a Frenchman is easily induced to do that to which he is provoked, as
involving a point of honour. This treacherous advice was adopted by
Isnard, Dussaux, and others of the proscribed deputies, who were thus
persuaded to abandon what defences remained to them, in hopes to soften
the ferocity of an enemy, too inveterate to entertain feelings of
generosity.
Lanjuinais maintained a more honourable struggle. "Expect not from me,"
he said to the Convention, "to hear either of submission or resignation
of my official character. Am I free to offer such a resignation, or are
you free to receive it?" As he would have turned his eloquence against
Robespierre and the Jacobins, an attempt was made by Legendre and Chabot
to drag him from the tribune. While he resisted he received several
blows. "Cruel men!" he exclaimed--"The Heathens adorned and caressed the
victims whom they led to the slaughter--you load them with blows and
insult."
Shame procured him a moment's hearing, during which he harangued the
Assembly with much effect on the baseness, treachery, cruelty, and
impolicy, of thus surrendering their brethren to the call of a
bloodthirsty multitude from without, stimulated by a vengeful minority
of their own members. The Convention made an effort to free themselves
from the toils in which they were entangled. They resolved to go out in
a body, and ascertain what respect would be paid to their persons by the
armed force assembled around them.
[Sidenote: FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.]
They sallied forth accordingly, in procession, into the gardens of the
Tuileries, the Jacobins alone remaining in the hall; but their progress
was presently arrested by Henriot, at the head of a strong military
staff, and a large body of troops. Every passage leading from the
gardens was secured by soldiers. The president read the decree of the
Assembly, and commanded Henriot's obedience. The commandant of Paris
only replied by reining back his horse, and commanding the troops to
stand to their arms. "Return to your posts," he said to the terrified
legislators; "the people demand the traitors who are in the bosom of
your assembly, and will not depart till their will is accomplished."
Marat came up presently afterwards at the head of a select band of a
hundred ruffians. He called on the multitude to stand firm to their
purpose, and commanded the Convention, in the name of the people, to
return to their place of meeting, to deliberate, and, above all, to
obey.[385]
The Convention re-entered their hall in the last degree of
consternation, prepared to submit to the infamy which now seemed
inevitable, yet loathing themselves for their cowardice, even while
obeying the dictates of self-preservation. The Jacobins meanwhile
enhanced their demand, like her who sold the books of the Sibyls.
Instead of twenty-two deputies, the accusation of thirty was now
demanded. Amid terror mingled with acclamations, the decree was declared
to be carried. This doom of proscription passed on the motion of
Couthon; a decrepid being whose lower extremities were paralysed,--whose
benevolence of feeling seemed to pour itself out in the most gentle
expressions, uttered in the most melodious tones,--whose sensibility led
him constantly to foster a favourite spaniel in his bosom, that he might
have something on which to bestow kindness and caresses,--but who was at
heart as fierce as Danton, and as pitiless as Robespierre.
Great part of the Convention did not join in this vote, protesting
loudly against the force imposed on them. Several of the proscribed
deputies were arrested, others escaped from the hall by the connivance
of their brethren; and of the official persons attached to the
Convention, some, foreseeing their fate, had absented themselves from
the meeting, and were already fled from Paris.
Thus fell, without a blow struck, or sword drawn in their defence, the
party in the Convention which claimed the praise of acting upon pure
Republican principles--who had overthrown the throne, and led the way to
anarchy, merely to perfect an ideal theory. They fell, as the wisest of
them admitted, dupes to their own system, and to the vain and
impracticable idea of ruling a large and corrupt empire, by the motives
which may sway a small and virtuous community. They might, as they too
late discovered, have as well attempted to found the Capitol on a
bottomless and quaking marsh, as their pretended Republic in a country
like France. The violent Revolutionary expedients, the means by which
they acted, were turned against them by men, whose ends were worse than
their own. The Girondists had gloried in their share of the triumphs of
the 10th of August; yet what was that celebrated day, save an
insurrection of the populace against the constituted authority of the
time, as those of the 31st of May, and 2d of June, 1793, under which the
Girondists succumbed, were directed against them as successors in the
government? In the one case, a king was dethroned; in the other, a
government, or band of ministers dismissed. And if the people had a
right, as the Girondists claimed in their behalf, to act as the
executioners of their own will in the one instance, it is difficult to
see upon what principle their power should be trammelled in the other.
In the important process against the King, the Girondists had shown
themselves pusillanimous;--desirous to save the life of a guiltless man,
they dared not boldly vouch his innocence, but sheltered themselves
under evasions which sacrificed his character, while they could not
protect his life. After committing this great error, they lost every
chance of rallying with efficacy under their standard what might remain
of well-intentioned individuals in Paris and in France, who, if they had
seen the Girondists, when in power, conduct themselves with firmness,
would probably rather have ranked themselves in the train of men who
were friends to social order, however republican their tenets, than have
given way to the anarchy which was doomed to ensue.[386]
Upon all their own faults, whether of act or of omission, the
unfortunate Girondists had now ample time to meditate. Twenty-two of
their leading members, arrested on the fatal 2d of June, already waited
their doom in prison, while the others wandered on, in distress and
misery, through the different departments of France.
The fate of those who were prisoners was not very long suspended. In
October they were brought to trial, and convicted of _royalism_! Such
was the temper of France at the time, and so gross the impositions which
might be put upon the people, that the men in the empire, who, upon
abstract principle, were most averse to monarchy, and who had sacrificed
even their consciences to join with the Jacobins in pulling down the
throne, were now accused and convicted of being Royalists; and that at a
time when what remained of the royal family was at so low an ebb, that
the imprisoned Queen could not obtain the most ordinary book for the use
of her son, without a direct and formal application to the Community of
Paris.[387]
[Sidenote: FATE OF THE GIRONDIST LEADERS.]
When the Girondists were brought before the tribunal, the people seem to
have shown more interest in men, whose distinguished talents had so
often swayed the legislative body, than was altogether acceptable to the
Jacobins, who were induced to fear some difficulty in carrying through
their conviction. They obtained a decree from the Convention, declaring
that the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal should be at liberty to
close the procedure so soon as the jury should have made up their minds,
and without hearing the accused in their defence.[388] This frightful
expedient of cutting short the debate, (_couper la parole_ was the
phrase,) was often resorted to on those revolutionary trials.
Unquestionably, they dreaded the reasoning of Brissot, and the eloquence
of Vergniaud, of which they had so long and so often experienced the
thunders. One crime,--and it was a fatal offence, considering before
what judicature they stood,--seems to have been made out by Brissot's
own letters. It was that by which the late members attempted to effect a
combination among the departments, for the purpose of counterpoising, if
possible, the tremendous influence which the capital and the
revolutionary part of its magistracy exercised over the Convention, whom
Paris detained prisoners within her walls. This delinquency alone was
well calculated to remove all scruples from the minds of a jury,
selected from that very class of Parisians, whose dreadful importance
would have been altogether annihilated by the success of such a scheme.
The accused were found guilty, as conspirators against the unity and
indivisibility of the Republic, and the liberty and safety of the French
people.
When the sentence of death was pronounced, one of their number, Valazé,
plunged a dagger in his bosom.[389] The rest suffered in terms of the
sentence, and were conveyed to the place of execution in the same
tumbril with the bloody corpse of their suicide colleague. Brissot
seemed downcast and unhappy. Fauchet, a renegade priest, showed signs of
remorse. The rest affected a Roman resolution, and went to execution
singing a parody on the hymn of the Marseillois, in which that famous
composition was turned against the Jacobins.[390] They had long rejected
the aids of religion, which, early received and cherished, would have
guided their steps in prosperity, and sustained them in adversity. Their
remaining stay was only that of the same vain and speculative
philosophy, which had so deplorably influenced their political conduct.
Those members of the Girondist party, who, escaping from Paris to the
departments, avoided their fate somewhat longer, saw little reason to
pride themselves on the political part they had chosen to act. They
found the eastern and southern departments in a ferment against Paris
and the Jacobins, and ready to rise in arms; but they became aware, at
the same time, that no one was thinking of or regretting their system of
a pure republic, the motives by which the malecontents were agitated
being of a very different, and far more practical character. Great part
of the nation, all at least of better feelings, had been deeply affected
by the undeserved fate of the King, and the cruelty with which his
family had been, and were still treated. The rich feared to be pillaged
and murdered by the Jacobins; the poor suffered no less under scarcity
of grain, under the depreciation of assignats, and a compulsory levy of
no less than three hundred thousand men over France, to supply the
enormous losses of the French army. But every where the insurrections
took a Royalist, and not a Republican character; and although the
Girondists were received at Caen and elsewhere with compassion and
respect, the votes they had given in the King's trial, and their fanatic
zeal for a kind of government for which France was totally unfitted, and
which those from whom they obtained refuge were far from desiring,
prevented their playing any distinguished part in the disturbed
districts of the West.
Buzot seems to see this in the true sense. "It is certain," he says,
"that if we could have rested our pretensions upon having wished to
establish in France a moderate government of that character, which,
according to many well-instructed persons, best suited the people of
France," (indicating a limited monarchy,) "we might have entertained
hopes of forming a formidable coalition in the department of Calvados,
and rallying around us all whom ancient prejudices attached to
royalty."[391] As it was, they were only regarded as a few enthusiasts,
whom the example of America had induced to attempt the establishment of
a republic, in a country where all hopes and wishes, save those of the
Jacobins, and the vile rabble whom they courted and governed, were
turned towards a moderate monarchy. Buzot also observed, that the many
violences and atrocities, forced levies, and other acts of oppression
practised in the name of the Republic, had disgusted men with a form of
government, where cruelty seemed to rule over misery by the sole aid of
terror. With more candour than some of his companions, he avows his
error, and admits that he would, at this closing scene, have willingly
united with the moderate monarchists, to establish royalty under the
safeguard of constitutional restraints.
[Sidenote: LOUVET--RIOUFFE--BARBAROUX.]
Several of the deputies, Louvet, Riouffe, Barbaroux, Pétion, and others,
united themselves with a body of Royalists of Bretagne, to whom General
Wimpfen had given something of the name of an army, but which never
attained the solidity of one. It was defeated at Vernon, and never
afterwards could be again assembled.
The proscribed deputies, at first with a few armed associates,
afterwards entirely deserted, wandered through the country, incurring
some romantic adventures, which have been recorded by the pen of their
historian, Louvet. At length, six of the party succeeded in obtaining
the means of transportation to Bourdeaux, the capital of that Gironde
from which their party derived its name, and which those who were
natives of it, remembering only the limited society in which they had
first acquired their fame, had described as possessing and cherishing
the purest principles of philosophical freedom. Guadet had protested to
his companions in misfortune a thousand times, that if liberal,
honourable, and generous sentiments were chased from every other corner
of France, they were nevertheless sure to find refuge in _La Gironde_.
The proscribed wanderers had wellnigh kissed the land of refuge, when
they disembarked, as in a country of assured protection. But Bourdeaux
was by this time no more than a wealthy trading town, where the rich,
trembling before the poor, were not willing to increase their own
imminent danger, by intermeddling with the misfortunes of others. All
doors, or nearly so, of La Gironde itself, were shut against the
Girondists, and they wandered outcasts in the country, suffering every
extremity of toil and hunger, and bringing, in some cases, death upon
the friends who ventured to afford them refuge.
Louvet alone escaped, of the six Girondists who took refuge in their own
peculiar province. Guadet, Sailes, and the enthusiastic Barbaroux, were
seized and executed at Bourdeaux, but not till the last had twice
attempted suicide with his pistols. Buzot and Pétion killed themselves
in extremity, and were found dead in a field of corn. This was the same
Pétion who had been so long the idol of the Parisians, and who, when the
forfeiture of the King was resolved on, had been heard to say with
simple vanity, "If they should force _me_ to become regent now, I cannot
see any means by which I can avoid it." Others of this unhappy party
shared the same melancholy fate. Condorcet, who had pronounced his vote
for the King's life, but in perpetual fetters, was arrested, and
poisoned himself. Rabaud de Saint Etienne was betrayed by a friend in
whom he trusted, and was executed. Roland was found dead on the
high-road, between Paris and Rouen,[392] accomplishing a prophecy of his
wife, whom the Jacobins had condemned to death, and who had declared her
conviction that her husband would not long survive her. That remarkable
woman, happy if her high talents had, in youth, fallen under the
direction of those who could better have cultivated them, made before
the revolutionary tribunal a defence more manly than the most eloquent
of the Girondists. The bystanders, who had become amateurs in cruelty,
were as much delighted with her deportment, as the hunter with the
pulling down a noble stag. "What sense," they said; "what wit, what
courage! What a magnificent spectacle it will be to behold such a woman
upon the scaffold!" She met her death with great firmness, and, as she
passed the Statue of Liberty, on her road to execution, she exclaimed,
"Ah, Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!"[393]
About forty-two of the Girondist deputies perished by the guillotine, by
suicide, or by the fatigue of their wanderings. About twenty-four
escaped these perils, and were, after many and various sufferings,
recalled to the Convention, when the Jacobin influence was destroyed.
They owed their fall to the fantastic philosophy and visionary theories
which they had adopted, not less than to their presumptuous confidence,
that popular assemblies, when actuated by the most violent personal
feelings, must yield to the weight of argument, as inanimate bodies obey
the impulse of external force; and that they who possess the highest
powers of oratory, can, by mere elocution, take the weight from clubs,
the edge from sabres, and the angry and brutal passions from those who
wield them. They made no further figure as a party in any of the state
changes in France; and, in relation to their experimental Republic, may
remind the reader of the presumptuous champion of antiquity, who was
caught in the cleft of oak, which he in vain attempted to rend asunder.
History has no more to say on the subject of La Gironde, considered as a
party name.
FOOTNOTES:
[372] Louis-Philippe, of Orleans, chosen King of the French at the
Revolution of July, 1830.
[373] Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 287; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 293;
Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 284.
[374] Carmagnole was the name applied in the early period of the
Revolution to a certain dance, and the song connected with it. It was
afterwards given to the French soldiers who first engaged in the cause
of Republicanism, and who wore a dress of a peculiar cut.
[375] Camus, Quinette, Bancal, and Lamarque.
[376] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 118; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 316; Mignet,
tom. i., p. 258. Shortly after the flight of Dumouriez, the French army
was placed by the Convention under the command of General Dampierre.
[377] Dumouriez was a man of pleasing manners and lively conversation.
He lived in retirement latterly at Turville Park, near Henley upon
Thames, and died, March 14, 1823, in his eighty-fifth year.--S.
[378] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 66; Mignet, tom. i., p. 248; Lacretelle, tom.
x., p. 311.
[379] L'Ami du Peuple.
[380] Mignet, tom. i., p. 259; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 145; Montgaillard,
tom. iv., p. 9; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 332.
[381] Mignet, tom. i., p. 261; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 346.
[382] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 151; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 343.
[383] Hébert was also editor of an obscene and revolting revolutionary
journal, entitled the "Père Duchêsne" which had obtained an immense
circulation.
[384] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 251; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 414;
Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 356.
[385] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 270; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 375; Mignet,
tom. i., p. 272.
[386] "The Girondists felt without doubt, at the bottom of their hearts,
a keen remorse for the means which they had employed to overturn the
throne; and when those very means were directed against themselves, when
they recognised their own weapons in the wounds which they received,
they must have reflected without doubt on that rapid justice of
revolutions, which concentrates on a few instants the events of several
ages."--DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 122.
[387] Witness the following entry in the minutes of the _Commune_, on a
day, be it remarked, betwixt the 29th May and the 2d June: "Antoinette
fait demander pour son fils le roman de Gil Blas de Santillane--Accordé."--S.
[388] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 114; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 389.
[389] "The court immediately ordered that his dead body should be borne
on a car to the place of execution, and beheaded with the other
prisoners."--LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 269.
[390]
"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé;
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
Le couteau sanglant est levé."
LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 270.
[391] Mémoires de Buzot, p. 98.
[392] "He had stabbed himself with a knife, concealed in his walking
stick. In his pocket was found a paper, containing these words: 'Whoever
you are, oh passenger! who discover my body, respect the remains of the
unfortunate. They are those of a man who devoted his whole life to the
service of his country. Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my
retreat when I heard of the murder of my wife. I loathed a world stained
with so many crimes.'"--ROLAND, tom. i., p. 46.
[393] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 277.