Convention had left them, by it subordinate agents, were in want of
every thing; and though in most prisons they were employed for the
republican armies, they could scarcely procure more than bread and
water. Yet this was not all: they were objects of the meanest and
most cruel persecution.--I knew one who was put in a dungeon, up to
her waist in putrid water, for twelve hours altogether, without
losing her resolution or serenity.
I have already written you a long letter, and bid you adieu with the
reluctance which precedes an uncertain separation. Uneasiness, ill
health, and confinement, besides the danger I am exposed to, render my
life at present more precarious than "the ordinary of nature's tenures."
--God knows when I may address you again!--My friend Mad. de ____ is
returned from the hospital, and I yield to her fears by ceasing to write,
though I am nevertheless determined not to part with what I have hitherto
preserved; being convinced, that if evil be intended us, it will be as
soon without a pretext as with one.--Adieu.
Providence, Aug. 11, 1794.
I have for some days contemplated the fall of Robespierre and his
adherents, only as one of those dispensations of Providence, which were
gradually to pursue all who had engaged in the French revolution. The
late change of parties has, however, taken a turn I did not expect; and,
contrary to what has hitherto occurred, there is a manifest disposition
in the people to avail themselves of the weakness which is necessarily
occasioned by the contentions of their governors.
When the news of this extraordinary event first became public, it was
ever where received with great gravity--I might say, coldness.--Not a
comment was uttered, nor a glance of approbation seen. Things might be
yet in equilibrium, and popular commotions are always uncertain.
Prudence was, therefore, deemed, indispensable; and, until the contest
was finally decided, no one ventured to give an opinion; and many, to be
certain of guarding against verbal indiscretion, abstained from all
intercourse whatever.
By degrees, the execution of Robespierre and above an hundred of his
partizans, convinced even the most timid; the murmurs of suppressed
discontent began to be heard; and all thought they might now with safety
relieve their fears and their sufferings, by execrating the memory of the
departed tyrants. The prisons, which had hitherto been avoided as
endangering all who approached them, were soon visited with less
apprehension; and friendship or affection, no longer exanimate by terror,
solicited, though still with trepidation, the release of those for whom
they were interested. Some of our associates have already left us in
consequence of such intercessions, and we all hope that the tide of
opinion, now avowedly inimical to the detestable system to which we are
victims, will enforce a general liberation.--We are guarded but slightly;
and I think I perceive in the behaviour of the Jacobin Commissaries
something of civility and respect not usual.
Thus an event, which I beheld merely as the justice which one set of
banditti were made the instruments of exercising upon another, may
finally tend to introduce a more humane system of government; or, at
least, suspend proscription and massacre, and give this harassed country
a little repose.
I am in arrears with my epistolary chronicle, and the hope of so
desirable a change will now give me courage to resume it from the
conclusion of my last. To-morrow shall be dedicated to this purpose.--
Yours.
August 12.
My letters, previous to the time when I judged it necessary to desist
from writing, will have given you some faint sketch of the situation of
the country, and the sufferings of its inhabitants--I say a faint sketch,
because a thousand horrors and iniquities, which are now daily
disclosing, were then confined to the scenes where they were perpetrated;
and we knew little more of them than what we collected from the reports
of the Convention, where they excited a laugh as pleasantries, or
applause as acts of patriotism.
France had become one vast prison, executions were daily multiplied, and
a minute and comprehensive oppression seemed to have placed the lives,
liberty, and fortune of all within the grasp of the single Committee.
Despair itself was subdued, and the people were gradually sinking into a
gloomy and stupid obedience.
* The words despotism and tyranny are sufficiently expressive of the
nature of the government to which they are applied; yet still they
are words rendered familiar to us only by history, and convey no
precise idea, except that of a bad political system. The condition
of the French at this time, besides its wretchedness, had something
so strange, so original in it, that even those who beheld it with
attention must be content to wonder, without pretending to offer any
description as adequate.
--The following extract from a speech of Bailleul, a member of the
Convention, exhibits a picture nearer the original than I have yet seen--
_"La terreur dominait tous les esprits, comprimait tous les couers--
elle etait la force du gouvernement, et ce gouvernement etait tel,
que les nombreux habitans d'un vaste territoire semblaient avoir
perdu les qualites qui distinguent l'homme de l'animal domestique:
ils semblaient meme n'avoir de vie que ce que le gouvernement
voulait bien leur en accorder.--Le moi humain n'existoit plus;
chaque individu n'etait qu'une machine, allant, venant, pensant ou
ne pensant pas, felon que la tyrannie le pressait ou l'animait."_
Discours de Bailleul, 19 March 1795.
"The minds of all were subdued by terror, and every heart was
compressed beneath its influence.--In this consisted the strength of
the government; and that government was such, that the immense
population of a vast territory, seemed to have lost all the
qualities which distinguish man from the animals attached to him.--
They appeared to exhibit no signs of life but such as their rulers
condescended to permit--the very sense of existence seemed doubtful
or extinct, and each individual was reduced to a mere machine, going
or coming, thinking or not thinking, according as the impulse of
tyranny gave him force or animation."
Speech of Bailleul, 19 March 1795.
On the twenty-second of Prairial, (June 10,) a law, consisting of a
variety of articles for the regulation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was
introduced to the convention by Couthon, a member of the government; and,
as usual adopted with very little previous discussion.--Though there was
no clause of this act but ought to have given the alarm to humanity,
"knocked at the heart, and bid it not be quiet;" yet the whole appeared
perfectly unexceptionable to the Assembly in general: till, on farther
examination, they found it contained an implied repeal of the law
hitherto observed, according to which, no representative could be
arrested without a preliminary decree for that purpose.--This discovery
awakened their suspicions, and the next day Bourdon de l'Oise, a man of
unsteady principles, (even as a revolutionist,) was spirited up to demand
an explicit renunciation of any power in the Committee to attack the
legislative inviolability except in the accustomed forms.--The clauses
which elected a jury of murderers, that bereft all but guilt of hope, and
offered no prospect to innocence but death, were passed with no other
comment than the usual one of applause.*--
* The baseness, cruelty, and cowardice of the Convention are neither
to be denied, nor palliated. For several months they not only
passed decrees of proscription and murder which might reach every
individual in France except themselves, but they even sacrificed
numbers of their own body; and if, instead of proposing an article
affecting the whole Convention, the Committee had demanded the heads
of as many Deputies as they had occasion for by name, I am persuaded
they would have met no resistance.--This single example of
opposition only renders the convention still more an object of
abhorrence, because it marks that they could subdue their
pusillanimity when their own safety was menaced, and that their
previous acquiescence was voluntary.
--This, and this only, by involving their personal safety, excited their
courage through their fears.--Merlin de Douay, originally a worthless
character, and become yet more so by way of obviating the imputation of
bribery from the court, seconded Bourdon's motion, and the obnoxious
article was repealed instantaneously.
This first and only instance of opposition was highly displeasing to the
Committee, and, on the twenty-fourth, Robespierre, Barrere, Couthon, and
Billaud, animadverted with such severity on the promoters of it, that the
terrified Bourdon* declared, the repeal he had solicited was unnecessary,
and that he believed the Committee were destined to be the saviours of
the country; while Merlin de Douay disclaimed all share in the business--
and, in fine, it was determined, that the law of the twenty-second of
Prairial should remain as first presented to the Convention, and that the
qualification of the succeeding day was void.
* It was on this occasion that the "intrepid" Bourdon kept his bed a
whole month with fear.
So dangerous an infringement on the privileges of the representative
body, dwelt on minds insensible to every other consideration; the
principal members caballed secretly on the perils by which they were
surrounded; and the sullen concord which now marked their deliberations,
was beheld by the Committee rather as the prelude to revolt, than the
indication of continued obedience. In the mean while it was openly
proposed to concentrate still more the functions of government. The
circulation of newspapers was insinuated to be useless; and Robespierre
gave some hints of suppressing all but one, which should be under
particular and official controul.*
* This intended restriction was unnecessary; for the newspapers were
all, not indeed paid by government, but so much subject to the
censure of the guillotine, that they had become, under an "unlimited
freedom of the press," more cautious and insipid than the gazettes
of the proscribed court. Poor Duplain, editor of the "Petit
Courier," and subsequently of the "Echo," whom I remember one of the
first partizans of the revolution, narrowly escaped the massacre of
August 1792, and was afterwards guillotined for publishing the
surrender of Landrecy three days before it was announced officially.
A rumour prevailed, that the refractory members who had excited the late
rebellion were to be sacrificed, a general purification of the Assembly
to take place, and that the committee and a few select adherents were to
be invested with the whole national authority. Lists of proscription
were said to be made; and one of them was secretly communicated as having
been found among the papers of a juryman of the Revolutionary Tribunal
lately arrested.--These apprehensions left the members implicated no
alternative but to anticipate hostilities, or fall a sacrifice; for they
knew the instant of attack would be that of destruction, and that the
people were too indifferent to take any part in the contest.
Things were in this state, when two circumstances of a very different
nature assisted in promoting the final explosion, which so much
astonished, not only the rest of Europe, but France itself.
It is rare that a number of men, however well meaning, perfectly agree in
the exercise of power; and the combinations of the selfish and wicked
must be peculiarly subject to discord and dissolution. The Committee of
Public Welfare, while it enslaved the convention and the people, was torn
by feuds, and undermined by the jealousies of its members. Robespierre,
Couthon, and St. Just, were opposed by Collot and Billaud Varennes; while
Barrere endeavoured to deceive both parties; and Carnot, Lindet, the two
Prieurs, and St. Andre, laboured in the cause of the common tyranny, in
the hope of still dividing it with the conquerors.
For some months this enmity was restrained, by the necessity of
preserving appearances, and conciliated, by a general agreement in the
principles of administration, till Robespierre, relying on his superior
popularity, began to take an ascendant, which alarmed such of his
colleagues as were not his partisans, both for their power and their
safety. Animosities daily increased, and their debates at length became
so violent and noisy, that it was found necessary to remove the business
of the Committee to an upper room, lest people passing under the windows
should overhear these scandalous scenes. Every means were taken to keep
these disputes a profound secret--the revilings which accompanied their
private conferences were turned into smooth panegyrics of each other when
they ascended the tribune, and their unanimity was a favourite theme in
all their reports to the Convention.*
* So late as on the seventh of Thermidor, (25th July,) Barrere made
a pompous eulogium on the virtues of Robespierre; and, in a long
account of the state of the country, he acknowledges "some little
clouds hang over the political horizon, but they will soon be
dispersed, by the union which subsists in the Committees;--above
all, by a more speedy trial and execution of revolutionary
criminals." It is difficult to imagine what new means of dispatch
this airy barbarian had contrived, for in the six weeks preceding
this harangue, twelve hundred and fifty had been guillotined in
Paris only.
The impatience of Robespierre to be released from associates whose views
too much resembled his own to leave him an undivided authority, at length
overcame his prudence; and, after absenting himself for six weeks from
the Committee, on the 8th of Thermidor, (26th July,) he threw off the
mask, and in a speech full of mystery and implications, but containing no
direct charges, proclaimed the divisions which existed in the
government.--On the same evening he repeated this harangue at the
Jacobins, while St. Just, by his orders, menaced the obnoxious part of
the Committee with a formal denunciation to the Convention.--From this
moment Billaud Varennes and Collot d'Herbois concluded their destruction
to be certain. In vain they soothed, expostulated with, and endeavoured
to mollify St. Just, so as to avert an open rupture. The latter, who
probably knew it was not Robespierre's intention to accede to any
arrangement, left them to make his report.
On the morning of the ninth the Convention met, and with internal dread
and affected composure proceeded to their ordinary business.--St. Just
then ascended the tribune, and the curiosity or indecision of the greater
number permitted him to expatiate at large on the intrigues and guilt of
every kind which he imputed to a "part" of the Committee.--At the
conclusion of this speech, Tallien, one of the devoted members, and
Billaud Varennes, the leader of the rival party, opened the trenches, by
some severe remarks on the oration of St. Just, and the conduct of those
with whom he was leagued. This attack encouraged others: the whole
Convention joined in accusing Robespierre of tyranny; and Barrere, who
perceived the business now deciding, ranged himself on the side of the
strongest, though the remaining members of the Committee still appeared
to preserve their neutrality. Robespierre was, for the first time,
refused a hearing, yet, the influence he so lately possessed still seemed
to protect him. The Assembly launched decrees against various of his
subordinate agents, without daring to proceed against himself; and had
not the indignant fury with which he was seized, at the desertion of
those by whom he had been most flattered, urged him to call for arrest
and death, it is probable the whole would have ended in the punishment of
his enemies, and a greater accession of power to himself.
But at this crisis all Robespierre's circumspection abandoned him.
Having provoked the decree for arresting his person, instead of
submitting to it until his party should be able to rally, he resisted;
and by so doing gave the Convention a pretext for putting him out of the
law; or, in other words, to destroy him, without the delay or hazard of a
previous trial.
Having been rescued from the Gens d'Armes, and taken in triumph to the
municipality, the news spread, the Jacobins assembled, and Henriot, the
commander of the National Guard, (who had likewise been arrested, and
again set at liberty by force,) all prepared to act in his defence. But
while they should have secured the Convention, they employed themselves
at the Hotel de Ville in passing frivolous resolutions; and Henriot, with
all the cannoneers decidedly in his favour, exhibited an useless
defiance, by stalking before the windows of the Committee of General
Safety, when he should have been engaged in arresting its members.
All these imprudences gave the Convention time to proclaim that
Robespierre, the municipality, and their adherents, were decreed out of
the protection of the laws, and in circumstances of this nature such a
step has usually been decisive--for however odious a government, if it
does but seem to act on a presumption of its own strength, it has always
an advantage over its enemies; and the timid, the doubtful, or
indifferent, for the most part, determine in favour of whatever wears the
appearance of established authority. The people, indeed, remained
perfectly neuter; but the Jacobins, the Committees of the Sections, and
their dependents, might have composed a force more than sufficient to
oppose the few guards which surrounded the National Palace, had not the
publication of this summary outlawry at once paralyzed all their hopes
and efforts.--They had seen multitudes hurried to the Guillotine, because
they were "hors de la loi;" and this impression now operated so forcibly,
that the cannoneers, the national guard, and those who before were most
devoted to the cause, laid down their arms, and precipitately abandoned
their chiefs to the fate which awaited them. Robespierre was taken at
the Hotel de Ville, after being severely wounded in the face; his brother
broke his thigh, in attempting to escape from a window; Henriot was
dragged from concealment, deprived of an eye; and Couthon, whom nature
had before rendered a cripple, now exhibited a most hideous spectacle,
from an ineffectual effort to shoot himself.--Their wounds were dressed
to prolong their suffering, and their sentence being contained in the
decree that outlawed them, their persons were identified by the same
tribunal which had been the instrument of their crimes.
--On the night of the tenth they were conveyed to the scaffold, amidst
the insults and execrations of a mob, which a few hours before beheld
them with trembling and adoration.--Lebas, also a member of the
convention, and a principal agent of Robespierre, fell by his own hand;
and Couthon, St. Just, and seventeen others, suffered with the two
Robespierres.--The municipality of Paris, &c. to the number of
seventy-two, were guillotined the succeeding day, and about twelve
more the day after.
The fate of these men may be ranked as one of the most dreadful of those
examples which history vainly transmits to discourage the pursuits of
ambition. The tyrant who perishes amidst the imposing fallaciousness of
military glory, mingles admiration with abhorrence, and rescues his
memory from contempt, if not from hatred. Even he who expiates his
crimes on the scaffold, if he die with fortitude, becomes the object of
involuntary compassion, and the award of justice is not often rendered
more terrible by popular outrage. But the fall of Robespierre and his
accomplices was accompanied by every circumstance that could add
poignancy to suffering, or dread to death. The ambitious spirit which
had impelled them to tyrannize over a submissive and defenceless people,
abandoned them in their last moments. Depressed by anguish, exhausted by
fatigue, and without courage, religion, or virtue, to support them, they
were dragged through the savage multitude, wounded and helpless, to
receive that stroke, from which even the pious and the brave sometimes
shrink with dismay.
Robespierre possessed neither the talents nor merits of Nicolas Riezi;
but they are both conspicuous instances of the mutability of popular
support, and there is a striking similitude in the last events of their
history. They both degraded their ambition by cowardice--they were both
deserted by the populace, whom they began by flattering, and ended by
oppressing; and the death of both was painful and ignominious--borne
without dignity, and embittered by reproach and insult.*
* Robespierre lay for some hours in one of the committee-rooms,
writhing with the pain of his wound, and abandoned to despair; while
many of his colleagues, perhaps those who had been the particular
agents and applauders of his crimes, passed and repassed him,
glorying and jesting at his sufferings. The reader may compare the
death of Robespierre with that of Rienzi; but if the people of Rome
revenged the tyranny of the Tribune, they were neither so mean nor
so ferocious as the Parisians.
You will perceive by this summary that the overthrow of Robespierre was
chiefly occasioned by the rivalship of his colleagues in the Committee,
assisted by the fears of the Convention at large for themselves.--Another
circumstance, at which I have already hinted, as having some share in
this event, shall be the subject of my next letter.
Providence, Aug. 13, 1794.
_Amour, tu perdis Troye_ [Love! thou occasionedst the destruction of
Troy.]:--yet, among the various mischiefs ascribed to the influence of
this capricious Sovereign, amidst the wrecks of sieges, and the slaughter
of battles, perhaps we may not unjustly record in his praise, that he was
instrumental to the solace of humanity, by contributing to the overthrow
of Robespierre. It is at least pleasing to turn from the general horrors
of the revolution, and suppose, for a moment, that the social affections
were not yet entirely banished, and that gallantry still retained some
empire, when every other vestige of civilization was almost annihilated.
After such an exordium, I feel a little ashamed of my hero, and could
wish, for the credit of my tale, it were not more necessary to invoke the
historic muse of Fielding, than that of Homer or Tasso; but imperious
Truth obliges me to confess, that Tallien, who is to be the subject of
this letter, was first introduced to celebrity by circumstances not
favourable for the comment of my poetical text.
At the beginning of the revolution he was known only as an eminent orator
en plain vent; that is, as a preacher of sedition to the mob, whom he
used to harangue with great applause at the Palais Royal. Having no
profession or means of subsistence, he, as Dr. Johnson observes of one of
our poets, necessarily became an author. He was, however, no farther
entitled to this appellation, than as a periodical scribbler in the cause
of insurrection; but in this he was so successful, that it recommended
him to the care of Petion and the municipality, to whom his talents and
principles were so acceptable, that they made him Secretary to the
Committee.
On the second and third of September 1792, he superintended the massacre
of the prisons, and is alledged to have paid the assassins according to
the number of victims they dispatched with great regularity; and he
himself seems to have little to say in his defence, except that he acted
officially. Yet even the imputation of such a claim could not be
overlooked by the citizens of Paris; and at the election of the
Convention he was distinguished by being chosen one of their
representatives.