THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CONVENTION
1. The Legend of the Convention.
The history of the Convention is not merely fertile in
psychological documents. It also shows how powerless the
witnesses of any period and even their immediate successors are
to form an exact idea of the events which they have witnessed,
and the men who have surrounded them.
More than a century has elapsed since the Revolution, and men are
only just beginning to form judgments concerning this period
which, if still often doubtful enough, are slightly more accurate
than of old.
This happens, not only because new documents are being drawn from
the archives, but because the legends which enveloped that
sanguinary period in a magical cloud are gradually vanishing with
the passage of time.
Perhaps the most tenacious legend of all was that which until
formerly used to surround the personages to whom our fathers
applied the glorious epithet, ``the Giants of the Convention.''
The struggles of the Convention against France in insurrection
and Europe in arms produced such an impression that the heroes of
this formidable struggle seemed to belong to a race of supermen
or Titans.
The epithet ``giant'' seemed justified so long as the events of
the period were confused and massed together. Regarded as
connected when it was simply simultaneous, the work of the armies
was confounded with that of the Convention. The glory of the
first recoiled upon the second, and served as an excuse for the
hecatombs of the Terror, the ferocity of the civil war, and the
devastation of France.
Under the penetrating scrutiny of modern criticism, the
heterogeneous mass of events has been slowly disentangled. The
armies of the Republic have retained their old prestige, but we
have been forced to recognise that the men of the Convention,
absorbed entirely by their intestine conflicts, had very little
to do with their victories. At the most two or three members of
the committees of the Assembly were concerned with the armies,
and the fact that they were victorious was due, apart from their
numbers and the talents of their young generals, to the
enthusiasm with which a new faith had inspired them.
In a later chapter, devoted to the revolutionary armies, we shall
see how they conquered Europe in arms. They set out inspired by
the ideas of liberty and equality which constituted the new
gospel, and once on the frontiers, which were to keep them so
long, they retained a special mentality, very different from that
of the Government, which they first knew nothing of and
afterwards despised.
Having no part whatever in their victories, the men of the
Convention contented themselves with legislating at hazard
according to the injunctions of the leaders who directed them,
and who claimed to be regenerating France by means of the
guillotine.
But it was thanks to these valiant armies that the history of the
Convention was transformed into an apotheosis which affected
several generations with a religious respect which even to-day is
hardly extinct.
Studying in detail the psychology of the ``Giants'' of the
Convention, we find their magnitude shrink very rapidly. They
were in general extremely mediocre. Their most fervent
defenders, such as M. Aulard, are obliged to admit as much.
This is how M. Aulard puts it in his History of the French
Revolution:--
``It has been said that the generation which from 1789 to 1799
did such great and terrible things was a generation of giants,
or, to put it more plainly, that it was a generation more
distinguished than that which preceded it or that which followed.
This is a retrospective illusion. The citizens who formed the
municipal and Jacobin or nationalist groups by which the
Revolution was effected do not seem to have been superior, either
in enlightenment or in talents, to the Frenchmen of the time of
Louis XV. or of Louis Philippe. Were those exceptionally gifted
whose names history has retained because they appeared on the
stage of Paris, or because they were the most brilliant orators
of the various revolutionary Assemblies? Mirabeau, up to a
certain point, deserved the title of genius; but as to the rest--
Robespierre, Danton, Vergniaud--had they truly more talent, for
example, than our modern orators? In 1793, in the time of the
supposed `giants,' Mme. Roland wrote in her memoirs: `France was
as though drained of men; their dearth during this revolution is
truly surprising; there have scarcely been any but pigmies.' ''
If after considering the men of the Convention individually we
consider them in a body, we may say that they did not shine
either by intelligence or by virtue or by courage. Never did a
body of men manifest such pusillanimity. They had no courage
save in their speeches or in respect of remote dangers. This
Assembly, so proud and threatening in its speech when addressing
royalty, was perhaps the most timid and docile political
collectivity that the world has ever known. We see it slavishly
obedient to the orders of the clubs and the Commune, trembling
before the popular delegations which invaded it daily, and
obeying the injunctions of the rioters to the point of handing
over to them its most brilliant members. The Convention affords
the world a melancholy spectacle, voting, at the popular behest,
laws so absurd that it is obliged to annul them as soon as the
rioters have quitted the hall.
Few Assemblies have given proof of such weakness. When we wish
to show how low a popular Government can fall we have only to
point to the Convention.
2. Results of the Triumph of the Jacobin Religion
Among the causes that gave the Convention its special
physiognomy, one of the most important was the definite
establishment of a revolutionary religion. A dogma which was at
first in process of formation was at last finally erected.
This dogma was composed of an aggregate of somewhat inconsistent
elements. Nature, the rights of man, liberty, equality, the
social contract, hatred of tyrants, and popular sovereignty
formed the articles of a gospel which, to its disciples, was
above discussion. The new truths had found apostles who were
certain of their power, and who finally, like believers all the
world over, sought to impose them by force. No heed should be
taken of the opinion of unbelievers; they all deserved to be
exterminated.
The hatred of heretics having been always, as we have seen, in
respect of the Reformation, an irreducible characteristic of
great beliefs, we can readily comprehend the intolerance of the
Jacobin religion.
The history of the Reformation proves also that the conflict
between two allied beliefs is very bitter. We must not,
therefore, be astonished that in the Convention the Jacobins
fought furiously against the other republicans, whose faith
hardly differed from their own.
The propaganda of the new apostles was very energetic. To
convert the provinces they sent thither zealous disciples
escorted by guillotines. The inquisitors of the new faith would
have no paltering with error. As Robespierre said, ``The
republic is the destruction of everything that is opposed to
it.'' What matter that the country refused to be regenerated?
It should be regenerated despite itself. ``We will make a
cemetery of France,'' said Carrier, ``rather than fail to
regenerate it in our own way.''
The Jacobin policy derived from the new faith was very simple.
It consisted in a sort of equalitarian Socialism, directed by a
dictatorship which would brook no opposition.
Of practical ideas consistent with the economic necessities and
the true nature of man, the theorists who ruled France would have
nothing to say. Speech and the guillotine sufficed them. Their
speeches were childish. ``Never a fact,'' says Taine, ``nothing
but abstractions, strings of sentences about Nature, reason, the
people, tyrants, liberty: like so many puffed-out balloons
uselessly jostling in space. If we did not know that it all
ended in practical and dreadful results, we should think they
were games of logic, school exercises, academical demonstrations,
ideological combinations.''
The theories of the Jacobins amounted practically to an absolute
tyranny. To them it seemed evident that a sovereign State must
be obeyed without discussion by citizens rendered equal as to
conditions and fortune.
The power with which they invested themselves was far greater
than that of the monarchs who had preceded them. They fixed the
prices of merchandise and arrogated the right to dispose of the
life and property of citizens.
Their confidence in the regenerative virtues of the revolutionary
faith was such that after having declared war upon kings they
declared war upon the gods. A calendar was established from
which the saints were banished. They created a new divinity,
Reason, whose worship was celebrated in Notre-Dame, with
ceremonies which were in many ways identical with those of the
Catholic faith, upon the altar of the ``late Holy Virgin.'' This
cult lasted until Robespierre substituted a personal religion of
which he constituted himself the high priest.
The sole masters of France, the Jacobins and their
disciples were able to plunder the country with impunity,
although they were never in the majority anywhere.
Their numbers are not easy to determine exactly. We know only
that they were very small. Taine valued them at 5,000 in Paris,
among 700,000 inhabitants; in Besancon 300 among 300,000; and
in all France about 300,000.
``A small feudality of brigands, set over a conquered France,''
according to the words of the same author, they were able, in
spite of their small numbers, to dominate the country, and this
for several reasons. In the first place, their faith gave them a
considerable strength. Then, because they represented the
Government, and for centuries the French had obeyed those who
were in command. Finally, because it was believed that to
overthrow them would be to bring back the ancien regime,
which was greatly dreaded by the numerous purchasers of the
national domains. Their tyranny must have grown frightful indeed
to force so many departments to rise against them.
The first factor of their power was very important. In the
conflict between powerful faiths and weak faiths victory never
falls to the latter. A powerful faith creates strong wills,
which will always overpower weak wills. That the Jacobins
themselves did finally perish was because their accumulated
violence had bound together thousands of weak wills whose united
weight overbalanced their own strong wills.
It is true that the Girondists, whom the Jacobins persecuted with
so much hatred, had also well-established beliefs, but in the
struggle which ensued their education told against them,
together with their respect for certain traditions and the rights
of others, scruples which did not in the least trouble their
adversaries.
``The majority of the sentiments of the Girondists,'' writes
Emile Ollivier, ``were delicate and generous; those of the
Jacobin mob were low, gross, and brutal. The name of Vergniaud,
compared with that of the `divine' Marat, measures a gulf which
nothing could span.''
Dominating the Convention at the outset by the superiority of
their talents and their eloquence, the Girondists soon fell under
the domination of the Montagnards--worthless energumens, who
carried little weight, but were always active, and who knew how
to excite the passions of the populace. It was violence and not
talent that impressed the Assemblies.
3. Mental Characteristics of the Convention.
Beside the characteristics common to all assemblies there are
some created by influences of environment and circumstances,
which give any particular assembly of men a special physiognomy.
Most of the characteristics observable in the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies reappeared, in an exaggerated form, in the
Convention.
This Assembly comprised about seven hundred and fifty deputies,
of whom rather more than a third had sat in the Constituent or
the Legislative Assembly. By terrorising the population the
Jacobins contrived to triumph at the elections. The majority of
the electors, six millions out of seven, preferred to abstain
from voting.
As to the professions, the Assembly contained a large number of
lawyers, advocates, notaries, bailiffs, ex-magistrates, and a few
literary men.
The mentality of the Convention was not homogeneous. Now, an
assembly composed of individuals of widely different characters
soon splits up into a number of groups. The Convention very
early contained three--the Gironde, the Mountain, and the Plain.
The constitutional monarchists had almost disappeared.
The Gironde and the Mountain, extreme parties, consisted of about
a hundred members apiece, who successively became leaders. In
the Mountain were the most advanced members: Couthon, Herault
de Sechelles, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Marat, Collot
d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Barras, Saint-Just, Fouche,
Tallien, Carrier, Robespierre, &c. In the Gironde were Brissot,
Petion, Condorcet, Vergniaud, &c.
The five hundred other members of the Assembly--that is, the
great majority--constituted what was known as the Plain.
This latter formed a floating mass, silent, undecided, and timid;
ready to follow every impulse and to be carried away by the
excitement of the moment. It gave ear indifferently to the
stronger of the two preceding groups. After obeying the Gironde
for some time it allowed itself to be led away by the Mountain,
when the latter triumphed over its enemy. This was a natural
consequence of the law already stated, by which the weak
invariably fall under the dominion of the stronger wills.
The influence of great manipulators of men was displayed
in a high degree during the Convention. It was constantly led by
a violent minority of narrow minds, whose intense convictions
lent them great strength.
A brutal and audacious minority will always lead a fearful and
irresolute majority. This explains the constant tendency toward
extremes to be observed in all revolutionary assemblies. The
history of the Convention verifies once more the law of
acceleration studied in another chapter.
The men of the Convention were thus bound to pass from moderation
to greater and greater violence. Finally they decimated
themselves. Of the 180 Girondists who at the outset led the
Convention 140 were killed or fled, and finally the most
fanatical of the Terrorists, Robespierre, reigned alone over a
terrified crowd of servile representatives.
Yet it was among the five hundred members of the majority,
uncertain and floating as it was, that the intelligence and
experience were to be found. The technical committees to whom
the useful work of the Convention was due were recruited from the
Plain.
More or less indifferent to politics, the members of the Plain
were chiefly anxious that no one should pay particular attention
to them. Shut up in their committees, they showed themselves as
little as possible in the Assembly, which explains why the
sessions of the Convention contained barely a third of the
deputies.
Unhappily, as often happens, these intelligent and honest men
were completely devoid of character, and the fear which always
dominated them made them vote for the worst of the
measures introduced by their dreaded masters.
The men of the Plain voted for everything they were ordered to
vote for--the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror,
&c. It was with their assistance that the Mountain crushed the
Gironde, and Robespierre destroyed the Hebertists and
Dantonists. Like all weak people, they followed the strong. The
gentle philanthropists who composed the Plain, and constituted
the majority of the Assembly, contributed, by their
pusillanimity, to bring about the frightful excesses of the
Convention.
The psychological note always prevailing in the Convention was a
horrible fear. It was more especially through fear that men cut
off one another's heads, in the doubtful hope of keeping their
own on their shoulders.
Such a fear was, of course, very comprehensible. The unhappy
deputies deliberated amid the hootings and vociferations of the
tribunes. At every moment veritable savages, armed with pikes,
invaded the Assembly, and the majority of the members no longer
dared to attend the sessions. When by chance they did go it was
only to vote in silence according to the orders of the Mountain,
which was only a third as numerous.
The fear which dominated the latter, although less visible, was
just as profound. Men destroyed their enemies, not only because
they were shallow fanatics, but because they were convinced that
their own existence was threatened. The judges of the
revolutionary Tribunals trembled no less. They would have
willingly acquitted Danton, and the widow of Camille
Desmoulins, and many others. They dared not.
But it was above all when Robespierre became the sole master that
the phantom of fear oppressed the Assembly. It has truly been
said that a glance from the master made his colleagues shrink
with fear. On their faces one read ``the pallor of fear and the
abandon of despair.''
All feared Robespierre and Robespierre feared all. It was
because he feared conspiracies against him that he cut off men's
heads, and it was also through fear that others allowed him to do
so.
The memoirs of members of the Convention show plainly what a
horrible memory they retained of this gloomy period. Questioned
twenty years later, says Taine, on the true aim and the intimate
thoughts of the Committee of Public Safety, Barrere replied:--
``We had only one feeling, that of self-preservation; only one
desire, that of preserving our lives, which each of us believed
to be threatened. You had your neighbour's head cut off so that
your neighbour should not have you yourself guillotined.''
The history of the Convention constitutes one of the most
striking examples that could be given of the influence of leaders
and of fear upon an assembly.