called up other regiments of Swiss, who would have made the stronghold
of monarchy impregnable. And it would have been in his power, before
sunset that day, to march out of Paris at the head of a victorious
army, and at once to proclaim reforms which enlightened statesmen had
drawn up. His queen was active and resolute; but she had learnt, in
adversity, to think more of the claims of authority and the historic
right of kings. She shared Burke's passionate hatred for men whose
royalism was conditional. At every step downward they were the authors
of their own disaster. The French Republic was not a spontaneous
evolution of social elements. The issue between constitutional
monarchy, the richest and most flexible of political forms, and the
Republic one and indivisible (that is, not federal), which is the most
rigorous and sterile, was decided by the crimes of men, and by errors
more inevitably fatal than crime. There is another world for the
expiation of guilt; but the wages of folly are payable here below.
XVI
THE EXECUTION OF THE KING
The constitutional experiment, first tried on the Continent under
Lewis XVI., failed mainly through distrust of the executive and a
mechanical misconstruction of the division of power. Government had
been incapable, the finances were disordered, the army was
disorganised; the monarchy had brought on an invasion which it was now
the mission of the Republic to repel. The instinct of freedom made way
for the instinct of force, the Liberal movement was definitely
reversed, and the change which followed the shock of the First
European Coalition was more significant, the angle more acute, than
the mere transition from royal to republican forms. Unity of power was
the evident need of the moment, and as it could not be bestowed upon a
king who was in league with the enemy, it had to be sought in a
democracy which should have concentration and vigour for its dominant
note. Therefore supremacy was assured to that political party which
was most alert in laying its grasp on all the resources of the State,
and most resolute in crushing resistance. More than public interests
were at stake. Great armies were approaching, guided by vindictive
_emigres_, and they had announced the horrors they were prepared to
inflict on the population of Paris.
Beyond the rest of France the Parisians were interested in the
creation of a power equal to the danger, and were ready to be saved
even by a dictatorship. The need was supplied by the members of the
new municipality who expelled the old on the night of August 9. They
were instituted by Danton. They appointed Marat their organ of
publicity. Robespierre was elected a member of the body on August 11.
It was the stronghold of the Revolution. Strictly, they were an
illegal assembly, and their authority was usurped; but they were
masters of Paris, and had dethroned the king. The _Legislative_,
having accepted their action, was forced to obey their commandments,
and to rescind its decrees at their pleasure. By convoking the
constituencies to elect a Convention, it had annulled itself. It was
no more than a dying assembly whose days were exactly numbered, and
whose credit and influence were at an end.
Between a king who was deposed and an assembly that abdicated, the
Commune alone exhibited the energy and force that were to save the
country. Being illegitimate, they could quell opposition only by
violence; and they made it clear what violence they meant to use when
they gave an office to Marat. This man had been a writer on science,
and Goethe celebrates his sagacity and gift of observation in a
passage which is remarkable for the absence of any allusion to his
public career. But he considered that the rich have no right to
enjoyments of which the masses are deprived, and that the guilt of
selfishness and oppression could only be expiated by death. A year
before he had proposed that obnoxious deputies should be killed by
torture, and their quarters nailed to the walls as a hint to their
successors. He now desired to reconcile mercy with safety, and
declared himself satisfied if the Assembly was decimated. For
royalists, and men who had belonged to privileged orders, he had no
such clemency. If, he said, the able-bodied men become soldiers and
are sent to guard the frontier, who is to protect us from traitors at
home? Either thousands of fighting men must be kept away from the army
in the field, or the internal enemy must be put out of the way. On
August 10 Marat began to employ this argument, and a company of
recruits protested against being sent to the front whilst their
families were at the mercy of the royalists. The cry became popular
that France would be condemned to fight her enemies with one arm, if
she had to guard the traitors with the other. And this was the plea
provided to excuse the crimes that were about to follow. It was the
plea, but not the motive. If the intended destruction of royalists
could be represented as an act of war, as a necessity of national
defence, moderate men would be unable to prevent it without incurring
reproach as unpatriotic citizens.
When the Jacobins prepared the massacre in the prisons, their purpose
was to fill France with terror and to secure their majority in the
Convention. That is the controlling idea that governed the events of
the next few weeks. After the decree which assigned the Luxemburg
palace as a residence to the king, the Commune claimed him; and he was
delivered up to them, and confined in the Temple, the ancient fortress
in which the Valois kept their treasure. They proceeded to suppress
the newspapers that were against them, disfranchised the voters who
had signed opposing or reactionary petitions, and closed the barriers.
They threw their enemies into prison, erected a new tribunal for the
punishment of crimes against the Revolution, and supplied it with a
new and most efficient instrument which executed its victims
painlessly, expeditiously, and on terms conforming to the precept of
equality. From the moment of his appearance at the Hotel de Ville, the
day after the fight was over, Robespierre became the ruling spirit and
the organiser, and it was felt at once that, behind the declamations
and imprecations of Marat, there was a singularly methodical,
consistent, patient, and systematic mind at work, directing the action
of the Commune.
The fall of Longwy was known at Paris on August 26. On that day the
Minister of Justice, Danton, revised the list of prisoners;
domiciliary visits were carried out, all over the city, to search for
arms, and for suspected persons. Nearly 3000 were arrested by the
28th, and a thing still more ominous was that many prisoners were
released. Nobody doubted, nobody seriously denied, the significance of
these measures. The legislature, seeing that this was not the mere
frenzy of passion, but a deliberate and settled plan, dissolved the
Commune, August 30, and ordered that it should be renewed by a fresh
election. They also restored the governing body of the department, as
a check on the municipality. They had the law and constitution on
their side, and their act was an act of sovereignty. It was the
critical and deciding moment in the struggle between the Girondins and
the Hotel de Ville. On the following day, August 31, the Assembly
revoked the decree. Tallien read an address, drawn up by Robespierre,
declaring that the Commune, just instituted by the people of Paris,
with a fresh and definite mandate, could not submit to an assembly
which had lost its powers, which had allowed the initiative to pass
away from it. The Assembly was entirely helpless, and was too much
compromised by its complicity since the 10th of August to resist its
master. Robespierre, at the Commune, threatened the Girondins with
imprisonment, and, to complete their discomfiture, Brissot's papers
were examined, and Roland, Minister of the Interior, was subjected to
the same indignity.
In the last days of August, whilst every house was being searched for
fugitives, the primary elections were held. The Jacobins were much
opposed to the principle of indirect election, but they did not
succeed in abolishing it. They instituted universal suffrage for the
first stage, and they gave to the primary assemblies a veto on the
choice of the second. For the rest, they relied on intimidation. The
800 electors met at the bishop's palace on September 2. But here there
was no stranger's gallery, and it was requisite that the nominees of
the people should act in the presence of the public that nominated
them to do its work. Robespierre proposed that the electoral body
should hold its sittings at the Jacobin Club, in the full enjoyment of
publicity. On the following day they met at the same place, and
proceeded to the Jacobins. Their way led them over the bridge, where a
spectacle awaited them which was carefully calculated to assist their
deliberations. They found themselves in the presence of a great number
of dead men, deposited from the neighbouring prison.
For this is what had happened. On the 2nd of September Verdun had
fallen. This was not yet known at Paris; but it was reported that the
Prussians had appeared before the fortress, and that it could not hold
out. Verdun was the last barrier on the road to Paris, and the first
scene of the war in Belgium made it doubtful whether the new levies
would stand their ground against battalions that had been drilled by
Frederic. Alarm guns were fired, the tocsin sounded, the black flag
proclaimed that the country was in danger, and the men of Paris were
summoned by beat of drum to be enrolled for the army of national
defence.
Danton, who knew English, and read English books, seems to have
remembered a passage in Spenser, when he declared that France must be
saved at Paris, and told his terrified hearers to be bold, to be bold,
and again to be bold. Then he went off to see to the enrolments, and
left the agents of the Commune to accomplish the work appointed for
the day. Twenty-four prisoners at the Mairie were removed to the
Abbaye, which was the old Benedictine monastery of St. Germain, in
hackney coaches; twenty-two of them were priests. Lewis XVI. had
fallen because he refused to proscribe the refractory clergy who were
accused of spreading discontent. Beyond all men they were identified
with the lost cause, and it had been decided that they should be
banished. They were imprisoned in large numbers, as a first step
towards their expulsion. That group, escorted by Marseilles from the
Mairie to the Abbaye, were the first victims. The people, who did not
love them, let them pass through the streets without injury; but when
they reached their destination, the escorting Marseillais began to
plunge their swords into the carriages, and all but three were killed.
Two made their way into a room where a commission was sitting, and, by
taking seats among the rest, escaped. Sicard, the teacher of the deaf
and dumb, was recognised and saved: and it is through him that we know
the deeds that were done that day. They were directed by Maillard who
proceeded from the abbey to the Carmelites, a prison filled with
ecclesiastics, where he sent for the Register, and had them murdered
orderly and without tumult. There was a large garden, and sixteen of
the prisoners climbed over the wall and got away; fourteen were
acquitted; 120 were put to death, and their bones are collected in the
chapel, and show the sabre cuts by which they died.
During the absence of Maillard, which lasted three hours, certain
unauthorised and self-constituted assassins appeared at the Abbaye and
proposed to go on with the work of extermination which he had left
unfinished. The gaolers were obliged to deliver up a few prisoners, to
save time. When Maillard returned, he established a sort of tribunal
for the trial of prisoners, while the murderers, in all something
under 200, waited outside and slaughtered those that were given up to
them. In the case of the clergy, and of the Swiss survivors of the 4th
of August, little formality was observed. At the Abbaye, and at La
Force, there were many political prisoners, and of these a certain
number were elaborately absolved. Several prisons were left unvisited;
but at Bicetre and the Saltpetriere, where only the most ignoble
culprits were confined, frightful massacres took place.
As this was utterly pointless and unmeaning, it has given currency to
the theory that all the horrors of that September were the irrational
and spontaneous act of some hundreds of gaolbirds, whose eyes were
stained with the vision of blood, and who ran riot in their impunity.
So that criminal Paris, not revolutionary Paris, was to blame. In
reality, the massacres were organised by the Commune, paid for by the
Commune, and directed by its emissaries. We know how much the various
agents received, and what was the cost of the whole, from the 2nd of
September to the 5th. At first, all was deliberate and methodical, and
the women were spared. Several were released at the last moment; some
were dismissed by the tribunal before which they appeared. The
exception is the Princess de Lamballe, who was the friend of the
queen. But as Madame de Tourzel was spared, the cause of her death
remains unexplained. Her life had not been entirely free from
reproach; and it has been supposed that she was in possession of
secrets injurious to the duke of Orleans.
But the problem is not to know why murderers were guilty of murder,
but how they allowed many of their captives to be saved. One man made
friends with a Marseillais by talking in his native patois. When asked
what he was, he replied, "A hearty royalist!" Thereupon Maillard
raised his hat and said, "We are here to judge actions, not opinions,"
and the man was received with acclamation outside by the thirsty
executioners. Bertrand, brother of the royalist minister, had the same
reception. Two men interrupted their work to see him home. They waited
outside whilst he saw his family, and then went away, thanking him for
the sight of so much happiness, and refusing a reward. Another
prisoner was taken to his house in a cab, with half a dozen dripping
patriots crowded on the roof, and hanging on behind. They would accept
nothing but a glass of spirits. Few men were in greater danger than
Weber, the foster-brother of the queen. He had been on guard at the
Tuileries, and was by her side on the funereal march across the
gardens from palace to prison. As he well knew what she was leaving,
and to what she was going, he was so overcome that Princess Elizabeth
whispered to him to control his feelings and be a man. Yet he was one
of those who lived to tell the tale of his appearance before the dread
tribunal of Maillard. When he was acquitted, the expectant cut-throats
were wild with enthusiasm. They cheered him; they gave him the
fraternal accolade; they uncovered as he passed along the line; and a
voice cried, "Take care where he walks! Don't you see he has got white
stockings on?"
One acquittal is remembered beyond all the rest. In every school and
in every nursery of France the story continues to be told how
Sombreuil, the governor of the Invalides, was acquitted by the judges,
but would have been butchered by the mob outside if his daughter had
not drunk to the nation in a glass filled with the warm blood of the
last victim. They were taken home in triumph. Sombreuil perished in
the Reign of Terror. His daughter married, and died at Avignon in
1823, at the height of the royalist reaction. The fame of that heroic
moment in her life filled the land, and her heart was brought to
Paris, to be laid in the consecrated ground where she had worshipped
as a child, and it rests under the same gilded canopy that covers the
remains of Napoleon. Many people believe that this is one of the
legends of royalism which should be strung with the mock pearls of
history. No contemporary mentions it, and it does not appear before
1801. Mlle. de Sombreuil obtained a pension from the Convention, but
this was not included in the statement of her claims. An Englishman,
who witnessed the release of Sombreuil, only relates that father and
daughter were carried away swooning from the strain of emotion. I
would not dwell on so well-worn an anecdote if I believed that it was
false. The difficulty of disbelief is that the son of the heroine
wrote a letter affirming it, in which he states that his mother was
never afterwards able to touch a glass of red wine. The point to bear
in mind is that these atrocious criminals rejoiced as much in a man to
save as in a man to kill. They were servants of a cause, acting under
authority.
Robespierre, among the chiefs, seems to have aimed mainly at the
destruction of the priests. Others proposed that the prisoners should
be confined underground, and that water should be let in until they
were drowned. Marat advised that the prisons should be burnt, with
their inmates. "The 2nd of September," said Collot d'Herbois, "is the
first article of the creed of Liberty. Without it there would be no
National Convention." "France," said Danton, in a memorable
conversation, "is not republican. We can only establish a Republic by
the intimidation of its enemies." They had crushed the Legislature,
they had given warning to the Germans that they would not save the
king by advancing on the capital when it was in the hands of men
capable of such deeds, and they had secured a Jacobin triumph at the
Paris election. Marat prepared an address exhorting the departments to
imitate their example, and it was sent out under cover from the
Ministry of Justice. Danton himself sent out the same orders. Only one
copy seems to have been preserved, and it might have been difficult to
determine the responsibility of Danton, if he had not avowed to Louis
Philippe that he was the author of the massacres of September.
The example of Paris was not widely followed, but the State prisoners
at Orleans were brought to Versailles, and there put to death. The
whole number killed was between thirteen and fourteen hundred. We have
touched low-water mark in the Revolution, and there is nothing worse
than this to come. We are in the company of men fit for Tyburn. I need
spend no words in impressing on you the fact that these republicans
began at once with atrocities as great as those of which the absolute
monarchy was justly accused, and for which it justly perished. What we
have to fix in our thoughts is this, that the great crimes of the
Revolution, and crimes as great as those in the history of other
countries, are still defended and justified in almost every group of
politicians and historians, so that, in principle, the present is not
altogether better than the past.
The massacre was successful at Paris, but not in the rest of France.
Under its influence none but Jacobins were elected in the capital.
President and vice-president of the Electoral Assembly were
Robespierre and Collot d'Herbois, with Marat for secretary.
Robespierre was the first deputy returned, Danton was second, Collot
third, Manuel fourth, Billaud-Varennes fifth, Camille Desmoulins
sixth, and Marat seventh, with a majority over Priestley, who was
chosen in two departments, but refused the seat. The twentieth and
last of the deputies for Paris was the duke of Orleans.
While the people of Paris sanctioned and approved the murders, it was
not the same in the country. In many places the proceedings began with
mass, and concluded with a Te Deum. Seventeen bishops were sent to
the Convention, and thirty-one priests. Tom Paine, though he could not
speak French, was elected in four places. Two-thirds were new members,
who had not sat in the previous assemblies. Four-fifths of the primary
electors abstained.
The Convention began its sittings, September 20, in the Riding School,
where the Legislative had met; in the month of May 1793 it adjourned
to the Tuileries. There were about fifty or sixty Jacobins. The
majority, without being Girondins, were prepared generally to follow,
if the Girondins led. Petion was at once elected president, and all
the six secretaries were on the same side. The victory of the Gironde
was complete. It had the game in its hands. The party had little
cohesion and, in spite of the whispered counsels of Sieyes, no sort of
tactics. Excepting Buzot, and perhaps Vergniaud, they scarcely deserve
the interest they have excited in later literature, for they had no
principles. Embarrassed by the helpless condition of the Legislative,
they made no resistance to the massacres. When Roland, Condorcet,
Gorsas, spoke of them in public, they described them as a dreadful
necessity, an act of rude but inevitable justice. Roland, Minister of
the Interior, had some of the promoters to dine with him while the
bloodshed was going on, and he proposed to draw a decent veil over
what had passed. Such men were unfit to compete with Robespierre in
ruthless villainy, but they were equally unfit to denounce and to
expose him. That was the policy which they attempted, and by which
they perished.
The movement towards a permanent Republic was not pronounced, beyond
the barrier of Paris. The constituencies made no demand for it, except
the Jura. Two others declared against monarchy. Thirty-four
departments gave no instructions; thirty-six gave general or unlimited
powers. Three, including Paris, required that constitutional decrees
should be submitted to popular ratification. The first act of the
Convention was to adopt that new principle. By a unanimous vote, on
the motion of Danton, they decided that the Constitution must be
accepted by the nation in its primary assemblies. But some weeks
later, October 16, when Manuel proposed to consult the people on the
question of a Republic, the Convention refused. The abolition of
monarchy was carried, September 21, without any discussion; for the
history of kings, said Bishop Gregoire, is the martyrology of nations.
On the 22nd the Republic was proclaimed, under the first impression of
the news from Valmy, brought by the future king of the French. The
repulse of the invasion provoked by the late government coincided with
the establishment of the new.
The Girondins, who were in possession, began with a series of personal
attacks on the opposite leaders. They said, what everybody knew, that
Marat was an infamous scoundrel, that Danton had not made his accounts
clear when he retired from office on entering the Convention, that
Robespierre was a common assassin. Some suspicion remained hanging
about Danton, but the assailants used their materials with so little
skill that they were worsted in the encounter with Robespierre. The
Jacobins expelled them from their Club, and Louvet's motion against
Robespierre was rejected on November 5. Thus they were weakened
already when, on the following day, the question of the trial of the
king came on. It was not only the first important stage in the strife
of the parties, but it was the decisive one. The question whether
Lewis should live or die was no other than the question whether
Jacobin or Girondin should survive and govern.
A mighty change occurred in the position of France and in the spirit
of the nation, between the events we have just contemplated and the
tragedy to which we are coming. In September the German armies were in
France, and at first met with no resistance. The peril was evidently
extreme, and the only security was the life of the king. Since then
the Prussians and Austrians had been ignominiously expelled; Belgium
had been conquered; Savoy had been overrun; the Alps and the Rhine as
far as Mentz were the frontiers of the Republic. From the German Ocean
to the Mediterranean not an army or a fortress had been able to
resist the revolutionary arms. The reasonable alarm of September had
made way for an exorbitant confidence. There was no fear of all the
soldiery of Europe. The French were ready to fight the world, and they
calculated that they ran no graver risk than the loss of the sugar
islands. It suited their new temper to slay their king, as it had been
their policy to preserve him as a hostage. On the 19th of November
they offered aid and friendship to every people that determined to be
free. This decree, really the beginning of the great war, was caused
by remonstrances from Mentz where the French party feared to be
abandoned. But it was aimed against England, striking at the weakest
point, and reducing its warlike power by encouraging Irish
disaffection.