tried by the Convention that was to meet, and that there should be an
appeal to the people. On October 1 the question was brought before the
Convention, and a Commission of twenty-four was appointed to examine
the evidence. They reported on the 6th of November; and from that
moment the matter did not rest. On the following day, Mailhe, in the
name of the jurists, reported that there was no legal obstacle, from
the inviolability acknowledged by the Constitution. Mousson replied
that since Lewis was deposed, he had no further responsibility. A very
young member sprang suddenly into notoriety, on the 13th, by arguing
that there was no question of justice and its forms; a king deserved
death not for what he did, but for what he was. The speaker's name was
St. Just. On November 20, before the debate had gone either way,
Roland appeared, with news of an important discovery. The king had an
iron safe in his palace, which the locksmith had betrayed. Roland had
found that it contained 625 documents. A committee of twelve was
directed to examine them, and they found the proofs of a great scheme
of corruption, and of the venality of Mirabeau. On December 3 it was
resolved that the king should be tried by the Convention; the order of
proceedings was determined on the 6th, and on the 10th the indictment
was brought in. On the next day Lewis appeared before his judges, and
was interrogated by the President. He said, in his replies, that he
knew nothing of an iron safe, and had never given money to Mirabeau,
or to any deputy. When he got back to prison the unhappy man
exclaimed, "They asked questions for which I was so little prepared
that I denied my own hand." Ten days were allowed to prepare the
defence. He was assisted by Malesherbes, by the famous jurist
Tronchet, and by Deseze, a younger man, who made the speech. It was
unconvincing, for the advocates perceived, no better than their
client, where the force and danger of the accusation lay.
Everybody believed that Lewis had brought the invader into the
country, but it was not proved in evidence. If the proofs since
published had been known at the time, the defence must have been
confined to the plea that the king was inviolable; and the answer
would have been that he is covered by the responsibility of ministers,
but responsible for what he does behind their back. At the last moment
several Girondins proposed that sentence should be pronounced by the
nation, in primary assemblies--an idea put forward by Faure on
November 29. This was contrary to the spirit of representative
democracy, which consults the electors as to men, and not as to
measures properly the result of debate. It was consistent with the
direct action of Democracy, which was the theory of Jacobinism. But
the Jacobins would not have it. By compelling the vote on the capital
question, they would ruin their adversaries. If the Girondins voted
for death, they would follow the train of the party that resolutely
insisted on it. If they voted against, they could be accused of
royalism. When the question "Guilty or not guilty?" was put, there was
no hesitation; 683 voted guilty, one man, Lanjuinais, answering that
he was a legislator, not a judge. The motion, to leave the penalty to
the people, which was made in the interest of the Girondins, not of
the king, failed by 423 to 281, and ruined the party that contrived
it. The voting on the penalty began on the evening of January 17, and
as each man gave his voice from the tribune, it lasted far into the
following day. Vergniaud declared the result; he said that there was a
majority of five for death. Both parties were dissatisfied, and
suspected fraud. A scrutiny was held, and it then appeared that those
who had voted simply for the capital penalty were 361, and that those
who had voted otherwise were 360. Majority, 1. But when the final vote
was taken on the question of delay, there was a majority of 70 for
immediate execution.
That the decision was the result of fear has been stated, even by
Brissot and Carnot. The duke of Orleans had written to the President
that he could not vote at the trial of his kinsman. The letter was
returned to him. He promised his son that he would not vote for death,
and when they met again exclaimed, "I am not worthy to be your
father!" At dinner, on the fatal day, Vergniaud declared that he would
defend the king's life, even if he stood alone. A few hours later he
voted for death. Yet Vergniaud was soon to prove that he was not a man
whom intimidation influenced. The truth is, that nobody had a doubt as
to guilt. Punishment was a question rather of policy than of justice.
The army was inclined to the side of mercy. Custine had offered,
November 23, to save Lewis, if Prussia would acknowledge the Republic.
The offer was made in vain. Dumouriez came to Paris in January, and
found that there was nothing to be done. He said afterwards, "It is
true he was a perfidious scoundrel, but it was folly to cut his head
off." The Spanish Bourbons made every effort to save the head of the
house. They offered neutrality and mediation, and they empowered their
agent to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in opportune bribery.
They promised, if Lewis was delivered up to them, that they would
prevent him from ever interfering in French affairs, and would give
hostages for his good behaviour. They entreated George III. to act
with them in a cause which was that of monarchy and of humanity.
Lansdowne, Sheridan, and Fox urged the government to interpose.
Grenville made known that peace would be preserved if France gave up
her conquests, but he said not a word for the king. Information was
brought to Pitt, from a source that could be trusted, that Danton
would save him for L40,000. When he made up his mind to give the
money, Danton replied that it was too late. Pitt explained to the
French diplomatist Maret, afterwards Prime Minister, his motive for
hesitation. The execution of the king of France would raise such a
storm in England that the Whigs would be submerged.
Lewis was resigned to his fate, but he expected that he would be
spared, and he spoke of retiring to the Sierra Morena, or of seeking a
retreat for his old age among the faithful republicans of Switzerland.
When his advocates came to tell him that there was no hope, he refused
to believe them. "You are mistaken," he said; "they would never dare."
He quickly recovered his composure, and declined to ask permission to
see his family. "I can wait," he said; "in a few days they will not
refuse me." A priest who applied for leave to attend him was sent to
prison. As a foreigner was less likely to be molested, the king asked
for the _abbe_ Edgeworth, of Firmount, who had passed his life in
France, but might be considered an Irishman. Garat, the Minister of
the Interior, went to fetch him. On their way he said, "He was weak
when in power; but you will see how great he is, now that he is in
chains."
On the following day Lewis was taken through a vast parade of military
and cannon to the scaffold in the Place de la Concorde, a little
nearer to the Champs Elysees than the place where the obelisk of Luxor
stands. He was nearly an hour on the way. The Spanish envoy had not
made terms with the agents who were attracted by the report of his
unlimited credit, and he spent his doubloons in a frantic attempt at
rescue as the prisoner passed, at a foot pace, along the Boulevard. An
equivocal adventurer, the Baron de Batz, who helped to organise the
rising of Vendemiaire, which only failed because it encountered
Bonaparte, had undertaken to break the line, with four or five
hundred men. They were to make a rush from a side street. But every
street was patrolled and every point was guarded as the coach went by
carrying the prisoner. De Batz was true to the rendezvous, and stood
up waving a sword and crying, "Follow me and save the king!" It was
without effect; he vanished in the crowd; one companion was taken and
guillotined, but the police were able to report that no incident had
occurred on the way.
Not the royalists but the king served the royal cause on that 21st of
January. Unequal to his duties on the throne, he found, in prison and
on the scaffold, a part worthy of the better qualities of his race,
justifying the words of Louis Blanc, "None but the dead come back." To
absolve him is impossible, for we know, better than his persecutors,
how he intrigued to recover uncontrolled authority by bringing havoc
and devastation upon the people over whom he reigned. The crowning
tragedy is not that which Paris witnessed, when Santerre raised his
sword, commanding the drums to beat, which had been silenced by the
first word of the dying speech; it is that Lewis XVI. met his fate
with inward complacency, unconscious of guilt, blind to the
opportunities he had wasted and the misery he had caused, and died a
penitent Christian but an unrepentant king.
XVII
THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE
The Constitution of 1791 had failed because it carried the division of
powers and the reaction against monarchical centralisation so far as
to paralyse the executive. Until the day when a new system should be
organised, a series of revolutionary measures were adopted, and by
these the Convention governed to the end. Immediately after the death
of Lewis XVI. they began to send out representatives with arbitrary
powers to the departments. The revolutionary tribunal was appointed in
March to judge political cases without appeal; and the Secret
Committee of Public Safety in April, on the defeat and defection of
Dumouriez. All this time, the Girondins had the majority. The issue of
the king's trial had been disastrous to them, because it proved their
weakness, not in numbers, but in character and counsel. Roland at once
resigned, confessing the defeat. But they stood four months before
their fall. During that memorable struggle, the question was whether
France should be ruled by violence and blood, or by men who knew the
passion for freedom. The Girondins at once raised the real issue by
demanding inquiry into the massacres of September. It was a valid but
a perilous weapon. There could be no doubt as to what those who had
committed a thousand murders to obtain power would be capable of doing
in their own defence.
The Girondins calculated badly. By leaving crime unpunished they could
have divided their adversaries. Almost to the last moment Danton
wished to avoid the conflict. Again and again they rejected his
offers. Open war, said Vergniaud, is better than a hollow truce. Their
rejection of the hand that bore the crimson stain is the cause of
their ruin, but also of their renown. They were always impolitic,
disunited, and undecided; but they rose, at times, to the level of
honest men. Their second line of attack was not better chosen. Party
politics were new, and the science of understanding the other side was
not developed; and the Girondins were persuaded that the Montagnards
were at heart royalists, aiming at the erection of an Orleanist
throne. Marat received money from the Palais Royal; and Sieyes to the
last regarded him as a masked agent of monarchy. Danton himself
assured the young Duc de Chartres that the Republic would not last,
and advised him to hold himself in readiness to reap, some day, what
the Jacobins were sowing.
The aim of the Jacobins was a dictatorship, which was quite a new
substitute for monarchy, and the Orleans spectre was no more than an
illusion on which the Gironde spent much of its strength. In
retaliation, they were accused of Federalism, and this also was a
false suspicion. Federal ideas, the characteristic of America, had the
sanction of the greatest names in the political literature of
France--Montesquieu and Rousseau, Necker and Mirabeau. The only
evident Federalist in the Convention is Barere. A scheme of federation
was discussed at the Jacobins on September 10, and did not come to a
vote. But the idea was never adopted by the Girondin party, or by any
one of its members, with the exception of Buzot. They favoured things
just as bad in Jacobin eyes. They inclined to decentralisation, to
local liberties, to restraint on the overwhelming activity of Paris,
to government by representatives of the sovereign people, not by the
sovereign itself. All this was absolutely opposed to the concentration
of all powers, which was the prevailing purpose since the alarm of
invasion and treason, and was easily confounded with the theory of
provincial rights and divided authority, which was dreaded as the
superlative danger of the time. That which, under the title of
Federalism, was laid to their charge, must be counted to their credit;
for it meant that, in a limited sense, they were constitutional, and
that there were degrees of power and oppression, which even a Girondin
would resist.
The Jacobins had this superiority over their fluctuating opponents,
that they fell back on a system which was simple, which was
intelligible, and which the most famous book of the previous
generation had made known to everybody. For them there was no
uncertainty, no groping, and no compromise. They intended that the
mass of the people should at all times assert and enforce their will,
over-riding all temporary powers and superseding all appointed agents.
As they had to fight the world with a divided population, they
required that all power should be concentrated in the hands of those
who acted in conformity with the popular will, and that those who
resisted at home, should be treated as enemies. They must put down
opposition as ruthlessly as they repelled invasion. The better Jacobin
would not have denied liberty, but he would have defined it
differently. For him it consisted not in the limitation, but the
composition of the governing power. He would not weaken the state by
making its action uncertain, slow, capricious, dependent on alternate
majorities and rival forces; but he would find security in power
exercised only by the whole body of the nation, united in the
enjoyment of the gifts the Revolution had bestowed on the peasant.
That was the most numerous class, the class whose interests were the
same, which was identified with the movement against privilege, which
would inevitably be true to the new institutions. They were a minority
in the Convention, but a minority representing the unity and security
of the Republic, and supported by the majority outside. They drew to
themselves not the best or the most brilliant men, but those who
devoted themselves to the use of power, not to the manipulation of
ideas. Many good administrators belonged to the party, among whom
Carnot is only the most celebrated. Napoleon, who understood talent
and said that no men were so vigorous and efficient as those who had
gone through the Revolution, gave office to 127 regicides, most of
whom were Montagnards.
The Girondins, vacillating and divided, would never have made the
Republic triumph over the _whole_ of Europe and the half of France.
They were immediately confronted by a general war and a formidable
insurrection. They were not afraid of war. The great military powers
were Austria and Prussia, and they had been driven to the Rhine by
armies of thirty or forty thousand men. After that, the armies of
Spain and England did not seem formidable. This calculation proved to
be correct. The audacity of the French appeared in their declaration
of war against the three chief maritime powers at once--England,
Spain, and Holland. It was not until 1797, not for four years, that
the superiority of the British fleet was established. They had long
hoped that war with England could be avoided, and carried on
negotiations through a succession of secret agents. There was a notion
that the English government was revolutionary in character as it was
in origin, that the execution of the king was done in pursuance of
English examples, that a Protestant country must admire men who
followed new ideas. Brissot, like Napoleon in 1815, built his hopes on
the opposition. Mr. Fox could not condemn the institution of a
Republic; and a party that had applauded American victories over their
own countrymen might be expected to feel some sympathy with a country
which was partly imitating England and partly America.
War with continental absolutism was the proper price of revolution;
but the changes since 1789 were changes in the direction of a Whig
alliance. When the Convention were informed that George III. would not
have a regicide minister in the country, they did not debate the
matter, but passed it over to a committee. They acted not only from a
sense of national dignity, but in the belief that the event was not
very terrible. The Girondins thought that the war would not be popular
in England, that the Whigs, the revolutionary societies, and the
Irish, would bring it to an early termination. Marat, who knew this
country, affirmed that it was an illusion. But there was no opposition
to the successive declarations of war with England, Holland, and the
Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, which took place in February and
March. Eight hundred million of _assignats_ were voted at once, to be
secured on the confiscated property of the _emigres_. France, at that
moment, had only 150,000 soldiers in the field. On February 24, a
decree called out 300,000 men, and obliged each department to raise
its due proportion. The French army that was to accomplish such
marvels in the next twenty years, begins on that day. But the first
consequence was an extraordinary diminution in the military power of
the State. The Revolution had done much for the country people, and
had imposed no burdens upon them. The compulsory levy was the first.
In most places, with sufficient pressure, the required men were
supplied. Some districts offered more than their proper number.
On March 10, the Conscription was opened in the remote parishes of
Poitou. The country had been agitated for some time. The peasants, for
there were no large towns in that region, had resented the overthrow
of the nobility, of the clergy, and of the throne. The expulsion of
their priests caused constant discontent. And now the demand that they
should go out, under officers whom they distrusted, and die for a
government which persecuted them, caused an outbreak. They refused to
draw their numbers, and on the following day they gathered in large
crowds and fell upon the two sorts of men they detested--the
government officials, and the newly established clergy. Before the
middle of March about three hundred priests and republican officials
were murdered, and the war of La Vendee began. And it was there, and
not in Paris, that liberty made its last stand in revolutionary
France.
But we must see first what passed in the Convention under the shadow
of the impending struggle. A committee had been appointed, October 11,
to draw up a constitution for the Republic. Danton was upon it, but
he was much away, with the army in Belgium. Tom Paine brought
illumination from America, and Barere, generally without ideas of his
own, made others' plausible. The majority were Girondins, and with
them Sieyes was closely associated. On February 15, Condorcet produced
the report. It was the main attempt of the Girondins to consolidate
their power, and for three months it occupied the leisure of the
Convention. The length of the debate proved the weakness of the party.
Robespierre and his friends opposed the work of their enemies, and
talked it out. They devoted their arguments to the preamble, the new
formula of the Rights of Man, and succeeded so well that no part of
the Constitution ever came to a vote. The most interesting portion of
the debate turned upon the principle of religious liberty, which the
draft affirmed, and which was opposed by Vergniaud. Whilst this
ineffectual discussion proceeded, the fight was waged decisively
elsewhere, and the Jacobins delivered a counterstroke of superior
force.
Dumouriez's reverses had begun, and there was new urgency in the
demand for concentration. Danton came to an understanding with
Robespierre, and they decided on establishing the revolutionary
tribunal. It was to consist of judges appointed by the Convention to
try prisoners whom the Convention sent before it, and to judge without
appeal. Danton said that it was a necessary measure, in order to avert
popular violence and vengeance. He recommended it in the name of
humanity. When the Convention heard Danton speak of humanity there was
a shudder, and in the midst of a dead silence Lanjuinais uttered the
word "September." Danton replied that there would have been no
massacres if the new tribunal had been instituted at the time. The
Convention resolved that there should be trial by jury, and that no
deputies should be tried without their permission. The object of
Robespierre was not obtained. He had meant that the revolutionary
tribunal should judge without a jury, and should have jurisdiction
over the deputies. The Girondins were still too strong for him.
Danton next addressed himself to them. They agreed that there should
be a strong committee to supervise and control the government. On
March 25 they carried a list of twenty-five, composed largely of their
own friends, and, by thus subjecting the Assembly at large to a
committee, they once more recovered supreme power. Immediately after,
the defection of Dumouriez was reported at Paris, and the Convention
rightly believed that they had narrowly escaped a great danger. For
Dumouriez had intended to unite all the forces he could collect in the
Dutch and Belgian Netherlands, and to march into France at their head,
to establish a government of his own. He had been in close
communication with Danton, and the opportunity of attacking Danton was
too good to be lost. On April 1 Lasource accused him of complicity in
the treason. The truce between them was at an end, and the
consequences were soon apparent. The committee of twenty-five was too
bulky, and was made up from different parties. A proposal was made to
reduce the number, and on April 6 a new committee of nine, the real
Committee of Public Safety, was elected, and no Girondins were
included in it. On the same day the first execution took place of a
prisoner sentenced by the new tribunal. The two chief instruments of
the revolutionary government were brought into action at the same
time. But they did not enable the Jacobins to reach their enemies in
the Assembly, for the deputies were inviolable. Everybody else was at
the mercy of the public accuser.
The Girondins, having failed in their attack on Danton, now turned
against Marat, and by 220 to 132 votes sent him before the
revolutionary tribunal to be tried for sedition. On the 24th he was
acquitted. Meantime his friends petitioned against the Girondins, and
demanded that twenty-two of them should be expelled. The petition was
rejected, after a debate in which Vergniaud refused to have the fate
of his party decided by primary assemblies, on the ground that it
would lead to civil war. Vendee was in flames, and the danger of
explosion was felt in many parts of France.