last long. He lost no time in devising a precaution equal to the
danger. He prepared what is known as the law of the 22nd of Prairial,
which was presented by Couthon, and carried without a division on June
10, two days after the procession. It is the most tyrannical of all
the acts of the Revolution, and is not surpassed by anything in the
records of absolute monarchy. For the decree of Prairial suppressed
the formalities of law in political trials. It was said by Couthon,
that delays may be useful where only private interests are at stake,
but there must be none where the interest of the entire public is to
be vindicated. The public enemy has only to be identified. The State
despatches him to save itself. Therefore the Committee was empowered
to send whom it chose before the tribunal, and if the jury was
satisfied, no time was to be lost with witnesses, written depositions,
or arguments. Nobody whom Robespierre selected for execution would be
allowed to delay judgment by defence; and that there might be no
exception or immunity from arbitrary arrest and immediate sentence,
all previous decrees in matter of procedure were revoked. That article
contained the whole point, for it deprived the Convention of
jurisdiction for the protection of its own members. Robespierre had
only to send a deputy's name to the public accuser, and he would be in
his grave next day. The point had been so well concealed that nobody
perceived it. Afterwards, the deputies, warned by the great jurist
Merlin, saw what they had done, and on June 11, they stipulated that
no member should be arrested without leave of the Convention. Couthon
and Robespierre were not present. On the 12th, by threatening that the
Committees would resign, they caused the decree of the previous day to
be rescinded, but they assured the Assembly that it was superfluous,
and their design had been misunderstood. They maintained their text,
and gained their object; but the success was on the other side. The
scheme had been exposed, and the Convention had resisted, for the
first time. The opposing deputies had received warning, and showed
that they understood. From that moment they were on the watch, and
their enemy shrank from employing against them a clause the validity
of which he had denied. He gave them time to combine. Over the rest of
the nation he exerted his new power without control. The victims
increased rapidly in number. Down to the middle of June, in fourteen
months, the executions had been about 1200. In seven weeks, after the
law of Prairial, they were 1376; that is, an average of 32 in a week
rose to an average of 196. But the guillotine was removed to a distant
part of the city, where a deep trench was dug to carry away such
quantities of blood.
During this time the Tribunal was not acting against men actually in
public life, and we are not compelled to study its judgments, as if
they were making history. Whilst inoffensive people were suffering
obscurely, the enemies of the tyrant were plotting to save themselves
from the dreadful fate they saw so near them. Nothing bound them
together but fear and a common hatred for the obtrusive dogmatist at
the head of affairs; and it was not evident to each that they were
acting in the same cause. But there was a man among them, still
somewhat in the background, but gifted with an incredible dexterity,
who hurled Napoleon from power in 1815 and Robespierre in 1794.
Fouche, formerly an Oratorian, had been one of the most unscrupulous
deputies on missions, and had given the example of seizing the
treasure of churches. For he said there were no laws, and they had
gone back to the state of nature. After the execution of Hebert he was
recalled from Lyons; and Robespierre, whose sister he had asked in
marriage, defended him at the Jacobins on April 10. Being an unfrocked
ecclesiastic, he was elected president of the Club on June 6, as a
protest against the clerical tendencies of Robespierre. On the 11th,
immediately after the procession, and the law of Prairial, Fouche
attacked him in a speech in which he said that it is to do homage to
the Supreme Being to plunge a sword into the heart of a man who
oppresses liberty. This was the first opening of hostilities, and it
seems to have been premature. Fouche was not supported by the club at
the time, and some weeks later, when Robespierre called him the head
of the conspiracy against him, he was expelled. He was a doomed man,
carrying his life in his hand, and he adopted more subtle means of
combat. July 19, five days after his expulsion, Collot was elected
President of the Convention. He and Fouche were united in sacred bands
of friendship, for they had put 1682 persons to death at Lyons. About
the same day others joined the plotters, and on July 20, Barere, the
orator of the Committee, who watched the turning of the tide, made an
ambiguous declaration portending a breach. No plan of operations had
been agreed upon, and there was yet time for Robespierre, now fully
awake to the approaching danger, to strike an irresistible blow.
During the last few weeks the position of the country had undergone a
change. On the 1st of June, Villaret Joyeuse had given battle to the
English off Ushant. It was the beginning of that long series of fights
at sea, in which the French were so often successful in single combat,
and so often defeated in general actions. They lost the day, but not
the object for which they fought, as the supplies of American grain
were brought safely into port. That substantial success and the
opportune legend of the Vengeur saved the government from reproach. At
the end of the month St. Just brought news of the French victory over
the Austrians at Fleurus, the scene of so many battles. It was due to
Jourdan and his officers, and would have been lost if they had obeyed
St. Just; but he arrived in time to tell his own story. Many years
were to pass before an enemy's guns were again heard on the Belgian
frontier. St. Just entreated his colleague to seize the opportunity,
and to destroy his enemies while the people were rejoicing over
victory. It appeared, afterwards, that the battle of Fleurus, the
greatest which the French had won since the reign of Lewis XIV.,
rendered no service to the government under whom it was fought. The
soil of France was safe for twenty years, and with the terror of
invasion, the need for terror at home passed away. It had been borne
while the danger lasted; and with the danger, it came to an end.
The Committee of Public Safety resented the law of Prairial; and when
asked to authorise the proscription of deputies refused. Robespierre
did nothing to conciliate the members, and had not the majority. And
he threatened and insulted Carnot. As the powers were then constituted
he was helpless against his adversaries. The Commune and the Jacobins
were true to him; but the Convention was on its guard, and the two
Committees were divided. Lists of proscription had been discovered,
and those who knew that their names were upon them made no surrender.
Two days after the speech which showed that Barere was wavering, when
Collot had been chosen President, and Fouche was at work underground,
a joint sitting of both Committees was called at night. St. Just
proposed that there should be a dictator. Robespierre was ready to
accept, but there were only five votes in favour--three out of eleven
on one Committee, two out of twelve on the other. The Jacobins sent a
deputation to require that the Convention should strengthen the
executive; it was dismissed with words by Barere. One resource
remained. It might still be possible, disregarding the false move of
Prairial, to obtain the authority of the Convention for the arrest,
that is, for the trial and execution of some of its members. They had
delivered up Danton and Desmoulins, Herault and Chaumette. They would
perhaps abandon Cambon or Fouche, Bourdon or Tallien, four months
later.
The Committees had refused Robespierre, and were in open revolt
against his will. His opponents there would oppose him in the
Assembly. But the mass of the deputies, belonging not to the Mountain
but to the Plain, were always on his side. They had no immediate cause
for fear, and they had something to hope for. Seventy of their number
had been under arrest ever since October, as being implicated in the
fall of the Girondins. Robespierre had constantly refused to let them
be sent to trial, and they owed him their lives. They were still in
prison, still in his power. To save them, their friends in the
Assembly were bound to refuse nothing that he asked for. They would
not scruple to deliver over to him a few more ruffians as they had
delivered over the others in the spring. That was the basis of his
calculation. The Mountain would be divided; the honest men of the
Plain would give him the majority, and would purge the earth of
another hatch of miscreants. On his last night at home he said to the
friends with whom he lived, "We have nothing to fear, the Plain is
with us."
Whilst Robespierre, repulsed by the committees which had so long
obeyed him, sat down to compose the speech on which his victory and
his existence depended, his enemies were maturing their plans. Fouche
informed his sister at Nantes of what was in preparation. On the 21st
of July he is expecting that they will triumph immediately. On the
23rd he writes: "Only a few days more, and honest men will have their
turn.--Perhaps this very day the traitors will be unmasked." It is
unlike so sagacious a man to have written these outspoken letters, for
they were intercepted and sent to Paris for the information of
Robespierre. But it shows how accurately Fouche timed his calculation,
that when they arrived Robespierre was dead.
The importance of the neutral men of the Plain was as obvious to one
side as to the other, and the Confederates attempted to negotiate with
them. Their overtures were rejected; and when they were renewed, they
were rejected a second time. The Plain were disabled by consideration
for their friends, hostages in the grasp of Robespierre, and by the
prospect of advantage for religion from his recent policy. They loaded
him with adulation, and said that when he marched in the procession,
with his blue coat and nosegay, he reminded them of Orpheus. They even
thought it desirable that he should live to clear off a few more of
the most detestable men in France, the very men who were making
advances to them. They believed that time was on their side. Tallien,
Collot, Fouche were baffled, and the rigid obstinacy of the Plain
produced a moment of extreme and certain danger.
Whilst they hesitated, Tallien received a note in a remembered
handwriting. That bit of paper saved unnumbered lives, and changed the
fortune of France, for it contained these words: "Coward! I am to be
tried to-morrow." At Bordeaux, Tallien had found a lady in prison,
whose name was Madame de Fontenay, and who was the daughter of the
Madrid banker Cabarrus. She was twenty-one, and people who saw her
for the first time could not repress an exclamation of surprise at her
extraordinary beauty. After her release, she divorced her husband, and
married Tallien. In later years she became the Princesse de Chimay;
but, for writing that note, she received the profane but unforgotten
name of Notre Dame de Thermidor.
On the night of July 26, Tallien and his friends had a third
Conference with Boissy d'Anglas and Durand de Maillane, and at last
they gave way. But they made their terms. They gave their votes
against Robespierre on condition that the Reign of Terror ended with
him. There was no condition which the others would not have accepted
in their extremity, and it is by that compact that the government of
France, when it came into the hands of these men of blood, ceased to
be sanguinary. It was high time, for, in the morning, Robespierre had
delivered the accusing speech which he had been long preparing, and of
which Daunou told Michelet that it was the only very fine speech he
ever made. He spoke of heaven, and of immortality, and of public
virtue; he spoke of himself; he denounced his enemies, naming scarcely
any but Cambon and Fouche. He did not conclude with any indictment, or
with any demand that the Assembly would give up its guilty members.
His aim was to conciliate the Plain, and to obtain votes from the
Mountain, by causing alarm but not despair. The next stroke was
reserved for the morrow, when the Convention, by voting the
distribution of his oration, should have committed itself too far to
recede. The Convention at once voted that 250,000 copies of the speech
should be printed, and that it should be sent to every parish in
France. That was the form in which acceptance, entire and unreserved
acceptance, was expressed. Robespierre thus obtained all that he
demanded for the day. The Assembly would be unable to refuse the
sacrifice of its black sheep, when he reappeared with their names.
Then it was seen that, in naming Cambon, the orator had made a
mistake. For Cambon, having had the self-command to wait until the
Convention had passed its approving vote, rose to reply. He repelled
the attack which Robespierre had made upon him, and turned the entire
current of opinion by saying, "What paralyses the Republic is the man
who has just spoken."
There is no record of a finer act of fortitude in all parliamentary
history. The example proved contagious. The Assembly recalled its
vote, and referred the speech to the Committee. Robespierre sank upon
his seat and murmured, "I am a lost man." He saw that the Plain could
no longer be trusted. His attack was foiled. If the Convention refused
the first step, they would not take the second, which he was to ask
for next day. He went to the Jacobin Club, and repeated his speech to
a crowded meeting. He told them that it was his dying testament. The
combination of evil men was too strong for him. He had thrown away his
buckler, and was ready for the hemlock. Collot sat on the step below
the president's chair, close to him. He said, "Why did you desert the
Committee? Why did you make your views known in public without
informing us?" Robespierre bit his nails in silence. For he had not
consulted the Committee because it had refused the extension of
powers, and his action that day had been to appeal to the Convention
against them. The Club, divided at first, went over to him, gave him
an ovation, and expelled Collot and Billaud-Varennes with violence and
contumely. Robespierre, encouraged by his success, exhorted the
Jacobins to purify the Convention by expelling bad men, as they had
expelled the Girondins. It was his first appeal to the popular forces.
Coffinhal, who was a man of energy, implored him to strike at once. He
went home to bed, after midnight, taking no further measures of
precaution, and persuaded that he would recover the majority at the
next sitting.
Collot and Billaud, both members of the supreme governing body, went
to their place of meeting, after the stormy scene at the Club, and
found St. Just writing intently. They fell upon him, and demanded to
know whether he was preparing accusations against them. He answered
that that was exactly the thing he was doing. When he had promised to
submit his report to the Committee of Public Safety before he went to
the Assembly, they let him go. In the morning, he sent word that he
was too much hurt by their treatment of him to keep his promise.
Barere meanwhile undertook to have a report ready against St. Just.
Before the Assembly began business on the morning of Sunday the 9th of
Thermidor, Tallien was in the lobby cementing the alliance which
secured the majority; and Bourdon came up and shook hands with Durand,
saying, "Oh! the good men of the Right." When the sitting opened, St.
Just at once mounted the tribune and began to read. Tallien, seeing
him from outside, exclaimed, "Now is the moment, come and see. It is
Robespierre's last day!" The report of St. Just was an attack on the
committee. Tallien broke in, declaring that the absent men must be
informed and summoned, before he could proceed. St. Just was not a
ready speaker, and when he was defied and interrupted, he became
silent. Robespierre endeavoured to bring him aid and encouragement;
but Tallien would not be stopped, Billaud followed in the name of the
government; Barere and Vadier continued, while Robespierre and St.
Just insisted vainly on being heard. The interrupters were turbulent,
aggressive, out of order, being desperate men fighting for life.
Collot d'Herbois, the President, did not rebuke them, and having
surrendered his place to a colleague whom he could trust, descended to
take part in the fray. If the Convention was suffered once more to
hear the dreaded voice of Robespierre, nobody could be sure that he
would not recover his ascendency. These tactics succeeded. Both
parties to the overnight convention were true to it, and Robespierre
was not allowed to make his speech. The galleries had been filled from
five in the morning. Barere moved to divide the command of Hanriot,
the general of the Commune, on whose sword the triumvirs relied; and
the Convention outlawed him and his second in command as the
excitement increased. This was early in the afternoon; and it was on
learning this that the Commune called out its forces, and Paris began
to rise.
All this time Robespierre had not been personally attacked. Decrees
were only demanded, and passed, against his inferior agents. The
struggle had lasted for hours; he thought that his adversaries
faltered, and made a violent effort to reach the tribune. It had
become known in the Assembly that his friends were arming, and they
began to cry, "Down with the tyrant!" The President rang his bell and
refused to let him speak. At last his voice failed him. A Montagnard
exclaimed, "He is choking with the blood of Danton." Robespierre
replied, "What! It is Danton you would avenge?" And he said it in a
way that signified "Then why did you not defend him?" When he
understood what the Mountain meant, and that a motive long repressed
had recovered force, he appealed to the Plain, to the honest men who
had been so long silent, and so long submissive. They had voted both
ways the day before, but he knew nothing of the memorable compact that
was to arrest the guillotine. But the Plain, who were not prepared
with articulate arguments for their change of front, were content with
the unanswerable cry, "Down with the tyrant!" That was evidently
decisive; and when that declaration had been evoked by his direct
appeal the end came speedily. An unknown deputy moved that Robespierre
be arrested, nobody spoke against it; and his brother and several
friends were taken into custody with him. None made any resistance or
protest. The conflict, they knew, would be outside. The Commune of
Paris, the Jacobin Club, the revolutionary tribunal were of their
party; and how many of the armed multitude, nobody could tell. All was
not lost until that was known. At five o'clock the Convention, weary
with a heavy day's work, adjourned for dinner.
The Commune had its opportunity, and began to gain ground. Their
troops collected slowly, and Hanriot was arrested. He was released,
and brought back in triumph to the Hotel de Ville, where the arrested
deputies soon assembled. They had been sent to different prisons, but
all the gaolers but one refused to admit them. Robespierre insisted on
being imprisoned, but the turnkey at the Luxembourg was unmoved, and
turned him out. He dreaded to be forced into a position of illegality
and revolt, because it would enable his enemies to outlaw him. Once
outlawed, there was nothing left but an insurrection, of which the
issue was uncertain. There was less risk in going before the
revolutionary tribunal, where every official was his creature and
nominee, and had no hope of mercy from his adversaries, when he ceased
to protect. The gaoler who shut the prison door in his face sealed his
fate; and it is supposed, but I do not know, that he had his
instructions from Voulland, on the other side, in order that the
prisoner might be driven into contumacy, against his will. Expelled
from gaol, Robespierre still refused to be free, and went to the
police office, where he was technically under arrest.
St. Just, who had seen war, and had made men wonder at his coolness
under heavy fire, did not calculate with so much nicety, and repaired,
with the younger Robespierre, to the municipality, where a force of
some thousands of men were assembled. They sent to summon their
leader, but the leader declined to come. He felt safer under arrest;
but he advised his friends at the Commune to ring the tocsin, close
the barriers, stop the Press, seize the post, and arrest the deputies.
The position of the man of peace encouraging his comrades to break the
law, and explaining how to do it, was too absurd to be borne.
Coffinhal, who was a much bigger man, came and carried him away by
friendly compulsion.
About ten o'clock the arrested deputies were united. Couthon, who was
a cripple, had gone home. The others sent for him, and Robespierre
signed a letter by which he was informed that the insurrection was in
full activity. This message, and the advice which he forwarded from
his shelter with the police prove that he had made up his mind to
fight, and did not die a martyr to legality. But if Robespierre was
ready, at the last extremity, to fight, he did not know how to do it.
The favourable moment was allowed to slip by; not a gun was fired, and
the Convention, after several hours of inaction and danger, began to
recover power. By Voulland's advice the prisoners out of prison were
outlawed, and Barras was put at the head of the faithful forces.
Twelve deputies were appointed to proclaim the decrees all over Paris.
Mounted on police chargers, conspicuous in their tricolor scarves, and
lighted by torches, they made known in every street that Robespierre
was now an outlaw under sentence of death. This was at last effective,
and Barras was able to report that the people were coming over to the
legal authority. An ingenious story was spread about that Robespierre
had a seal with the lilies of France. The western and wealthier half
of Paris was for the Convention but parts of the poorer quarters,
north and east, went with the Commune. They made no fight. Legendre
proceeded to the Jacobin Club, locked the door, and put the key in his
pocket, while the members quietly dispersed. About one in the morning,
Bourdon, at the head of the men from the district which had been the
stronghold of Chaumette made his way along the river to the Place de
Greve. The insurgents drawn up before the Hotel de Ville made no
resistance, and the leaders who were gathered within knew that all was
over.
The collapse was instantaneous. A little earlier, a messenger sent out
by Gaudin, afterwards Duke of Gaeta and Napoleon's trusted finance
minister, reported that he had found Robespierre triumphing and
receiving congratulations. Even in those last moments he shrank from
action. A warlike proclamation was drawn up, signed by his friends,
and laid before him. He refused to sign unless it was in the name of
the French people. "Then," said Couthon, "there is nothing to be done
but to die." Robespierre, doubtful and hesitating, wrote the first two
letters of his name. The rest is a splash of blood. When Bourdon, with
a pistol in each hand, and the blade of his sword between his teeth,
mounted the stairs of the Hotel de Ville at the head of his troops,
Lebas drew two pistols, handed one to Robespierre, and killed himself
with the other. What followed is one of the most disputed facts of
history. I believe that Robespierre shot himself in the head, only
shattering the jaw. Many excellent critics think that the wound was
inflicted by a gendarme who followed Bourdon. His brother took off his
shoes and tried to escape by the cornice outside, but fell on to the
pavement. Hanriot, the general, hid himself in a sewer, from which he
was dragged next morning in a filthy condition. The energetic
Coffinhal alone got away, and remained some time in concealment. The
rest were captured without trouble.