voted against the appeal to the people, and against the respite. His
demeanour and his language also were widely different from those of the
Girondists. Their hearts were heavy, and their deportment {457}was that
of men oppressed by sorrow. It was Vergniaud’s duty to proclaim the
result of the roll-call. His face was pale, and he trembled with
emotion, as in a low and broken voice he announced that Louis was
condemned to death. Barère had not, it is true, yet attained to full
perfection in the art of mingling jests and conceits with words of
death; but he already gave promise of his future excellence in this high
department of Jacobin oratory. He concluded his speech with a sentence
worthy of his head and heart. “The tree of liberty,” he said, “as an
ancient author remarks, flourishes when it is watered with the blood of
all classes of tyrants.” M. Hippolyte Carnot has quoted this passage in
order, as we suppose, to do honour to his hero. We wish that a note had
been added to inform us from what ancient author Barère quoted. In the
course of our own small reading among the Greek and Latin writers, we
have not happened to fall in with trees of liberty and watering pots
full of blood; nor can we, such is our ignorance of classical antiquity,
even imagine an Attic or Roman orator employing imagery of that sort. In
plain words, when Barère talked about an ancient author he was lying, as
he generally was when he asserted any fact, great or small. Why he lied
on this occasion we cannot guess, unless indeed it was to keep his hand
in.
It is not improbable that, but for one circumstance, Barère would, like
most of those with whom he ordinarily acted, have voted for the appeal
to the people and for the respite. But, just before the commencement of
the trial, papers had been discovered which proved that, while a member
of the National Assembly, he had been in communication with the Court
respecting his Reports on the Woods and Forests. He was acquitted
{458}of all criminality by the Convention; but the fiercer Republicans
considered him as a tool of the fallen monarch; and this reproach
was long repeated in the journal of Marat, and in the speeches at the
Jacobin club. It was natural that a man like Barère should, under such
circumstances, try to distinguish himself among the crowd of regicides
by peculiar ferocity. It was because he had been a royalist that he was
one of the foremost in shedding blood.
The King was no more. The leading Girondists had, by their conduct
towards him, lowered their character in the eyes both of friends and
foes. They still, however, maintained the contest against the Mountain,
called for vengeance on the assassins of September, and protested
against the anarchical and sanguinary doctrines of Marat. For a time
they seemed likely to prevail. As publicists and orators they had no
rivals in the Convention. They had with them, beyond all doubt, the
great majority, both of the deputies and of the French nation. These
advantages, it should seem, ought to have decided the event of the
struggle. But the opposite party had compensating advantages of a
different kind. The chiefs of the Mountain, though not eminently
distinguished by eloquence or knowledge, had great audacity, activity,
and determination. The Convention and France were against them; but the
mob of Paris, the clubs of Paris, and the municipal government of Paris,
were on their side.
The policy of the Jacobins, in this situation, was to subject France
to an aristocracy infinitely worse than that aristocracy which had
emigrated with the Count of Artois--to an aristocracy not of birth, not
of wealth, not of education, but of mere locality. They would not hear
of privileged orders; but they wished to have a {459}privileged city.
That twenty-five millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundred
thousand gentlemen and clergymen was insufferable; but that twenty-five
millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundred thousand Parisians
was as it should be. The qualification of a member of the new oligarchy
was simply that he should live near the hall where the Convention met,
and should be able to squeeze himself daily into the gallery during
a debate, and now and then to attend with a pike for the purpose of
blockading the doors. It was quite agreeable to the maxims of the
Mountain that a score of draymen from Santerre’s brewery, or of devils
from Hebert’s planting house, should be permitted to drown the voices
of men commissioned to speak the sense of such cities as Marseilles,
Bordeaux, and Lyons; and that a rabble of half-naked porters from the
Faubourg St. Antoine should have power to annul decrees for which
the representatives of fifty or sixty departments had voted. It was
necessary to find some pretext for so odious and absurd a tyranny. Such
a pretext was found. To the old phrases of liberty and equality were
added the sonorous watchwords, unity and indivisibility. A new crime
was invented, and called by the name of federalism. The object of the
Girondists, it was asserted, was to break up the great nation into
little independent commonwealths, bound together only by a league like
that which connects the Swiss cantons or the United States of America.
The great obstacle in the way of this pernicious design was the
influence of Paris. To strengthen the influence of Paris ought therefore
to be the chief object of every patriot.
The accusation brought against the leaders of the Girondist party was a
mere calumny. They were undoubtedly desirous to prevent the capital
from domineering {460}over the republic, and would gladly have seen the
Convention removed for a time to some provincial town, or placed under
the protection of a trusty guard, which might have overawed the Parisian
mob; but there is not the slightest reason to suspect them of any
design against the unity of the state. Barère, however, really was a
federalist, and, we are inclined to believe, the only federalist in the
Convention. As far as a man so unstable and servile can be said to have
felt any preference for any form of government, he felt a preference for
federal government. He was born under the Pyrenees; he was a Gascon of
the Gascons, one of a people strongly distinguished by intellectual
and moral character, by manners, by modes of speech, by accent, and by
physiognomy, from the French of the Seine and of the Loire; and he had
many of the peculiarities of the race to which, he belonged. When he
first left his own province he had attained his thirty-fourth year, and
had acquired a high local reputation for eloquence and literature. He
had then visited Paris for the first time. He had found himself in a new
world. His feelings were those of a banished man. It is clear also that
he had been by no means without his share of the small disappointments
and humiliations so often experienced by men of letters who, elated
by provincial applause, venture to display their powers before the
fastidious critics of a capital. On the other hand, whenever he
revisited the mountains among which he had been born, he found
himself an object of general admiration. His dislike of Paris, and his
partiality to his native district, were therefore as strong and durable
as any sentiments of a mind like his could be. He long continued to
maintain that the ascendency of one great city was the bane of France;
{461}that the superiority of taste and intelligence which it was
the fashion to ascribe to the inhabitants of that city were wholly
imaginary; and that the nation would never enjoy a really good
government till the Alsatian people, the Breton people, the people
of Bearn, the people of Provence, should have each an independent
existence, and laws suited to its own tastes and habits. These
communities he proposed to unite by a tie similar to that which
binds together the grave Puritans of Connecticut and the dissolute
slave-drivers of New Orleans. To Paris he was unwilling to grant even
the rank which Washington holds in the United States. He thought it
desirable that the congress of the French federation should have no
fixed place of meeting, but should sit sometimes at Rouen, sometimes at
Bordeaux, sometimes at his own Toulouse.
Animated by such feelings, he was, till the close of May 1793, a
Girondist, if not an ultra-Girondist. He exclaimed against those impure
and bloodthirsty men who wished to make the public danger a pretext for
cruelty and rapine. “Peril,” he said, “could be no excuse for crime. It
is when the wind blows hard, and the waves run high, that the anchor is
most needed; it is when a revolution is raging, that the great laws of
morality are most necessary to the safety of a state.” Of Marat he spoke
with abhorrence and contempt; of the municipal authorities of Paris with
just severity. He loudly complained that there were Frenchmen who paid
to the Mountain that homage which was due to the Convention alone. When
the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal was first proposed, he
joined himself to Vergniaud and Buzot, who strongly objected to that
odious measure. “It cannot be,” exclaimed Barère, “that men really
attached to liberty will imitate {462}the most frightful excesses of
despotism!” He proved to the Convention, after his fashion, out of
Sallust, that such arbitrary courts may indeed, for a time, be severe
only on real criminals, but must inevitably degenerate into instruments
of private cupidity and revenge. When, on the tenth of March, the worst
part, of the population of Paris made the first unsuccessful attempt to
destroy the Girondists, Barère eagerly called for vigorous measures of
repression and punishment. On the second of April, another attempt of
the Jacobins of Paris to usurp supreme dominion over the republic was
brought to the knowledge of the Convention; and again Barère spoke with
warmth against the new tyranny which afflicted France, and declared that
the people of the departments would never crouch beneath the tyranny of
one ambitious city. He even proposed a resolution to the effect that the
Convention would exert against the demagogues of the capital the same
energy which had been exerted against the tyrant Louis. We are assured
that, in private as in public, he at this time uniformly spoke with
strong aversion of the Mountain.
His apparent zeal for the cause of humanity and order had its reward.
Early in April came the tidings of Dumourier’s defection. This was a
heavy blow to the Girondists. Dumourier was their general. His victories
had thrown a lustre on the whole party; his army, it had been hoped,
would, in the worst event, protect the deputies of the nation against
the ragged pikemen of the garrets of Paris. He was now a deserter and
an exile; and those who had lately placed their chief reliance on
his support were compelled to join with their deadliest enemies in
execrating his treason. At this perilous conjuncture, it was resolved
to {463}appoint a Committee of Publie Safety, and to arm that committee
with powers, small indeed when compared with those which it afterwards
drew to itself, but still great and formidable. The moderate party,
regarding Barère as a representative of their feelings and opinions,
elected him a member. In his new situation he soon began to make himself
useful. He brought to the deliberations of the Committee, not indeed the
knowledge or the ability of a great statesman, but a tongue and a pen
which, if others would only supply ideas, never paused for want of
words. His mind was a mere organ of communication between other minds.
It originated nothing; it retained nothing: but it transmitted every
thing. The post assigned to him by his colleagues was not really of the
highest importance; but it was prominent, and drew the attention of all
Europe. When a great measure was to be brought forward, when an
account was to be rendered of an important event, he was generally
the mouthpiece of the administration. He was therefore not unnaturally
considered, by persons who lived at a distance from the seat of
government, and above all by foreigners who, while the war raged, knew
France only from journals, as the head of that administration of which,
in truth, he was only the secretary and the spokesman. The author of
the History of Europe, in our own Annual Registers, appears to have been
completely under this delusion.
The conflict between the hostile parties was meanwhile fast approaching
to a crisis. The temper of Paris grew daily fiercer and fiercer.
Delegates appointed by thirty-five of the forty-eight wards of the city
appeared at the bar of the Convention, and demanded that Vergniaud,
Brissot, Guadet, Gensonné, Barbaroux, Buzot, Pétion, Louvet, and many
other deputies, should {464}be expelled. This demand was disapproved
by at least three-fourths of the Assembly, and, when known in the
departments, called forth a general cry of indignation. Bordeaux
declared that it would stand by its representatives, and would, if
necessary, defend them by the sword against the tyranny of Paris. Lyons
and Marseilles were animated by a similar spirit. These manifestations
of public opinion gave courage to the majority of the Convention. Thanks
were voted to the people of Bordeaux for their patriotic declaration;
and a commission consisting of twelve members was appointed for the
purpose of investigating the conduct of the municipal authorities of
Paris, and was empowered to place under arrest such persons as should
appear to have been concerned in any plot against the authority of the
Convention. This measure was adopted on the motion of Barère.
A few days of stormy excitement and profound anxiety followed; and then
came the crash. On the thirty-first of May the mob of Paris rose; the
palace of the Tuileries was besieged by a vast array of pikes; the
majority of the deputies, after vain struggles and remonstrances,
yielded to violence, and suffered the Mountain to carry a decree for the
suspension and arrest of the deputies whom the wards of the capital had
accused.
During the contest Barère had been tossed backwards and forwards between
the two raging factions. His feelings, languid and unsteady as they
always were, drew him to the Girondists; but he was awed by the vigour
and determination of the Mountain. At one moment he held high and firm
language, complained that the Convention was not free, and protested
against the validity of any vote passed under coercion. At {465}another
moment he proposed to conciliate the Parisians by abolishing that
commission of twelve which he had himself proposed only a few days
before; and himself drew up a paper condemning the very measures which
had been adopted at his own instance, and eulogising the public spirit
of the insurgents. To do him justice, it was not without some symptoms
of shame that he read this document from the tribune, where he had so
often expressed very different sentiments. It is said that, at some
passages, he was even seen to blush. It may have been so; he was still
in his novitiate of infamy.
Some days later he proposed that hostages for the personal safety of the
accused deputies should be sent to the departments, and offered to be
himself one of those hostages. Nor do we in the least doubt that the
offer was sincere. He would, we firmly believe, have thought himself far
safer at Bordeaux or Marseilles than at Paris. His proposition, however,
was not carried into effect; and he remained in the power of the
victorious Mountain.
This was the great crisis of his life. Hitherto he had done nothing
inexpiable, nothing which marked him out as a much worse man than most
of his colleagues in the Convention. His voice had generally been on
the side of moderate measures. Had he bravely cast in his lot with the
Girondists, and suffered with them, he would, like them, have had a not
dishonourable place in history. Had he, like the great body of deputies
who meant well, but who had not the courage to expose themselves
to martyrdom, crouched quietly under the dominion of the triumphant
minority, and suffered every motion of Robespierre and Billaud to pass
unopposed, he would have incurred no peculiar ignominy. {466}But it is
probable that this course was not open to him. He had been too prominent
among the adversaries of the Mountain to be admitted to quarter without
making some atonement. It was necessary that, if he hoped to find pardon
from his new lords, he should not be merely a silent and passive
slave. What passed in private between him and them cannot be accurately
related; but the result was soon apparent. The Committee of Public
Safety was renewed. Several of the fiercest of the dominant faction,
Couthon for example, and St. Just, were substituted for more moderate
politicians; but Barère was suffered to retain his seat at the Board.
The indulgence with which he was treated excited the murmurs of some
stern and ardent zealots. Marat, in the very last words that he wrote,
words not published till the dagger of Charlotte Corday had avenged
France and mankind, complained that a man who had no principles, who was
always on the side of the strongest, who had been a royalist, and who
was ready, in case of a turn of fortune, to be a royalist again, should
be entrusted with an important share in the administration. (1) But the
chiefs of the Mountain judged more correctly. They knew indeed, as well
as Marat, that Barère was a man utterly without faith or steadiness;
that, if he could be said to have any political leaning, his leaning was
not towards them; that he felt for the Girondist party that faint and
wavering sort of preference of which alone his nature was susceptible;
and that, if he had been at liberty to make his choice, he would rather
have murdered Robespierre and Danton than Vergniaud and Gensonné.
(1) See the _Publiciste_ of the 14th July, 1793.
Marat was stabbed on the evening of the 13th. {467}But they justly
appreciated that levity which made him incapable alike of earnest love
and of earnest hatred, and that meanness which made it necessary to him
to have a master. In truth, what the planters of Carolina and Louisiana
say of black men with flat noses and woolly hair was strictly true of
Barère. The curse of Canaan was upon him. He was born a slave. Baseness
was an instinct in him. The impulse which drove him from a party in
adversity to a party in prosperity was as irresistible as that which
drives the cuckoo and the swallow towards the sun when the dark and
cold months are approaching. The law which doomed him to be the
humble attendant of stronger spirits resembled the law which binds the
pilot-fish to the shark. “Ken ye,” said a shrewd Scotch lord, who was
asked his opinion of James the First, “Ken ye a John Ape? If I have
Jacko by the collar, I can make him bite you; but if you have Jacko, you
can make him bite me.” Just such a creature was Barère. In the hands of
the Girondists he would have been eager to proscribe the Jacobins;
he was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, to proscribe the
Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountain
could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very
easy and not very delicate lover in Congreve’s lively song valued the
conquest of a prostitute of a different kind. Barère was, like Chloe,
false and common; but he was, like Chloe, constant while possessed;
and they asked no more. They needed a service which he was perfectly
competent to perform. Destitute as he was of all the talents both of an
active and of a speculative statesman, he could with great facility draw
up a report, or make a speech on any subject and on any side. If other
{468}people would furnish facts and thoughts, he could always furnish
phrases; and this talent was absolutely at the command of his owners for
the time being. Nor had he excited any angry passion among those to whom
he had hitherto been opposed. They felt no more hatred to him than they
felt to the horses which dragged the cannon of the Duke of Brunswick
and of the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. The horses had only done according to
their kind, and would, if they fell into the hands of the French, drag
with equal vigour and equal docility the guns of the republic, and
therefore ought not merely to be spared, but to be well fed and curried.
So was it with Barère. He was of a nature so low, that it might be
doubted whether he could properly be an object of the hostility of
reasonable beings. He had not been an enemy; he was not now a friend.
But he had been an annoyance; and he would now be a help.
But, though the heads of the Mountain pardoned this man, and admitted
him into partnership with themselves, it was not without exacting
pledges such as made it impossible for him, false and fickle as he was,
ever again to find admission into the ranks which he had deserted. That
was truly a terrible sacrament by which they admitted the apostate into
their communion. They demanded of him that he should himself take the
most prominent part in murdering his old friends. To refuse was as much
as his life was worth. But what is life worth when it is only one long
agony of remorse and shame? These, however, are feelings of which it
is idle to talk, when we are considering the conduct of such a man
as Barére. He undertook the task, mounted the tribune, and told the
Convention that the time was come for taking the stern attitude of
justice, and {469}for shaking at all conspirators without distinction.
He then moved that Buzot, Barbaroux, Pétion, and thirteen other deputies
should be placed out of the pale of the law, or, in other words,
beheaded without a trial; and that Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonnè, and six
others, should be impeached. The motion was carried without debate.
We have already seen with what effrontery Barère has denied, in these
Memoirs, that he took any part against the Girondists. This denial, we
think, was the only thing wanting to make his infamy complete. The most
impudent of all lies was a fit companion for the foulest of all murders.
Barère, however, had not yet earned his pardon. The Jacobin party
contained one gang which, even in that party was pre-eminent in every
mean and every savage vice, a gang so low-minded and so inhuman
that, compared with them, Robespierre might be called magnanimous and
merciful. Of these wretches, Hébert was perhaps the best representative.
His favourite amusement was to torment and insult the miserable remains
of that great family which, having ruled France during eight hundred
years, had now become an object of pity to the humblest artisan or
peasant. The influence of this man, and of men like him, induced the
Committee of Public Safety to determine that Marie Antoinette should be
sent to the scaffold. Barère was again summoned to his duty. Only four
days after he had proposed the decrees against the Girondist deputies
he again mounted the tribune, in order to move that the Queen should be
brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was improving fast in the
society of his new allies. When he asked for the heads of Vergniaud and
Pétion he had spoken like a man who had some {470}slight sense of his
own guilt and dégradation: He had said little; and that little had not
been violent. The office of expatiating on the guilt of his old friends
he had left to Saint Just. Very different was Barère’s second appearance
in the character of an accuser. He now cried out for blood in the eager
tones of the true and burning thirst, and raved against the Austrian
woman with the virulence natural to a coward who finds himself at
liberty to outrage that which he has feared and envied. We have already
exposed the shameless mendacity with which, in these Memoirs, he
attempts to throw the blame of his own guilt on the guiltless.
On the day on which the fallen Queen was dragged, already more than half
dead, to her doom, Barère regaled Robespierre and some other Jacobins
at a tavern. Robespierre’s acceptance of the invitation caused some
surprise to those who knew how long and how bitterly it was his nature
to hate. “Robespierre of the party!” muttered Saint Just. “Barère is
the only man whom Robespierre has forgiven.” We have an account of
this singular repast from one of the guests. Robespierre condemned the
senseless brutality with which Hebert had conducted the proceedings
against the Austrian woman, and, in talking on that subject, became
so much excited that he broke his plate in the violence of his
gesticulation. Barère exclaimed that the guillotine had cut a diplomatic
knot which it might have been difficult to untie. In the intervals
between the Beaune and the Champagne, between the ragout of thrushes
and the partridge with truffles, he fervently preached his new political
creed. “The vessel of the revolution,” he said, “can float into
port only on waves of blood. We must begin with the members of the
{471}National Assembly and of the Legislative Assembly. That rubbish
must be swept away.”