Barère, as in the whole breed of Neros, Caligulas, and Domitians whom
He resembled, voluptuousness was mingled with cruelty; that he withdrew,
twice in every decade, from the work of blood to the smiling gardens of
Clichy, and there forgot public cares in the madness of wine and in the
arms of courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does
not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes that
Barère’s dissipation was not carried to such a point as to interfere
with his industry. Nothing can be more true. Barère was by no means so
much addicted to debauchery as to neglect the work of murder. It was his
boast that, even during his hours of recreation, he cut out work for the
Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that his exertions
would hurt his health, he gaily answered that he was less busy than they
thought. “The guillotine,” He said, “does all; the guillotine governs.”
For ourselves, we are much more disposed to look indulgently on
the pleasures which he allowed to himself than on the pain which he
inflicted on his neighbours.
“Atque utinam his potius nugis tota ilia dedisset
Tempore, sævitiæ, clarus quibus abstulit urbi
Illustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo.”
An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a
blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr. Fox. But
the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barère.
And now Barère had become a really cruel man. It was from mere
pusillanimity that he had perpetrated nis first great crimes. But the
whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of
others is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily
{486}acquire, and which, when once acquired, is as strong as any of the
propensities with which we are born. A very few months had sufficed to
bring this man into a state of mind in which images of despair, wailing,
and death had an exhilarating effect on him, and inspired him as wine
and love inspire men of free and joyous natures. The cart creaking
under its daily freight of victims, ancient men and lads, and fair young
girls, the binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the
little national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood
beneath the scaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the panier--these
things were to him what Lalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace,
what Rosette and a bottle of iced champagne are to De Béranger. As soon
as he began to speak of slaughter his heart seemed to be enlarged,
and his fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades.
Robespierre, St. Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect of
earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who made a toil of a
pleasure. Cruelty was no such melancholy business, to be gone about
with an austere brow and a whining tone; it was a recreation, fitly
accompanied by singing and laughing. In truth, Robespierre and Barère
might be well compared to the two renowned hangmen of Louis the
Eleventh. They were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havock. But,
while they murdered, one of them frowned and canted, the other grinned
and joked. For our own part, we prefer _Jean qui pleure_ to _Jean qui
rit_.
In the midst of the funeral gloom which overhung Paris, a gaiety
stranger and more ghastly than the horrors of the prison and the
scaffold, distinguished the dwelling of Barère. Every morning a crowd of
suitors assembled to implore his protection. He came forth {487}in his
rich dressing-gown, went round the antechamber, dispensed smiles and
promises among the obsequious crowd, addressed himself with peculiar
animation to every handsome woman who appeared in the circle and
complimented her in the florid style of Gascony on the bloom of her
cheeks and the lustre of her eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and
anxiety of his suppliants he dismissed them, and flung all their
memorials unread into the fire. This was the best way, he conceived,
to prevent arrears of business from accumulating. Here he was only an
imitator. Cardinal Dubois had been in the habit of clearing his table
of papers in the same way. Nor was this the only point in which we could
point out a resemblance between the worst statesman of the monarchy and
the worst statesman of the republic.
Of Barère’s peculiar vein of pleasantry, a notion may be formed from
an anecdote which one of his intimate associates, a juror of the
revolutionary tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a conspicuous
part in the orgies of Clichy implored Barère to use his power against
a head-dress which did not suit her style of face, and which a rival
beauty was trying to bring into fashion. One of the magistrates of the
capital was summoned, and received the necessary orders. Aristocracy,
Barère said, was again rearing its front. These new wigs were
counter-revolutionary. He had reason to know that they were made out of
the long fair hair of handsome aristocrats who had died by the national
chopper. Every lady who adorned herself with the relics of criminals
might justly be suspected of incivism. This ridiculous lie imposed on
the authorities of Paris. Female citizens were solemnly warned against
the obnoxious ringlets, and were left to choose {488}between their
head-dresses and their heads. Barère’s delight at the success of this
facetious fiction was quite extravagant: he could not tell the story
without going: into such convulsions of laughter as made his hearers
hope that he was about to choke. There was something peculiarly tickling
and exhilarating to his mind in this grotesque combination of the
frivolous with the horrible, of false locks and curling-irons with
spouting arteries and reeking hatchets.
But, though Barère succeeded in earning the honourable nicknames of the
Witling of Terror, and the Anacreon of the guillotine, there was one
place where it was long; remembered to his disadvantage that he had, for
a time, talked the language of humanity and moderation. That place was
the Jacobin Club. Even after he had borne the chief part in the massacre
of the Girondists, in the murder of the Queen, in the destruction of
Lyons, he durst not show himself within that sacred precinct. At one
meeting of the society a member complained that the committee to which
the supreme direction of affairs was entrusted, after all the changes
which had been made, still contained one man who was not trustworthy.
Robespierre, whose influence over the Jacobins was boundless, undertook
the defence of his colleague, owned there was some ground for what
had been said, but spoke highly of Barère’s industry and aptitude for
business. This seasonable interposition silenced the accuser; but it was
long before the neophyte could venture to appear at the club.
At length a masterpiece of wickedness, unique, we think, even among
Barère’s great achievements, obtained his full pardon even from that
rigid conclave. The insupportable tyranny of the Committee of Public
Safety had at length brought the minds of men, and {489}even of women,
into a fierce and hard temper, which defied or welcomed death. The life
which might be any morning taken away, in consequence of the whisper of
a private enemy, seemed of little value. It was something to die after
smiting one of the oppressors; it was something to bequeath to
the surviving tyrants a terror not inferior to that which they had
themselves inspired. Human nature, hunted and worried to the utmost,
now turned furiously to bay. Fouquier Tinville was afraid to walk
the streets; a pistol was snapped at Collot D’Herbois; a young girl,
animated apparently by the spirit of Charlotte Corday, attempted
to obtain an interview with Robespierre. Suspicions arose; she was
searched; and two knives were found about her. She was questioned, and
spoke of the Jacobin domination with resolute scorn and aversion. It is
unnecessary to say that she was sent to the guillotine. Barère declared
from the tribune that the cause of these attempts was evident. Pitt and
his guineas had done the whole.
The English Government had organised a vast system of murder, had armed
the hand of Charlotte Corday, and had now, by similar means, attacked
two of the most eminent friends of liberty in France. It is needless to
say that these imputations were, not only false, but destitute of all
show of truth. Nay, they were demonstrably absurd: for the assassins
to whom Barcre referred rushed on certain death, a sure proof that they
were not hirelings. The whole wealth of England would not have bribed
any sane person to do what Charlotte Corday did. But, when we consider
her as an enthusiast, her conduct is perfectly natural. Even those
French writers who are childish enough to believe that the English
Government contrived the infernal machine and strangled the Emperor Paul
have fully {490}acquitted Mr. Pitt of all share in the death of Marat
and in the attempt on Robespierre. Yet on calumnies so futile as
those which we have mentioned did Barère ground a motion at which all
Christendom stood aghast. He proposed a decree that no quarter should
be given to any English or Hanoverian soldier. (1) His Carmagnole was
worthy of the proposition with which it concluded. “That one Englishman
should be spared, that for the slaves of George, for the human machines
of York, the vocabulary of our armies should contain such a word as
generosity, this is what the National Convention cannot endure. War
to the death against every English soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk,
quarter had been refused to them when they asked it on their knees,
if our troops had exterminated them all, instead of suffering them to
infest our fortresses by their presence, the English Government would
not have renewed its attack on our frontiers this year. It is only the
dead man who never comes back. What is this moral pestilence which has
introduced into our armies false ideas of humanity? That the English
were to be treated with indulgence was the philanthropic notion of the
Brissotines; it was the patriotic practice of Dumourier. But
(1) Hippolyte does his best to excuse this decree. His
abuse of England is merely laughable. England has managed to
deal with enemies of a very different sort from either
himself or his hero. One disgraceful blunder, however, we
think it right to notice.
M. Hippolyte Carnot asserts that a motion similar to that of Barère
was made in the English Parliament by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This
assertion is false. We defy M. Hippolyte Carnot to state the date
and terms of the motion of which he speaks. We do not accuse him of
intentional misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him of extreme
ignorance and temerity. Our readers will be amused to learn on what
authority he has ventured to publish such a fable. He quotes, not the
journals of the Lords, not the Parliamentary Debates, but a ranting
message of the Executive Directory to the Five Hundred, a message, too,
the whole meaning ol which he has utterly misunderstood. {491}humanity
consists in exterminating our enemies. No mercy to the execrable
Englishman. Such are the sentiments of the true Frenchman; for he
knows that he belongs to a nation revolutionary as nature, powerful
as freedom, ardent as the saltpetre which she has just torn from
the entrails of the earth. Soldiers of liberty, when victory places
Englishmen at your mercy, strike! None of them must return to the
servile soil of Great Britain; none must pollute the free soil of
France.”
The Convention, thoroughly tamed and silenced, acquiesced in Barère’s
motion without debate. And now at last the doors of the Jacobin Club
were thrown open to the disciple who had surpassed his masters. He was
admitted a member by acclamation, and was soon selected to preside.
For a time he was not without hope that his decree would be carried
into full effect. Intelligence arrived from the seat of war of a sharp
contest between some French and English troops, in which the Republicans
had the advantage, and in which no prisoners had been made. Such
things happen occasionally in all wars. Barère, however, attributed
the ferocity of this combat to his darling decree, and entertained the
Convention with another Carmagnole.
“The Republicans,” he said, “saw a division in red uniform at a
distance. The red-coats are attacked with the bayonet. Not one of
them escapes the blows of the Republicans. All the red-coats have been
killed. No mercy, no indulgence, has been shown towards the villains.
Not an Englishman whom the Republicans could reach is now living. How
many prisoners should you guess that we have made? One single prisoner
is the result of the day.”
And now this bad man’s craving for blood had became {492}insatiable. The
more he quaffed, the more He thirsted. He had begun with the English;
but soon he came down with a proposition for new massacres. “All the
troops,” he said, “of the coalesced tyrants in garrison at Coudé,
Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, ought to be put to the sword
unless they surrender at discretion in twenty-four hours. The English,
of course, will be admitted to no capitulation whatever. With the
English we have no treaty but death. As to the rest, surrender at
discretion in twenty-four hours, or death, these are our conditions.
If the slaves resist, let them feel the edge of the sword.” And then he
waxed facetious. “On these terms the Republic is willing to give them a
lesson in the art of war.” At that jest, some hearers, worthy of such
a speaker, set up a laugh. Then he became serious again. “Let the enemy
perish,” he cried; “I have already said it from this tribune. It is only
the dead man who never comes back. Kings will not conspire against us in
the grave. Armies will not fight against us when they are annihilated.
Let our war with them be a war of extermination. What pity is due to
slaves whom the Emperor leads to war under the cane; whom the King of
Prussia heats to the shambles with the flat of the sword; and whom the
Duke of York makes drunk with rum and gin?” And at the rum and gin the
Mountain and the galleries laughed again.
If Barère had been able to effect his purpose, it is difficult to
estimate the extent of the calamity which he would have brought on the
human race. No government, however averse to cruelty, could, in justice
to its own subjects, have given quarter to enemies who gave none.
Retaliation would have been, not merely justifiable, but a sacred duty.
It would have been {493}necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every
French sailor whom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar
reason to dread the introduction of such a system. On the contrary, the
operation of Barère’s new law of war would have been more unfavourable
to his countrymen than to ours; for we believe that, from the beginning
to the end of the war there never was a time at which the number of
French prisoners in England was not greater than the number of English
prisoners in France; and so, we apprehend, it will be in all wars while
England retains her maritime superiority. Had the murderous decree of
the Convention been in force from 1794 to 1815, we are satisfied that,
for every Englishman slain by the French, at least three Frenchmen would
have been put to the sword by the English. It is, therefore, not as
Englishmen, but as members of the great society of mankind, that we
speak with indignation and horror of the change which Barère attempted
to introduce. The mere slaughter would have been the smallest part of
the evil. The butchering of a single unarmed man in cold blood, under an
act of the legislature, would have produced more evil than the carnage
of ten such fields as Albuera. Public law would have been subverted from
the foundations; national enmities would have been inflamed to a degree
of rage which happily it is not easy for us to conceive; cordial peace
would have been impossible. The moral character of the European nations
would have been rapidly and deeply corrupted; for in all countries those
men whose calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the defence of
the public weal enjoy high consideration, and are considered as the best
arbitrators on points of honour and manly bearing. With the standard
of morality {494}established in the military profession the general
standard of morality must to a great extent sink or rise. It is,
therefore, a fortunate circumstance that, during a long course of years,
respect for the weak and clemency towards the vanquished have been
considered as qualities not less essential to the accomplished soldier
than personal courage. How long would this continue to be the case, if
the slaying of prisoners were a part of the daily duty of the warrior?
What man of kind and generous nature would, under such a system,
willingly bear arms? Who, that was compelled to bear arms, would long
continue kind and generous? And is it not certain that, if barbarity
towards the helpless became the characteristic of military men, the
taint must rapidly spread to civil and to domestic life, and must show
itself in all the dealings of the strong with the weak, of husbands with
wives, of employers with workmen, of creditors with debtors?
But, thank God, Barère’s decree was a mere dead letter. It was to
be executed by men very different from those who, in the interior of
France, were the instruments of the Committee of Public Safety, who
prated at Jacobin Clubs, and ran to Fouquier Tinville with charges of
incivism against women whom they could not seduce, and bankers from whom
they could not extort money. The warriors who, under Hoche, had guarded
the walls of Dunkirk, and who, under Kléber, had made good the defence
of the wood of Monceaux, shrank with horror from an office more
degrading than that of the hangman. “The Convention,” said an officer to
his men, “has sent orders that all the English prisoners shall be shot.”
“We will not shoot them,” answered a stout-hearted sergeant. “Send them
to the Convention. If the deputies take pleasure {495}in killing a
prisoner, they may kill him themselves, and eat him too, like savages
as they are.” This was the sentiment of the whole army. Bonaparte, who
thoroughly understood war, who at Jaffa and elsewhere gave ample proof
that he was not unwilling to strain the laws of war to their utmost
rigour, and whose hatred of England amounted to a folly, always spoke of
Barère’s decree with loathing, and boasted that the army had refused to
obey the Convention.
Such disobedience on the part of any other class of citizens would have
been instantly punished by wholesale massacre; but the Committee
of Public Safety was aware that the discipline which had tamed the
unwarlike population of the fields and cities might not answer in camps.
To fling people by scores out of a boat, and, when they catch hold of
it, to chop off their fingers with a hatchet, is undoubtedly a very
agreeable pastime for a thorough-bred Jacobin, when the sufferers are,
as at Nantes, old confessors, young girls, or women with child. But
such sport might prove a little dangerous if tried upon grim ranks of
grenadiers, marked with the scars of Hondschoote, and singed by the
smoke of Fleurus.
Barère, however, found some consolation. If he could not succeed in
murdering the English and the Hanoverians, he was amply indemnified by
a new and vast slaughter of his own countrymen and countrywomen. If the
defence which has been set up for the members of the Committee of Public
Safety had been well founded, if it had been true that they governed
with extreme severity only because the republic was in extreme peril,
it is clear that the severity would have diminished as the peril
diminished. But the fact is, that those cruelties for which the public
danger is made {496}a plea became more and more enormous as the danger
became less and less, and reached the full height when there was no
longer any danger at all. In the autumn of 1794, there was undoubtedly
reason to apprehend that France might be unable to maintain the
struggle against the European coalition. The enemy was triumphant on the
frontiers. More than half the departments disowned the authority of the
Convention. But at that time eight or ten necks a day were thought an
ample allowance for the guillotine of the capital. In the summer of
1794, Bordeaux, Toulon, Caen, Lyons, Marseilles, had submitted to the
ascendency of Paris. The French arms were victorious under the Pyrenees
and on the Sambre. Brussels had fallen. Prussia had announced her
intention of withdrawing from the contest. The Republic, no longer
content with defending her own independence, was beginning to meditate
conquest beyond the Alps and the Rhine. She was now more formidable
to her neighbours than ever Louis the Fourteenth had been. And now the
Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was not content with forty, fifty,
sixty heads in a morning. It was just after a series of victories, which
destroyed the whole force of the single argument which has been urged
in defence of the system of terror, that the Committee of Public Safety
resolved to infuse into that system an energy hitherto unknown. It was
proposed to reconstruct the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to collect in
the space of two pages the whole revolutionary jurisprudence. Lists of
twelve judges and fifty jurors were made out from among the fiercest
Jacobins. The substantive law was simply this, that whatever the
tribunal should think pernicious to the republic was a capital crime.
The law of evidence was simply this, crime. {497}that whatever satisfied
the jurors was sufficient proof. The law of procedure was of a piece
with every thing else. There was to be an advocate against the prisoner,
and no advocate for him. It was expressly declared that, if the jurors
were in any manner convinced of the guilt of the prisoner, they might
convict him without hearing a single witness. The only punishment which
the court could inflict was death.
Robespierre proposed this decree. When he had read it, a murmur rose
from the Convention. The fear which had long restrained the deputies
from opposing the Committee was overcome by a stronger fear. Every
man felt the knife at his throat. “The decree,” said one, “is of grave
importance. I move that it be printed, and that the debate be adjourned.
If, such a measure were adopted without time for consideration, I would
blow my brains out at once.” The motion for adjournment was seconded.
Then Barère sprang up. “It is impossible,” he said, “that there can
be any difference of opinion among us as to a law like this, a law so
favourable in all respects to patriots; a law which insures the speedy
punishment of conspirators. If there is to be an adjournment, I must
insist that it shall not be for more than three days.” The opposition
was overawed; the decree was passed; and, during the six weeks which
followed, the havock was such as had never been known before.
And now the evil was beyond endurance. That timid majority which had
for a time supported the Girondists, and which had, after their
fall, contented itself with registering in silence the decrees of the
Committee of Public Safety, at length drew courage from despair. Leaders
of bold and firm character were not wanting, men such as Fouché and
Tallien, who, having been {498}long conspicuous amoung the chiefs of the
Mountain, now found that their own lives or lives still dearer to them
than their own, were in extreme peril. Nor could it be longer kept
secret that there was a schism in the despotic, committee. On one
side were Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon; on the other, Collot and
Billaud. Barère leaned towards these last, but only leaned towards
them. As was ever his fashion when a great crisis was at hand, he
fawned alternately on both parties, struck alternately at both, and held
himself in readiness to chant the praises or to sign the death-warrant
of either. In any event his Carmagnole was ready. The tree of liberty,
the blood of traitors, the dagger of Brutus, the guineas of Perfidious
Albion, would do equally well for Billaud and for Robespierre.