Danton and the French revolution

Preface

When " Mirabeau and the French Revolution " was published, I stated that it would be followed in turn by the Lives of Danton and Robespierre, that it was my purpose to trace briefly the causes of the Revolution and group its principal events around these men who were the manifestation of the Revolution in its three distinctive periods. Although each book will be separate and complete in itself, the three volumes will form a series covering the entire period of the Revolution.

Charles F. Warwick.

Philadelphia, February, 1908.

CHAPTER I PAGE Mirabeau and Danton 17

CHAPTER II Danton's Birth — Arcis sur Aube — Political, Religious and Social Conditions in France 22

CHAPTER III Home Influences of Danton — School Days — The Coronation of Louis XVI 35

CHAPTER IV Danton Chooses Law as His Profession — Comes to the Bar — Marries — Avocat aux Conseils du Roi — His Studies — Camille Desmoulins 45

CHAPTER V Conditions Immediately Prior to the Revolution — Reveillon Affair — Louis XVI — His Ministers — His Habits — His Character 53

CHAPTER VI Advisers of the King — The Queen — The Finances — Revolutions Begin at the Top 70

CHAPTER VII Danton in the Early Days of the Revolution — The Affair of Soules — Marat — The Incident of Marat — Early

Events of the Revolution JJ

CHAPTER VIII p AGE

Death of Mirabeau — Louis Attempts to go to St. Cloud — Danton Intervenes — The Flight of the Royal Family to Varennes 102

CHAPTER IX Paris After the Flight of the King — La Fayette in Peril — La Fayette Denounced by Danton at the Jacobins 127

CHAPTER X Return of the King to Paris 137

CHAPTER XI Danton Favors a Republic — Danton Urges Deposition of the King — Republican Society Proclaims Republic — The Assembly Decrees the Inviolability of the King — The Club of the Cordeliers Issues Public Address — Fusillade of the Champ de Mars.. 149

CHAPTER XII Convocation of the New Assembly — King's Return to Popularity — Reactions in His Favor — His Advisers — His Deception — Marie Antoinette — Return of Danton From Exile 165

CHAPTER XIII The Feuillants — The Club of the Cordeliers Where Danton Ruled — The Girondins — Madame Roland — War Issues — Danton After Some Hesitation Favors the War — Vetoes — Dumouriez — Danton and Dumouriez 176

CHAPTER XIV

Death of Leopold — Assassination of Gustavus III,

King of Sweden — Francis II Makes Proclamation

— Danton Hurls Defiance — War Declared April 21,

1792 — Defeat of the French Troops — Death of Gen-

PAGE

eral Dillon — Deputies From Marseilles Present Petition to the Assembly — Day of the Black Breeches — Petion 193

CHAPTER XV La Fayette Comes to Paris — La Fayette — Danton and La Fayette 209

CHAPTER XVI The Marseillais — The Marseillaise Hymn — Lamourette Kiss — The Day of Federation 220

CHAPTER XVII Enlistment — Proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick — Marseillais enters Paris — Brush With the Filles St. Thomas 226

CHAPTER XVIII The Tenth of August 238

CHAPTER XIX Danton's Activity — Longwy Capitulates — Domiciliary Visits 256

CHAPTER XX The September Massacres 264

CHAPTER XXI Paris During the Revolution — Manners — Customs — Conditions — The Guillotine 277

CHAPTER XXII Was Danton Responsible for the September Massacres? — La Fayette Abandons His Command — Dumouriez Named His Successor — Cannonade of Valmy — Danton's Energy — Duke de Chartres —

Dumouriez in Paris 295

CHAPTER XXIII PAGE

Girondins and Jacobins — Louvet's Accusation of Robespierre 307

CHAPTER XXIV Victory of Jemappes — Girondins Propose Opening of the Scheldt — Edmund Burke — England Joins Coalition — Danton Visits Belgium — Death of Danton's Wife 315

CHAPTER XXV Finding of the Iron Chest — Louis Summoned to the Bar 326

CHAPTER XXVI Trial of Louis XVI 334

CHAPTER XXVII Execution of Louis XVI 343

CHAPTER XXVIII Danton Opposes Factional Strife — The Treason of Dumouriez — Lasource Attacks Danton — The Reply of Danton 353

CHAPTER XXIX Danton — Marat's Arrest and Triumph — Girondins — Charlotte Corday — Assassination of Marat — Execution of Charlotte Corday — Marriage of Danton — Trial and Execution of Marie Antoinette 362

CHAPTER XXX Trial and Execution of Girondins — Execution of Madame Roland, Philippe, d'Orleans, Barnave, Bailly — Dethronement of Religion — Danton Favors

Reaction 385

CHAPTER XXXI PAGE

Trial of the Dantonists 400

CHAPTER XXXII Execution of the Dantonists 418

CHAPTER XXXIII Danton — His Appearance — His Style of Dress — His Character — His Religious Belief — Was He Venal? — Politician — Statesman — Orator — His Short Political Career — Results of the French Revolution 423

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Danton. The original portrait in the possession of the family is said to have been painted by David Frontispiece

House of the Danton Family at Arcis sur Aube 24

Danton's Mother 36

Camille Desmoulins 50

Louis XVI. From an engraving by Bervic after the original portrait painted by Callet 60

Marie Antoinette. From an engraving in the collection of William J. Latta, Esq., of Philadelphia, by whom it was kindly loaned for this work 72

Marat. From an engraving in the collection of William J. Latta, Esq., of Philadelphia 80

Madame Roland. From an engraving in the collection of William J. Latta, Esq., of Philadelphia 180

Princess de Lamballe 274

Dr. Guillotin. From an engraving in the collection of William J. Latta, Esq., of Philadelphia 288

Charlotte Corday. From an engraving in the collection of William J. Latta, Esq., of Philadelphia. After a portrait painted by David 374

F AC -SIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY DANTON. The

original is in the possession of William J. Latta, Esq., of Philadelphia, by whom it was kindly loaned for

this work 438

AND

Chapter I Mirabeau And Danton

The death of Mirabeau marked the end of the first period of the French Revolution.

He had struggled hard against heavy odds to effect a reaction to restore order and to save the monarchy, but he failed because he could not secure the confidence and the support of those whose cause he had espoused. When he passed away the proud empire of the Bourbons was doomed. The bells that tolled his death rang, at the same time, the knell of the monarchy.

Even those who intimately knew him, and were in his confidence, did not comprehend how great was the work he had undertaken and with what marked ability he had carried it forward, not until some time after his death did they realize the fact that there was no one in France who could take up the task where he had laid it down.

He had directed the Revolution. To him it had a purpose, which purpose was the correction of abuses, the restriction within constitutional limi- 2 17 tations of the absolute, the arbitrary power of the king, but not his deposition nor the destruction of the throne.

It surely must be admitted by all who have studied the Revolution, that the death of Mirabeau perceptibly gave it a new phase. He had been its manifestation. He had aided in the accomplishment of all its purposes; its results, in a great measure, were due to his genius and his energy, but he had watched closely the trend of events and with a vision that was far-reaching, almost prophetic, he saw the impending calamities that were menacing not only the monarchy, but also the welfare, the integrity, the future interests of all France. He therefore strongly favored a reaction, and bent every effort towards staying the torrent whose flood-gates he had helped to open.

When Mirabeau passed out of the Revolution, Danton stepped in. The great tribune was dead, and there strode forth a man with almost superhuman power, who was to tear down and destroy that system which Mirabeau would fain have saved. Danton gave to the Revolution a fresh impulse, his courage and his audacity aroused the spirit of the radicals. From now until the execution of the king he was the master. " He rode in the whirlwind and directed the storm."

At the time of Mirabeau's death France had lost every feature of a monarchy, save that a king still occupied the throne. The Revolution had leveled the walls of the Bastile, had given a declaration of rights and the form of a consti-

i8 tution to France, had equalized taxation, had removed the burdens of feudalism, had abolished privileges and exemptions, had destroyed titles and distinctions, had introduced a system of economy in the public administration, had scattered the nobles, had confiscated the lands of the Church, had proscribed the non-juring priests, had brought the king as a captive from Versailles to Paris, and had put him and his queen in the humiliating position of being held as hostages for the good behavior of the emigrants. There was nothing left for the Revolution to accomplish but the deposition of the king and the establishment of a republic. It was to these tasks that Danton devoted himself in earnest.

Had Mirabeau lived, a combat between him and Danton would most likely have taken place. These two Titans, it is reasonable to believe, had they not united their interests, would have grappled in a death struggle for the mastery, and no one can say with certainty what the outcome would have been.

But on the other hand, they might have formed a combination that would have resulted in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, for at this period of the Revolution, that is in the early part of 1791, Danton was not so violent in his views as he subsequently became. Mirabeau and Danton, although they differed radically in their political principles, were reasonable, practical, politic, and patriotic, and it is not impossible to believe that they might have united their efforts in a common purpose to stay the

Revolution and to make secure the reforms that had already been achieved.

Danton had been loyal to the monarchy, he was naturally of that conservative class that adheres to existing conditions, and fears radical reforms and sudden violent changes. " He was," says Michelet, " of the middle class, the heart of the nation." " He was certainly," declares Gronlund, " from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot a middle class man, but he was more than that,, he was a middle class man with a heart for the masses." He opposed, of course, the system that created exemptions and privileges to be monopolized and enjoyed only by the chosen few. He had no sympathy with the old regime and as a man of spirit and independence he chafed and fretted under the unjust class distinctions that prevailed, but on the other hand he naturally favored law and order and dreaded that violence that suddenly and forcibly wrenches from their ancient foundations those customs, usages, and laws that have long obtained. His education, his social and professional position raised him far above the proletariat, and he had nothing in common with them except a desire to ameliorate their unhappy condition, but this amelioration he hoped to see effected gradually and without a shock or a violent convulsion.

In the early stages of the Revolution he no more wished the destruction of the monarchy than Mirabeau. To use his own language, " I am more monarchist than you, M. de La Fayette." He was a reformer, a revolutionist of a positive type, to be sure, but he believed that a king was as necessary to government in France as in England. He looked askance at M. de Mirabeau ; he " had always from a long way off understood his brother in silk and with the sword," but really they were revolutionists of the same class, and the splendid talents of one united with the force and the superb audacity of the other might have avoided " The Terror."

With Mirabeau out of the contest the court could find no substitute to take his place. The French monarchy without the guidance of wisdom blindly groped its way through darkness to despair and finally plunged headlong to destruction. Achilles was dead and there was no friend nor adviser of the king who had diplomacy enough to secure the aid and the loyalty of Danton, the only man who could have stepped into the shoes and could have worn the mantle of the great tribune. Barnave, Duport and the Lameths, finding the Revolution getting beyond their control, undertook to divert and direct its course by attempting to apply the policies and to carry out the plans of Mirabeau, but they were in no way equal to the task.

Chapter II Danton's Birth Arcis Sur Aube Political

RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN FRANCE

George Jacques Danton was born on the 26th day of October, 1759, at Arcis sur Aube, in the Champagne Pouilleuse, about seventeen miles north of Troyes and about one hundred miles from Paris. " His family, pure, honest, of property, industrious, ancient in name, honorable in manners . . . possessed a rural domain in the environs of that small town."

Arcis sur Aube was settled at a very early period and is mentioned in the register called " Antonini Itinerarium," which gave the stations and the distances along the various roads of the Roman empire and which was based probably upon the surveys made by direction of Julius Caesar and continued by Augustus. It had no specially attractive feature except that an old picturesque castle situated upon a high bluff overlooked the town and was of historical interest, in that it was at one time the residence of Brunehaut, and at a later period was occupied by the celebrated Diana of Poitiers who had the honor of serving in turn Francis I and Henry II, father and son, as mistress.

It was the principal market town and the chief 22 commercial centre in that immediate locality, it possessed a fairly prosperous population and enjoyed the advantage of being close enough to the capital of the kingdom to keep in touch with the news and the events of the day. A beautiful church, of the sixteenth century, gave the place some architectural renown.

In this country town Danton passed his early years, and it was a good school for the training of a boy who subsequently was to make Paris his home. In this provincial community he had an opportunity to watch the process of disintegration as revealed in the social and political Conditions that prevailed in the country or peasant districts, and to observe and note those gradual changes that are not so apparent in a populous or crowded city.

The date of his birth fell in a very interesting historical period, one of the most important in the history of the human race, an era when men and events were preparing for " the most impassioned effort ever made for the attainment of public freedom."

When Danton was born, Mirabeau had seen ten years of life ; Robespierre was a baby in arms ; Louis XVI was five, and Marie Antoinette four years old; Camille Desmoulins was to see the light of day in five months, and Napoleon in ten years. Louis XV was on the throne and had been reigning for forty-four years. He had sixteen years yet to rule and riot before being stricken by the fatal 'and loathsome disease that carried him off. Absolutism was in its full vigor, although perhaps not so assertive as it had been under the prior reign when Louis XIV had declared that he was the State. Feudalism was imbedded in the life, in the very flesh of the people ; its burdens were as grinding and as oppressive as they ever had been.

King and noble were virtually not amenable to law, the privileged classes enjoying rights in contravention of every principle of human justice.

The glory and the splendor of Louis XIV, which in a measure had concealed the vices of his reign and had made some atonement for its tyranny, corruption, and extravagance, were but a memory, and in the shadow of the great Louis ruled a king who was without ambition, who shed no lustre, no personal renown upon his times, and whose luxury, sensuality, prodigality, and indifference to the public weal, were hastening the country to destruction and the monarchy to its ruin. The aggregate duration of the reigns of these two princes, Louis XIV and Louis XV, was one hundred and thirty-one years, something unparalleled in history. It was most unfortunate for France that lives so long were vouchsafed to rulers so unworthy and so profligate.

Only one-third of the landed property of the entire country was in the hands of the lay commonalty, all the rest belonged to the Church and the nobles. The taxes too were so unequally distributed that the largest of them, the Taille, yielding about 200,000,000 francs, fell almost wholly upon the peasantry, neither the Church nor the vast majority of the nobles paying one sou. The 24

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Q privileged classes consisting of the nobility and the upper clergy numbered about 190,000 persons out of a population of twenty-five millions, and these few received and enjoyed all the benefits of government.

Many of the nobility, because of some trivial service rendered to the king by their ancestors, were relieved entirely from taxation and besides this were extravagantly pensioned out of the public revenues. These drones actually consumed the substance of the poor. It was calculated that if an acre of land afforded seventy-five francs of gross produce, two-thirds went to the revenue, and after the landlord was paid the wretched farmer or cultivator received about one-half of the remaining third, or twelve and one-half francs.

The social and political conditions of the lower classes were in a most deplorable state. Language cannot fully describe the real wretchedness that prevailed among the peasantry. Men, women and children went barefooted and were scantily clad, even in the dead of winter. They lived on black-bread and " slept on the mud of the cold clay floor," their homes were as comfortless, and often as filthy, as pig-sties. Wages were so low, and in consequence labor was so hard, that men were worn to the bone in earning a mere pittance; children were poorly nurtured and compelled to toil in their earliest years; women were haggard in feature and grew old long before they reached middle life, being obliged to perform the most servile labor, often actually being used as beasts of burden. In some districts they were, like oxen, harnessed to the plough and driven to the cart.

Agriculture had made no advance from the tenth century, its implements were rude and primitive in pattern and construction. The plough differed not a whit from that used in the days of Virgil. The peasant was virtually a serf, he was attached to the soil, he belonged body and soul to the lord of the manor. Although burdened with duties, he had but few if any rights. Under the infamous, iniquitous system of feudalism that existed, he was required to perform, in return for the use of his small strip of land, all sorts of menial and humiliating services, from the swishing of the pond to the loaning of his bride, from the patching of the public roads to the ploughing of the lord's glebe. In an agricultural country, herds of deer and droves of wild boars were permitted to go at large as in a savage wilderness, only to provide amusement for the great. When the royal game destroyed the crops of the peasant he had no redress, and if he dared to kill a rabbit or a quail he ran the risk, if the gamekeeper caught him in the act, of paying forfeit with his life. If a fox crossed his land he might expect to see, at any moment, a pack of hounds followed by a hunting party of lords and ladies, who would ruthlessly dash across his recently ploughed field or trample down the growing vines in his vineyard. Yet this wretched creature meekly submitted to his lot, paid the bulk of taxation, and supported the glory of the empire. No 26 wonder, when the time came and the devil was let loose in his heart, that he took vengeance with pike and torch!

" The men are dying as thick as flies," wrote Argenson in the middle of the eighteenth century, " and the living are eating grass," and this condition continued with intervals of slight improvement up to the date of the meeting of the States-General. The fields were bare, the highways were deserted, except by armies of tramps and vagrants, the inns were comfortless and without conveniences, there were few carriages or diligences traveling on the public roads, which roads were sadly out of repair. Famine was decimating the population. While the peasants were living on roots and the bark of trees, the aristocracy flaunted their wealth and extravagance in the faces of the poor. In the shadows of magnificent palaces and chateaux men literally starved to death.

Notwithstanding the financial distress of the country the king abated not a jot of his luxury. He owned more palaces than he could occupy and the expenses of the royal household amounted to 250,000,000 francs annually. There were 300 cooks in the kitchen and over 2,000 horses standing in the stables. Nobles and also churchmen indulged in extravagances and excesses to such a degree that their conduct provoked the bitter hatred of the people and destroyed respect for authority and government and even reverence for holy things.

A few years later than the period of which 27 we are speaking, the Cardinal de Rohan, a prince of the Church, the grand almoner of France who made religion a mockery, declared that it was impossible for him to live on an annual income of less than one million and a half. He indulged in such licentiousness that his example was most demoralizing and yet he was not, by any means, the only churchman who disgraced his calling. The Church, although possessed of nearly half the land in the kingdom and endowed with an immense revenue from tithes alone, assigned a miserable pittance of 500 francs a year to the parochial or working clergy; all the rest was consumed in luxurious living by an idle and a dissolute hierarchy. The administration of the law was venal, was corrupt. The penal code in some of its features was inhuman, and the criminal courts were merciless in prosecuting and punishing those who were unable to temper the severity of the judges with gold. The penalties imposed for the slightest transgressions upon those who were not able to pay for exemptions were cruel and monstrous. The plaintiff obtained entrance to the court by bribery. Justice was a wanton to be won by favors. Arrests were arbitrarily made, and men were immured in dungeons without even the faintest form of trial. One prisoner was confined in the Bastile for thirty-five years, and at the time of his release there could be found no record of his commitment.

A man merely suspected of a political offense would be seized under a lettre de cachet and would suddenly disappear from his usual haunts 28 as if swallowed up by the earth. There was no uniform system of law throughout the kingdom; what was a crime in one district was not so considered in another, and the whole system of judicature was in utter confusion.

The cold-blooded insolence of the aristocracy created a consuming hatred in the hearts of the people, a hatred that was deep-seated and vindictive and that passed like a heritage from one generation to another, until at last it cruelly avenged with blood the grinding wrongs and the galling tyranny of centuries. The sufferings of the poor did not call forth even the commiseration of the rich. The nobles looked upon the common people as hardly worthy of consideration. Madame de Stael at a later period, in speaking of Napoleon in this connection, said : " II regarde une creature humaine comme un fait on an chose, et non comme an semblable." So the nobles of this period looked upon the common people as mere chattels, and they had no respect for their rights as fellow-men. In the reign of Louis XV the Count de Charolais amused himself by shooting men whom he had employed to work on the roof of his barn, and every time he picked a man off he laughed aloud as he saw his victim roll to the ground; his conduct was in the spirit of brutal wantonness. The matter was brought to the notice of the king who sent word to the count that if he repeated the offense, he would pardon anyone who killed him. But there was no arrest, nor prosecution of the count, the authorities allowed the matter to end here. What justice could the people expect from such a monarch and under such a system?

Most inhuman were the punishments inflicted upon those who assailed royalty. A man had written some satirical lines on the king's mistress. The agents of his majesty seized the culprit at the Hague and in violation of every principle of international law, carried him to France and cast him into a cell below the sea level of Mont St. Michel. Here he lived or rather existed for eight years, in a stone hole in which he could neither stand upright nor lie down at full length, the cell being less than five feet long, but four feet wide, and three feet high. The sunlight penetrated the cavern only one hour during the entire day. In this hole he was attacked by rats and it was said that he sustained life by eating them. But in time he was so weakened by confinement that he was unable to resist them and the hungry rodents at last began nibbling at his toes and soon he was devoured.

Damiens, who assaulted the king and merely scratched his royal person, underwent a punishment so brutal that the heart sickens in the recital of its details. It was not much of a wound that was inflicted, it was not " so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door," but it was enough to bring down on the head of the culprit all the vengeance of the State. It might have been better for the poor wretch had he accomplished his purpose, for he could not have been tortured worse had he killed the king outright.

The tyranny of a king is as much treason 30 against the sovereignty of the people as the rebellion of the people is against the sovereignty of a king. It required a revolution to vitalize this thought and to bring tyrants and potentates to a sense of personal accountability.

Superstition, bigotry, and intolerance, were on every hand. Religious persecution was relentless. Protestants or those who harbored them were punished remorselessly. One woman was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and subjected to a heavy fine simply because she spoke a kindly word to a dying heretic. A man was sent to the galleys for having so far forgotten his loyalty to the Church as to attend a Protestant service. A boy was arrested for having mutilated a crucifix. There was no proof that he had committed the offense, but it was shown, in the course of the trial, that he had read a book of Voltaire's. This was sufficient to control the judgment of the court and the poor lad was tortured till his bones cracked and life was almost extinct. To complete the infamy, he was then decapitated and his head was set up on a post as a warning to the faithful not to stray from the paths of orthodoxy.

Such were the conditions that prevailed at the time Danton first saw the light of day, and they grew but little better as he advanced towards manhood. These were the events that were brewing the Revolution and they explain why in its character it was so vindictive and retributive.

Meanwhile society was undergoing a change and men were beginning to long and strive for better things. General education was developing the human mind and opening the avenues to knowledge. The printing press was at work, people were thinking, reading, discussing. The Revolution was made by books, some one has well said. Michelet declares that when Voltaire and Rousseau, the apostles of humanity, passed away the revolution in the intellectual world was accomplished.

Montesquieu's " Spirit of the Laws," appeared in 1748; its aphorisms, though trite to-day, were new and startling then, and aroused in the French heart a longing for a constitutional liberty under which the humblest citizen in the land would be as secure in the enjoyment of his rights as the king himself.

Helvetius, whose great work "De 1'Esprit" was published in 1758, was a philosopher of the so-called sensuous school, a direct descendant of Epicurus. In his materialism he deprived man of all spirituality and brought him to the level of the brute. He taught that pleasure is the only good and self-interest the only consideration. In an age so corrupt his teachings exerted a great influence and were congenial to a people and a court that could tolerate a Pompadour and a Du- Barry.

At the time of Danton's birth, Voltaire was in the heyday of his power; and in the full vigor of his intellect he was satirizing the follies of the day and with his trenchant pen was attacking tyranny, injustice, superstition, bigotry, and intolerance. Never did a writer exert a greater 32 influence upon his age. The vices of both Church and State were cowering beneath his merciless assaults. He was the philosopher of Iconoclasm and under his terrific blows the idols of the past were broken and shattered.