XXXV. FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS AND OF THE DANTONISTS
Continued Persecution of the Girondists.--Robespierre opposes the Atheists.--Danton, Souberbielle, and Camille Desmoulins.--The Vieux Cordelier.--The Hebertists executed.--Danton assailed.--Interview between Danton and Robespierre.--Danton warned of his Peril.--Camille Desmoulins and others arrested.--Lucile, the Wife of Desmoulins.--Letters.--Execution of the Dantonists.--Arrest and Execution of Lucile.--Toulon recovered by Bonaparte.
The leaders of the Girondists were now destroyed, and the remnants of the party were prosecuted with unsparing ferocity. On the 11th of November, Bailly, the former mayor, the friend of La Fayette, the philanthropist and the scholar, was dragged to the scaffold. The day was cold and rainy. His crime was having unfurled the red flag in the Field of Mars, to quell the riot there, on the 17th of July, 1791. He was condemned to be executed on the field which was the theatre of his alleged crime. Behind the cart which carried him they affixed the flag which he had spread. A crowd followed, heaping upon him the most cruel imprecations. On reaching the scaffold, some one cried out that the field of the federation ought not to be polluted with his blood. Immediately the mob rushed upon the guillotine, tore it down, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the banks of the Seine. They dragged Bailly from the tumbril, and compelled him to make the tour of the Field of Mars on foot. Bareheaded, with his hands bound behind him, and with no other garment than a shirt, the sleet glued his hair and froze upon his breast. They pelted him with mud, spat in his face, and whipped him with the flag, which they dipped in the gutters. The old man fell exhausted. They lifted him up again, and goaded him on. Blood, mingled with mire, streamed down his face, depriving him of human aspect. Shouts of derision greeted these horrors. The freezing wind and exhaustion caused an involuntary shivering. Some one cried out, "You tremble, Bailly." "Yes, my friend," replied the heroic old man, "but it is with cold."[411] After five hours of such a martyrdom, the axe released him from his sufferings.
Pétion and Buzot wandered many days and nights in the forest. At length their remains were found, half devoured by wolves. Whether they perished of cold and starvation, or sought relief from their misery in voluntary death, is not known.
The illustrious Condorcet, alike renowned for his philosophical genius and his eloquent advocacy of popular rights, had been declared an outlaw. For several months he had been concealed in the house of Madame Verney, a noble woman, who periled her own life that she might save that of her friend. At last Condorcet, learning from the papers that death was denounced against all who concealed a proscribed individual, resolved, at every hazard, to leave the roof of his benefactress. For some time he wandered through the fields in disguise, until he was arrested and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having swallowed poison, which for some time he carried about with him.
"It would be difficult in that or any other age to find two men of more active or, indeed, enthusiastic benevolence than Condorcet and La Fayette. Besides this, Condorcet was one of the most profound thinkers of his time, and will be remembered as long as genius is honored among us. La Fayette was no doubt inferior to Condorcet in point of ability, but he was the intimate friend of Washington, on whose conduct he modeled his own, and by whose side he had fought for the liberties of America; his integrity was, and still is, unsullied, and his character had a chivalrous and noble turn which Burke, in his better days, would have been the first to admire. Both, however, were natives of that hated country whose liberties they vainly attempted to achieve. On this account Burke declared Condorcet to be guilty of 'impious sophistry,' to be a 'fanatic atheist and furious democratic republican,' and to be capable of the 'lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies.' As to La Fayette, when an attempt was made to mitigate the cruel treatment he was receiving from the Prussian government, Burke not only opposed the motion made for that purpose in the House of Commons, but took the opportunity of grossly insulting the unfortunate captive, who was then languishing in a dungeon. So dead had he become on this subject, even to the common instincts of our nature, that in his place in parliament he could find no better way of speaking of this injured and high-souled man than by calling him a ruffian. 'I would not,' says Burke, 'debase[412] my humanity by supporting an application in behalf of so horrid a ruffian.'"[413]
Madame Roland was led to the guillotine, evincing heroism which the world has never seen surpassed. Her husband, in anguish, unable to survive her, and hunted by those thirsting for his blood, anticipated the guillotine by plunging a stiletto into his own heart.
Danton and Robespierre were both opposed to such cruel executions, and especially to the establishment in France of that system of atheism which degraded man into merely the reptile of an hour. When Robespierre was informed of the atrocities which attended the execution of Bailly, in shame and grief he shut himself up in his room, saying, with prophetic foresight, to his host Duplay, "It is thus that they will martyrize ourselves."
Hebert[414] and the atheists were now dominant in the Commune of Paris, and Danton and Robespierre organized a party to crush them. Hebert soon saw indications of this movement, and began to tremble. He complained in the Jacobin Club that Robespierre and Danton were plotting against him. Robespierre was present on the occasion, and, with his accustomed audacity, immediately ascended the tribune and hurled his anathemas upon the heads of these blood-crimsoned fanatics.
"There are men," said he, "who, under the pretext of destroying superstition, would fain make a sort of religion of atheism itself. Every man has a right to think as he pleases; whoever would make a crime of this is a madman. But the legislator who should adopt the system of atheism would be a hundred times more insane. The National Convention abhors such a system. It is a political body, not a maker of creeds. Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and who punishes triumphant guilt is quite popular. The people, the unfortunate, applaud me. If God did not exist, it would behoove man to invent him."
One of the last evenings in the month of January, Danton, Souberbielle, one of the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Camille Desmoulins came from the Palace of Justice together. It was a cold gloomy winter's night. It had been a day of blood. Fifteen heads had fallen upon the guillotine and twenty-seven were condemned to die on the morrow. These three men were all appalled by the progress of events, and for some time walked along in silence. On reaching Pont Neuf, Danton turned suddenly round to Souberbielle and said,
"Do you know that, at the pace we are now going, there will speedily be no safety for any person? The best patriots are confounded with traitors. Generals who have shed their blood for the Republic perish on the scaffold. I am weary of living. Look there; the very river seems to flow with blood."
"True," replied Souberbielle, "the sky is red, and there are many showers of blood behind those clouds. Those who were to be judges have become but executioners. When I refuse an innocent head to their knife I am accused of sympathy with traitors. What can I do? I am but an obscure patriot. Ah, if I were Danton!"
"All this," replied Danton, "excites horror in me. But be silent. Danton sleeps; he will awake at the right moment. I am a man of revolution, but not a man of slaughter. But you," he added, addressing Camille Desmoulins, "why do you keep silence?"
"I am weary of silence," was Desmoulins's reply. "My hand weighs heavily, and I have sometimes the impulse to sharpen my pen into a dagger and stab these scoundrels. Let them beware. My ink is more indelible than their blood. It stains for immortality."
"Bravo!" cried Danton. "Begin to-morrow. You began the Revolution; be it you who shall now most thoroughly urge it. Be assured this hand shall aid you. You know whether or not it be strong."
The three friends separated at Danton's door. The doom of the miserable Hebert and his party was now sealed. Robespierre, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins were against him. They could wield resistless influences. The next day Camille Desmoulins commenced a series of papers called the Vieux Cordelier. He took the first number to Danton and then to Robespierre. They both approved, and the warfare against Hebert and his party was commenced. The conflict was short and desperate; each party knew that the guillotine was the doom of the vanquished.[415] Robespierre and Danton were victors. Hebert, Cloots, and their friends, nineteen in number, were arrested and condemned to death. On the 24th of March, 1794, five carts laden with the Hebertists proceeded from the Conciergerie to the guillotine. Cloots died firmly. Hebert was in a paroxysm of terror, which excited the contempt and derision of the mob.
The bold invectives against the Reign of Terror in the Vieux Cordelier, written by Desmoulins, began to alarm the Committee of Public Safety. Danton and Robespierre were implicated. They were accused of favoring moderate measures, and of being opposed to those acts of bloody rigor which were deemed necessary to crush the aristocrats. Danton and Desmoulins were in favor of a return to mercy. Robespierre, though opposed to cruelty and to needless carnage, was sternly for death as the doom of every one not warmly co-operating with the Revolution. To save himself from suspicion he became the accuser of his two friends. And now it came the turn of Danton and Desmoulins to tremble. For five years Danton and Robespierre had fought together to overthrow royalty and found the Republic. But Danton was disgusted with carnage, and had withdrawn from the Committee of Public Safety.
"Danton, do you know," said Eglantine to him one day, "of what you are accused? They say that you have only launched the car of the Revolution to enrich yourself, while Robespierre has remained poor in the midst of the monarchical treasures thrown at his feet."
"Well," replied Danton, "do you know what that proves? that I love gold, and that Robespierre loves blood. Robespierre is afraid of money lest it should stain his hands."
Robespierre earnestly wished to associate Danton with him in all the rigor of the Revolutionary government, for he respected the power of this bold, indomitable man. They met at a dinner-party, through the agency of a mutual friend, when matters were brought to a crisis. They engaged in a dispute, Danton denouncing and reviling the acts of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Robespierre defending them, until they separated in anger. The friends of Danton urged him either to escape by flight or to take advantage of his popularity and throw himself upon the army.
"My life is not worth the trouble," said Danton. "Besides, I am weary of blood. I had rather be guillotined than be a guillotiner. They dare not attack me. I am stronger than they."
A secret meeting of the Committee of Public Safety was convened by night, and Danton was accused of the "treason of clemency." A subaltern door-keeper heard the accusation, and ran to Danton's house to warn him of his peril and to offer him an asylum. The young and beautiful wife of Danton, with tears in her eyes, threw herself at his feet, and implored him, for her sake and for that of their children, to accept the proffered shelter. Danton proudly refused, saying,
"They will deliberate long before they will dare to strike a man like me. While they deliberate I will surprise them."
He dismissed the door-keeper and retired to bed. At six o'clock gens d'armes entered his room with the order for his arrest.
"They dare, then," said Danton, crushing the paper in his hand. "They are bolder than I had thought them to be."
He dressed, embraced his wife convulsively, and was conducted to prison. At the same hour Camille Desmoulins and fourteen others, the supposed partisans of Danton, were also arrested. It was the 31st of March. Danton was taken to the Luxembourg. Here he found Desmoulins and his other friends already incarcerated. As Danton entered the gloomy portals of the prison he said,
"At length I perceive that, in revolutions, the supreme power ultimately rests with the most abandoned."[416]
A crowd of the detained immediately gathered around him, amazed at that freak of fortune which had cast the most distinguished leader of the Jacobins into the dungeons of the accused. Danton was humiliated and annoyed by the gaze, and endeavored to veil his embarrassment under the guise of derision.
"Yes," said he, raising his head and forcing loud laughter, "it is Danton. Look at him well. The trick is well played. We must know how to praise our enemies when they conduct adroitly. I would never have believed that Robespierre could have juggled me thus." Then softening, and growing more sincere, he said, "Gentlemen, I hoped to have been the means of delivering you all from this place; but here I am among you, and no one can tell where this will end."
The accused Dantonists--accused of advocating moderate measures in the treatment of the enemies of the Revolution--were soon shut up in separate cells. The report of the arrest of men of such acknowledged power, and who had been so popular as patriots, spread anxiety and gloom through Paris. The warmest friends of the arrested dared not plead their cause; it would only have imperiled their own lives.
Even in the Assembly great excitement was produced by these important arrests. The members gathered in groups and spoke to each other in whispers, inquiring what all this meant and where it was to end. At last, Légendre ventured to ascend the tribune, and said,
"Citizens, four members of this Assembly have been arrested during the night. Danton is one. I know not the others. Citizens, I declare that I believe Danton to be as pure as myself; yet he is in a dungeon. They feared, no doubt, that his replies would overturn the accusations brought against him. I move, therefore, that, before you listen to any report, you send for the prisoners and hear them."
Robespierre immediately ascended the tribune and replied,
"By the unusual agitation which pervades this Assembly--by the sensation the words of the speaker you have just heard have produced, it is manifest that a question of great interest is before us--a question whether two or three individuals shall be preferred to the country. The question to-day is whether the interests of certain ambitious hypocrites shall prevail over the interests of the French nation. Légendre appears not to know the names of those who have been arrested. All the Convention knows them. His friend Lacroix is among the prisoners. Why does he pretend to be ignorant of it? Because he knows that he can not defend Lacroix without shame. He has spoken of Danton, doubtless because he thinks that a privilege is attached to this name. No! we will have no privilege. No! we will have no idols. We shall see to-day whether the Convention will break a false idol, long since decayed, or whether in its fall it will crush the Convention and the French people.
"I say, whoever now trembles is guilty, for never does innocence dread public surveillance. Me, too, have they tried to alarm. It has been attempted to make me believe that the danger which threatens Danton might reach me. I have been written to. The friends of Danton have sent me their letters; have besieged me with their importunities. They have thought that the remembrance of a former acquaintance, that a past belief in false virtues, might determine me to relax in my zeal and my passion for liberty. Well, then, I declare that none of these motives have touched my soul with the slightest impression; my life is for my country, my heart is exempt from fear.
"I have seen in the flattery which has been addressed to me, in the concern of those who surrounded Danton, only signs of the terror which they felt, even before they were threatened. And I, too, have been the friend of Pétion; as soon as he was unmasked I abandoned him. I have also been acquainted with Roland; he became a traitor and I denounced him. Danton would take their place, and in my eyes he is but an enemy to his country."
Légendre, appalled, immediately retracted, and trembling for his life, like a whipped spaniel, crouched before the terrible dictator. At that moment St. Just came in, and read a long report against the members under arrest. The substance of the vague and rambling charges was that they had been bought up by the aristocrats and were enemies to their country. The Assembly listened without a murmur, and then unanimously, and even with applause, voted the impeachment of Danton and his friends. "Every one sought to gain time with tyranny, and gave up others' heads to save his own."[417]
The Dantonists were men of mark, and they now drank deeply of that bitter chalice which they had presented to so many lips. Camille Desmoulins, young, brilliant, enthusiastic, was one of the most fascinating of men. His youthful and beautiful wife, Lucile, he loved to adoration. They had one infant child, Horace, their pride and joy. Camille was asleep in the arms of his wife when the noise of the butt end of a musket on the threshold of his door aroused him. As the soldiers presented the order for his arrest, he exclaimed, in anguish, "This, then, is the recompense of the first voice of the Revolution."
Embracing his wife for the last time, and imprinting a kiss upon the cheek of his child asleep in the cradle, he was hurried to prison. Lucile, frantic with grief, ran through the streets of Paris to plead with Robespierre and others for her husband; but her lamentations were as unavailing as the moaning wind. In the following tender strain Camille wrote his wife:
"My prison recalls to my mind the garden where I spent eight years in beholding you. A glimpse of the garden of the Luxembourg brings back to me a crowd of remembrances of our loves. I am alone, but never have I been in thought, imagination, feeling nearer to you, your mother, and to my little Horace. I am going to pass all my time in prison in writing to you. I cast myself at your knees; I stretch out my arms to embrace you; I find you no more. Send me the glass on which are our two names; a book, which I bought some days ago, on the immortality of the soul. I have need of persuading myself that there is a God more just than man, and that I can not fail to see you again. Do not grieve too much over my thoughts, dearest; I do not yet despair of men. Yes! my beloved, we will see ourselves again in the garden of the Luxembourg. Adieu, Lucile! Adieu, Horace! I can not embrace you; but in the tears which I shed it appears that I press you again to my bosom.
Thy Camille."
Lucile, frantic with grief, made the most desperate efforts to gain access to Robespierre, but she was sternly repulsed. She then thus imploringly wrote to him,
* * * * *
"Can you accuse us of treason, you who have profited so much by the efforts we have made for our country? Camille has seen the birth of your pride, the path you desired to tread, but he has recalled your ancient friendship and shrunk from the idea of accusing a friend, a companion of his labors. That hand which has pressed yours has too soon abandoned the pen, since it could no longer trace your praise; and you, you send him to death. But, Robespierre, will you really accomplish the deadly projects which doubtless the vile souls which surround you have inspired you with? Have you forgotten those bonds which Camille never recalls without grief? you who prayed for our union, who joined our hands in yours, who have smiled upon my son whose infantile hands have so often caressed you? Can you, then, reject my prayers, despise my tears, and trample justice under foot? For you know it yourself, we do not merit the fate they are preparing for us, and you can avert it. If it strike us, it is you who will have ordered it. But what is, then, the crime of my Camille?
"I have not his pen to defend him. But the voice of good citizens, and your heart, if it is sensible, will plead for me. Do you believe that people will gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your best friends? Do you think that they will bless him who regards neither the tears of the widow nor the death of the orphan? Poor Camille! in the simplicity of his heart, how far was he from suspecting the fate which awaits him to-day! He thought to labor for your glory in pointing out to you what was still wanting to our republic. He has, no doubt, been calumniated to you, Robespierre, for you can not believe him guilty. Consider that he has never required the death of any one--that he has never desired to injure by your power, and that you were his oldest and his best friend. And you are about to kill us both! For to strike him is to kill me--"
The unfinished letter she intrusted to her mother, but it never reached the hands of Robespierre. The prisoners were soon taken to the Conciergerie and plunged into the same dungeon into which they had thrown the Girondists. The day of trial was appointed without delay. It was the 3d of April. As the prisoners, fourteen in number, were arrayed before the Tribunal, the president, Hermann, inquired of Danton, in formal phrase, his name, age, and residence.
"My name," was the proud and defiant reply, "is Danton, well enough known in the Revolution. I am thirty-five years old. My residence will soon be void, and my name will exist in the Pantheon of history."
To the same question Camille Desmoulins replied, "I am thirty-three, a fatal age to revolutionists,--the age of the sans culotte Jesus when he died."
The trial lasted three days. Danton, in his defense, struggled like a lion in the toils. An immense crowd filled the court and crowded the surrounding streets. The windows were open, and the thunders of his voice were frequently heard even to the other side of the Seine. The people in the streets, whom he doubtless meant to influence, caught up his words and transmitted them from one to another. Some indications of popular sympathy alarmed the Tribunal, and it was voted that the accused were wanting in respect to the court, and should no longer be heard in their defense. They were immediately condemned to die.
They were reconducted to their dungeon to prepare for the guillotine. The fortitude of Camille Desmoulins was weakened by the strength of his domestic attachments. "Oh, my dear Lucile! Oh, my Horace! what will become of them!" he incessantly cried, while tears flooded his eyes. Seizing a pen, he hastily wrote a few last words to Lucile, which remain one of the most touching memorials of grief.
"I have dreamed," he wrote, "of a republic which all the world would have adored. I could not have believed that men were so cruel and unjust. I do not dissimulate that I die a victim to my friendship for Danton. I thank my assassins for allowing me to die with Philippeaux. Pardon, my dear friend, my true life which I lost from the moment they separated us. I occupy myself with my memory. I ought much rather to cause you to forget it, my Lucile. I conjure you do not call to me by your cries. They would rend my heart in the depths of the tomb. Live for our child; talk to him of me; you may tell him what he can not understand, that I should have loved him much. Despite my execution, I believe there is a God. My blood will wash out my sins, the weakness of my humanity; and whatever I have possessed of good, my virtues and my love of liberty, God will recompense it. I shall see you again one day.
"O my Lucile, sensitive as I was, the death which delivers me from the sight of so much crime, is it so great a misfortune? Adieu, my life, my soul, my divinity upon earth! Adieu, Lucile! my Lucile! my dear Lucile! Adieu, Horace! Annette! Adèle! Adieu, my father! I feel the shore of life fly before me. I still see Lucile! I see her, my best beloved! my Lucile! My bound hands embrace you, and my severed head rests still upon you its dying eyes."
As Danton re-entered the gloomy corridor of the prison he said, "It was just a year ago that I was instrumental in instituting the Revolutionary Tribunal. I beg pardon of God and men. I intended it as a measure of humanity, to prevent the renewal of the September massacres, and that no man should suffer without trial. I did not mean that it should prove the scourge of humanity."
Then, pressing his capacious brow between his hands, he said, "They think that they can do without me. They deceive themselves. I was the statesman of Europe. They do not suspect the void which this head leaves."
"As to me," he continued, in cynical terms, "I have enjoyed my moments of existence well. I have made plenty of noise upon earth. I have tasted well of life. Let us go to sleep," and he made a gesture with head and arms as if about to repose his head upon a pillow.
After a short pause he resumed, "We are sacrificed to the ambition of a few dastardly brigands. But they will not long enjoy the fruit of their villainy. I drag Robespierre after me. Robespierre follows me to the grave." At four o'clock the executioners entered the Conciergerie to bind their hands and cut off their hair.
"It will be very amusing," said Danton, "to the fools who will gape at us in the streets, but we shall appear otherwise in the eyes of posterity."
When the executioners laid hold of Camille Desmoulins, he struggled in the most desperate resistance. But he was speedily thrown upon the floor and bound, while the prison resounded with his shrieks and imprecations. The whole fourteen Dantonists were placed in one cart. Desmoulins seemed frantic with terror. He looked imploringly upon the crowd, and incessantly cried,
"Save me, generous people! I am Camille Desmoulins. It was I who called you to arms on the 14th of July. It was I who gave you the national cockade."
He so writhed and twisted in the convulsions of his agony that his clothes were nearly torn from his back. Danton stood in moody silence, occasionally endeavoring to appease the turbulence of Desmoulins.
Herault de Séchelles first ascended the scaffold. As he alighted from the cart he endeavored to embrace Danton. The brutal executioner interposed.
"Wretch," said Danton, "you will not, at least, prevent our heads from kissing presently in the basket."
Desmoulins followed next. In his hand he held a lock of his wife's hair. For an instant he gazed upon the blade, streaming with the blood of his friend, and then said, turning to the populace,
"Look at the end of the first apostle of liberty. The monsters who murder me will not survive me long."
The axe fell, and his head dropped into the basket. Danton looked proudly, imperturbably on as, one after another, the heads of his thirteen companions fell. He was the last to ascend the scaffold. For a moment he was softened as he thought of his wife.
"Oh my wife, my dear wife," said he, "shall I never see you again?" Then checking himself, he said, "But, Danton, no weakness." Turning to the executioner, he proudly remarked, "You will show my head to the people; it will be well worth the display."
His head fell. The executioner, seizing it by the hair, walked around the platform, holding it up to the gaze of the populace. A shout of applause rose from the infatuated people. "Thus," says Mignet, "perished the last defenders of humanity and moderation, the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the Revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice was raised against the dictatorship of terror, and from one end of France to the other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought to prevent this violent reign, the Dantonists to stop it. All perished, and the conquerors had the more victims to strike, the more the foes arose around them."
The Robespierrians, having thus struck down the leaders of the moderate party, pursued their victory, by crushing all of the advocates of moderation from whom they apprehended the slightest danger. Day after day the guillotine ran red with blood. Even the devoted wife of Camille Desmoulins, but twenty-three years of age, was not spared. It was her crime that she loved her husband, and that she might excite sympathy for his fate. Resplendent with grace and beauty, she was dragged before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Little Horace was left an orphan, to cry in his cradle. Lucile displayed heroism upon the scaffold unsurpassed by that of Charlotte Corday or Madame Roland. When condemned to death she said calmly to her judges,
"I shall, then, in a few hours, again meet my husband. In departing from this world, in which nothing now remains to engage my affections, I am far less the object of pity than are you."
Robespierre had been the intimate friend of Desmoulins and Lucile. He had often eat of their bread and drunk of their cup in social converse. He was a guest at their wedding. Madame Duplessis, the mother of Lucile, was one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of France. In vain she addressed herself to Robespierre and all his friends, in almost frantic endeavors to save her daughter.
"Robespierre," she wrote to him, "is it not enough to have assassinated your best friend; do you desire also the blood of his wife, of my daughter? Your master, Fouquier Tinville, has just ordered her to be led to the scaffold. Two hours more and she will not be in existence. Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human shape, if the blood of Camille has not inebriated you to the point of losing your reason entirely, if you recall still our evenings of intimacy, if you recall to yourself the caresses you lavished upon the little Horace, and how you delighted to hold him upon your knees, and if you remember that you were to have been my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim! But, if thy fury is that of a lion, come and take us also, myself, Adèle [her other daughter], and Horace. Come and tear us away with thy hands still reeking in the blood of Camille. Come, come, and let one single tomb reunite us."
To this appeal Robespierre returned no reply. Lucile was left to her fate. In the same car of the condemned with Madame Hebert she was conducted to the guillotine. She had dressed herself for the occasion with remarkable grace. A white gauze veil, partially covering her luxuriant hair, embellished her marvelous beauty. With alacrity and apparent cheerfulness she ascended the steps, placed her head upon the fatal plank, and a smile was upon her lips as the keen-edged knife, with the rapidity of the lightning's stroke, severed her head from her body.
While these cruel scenes were transpiring in Paris, and similar scenes in all parts of France, the republican armies on the frontiers were struggling to repel the invading armies of allied Europe. It was the fear that internal enemies would rise and combine with the foreign foe which goaded the Revolutionists to such measures of desperation. They knew that the triumph of the Bourbons was their certain death. The English were now in possession of Toulon, the arsenal of the French navy, which had been treasonably surrendered to an English fleet by the friends of the Bourbons. A republican army had for some months been besieging the city, but had made no progress toward the expulsion of the invaders.
Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young man about twenty-five years of age and a lieutenant in the army, was sent to aid the besiegers. His genius soon placed him in command of the artillery. With almost superhuman energy, and skill never before surpassed, he pressed the siege, and, in one of the most terrific midnight attacks which ever has been witnessed, drove the British from the soil of France. This is the first time that Napoleon appears as an actor in the drama of the Revolution. The achievement gave him great renown in the army. On this occasion the humanity of Napoleon was as conspicuous as his energy. He abhorred alike the tyrannic sway of the Bourbons and the sanguinary rule of the Jacobins. One of the deputies of the Convention wrote to Carnot, then Minister of War, "I send you a young man who distinguished himself very much during the siege, and earnestly recommend you to advance him speedily. If you do not, he will most assuredly advance himself."
At St. Helena Napoleon said, "I was a very warm and sincere Republican at the commencement of the Revolution. I cooled by degrees, in proportion as I acquired more just and solid ideas. My patriotism sank under the political absurdities and monstrous domestic excesses of our legislatures."[418]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 411: "Few victims ever met with viler executioners; few executioners with so exulted a victim. Shame at the foot of the scaffold, glory above, and pity every where. One blushes to be a man in contemplating this people. One glories in this title in contemplating Bailly."--Lamartine, Hist. Gir., vol. iii., p. 282.]
[Footnote 412: In Parl. Hist., "I would not debauch my humanity."]
[Footnote 413: History of Civilization in England, by Henry Thomas Buckle, vol. i., p. 338.]
[Footnote 414: Hebert was a low fellow, impudent, ignorant, and corrupt, and connected with one of the theatres in Paris. He was an ardent Jacobin, and established a paper called "Father Duchesne," which, from its ribaldry, was eagerly sought for by the populace. He was one of the leaders of the prison massacres on the 10th of August. His paper was the zealous advocate of atheism. He it was who brought the disgusting charge against the queen that she had endeavored to pollute her own son, and had committed incest with him, a child of eight years. Robespierre even was indignant at the foul accusation, and exclaimed, "Madman! was it not enough for him to have asserted that she was a Messalina, without also making an Agrippina of her?"--Biographie Moderne.]
[Footnote 415: In this celebrated pamphlet, the "Old Cordelier," Desmoulins thus powerfully describes France, while pretending to describe Rome under the emperors: "Every thing, under that terrible government, was made the groundwork of suspicion. Does a citizen avoid society and live retired by his fireside? That is to ruminate in private on sinister designs. Is he rich? That renders the danger greater that he will corrupt the citizens by his largesses. Is he poor? None so dangerous as those who have nothing to lose. Is he thoughtful and melancholy? He is revolving what he calls the calamities of his country. Is he gay and dissipated? He is concealing, like Cæsar, ambition under the mask of pleasure. The natural death of a celebrated man has become so rare that historians transmit it, as a matter worthy of record, to future ages. The tribunals, once the protectors of life and property, have become the mere organs of butchery."
Speaking of Hebert, he said, "Hebert, the head of this turbulent and atrocious faction, is a miserable intriguer, a caterer for the guillotine, a traitor paid by Pitt, a thief expelled for theft from his office of check-taker at a theatre."--Le Vieux Cordelier.]
[Footnote 416: Rioufle, p. 67.]
[Footnote 417: Mignet, p. 245.]
[Footnote 418: Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 125.]
XXXVI. FALL OF ROBESPIERRE
Inexplicable Character of Robespierre.--Cécile Regnault.--Fête in honor of the Supreme Being.--Increase of Victims.--The Triumvirate.--Suspicions of Robespierre.--Struggle between Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety.--Conspiracy against Robespierre.--Session of the 27th of July.--Robespierre and his Friends arrested.--Efforts to save Robespierre.--Peril of the Convention.--Execution of Robespierre and his Confederates.
Robespierre, who was now apparently at the height of his power, is one of the most inexplicable of men. His moral character was irreproachable; no bribes could corrupt him; he sincerely endeavored to establish a republic founded upon the basis of popular liberty and virtue; and self-aggrandizement seems never to have entered into his aims. He was not a blood-thirsty man; but was ready, with frigid mercilessness, to crush any party which stood in the way of his plans. His soul appears to have been almost as insensible to any generous emotion as was the blade of the guillotine.[419] He seems to have mourned the apparent necessity of beheading Danton. Repeatedly he was heard to say, perhaps hypocritically,
"Oh, if Danton were but honest! If he were but a true Republican! What would I not give for the lantern of Diogenes to read the heart of Danton, and learn if he be the friend or the enemy of the Republic?"
Robespierre would gladly have received the aid of Danton's powerful arm, but, finding his old friend hostile to his measures, he pitilessly sent him to the guillotine. And yet there is evidence that he at times was very weary of that work of death which he deemed it necessary to prosecute.[420]
"Death," said he, "always death; and the scoundrels throw all the responsibility upon me. What a memory shall I leave behind me if this lasts! Life is a burden to me."
On the 7th of May, 1794, Robespierre made a very eloquent speech in the Convention advocating the doctrines of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. He presented the following decrees, which were adopted by acclamation:
"Art. 1. The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.
"Art. 2. They acknowledge that the worship worthy of the Supreme Being is one of the duties of man."
There were some unavailing attempts now made to assassinate Robespierre; one, very singular in its character, by a beautiful girl, Cécile Regnault, but seventeen years of age. She called at Robespierre's house and asked to see him. Her appearance attracted suspicion, and she was arrested. In her basket a change of clothes was found and two knives. She was led before the Tribunal.
"What was the object of your visit to Robespierre?" the president inquired.
"I wished," she replied, "to see what a tyrant was like."
"Why did you provide yourself with the change of clothes?"
"Because," she calmly replied, "I expected to be sent to prison and then to the guillotine."
"Did you intend to stab Robespierre?"
"No," she answered, "I never wished to hurt any one in my life."
"Why are you a Royalist?" the president continued.
"Because," she replied, "I prefer one king to sixty tyrants."
She was sent to the guillotine with all her family relations. The conduct of this girl is quite inexplicable, and it is doubted whether she seriously contemplated any crime. When she called to see Robespierre she left her knife in her room in a basket! Eight carts were filled with victims to avenge this crime.[421]
Robespierre was now so popular with the multitude that all Paris rallied around him with congratulations.
The 8th of May was appointed as a festival in honor of the Supreme Being. Robespierre, the originator of the movement, was chosen President of the Convention, that he might take the most conspicuous part on the occasion. The morning dawned with unusual splendor. For that one day the guillotine was ordered to rest. An amphitheatre was erected in the centre of the garden of the Tuileries, and the spacious grounds were crowded with a rejoicing concourse. The celebrated painter David had arranged the fête with the highest embellishments of art. At twelve o'clock Robespierre ascended a pavilion and delivered a discourse.
"Republican Frenchmen," said he, "the ever fortunate day which the French people dedicated to the Supreme Being has at length arrived. Never did the world which he created exhibit a spectacle so worthy of his attention. He has beheld tyranny, crime, and imposture reigning on earth. He beholds at this moment a whole nation, assailed by all the oppressors of mankind, suspending the course of its heroic labors to lift its thoughts and its prayers toward the Supreme Being who gave it the mission to undertake and the courage to execute them."
Having finished his brief address, he descended and set fire to a colossal group of figures representing Atheism, Discord, and Selfishness, which the idea of a God was to reduce to ashes. As they were consumed, there appeared in their place, emerging from the flames, the statue of Wisdom. After music, songs, and sundry symbolic ceremonies, an immense procession was formed, headed by Robespierre, which proceeded from the Tuileries to the Champ de Mars. Here, after the performance of pageants as imposing as Parisian genius could invent and Parisian opulence execute, the procession returned to the Tuileries, where the festival was concluded with public diversions.[422]
The pre-eminence which Robespierre assumed on this occasion excited great displeasure, and many murmurs reached his ears. Robespierre, the next day, entered complaints against those who had murmured, accused them of being Dantonists and enemies of the Revolution, and wished to send them to the guillotine. Each member of the Convention began to feel that his head was entirely at the disposal of Robespierre, and gradually became emboldened to opposition.
The legal process by which victims were arrested and sent to the guillotine had now become simple and energetic in the extreme. Any man complained to the Committee of Public Safety of whom he would, as suspected of being unfriendly to the Revolution. The committee immediately ordered the arrest of the accused. The eighteen prisons of Paris were thus choked with victims. Each evening Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, received from the Committee of Public Safety a list of those whom he was to take the next day to the Revolutionary Tribunal. If the committee, for any reason, had not prepared a list, Fouquier Tinville was allowed to select whom he pleased. To be suspected was almost certain death. From the commencement of this year (1794) the executions had increased with frightful rapidity. In January eighty-three were executed; in February, seventy-five; in March, one hundred and twenty-three; in April, two hundred and sixty-three; in May, three hundred and twenty-four; in June, six hundred and seventy-two; in July, eight hundred and thirty-five.[423]
Carts were continually passing from the gates of the Conciergerie loaded with prisoners, who were promptly condemned and sent immediately to the scaffold. Malesherbes, the intrepid and venerable defender of Louis XVI., living in retirement in the country, was dragged, with all his family, to the scaffold. If a man were rich, he was suspected of aristocracy and was sent to the guillotine. If he were learned, his celebrity exposed him to suspicion, and his doom was death. If he were virtuous, he was accused of sympathy for the victims of the guillotine, and was condemned to the scaffold. There was no longer safety but in vice and degradation. The little girls who had been led by their fathers to attend a ball given by the King of Prussia at Verdun were all arrested, brought to Paris, and condemned and executed. "The eldest," says Lamartine, "was eighteen. They were all clothed in white robes. The cart which carried them resembled a basket of lilies whose heads waved to the motion of the arm. The affected executioners wept with them." Josephine Beauharnais, afterward the bride of Napoleon, was at this time in one of the dungeons of Paris, sleeping upon a wretched pallet of straw, and expecting daily to be led to execution.
Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon were the three leading men in the Committee of Public Safety, and were hence called the Triumvirate. All began now to be weary of blood, and yet no one knew how to stem the torrent or when the carnage would cease. The Reign of Terror had become almost as intolerable as the tyranny of the old kings, but not fully so; the Reign of Terror crushed thousands who could make their woes heard; despotism crushed millions who were dumb. There was no hope for France but in some energetic arm which, assuming the dictatorship, should rescue liberty from the encroachments of kings and from being degraded by the mob. Robespierre was now the most prominent man in France and the most popular with the multitude. His friends urged him to assume the dictatorship.
Jealousy of Robespierre's ambition now began to arise, and his enemies rapidly increased. Whispers that he had become a traitor to the Republic and was seeking kingly power began to circulate. Popular applause is proverbially fickle. Robespierre soon found that he could not carry his measures in the Committee of Public Safety, and, disgusted and humiliated, he absented himself from the sittings. He attempted to check the effusion of blood, but was overruled by those even more pitiless than himself. He now determined to crush the committee. Political defeat was death. He must either send the committee to the scaffold or bow his own head beneath the knife. It was a death-struggle short and decisive. Pretended lists were circulated of the heads Robespierre demanded. Many in the Convention were appalled. Secret nightly councils were held to array a force against him. The mob of Paris he could command. Henriot, the chief of the military force, was entirely subservient to his will. He reigned supreme and without a rival in the Jacobin Club. His power was apparently resistless. But despair nerved his foes.
Three very able men, accustomed to command--Tallien, Barras, and Fréron--headed the conspiracy against Robespierre. The party thus organized was called the Thermidorien, because it was in the month of Thermidor (July) that they achieved their signal victory, and, trampling upon the corpse of Robespierre and of his adherents, ascended to power. But nearly all these men, of all these parties, seem to have had no sense whatever of responsibility to God, or of Christianity as the rule of life. They had one and all rejected the Gospel of our Savior, and had accepted human philosophy alone as their guide. They were men, many of them, great in ability, illustrious in many virtues, sincerely loving their country, and too proud to allow themselves to be degraded by bribes or plunder. As the general on the battle-field will order movements which will cut down thousands of men, thus did these Revolutionists, without any scruples of conscience, send hundreds daily to the guillotine, not from love of blood, but because they believed that the public welfare demanded the sacrifice. And yet there was a cowardly spirit impelling these massacres. No one dared speak a word in behalf of mercy, lest he should be deemed in sympathy with aristocrats. He alone was safe from suspicion who was merciless in denunciation of the suspected. It is, however, remarkable that nearly all the actors in these scenes of blood, even in the hour of death, protested their conscientiousness and their integrity.
Robespierre was now involved in inextricable toils. He was weary of blood. The nation was becoming disgusted with such carnage.[424] He was universally recognized as the leading mind in the government, and every act was deemed his act. His enemies in the Committee of Public Safety plied the guillotine with new vigor, knowing that the public responsibility would rest on Robespierre. Robespierre was strongly opposed to that reckless massacre, and yet dared not interfere to save the condemned. His own dearest friends were arrested and dragged to the guillotine, and yet Robespierre was compelled to be silent. Earnestly he was entreated to assume the dictatorship, and rescue France from its measureless woe. Apparently he could have done it with ease. He refused; persistently and reiteratedly refused. What were his motives none now can tell. Some say cowardice prevented him; others affirm that true devotion to the Republic forbade him. The fact alone remains; he refused the dictatorship, saying again and again, "No! no Cromwell; not even I myself."
Robespierre retired for some weeks from the Committee of Public Safety, while blood was flowing in torrents, and prepared a very elaborate discourse, to be delivered in the Convention, defending himself and assailing his foes.
On the morning of the 26th of July Robespierre appeared in the Convention, prepared to speak. His Jacobin friends, forewarned, crowded around him, and his partisans thronged the galleries. His foes were appalled, and trembled; but they rallied all their friends. It was a decisive hour, and life or death was suspended on its issues. The speech, which he read from a carefully-prepared manuscript, was long and exceedingly eloquent. His foes felt that they were crushed, and a silence as of death for a moment followed its delivery. The printing of the speech was then voted, apparently by acclamation, and the order for its transmission to all the Communes of the Republic.
The foes of Robespierre were now emboldened by despair. Their fate seemed sealed, and consequently there was nothing to be lost by any violent struggle in self-defense. Cambon ventured an attack, boldly declaring, "One single man paralyzes the National Convention, and that man is Robespierre." Others followed with more and more vigorous blows. Robespierre was amazed at the audacity. The charm of his invincibility was gone. It soon appeared that there was a strong party opposed to Robespierre, and by a large majority it was voted to revoke the resolution to print the speech.
Robespierre, mute with alarm, left the Convention, and hastened to his friends in the Club of Jacobins. He read to them the speech which the Convention had repudiated. They received it with thunders of applause and with vows of vengeance. Robespierre, fainting with exhaustion, said, in conclusion,
"Brothers, you have heard my last will and testament. I have seen to-day that the league of villains is so strong that I can not hope to escape them. I yield without a murmur! I leave to you my memory; it will be dear to you, and you will defend it."
Many were affected even to tears, and, crowding around him, conjured him to rally his friends in an insurrection. Henriot declared his readiness to march his troops against the Convention. Robespierre, knowing that death was the inevitable doom of the defeated party, consented, saying,
"Well, then, let us separate the wicked from the weak. Free the Convention from those who oppress it. Advance, and save the country. If in these generous efforts we fail, then, my friends, you shall see me drink hemlock calmly."
David, grasping his hand, enthusiastically exclaimed, "Robespierre, if you drink hemlock, I will drink it with you." "Yes," interrupted a multitude of voices, "all! we all will perish with you. To die with you is to die with the people."
One or two of Robespierre's opponents had followed him from the Convention to the Hall of the Jacobins. Couthon pointed them out and denounced them. The Jacobins fell upon them and drove them out of the house wounded and with rent garments. With difficulty they escaped with their lives. Robespierre witnessed this violence, and dreading the effects of a general insurrection, withdrew his consent to adopt means so lawless and desperate. He probably felt that, strongly supported as he was, he would be able the next day to triumph in the Convention.
"At this refusal," says Lamartine, "honest, perhaps, but impolitic, Coffinhal, taking Payan by the arm and leading him out of the room, said,
"'You see plainly that his virtue could not consent to insurrection. Well! since he will not be saved, let us prepare to defend ourselves and to avenge him.'"
The night was passed by both parties in preparing for the decisive strife of the next day. The friends of Robespierre were active in concerting, in all the quarters of Paris, a rising of the people to storm the Convention. Tallien, Barras, Fréron, Fouché, slept not. They were informed of all that had passed at the Jacobins, and their emissaries brought them hourly intelligence through the night of the increasing tumult of the people. They made vigorous preparations for the debate within the walls and for the defense of the doors against the forest of pikes with which it was about to be assailed. Barras was intrusted with the military defense. It was resolved that Robespierre should be cried down and denounced by internal tumult and not permitted to speak. Each party, not knowing the strength of its opponents, was sanguine of success.
The morning of the 27th of July dawned, and as Robespierre entered the Convention, attired with unusual care, and with a smile of triumph upon his lips, silence and stillness reigned through the house. St. Just, in behalf of Robespierre, commenced the onset. A scene of tumult immediately ensued of which no adequate description can be given. Robespierre immediately saw that his friends were far outnumbered by his foes, and was in despair. Pale and excited, he attempted to ascend the tribune. Tallien seized by the coat and dragged him away, while cries of Down with the tyrant filled the house.[425]
"Just now," shouted Tallien, taking the tribune from which he had ejected Robespierre, "I demanded that the curtain should be withdrawn; it is so; the conspirators are unmasked and liberty will triumph. Up to this moment I had preserved utter silence because I was aware that the tyrant had made a list of proscriptions. But I was present at the sitting of the Jacobins. I beheld the formation of the army of this second Cromwell, and I armed myself with this poniard, with which to pierce his heart if the National Convention had not the courage to order his arrest."
With these words he drew a dagger and pointed it menacingly at the breast of Robespierre. At the same time he moved the arrest of Henriot and others of the leading men of that party. The motion was tumultuously carried. In vain Robespierre attempted to gain a hearing. Cries of "Down with the tyrant" filled the house, and menaces, reproaches, and insults were heaped upon him without measure. The wretched man, overwhelmed by the clamor, turned pale with indignation, and shouted "President of assassins, will you hear me?" "No! no! no!" seemed to be the unanimous response. In the midst of the uproar Louchet moved the arrest of Robespierre. The proposition was received with thunders of applause.[426] The brother of Robespierre, a young man of gentle, affectionate nature and many virtues, who was universally esteemed, now rose, and said,
"I am as guilty as my brother. I have shared his virtues, I wish to share his fate."
Robespierre instantly interposed, saying, "I accept my condemnation. I have deserved your hatred. But, crime or virtue, my brother is not guilty of that which you strike in me."
Shouts and stamping drowned his voice. As cries of Vive la République rose on all sides, Robespierre quietly folded his arms, and, with a contemptuous smile, exclaimed, "The Republic! it is destroyed; for scoundrels triumph." It was now three o'clock in the afternoon. The two Robespierres, Couthon, St. Just, and Lebus were led by gens d'armes from the Convention across the Place du Carrousel to the Hôtel de Brionne, where the Committee of General Safety were in session. A crowd followed the prisoners with derision and maledictions. As they entered the Carrousel a procession of carts, containing forty-five victims on their way to the guillotine, met them.
After a very brief examination Robespierre was sent to the Luxembourg. His confederates were distributed among the other prisons of Paris. The Mayor of Paris and Henriot were in the mean time active in endeavors to excite an insurrection to rescue the prisoners. The following proclamation was issued from the Hôtel de Ville:
"Brothers and friends! the country is in imminent danger! The wicked have mastered the Convention, where they hold in chains the virtuous Robespierre. To arms! to arms! Let us not lose the fruits of the 18th of August and the 2d of June."
Henriot, waving his sword, swore that he would drag the scoundrels who voted the arrest of Robespierre through the streets tied to the tail of his horse. This brutal man was now in such a state of intoxication as to be incapable of decisive action. Flourishing a pistol, he mounted his horse, and, with a small detachment of troops, galloped to the Luxembourg to rescue his friend. He was met on the way by the troops of the Convention, who had been ordered to arrest him. They seized him, dragged him from his horse, bound him with their belts, and threw him into a guard-house, almost dead-drunk. In the mean time the populace rescued all the prisoners, and carried them in triumph to the mayor's room at the Hôtel de Ville. Robespierre, however, notwithstanding the most earnest entreaties of the Jacobins and the municipal government, refused to encourage or to accept the insurrection, or to make escape from arrest. "Made prisoner," writes Lamartine, "by command of his enemies, he resolved either to triumph or fall submissive to the law only; added to which, he firmly believed the Revolutionary Tribunal would acquit him of all laid to his charge; or, if not, and if even condemned to death, 'the death of one just man,' said he, 'is less hurtful to the Republic than the example of a revolt against the national representation.'"
News was brought to the Hôtel de Ville of the arrest of Henriot. Coffinhal, Vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, immediately rallied the mob, rushed to the Tuileries, released Henriot, who was by this time somewhat sobered, and brought him back to the Hôtel de Ville. Henriot, exasperated by his arrest, placed himself at the head of his troops and marched with a battery against the Convention. At this stage of the affair no one could judge which party would be victorious. The city government, with the populace at its disposal, was on one side; the Convention, with its friends, on the other.[427]
It was now seven o'clock in the evening, and the deputies of the Convention, fully conscious of their peril, seemed almost speechless with terror. Robespierre and his confederates were rescued and protected by the city government; the mob was aroused, and the National Guard, under their leader, Henriot, were marching against the Convention. The Revolutionary Tribunal, which alone could condemn Robespierre, it was feared would acquit him by acclamation. He would then be led back in triumph to the Convention, and his foes would be speedily dragged to the guillotine. The dismal tolling of the tocsin now was heard; in the Jacobin Club the oath was taken to live or die with Robespierre; the rallying masses were crowding in from the faubourgs; cannon were pointed against the Convention; and three thousand young students seized their arms and rendezvoused as a body-guard for Robespierre.
In this critical hour the Convention, nerved by despair, adopted those measures of boldness and energy which could alone save them from destruction. As they were deliberating, Henriot placed his artillery before their doors and ordered them to be blown open. The deputies remained firmly in their seats, saying, "Here is our post, and here we will die." The friends of the Convention, who crowded the galleries, rushed out and spread themselves through the streets to rally defenders for the laws. Several of the deputies also left the hall, threw themselves among the soldiers, and, remonstrating with them, pointed to Henriot, and said,
"Soldiers! look at that drunken man! who but a drunkard would ever point his arms against his country or its representatives? Will you, who have ever deserved so much from your country, cast shame and dishonor on her now?"
The Convention had outlawed Henriot and appointed Barras to the command of the National Guard in his place. The soldiers began to waver. Henriot, affrighted, put spurs to his horse and fled. Barras, an energetic man, was now in command, and the tide had thus suddenly and strongly turned in favor of the Convention. It was now night, and the gleam of ten thousand torches was reflected from the multitudes surging through the streets. Barras, on horseback, with a strong retinue, traversed the central quarters of Paris, rallying the citizens to the defense of the Convention. Eighteen hundred bold, well-armed men were soon marshaled before the doors. With two other bands he marched along parallel streets to the Place de Grève, where he drove off the disorderly crowd and secured all the approaches to the Hôtel de Ville. Robespierre was still in one of the rooms of the Hôtel de Ville, surrounded by his confederates and by the members of the city government. They implored him to authorize an insurrection, assuring him that his name would rally the populace and rescue them all from inevitable death. But Robespierre persistently refused, declaring that he would rather die than violate the laws established by the people.
A detachment of soldiers, sent by Barras, cautiously ascended the steps, and entered the Salle de l'Egalité to rearrest the rescued prisoners. As they were ascending the stairs Lebas discharged a pistol into his heart and fell dead. The younger Robespierre leaped from the window into the court-yard, breaking his leg by his fall. Coffinhal, enraged in contemplating the ruin into which the drunken imbecility of Henriot had involved them, seized him and threw him out of a window of the second story upon a pile of rubbish, exclaiming,
"Lie there, wretched drunkard! You are not worthy to die on a scaffold!"
Robespierre sat calmly at a table, awaiting his fate. One of the gens d'armes discharged a pistol at him. The ball entered his left cheek, fracturing his jaw and carrying away several of his teeth. His head dropped upon the table, deluging with blood the papers which were before him. The troops of the Convention now filled the Hôtel de Ville, arresting all its inmates. The day was just beginning to dawn as the long file of prisoners were led out into the Place de Grève to be conducted to the hall of the Convention.[428]
First came Robespierre, borne by four men on a litter. His fractured jaw was bound up by a handkerchief, which was steeped in blood. Couthon was paralytic in his limbs. Unable to walk, he was also carried in the arms of several men. They had carelessly let him fall, and his clothes were torn, disarranged, and covered with mud. Robespierre the younger, stunned by his fall and with his broken limb hanging helplessly down, was conveyed insensible in the arms of two men. The corpse of Lebas was borne next in this sad train, covered with a table-cloth spotted with his blood. Then followed St. Just, bareheaded, with dejected countenance, his hands bound behind him. Upward of eighty members of the city government, bound two and two, completed the melancholy procession.
It was five o'clock in the morning when the captives were led to the Tuileries. In the mean time Légendre had marched to the assembly-room of the Jacobins, dispersed them, locked their doors, and brought the keys to the President of the Convention.[429]
Robespierre was laid upon a table in an anteroom, while an interminable crowd pressed in and around to catch a sight of the fallen dictator. The unhappy man was overwhelmed with reproaches and insults, and feigned death to escape this moral torture. The blood was freely flowing from his wound, coagulating in his mouth, and choking him as it trickled down his throat. The morning was intensely hot; not a breath of pure air could the wounded man inhale; insatiable thirst and a burning fever consumed him; and thus he remained for more than an hour, enduring the intensest pangs of bodily and mental anguish. By order of the Convention, he and his confederates were then removed to the Committee of General Safety for examination; from which tribunal they were sent to the Conciergerie, where they were all thrown into the same dungeon to await their trial, which was immediately to take place before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
A few hours of pain, anguish, and despair passed away, when at three o'clock in the afternoon the whole party were conveyed to that merciless court which was but the last stepping-stone to death. The trial lasted but a few moments. They were already condemned, and it was only necessary to prove their identity. The Convention was victorious, and no man of the Revolutionary Tribunal dared to resist its will. Had the Commune of Paris conquered in this strife, the obsequious Tribunal, with equal alacrity, would have consigned the Deputies to the guillotine.
At five o'clock the carts of the condemned received the prisoners.[430] The long procession advanced through the Rue St. Honoré to the Place de la Révolution. The fickle crowd thronged the streets, heaping imprecations upon the man to whom they would have shouted hosanna had he been a victor. Robespierre, his brother, Couthon, Henriot, all mangled, bleeding, and with broken bones, were thrown into the first cart with the corpse of Lebas. As the cart jolted over the pavement shrieks of anguish were extorted from the victims. At six o'clock they reached the steps of the guillotine. Robespierre ascended the scaffold with a firm step; but, as the executioner brutally tore the bandage from his inflamed wound, he uttered a shriek of torture which pierced every ear. The dull sullen sound of the falling axe was heard, and the head of Robespierre fell ghastly into the basket. For a moment there was silence, and then the crowd raised a shout as if a great victory had been achieved and the long-sought blessings of the Revolution attained.[431]
Thus died Robespierre, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. His character will probably ever remain a mystery. "His death was the date and not the cause of the cessation of terror. Deaths would have ceased by his triumphs, as they did by his death. Thus did Divine justice dishonor his repentance, and cast misfortune on his good intentions, making of his tomb a gulf filled up. It has made of his memory an enigma of which history trembles to pronounce the solution, fearing to do him injustice if she brand it as a crime, or to create horror if she should term it a virtue. This man was, and must ever remain, shadowy and undefined."[432]
Twenty-two were beheaded with Robespierre. The next day seventy who were arrested at the Hôtel de Ville were sent to the guillotine. The following day twelve more bled upon the scaffold. In three days one hundred and fourteen perished, untried, by that tyranny which had supplanted the tyranny of Robespierre.[433]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 419: "Mr. Alison gives currency to an atrocious slander against Robespierre, for which he has adduced no authority, and which is contradicted by the whole evidence of Robespierre's life. 'He (Philippe Egalité) was detained,' says Alison, 'above a quarter of an hour in front of the Palais Royal, by order of Robespierre, who had asked in vain for the hand of his daughter in marriage, and had promised, if he would relent in that extremity, to excite a tumult which would save his life.'"--Life of Robespierre, by G.H. Lewes, p. 265.]
[Footnote 420: "Danton regarded the austere principles of Robespierre as folly. He thought that the Republicans could not maintain their power but by surrounding themselves with the consideration which wealth confers, and he consequently thought it necessary to close their eyes against the sudden acquisition of wealth of certain Revolutionists. Robespierre, on the contrary, flattered himself that he could establish a republic in France based on virtue, and when he was thoroughly persuaded that Danton was an obstacle to that system he abandoned him."--Biographie Universelle.]
[Footnote 421: Du Broca.]
[Footnote 422: "Robespierre had a prodigious force at his disposal. The lowest orders, who saw the Revolution in his person, supported him as the best representative of its doctrines and interests; the armed force of Paris, commanded by Henriot, was at his command. He had entire sway over the Jacobins, whom he admitted and ejected at pleasure; all important posts were occupied by his creatures; he had formed the Revolutionary Tribunal and the new committee himself."--Mignet, p. 256.]
[Footnote 423: Thiers, vol. iii., p. 68, note from Quarterly Review.]
[Footnote 424: Prudhomme, a Republican, who wrote during this period of excitement, has left six volumes of the details of the Reign of Terror. Two of these contain an alphabetical list of all the persons put to death by the Revolutionary Tribunals. He gives the following appalling statement of the victims:
Nobles 1,278 Noble women 750 Wives of laborers and artisans 1,467 Nuns 350 Priests 1,135 Men not noble 13,623 ------ Total sent to the guillotine 18,603 18,603 Women who died of premature delivery 3,400 Women who died in childbirth from grief 348 Women killed in La Vendée 15,000 Children killed in La Vendée 22,000 Men slain in La Vendée 900,000 Victims under Carrier at Nantes 32,000 Victims at Lyons 31,000 ---------- Total 1,022,351
This list, appalling as it is, does not include those massacred in the prisons, or those shot at Toulon or Marseilles.]
[Footnote 425: The full report of this terrible scene, as contained in the Moniteur of the 11th Thermidor, is one of the most exciting narratives in history. In the conflict Robespierre appears immeasurably superior to his opponents in dignity and argument. But he is overwhelmed and crushed by the general clamor. He struggles valiantly, and falls like a strong man armed.]
[Footnote 426: "In the height of the terrible conflict, when Robespierre seemed deprived by rage of the power of articulation, a voice cried out, 'It is Danton's blood that is choking you.' Robespierre, indignant, recovered his voice and courage to exclaim, 'Danton! Is it, then, Danton you regret? Cowards! why did you not defend him?' There was spirit, truth, and even dignity in this bitter retort--the last words that Robespierre ever spoke in public."--Quarterly Review.]
[Footnote 427: The state of the times is illustrated by the fact that Barrere is reported to have gone to the Convention with two speeches in his pocket, one assailing Robespierre and the other defending him. He knew not which party would triumph, and he was prepared to join the strongest.]
[Footnote 428: Though it has generally been represented that Robespierre attempted to commit suicide, the evidence now seems to be conclusive that he did not. See Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. iii., p. 527.]
[Footnote 429: Légendre, the butcher, was a deputy of the Convention. He was a man of extraordinary nerve, and had been one of the most furious members of the society of Jacobins.--Biog. Universelle.]
[Footnote 430: There is some confusion respecting the dates of these events; but we follow the dates as given by Lamartine.]
[Footnote 431: "Robespierre," said Napoleon, "was by no means the worst character who figured in the Revolution. He opposed trying the queen. He was not an atheist; on the contrary, he had publicly maintained the existence of a Supreme Being in opposition to many of his colleagues. Neither was he of opinion that it was necessary to exterminate all priests and nobles, like many others. Marat, for example, maintained that it was necessary that six hundred thousand heads should fall. Robespierre wanted to proclaim the king an outlaw, and not to go through the ridiculous mockery of trying him. Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing or causing the deaths of others either from personal enmity or a desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast, but one who really believed that he was acting right, and died not worth a sou. In some respects Robespierre may be said to have been an honest man."--Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 590.]
XXXVII. THE THERMIDORIANS AND THE JACOBINS
The Reign of Committees.--The Jeunesse Dorée.--The Reaction.--Motion against Fouquier Tinville.--Apotheosis of Rousseau.--Battle of Fleurus.--Brutal Order of the Committee of Public Welfare.--Composition of the two Parties.--Speech of Billaud Varennes.--Speech of Légendre.--The Club-house of the Jacobins closed.--Victories of Pichegru.--Alliance between Holland and France.--Advance of Kleber.--Peace with Prussia.--Quiberon.--Riot in Lyons.
The fall of Robespierre was hailed with general enthusiasm, for he was believed to be the chief instigator of that carnage which, in reality, at the time of his fall, he was struggling to repress. There were now in the Convention the headless remains of four parties, the Girondists, Hebertists, Dantonists, and Robespierrians. The able leaders of all these parties had, each in their turn, perished upon the scaffold. There now arose from these ruins a party, which was called, as we have before remarked, Thermidorians, from the month Thermidor (July), in which its supremacy commenced. A new government was immediately and noiselessly evolved, the result of necessity. The extreme concentration of power in the Committee of Public Safety, over which Robespierre had been supposed to rule as a dictator, was now succeeded by a dissemination of power, wide and ineffective. Sixteen committees became the executive of France; one Assembly its legislative power. These committees were composed of members numbering from twelve to fifty. The Committee of Public Welfare contained twelve, and superintended military and diplomatic operations; that of General Safety sixteen, and had the direction of the police; that of Finance forty-eight. Such was the new government, under which, after the fall of Robespierre, the Republic struggled along.
The horrors of the Reign of Terror were now producing a decided reaction. Many of the young men of Paris, who abhorred the past scenes of violence, organized themselves into a band called the Jeunesse Dorée, or Gilded Youth, and commenced vigorous opposition to the Jacobins. They wore a distinctive dress, and armed themselves with a short club loaded with lead. Frequent conflicts took place in the streets between the two parties, in which the Jeunesse Dorée were generally victorious. The Terrorists having become unpopular, and being in the decided minority, the guillotine was soon allowed to rest. Mercy rapidly succeeded cruelty. The captives who crowded the prisons of Paris were gradually liberated, and even the Revolutionary Tribunal was first modified and then abolished.
The reaction was so strong, annulling past decrees, liberating suspected Loyalists, and punishing violent Revolutionists, that even many of the true friends of popular rights were alarmed lest the nation should drift back again under the sway of old feudal despotism. M. Fréron, in the following terms, moved, in the Convention, an act of accusation against the execrable Fouquier Tinville, who had been public accuser:
"I demand that the earth be at length delivered from that monster, and that Fouquier be sent to hell, there to wallow in the blood he has shed."
The decree was passed by acclamation. In the space of eight or ten days after the fall of Robespierre, out of ten thousand suspected persons not one remained in the prisons of Paris.[434] For many weeks nothing of moment occurred in the Convention but the petty strife of factions. On the 11th of October the remains of Rousseau were transferred to the Pantheon with all the accompaniments of funeral pageantry. They were deposited by the side of the remains of Voltaire. Upon his tomb were inscribed the words, "Here reposes the man of nature and of truth."
About a month before the fall of Robespierre, on the 26th of June, the celebrated battle of Fleurus was fought. The sanguinary engagement extended along a semicircle nearly thirty miles in extent. The French had brought up about eighty thousand troops, to oppose an equal number of the Allies. The French, under Pichegru, were victorious at every point, and the Allies were compelled to retreat. They rallied for a short time in the vicinity of Brussels, but were soon again compelled to retire, and all Belgium fell into the hands of the Republicans.
About the middle of July two armies of the French, amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand, effected a junction in the city of Brussels. The Committee of Public Safety had passed an inhuman decree that no quarter should be given to the English. The soldiers refused obedience to this decree. A sergeant, having taken some English prisoners, brought them to an officer.
"Why did you spare their lives?" the officer inquired.
"Because," the sergeant replied, "it was saving so many shots."
"True," rejoined the officer, "but the Representatives will oblige us to shoot them."
"It is not we," retorted the sergeant, "who will shoot them. Send them to the Representatives. If they are barbarous enough, why, let them kill and eat them if they like."[435]
While the French armies were gaining these signal victories all along the Rhine, war was raging with almost equal ferocity in the ravines of the Alps and at the base of the Pyrenees, as the Republicans struggled to repel the invading hosts of Austria, England, and Spain.
The Thermidorians and the Jacobins were now the two great parties struggling for power all over France. The Thermidorians were the moderate conservative party, and the Jacobins called them Aristocrats. The Jacobins were the radical, progressive, revolutionary party, and the Thermidorians called them Terrorists. The more intelligent and reputable portion of the community were with the Thermidorians; the women, weary of turmoil and blood, were very generally with them; and the very efficient military band of young men called the Jeunesse Dorée (gilded youth), who belonged to the rich and middle classes, were very efficient supporters of this party, hurling defiance upon the Jacobins, and ever ready for a street fray with their clubs. The Jacobins were composed of the mob, generally headed by those vigorous, reckless, determined men who usually form what Thiers calls "the ferocious democracy." Fréron's journal, The Orator of the People, was the eloquent advocate of the Thermidorians, now rising rapidly to power, and it launched incessant and merciless anathemas against the revolutionary canaille. The females who advocated Jacobinism were called the furies of the guillotine, because they had frequently formed circles around the scaffold, assailing the victims with ribald abuse. These two parties were so equally divided, and the strife was so fierce between them, that scenes of fearful uproar frequently took place not only in the Convention but throughout all France. The spirit of the Jacobins at this time may be seen in the following brief extract from a speech of Billaud Varennes:
"People talk," said he, "of shootings and drownings, but they do not recollect that the individuals for whom they feel pity had furnished succors to the banditti. They do not recollect the cruelties perpetrated on our volunteers, who were hanged upon trees and shot in files. If vengeance is demanded for the banditti, let the families of two hundred thousand Republicans, mercilessly slaughtered, come also to demand vengeance. The course of counter-revolutionists is known. When, in the time of the Constituent Assembly, they wanted to bring the Revolution to trial, they called the Jacobins disorganizers and shot them in the Field of Mars. After the 2d of September, when they wanted to prevent the establishment of the Republic, they called them quaffers of blood and loaded them with atrocious calumnies. They are now recommencing the same machinations; but let them not expect to triumph. The Patriots have been able to keep silence for a moment, but the lion is not dead when he slumbers, and when he awakes he exterminates all his enemies. The trenches are open, the Patriots are about to rouse themselves and to resume all their energy. We have already risked our lives a thousand times. If the scaffold awaits us, let us recollect that it was the scaffold which covered the immortal Sidney with glory."
This speech, reported in the journal of the Jacobins, called the Journal de la Montagne, created great excitement, and gave rise to one of the stormiest debates in the Convention. The Jacobins were accused of wishing to direct the mob against the Convention. They, on the other hand, accused the Thermidorians of releasing well-known Royalists from prison, and of thus encouraging a counter-revolution. Légendre, speaking in behalf of the Thermidorians, in reply to the Jacobins, said,
"What have you to complain of, you who are constantly accusing us? Is it because citizens are no longer sent to prison by hundreds? because the guillotine no longer dispatches fifty, sixty, or eighty persons per day? Ah! I must confess that in this point our pleasure differs from yours, and that our manner of sweeping the prisons is not the same. We have visited them ourselves; we have made, as far as it was possible to do so, a distinction between the Aristocrats and the Patriots; if we have done wrong, here are our heads to answer for it. But while we make reparation for crimes, while we are striving to make you forget that those crimes are your own, why do you go to a notorious society to denounce us, and to mislead the people who attend there, fortunately in no great numbers? I move that the Convention take measures to prevent its members from going and preaching up rebellion at the Jacobins'."
The conflict extended from the Convention into the streets, and for several days there were serious riots. Angry groups in hostile bands paraded the gardens of the Tuileries and the Palais Royal--the partisans of the Thermidorians shouting "Down with the Terrorists and Robespierre's tail." Their opponents shouted "The Jacobins forever! Down with the Aristocrats!"
On the 9th of November there was a battle between the two parties in the Rue St. Honoré, in and around the hall of the Jacobins, which lasted for several hours. A number of the women, called Furies of the Guillotine, who mingled in the fray, were caught by the Jeunesse Dorée, and, in defiance of all the rules of chivalry, had their clothes stripped from their backs and were ignominiously whipped. It was midnight before the disturbance was quelled. A stormy debate ensued next day in the Convention.
"Where has tyranny," said Rewbel, "been organized? At the Jacobins'. Where has it found its supporters and satellites? At the Jacobins'. Who have covered France with mourning, carried despair into families, filled the country with prisons, and rendered the Republic so odious that a slave, pressed down by the weight of his irons, would refuse to live under it? The Jacobins. Who regret the frightful government under which we have lived? The Jacobins. If you have not now the courage to declare yourselves, you have no longer a Republic, because you have Jacobins."
Influenced by such sentiments, the Convention passed a decree "to close the door of places where factions arise and where civil war is preached."
Thus terminated the long reign of the Jacobin Club. The act was greeted with acclaim by the general voice of France.[436]
The French, who had twelve hundred thousand men under arms, were now in possession of all the important points on the Rhine, and every where held their assailants at bay.[437] The latter part of December, Pichegru, driving the allied Dutch, English, and Austrians before him, crossed the Meuse on the ice and entered Holland. The Republican party in Holland was numerous and detested their rulers. They immediately prepared to rise and welcome their friends, the French. In this desperate situation the Stadtholder implored a truce, offering as a condition of peace neutrality and indemnification for the expenses of the war.[438] Pichegru refused the truce; but sent the terms of peace for the consideration of the government in Paris. The proffered terms were refused, and Pichegru was ordered to press on and restore the Dutch Republic. At the head of two hundred thousand troops he spread, like a torrent, over all Holland. He was every where received with open arms and as a deliverer. The Allies, with the emigrants, fled in all directions, some by land and some by sea. A portion of the Dutch fleet, at anchor near the Texel, was frozen in by the unparalleled severity of the winter. A squadron of horse-artillery galloped across the ice and summoned it to surrender. The fleet was compelled to strike its flags to these novel assailants. On the 20th of January, 1795, Pichegru entered Amsterdam in triumph. The inhabitants crowded from the walls to meet him, shouting "The French Republic forever! Liberty forever!"
Holland, organizing as the Republic of the United Provinces, on the 16th of May entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with the French Republic, to be perpetual during the continuance of the war. The two infant republics needed mutual support to resist the combined monarchies of England and the Continent.[439]
While Pichegru was gaining such victories on the Lower Rhine and in Holland, Kleber was also, on the Upper Rhine, driving the Austrians before him. He boldly crossed the river in the impetuous pursuit, and carried the horrors of war into the enemies' country. Soon, however, he was crowded with such numbers of antagonists that he was compelled, in his turn, to commence a retreat. Again, re-enforcements arriving, he assumed the offensive. Thus the tide of war ebbed and flowed.
Prussia, alarmed by these signal victories of the Republican troops, and threatened with invasion, was anxious to withdraw from the coalition. The king sent a commissioner to Pichegru's head-quarters to propose peace. The commissioners from the two countries met at Basle, and on the 5th of April a treaty of peace was signed. The French agreed to evacuate the Prussian provinces they had occupied on the right bank of the Rhine, and the Prussian monarchy agreed that there should be peace, amity, and a good understanding between the King of Prussia and the French Republic.
Spain, also, trembling in view of the triumphant march of Dugommier through the defiles of the Pyrenees, made proposals of accommodation, promising to acknowledge the Republic and to pay indemnities for the war. Peace with the Peninsula was signed at Basle on the 12th of July. This peace, which detached a Bourbon from the coalition, was hailed throughout France with transports of joy.[440]
England, Austria, and Naples still remained firm in their determination to crush the Republic. William Pitt led the ministry with his warlike measures, and triumphed over the peaceful policy of Sheridan and Fox. He thus, for a quarter of a century, converted all Europe into a field of blood. Roused by the energies of Pitt, the English government organized a very formidable expedition, to be landed in La Vendée, to rouse and rally the Royalists all over France, and thus to reinvigorate the energies of civil war. A squadron was fitted out, consisting of three 74-gun ships, two frigates of 44 guns, four frigates of 30 to 36 guns, and several gun-boats and transports. This was the first division, which, as soon as it was established in France, was to be followed by another. The fleet came to anchor in the Bay of Quiberon on the 25th of June. A motley mass of about seven thousand men were speedily landed; the Royalists soon joined them, making an army of some thirteen thousand. General Hoche, who had for some time been valiantly and most humanely struggling for the pacification of La Vendée, marched to repel them. A few bloody battles ensued, in which the unhappy invaders were driven into a narrow peninsula, where, by a midnight assault, they most miserably perished. A few only escaped to the ships; many were drowned, and a large number were mercilessly put to the sword. The Convention had decreed the penalty of death to any Frenchman who should enter France with arms in his hands.
At Lyons there was a general rising of the Royalists and the reactionary party against the Revolutionists. The Royalists proved themselves not one whit behind the Jacobins in the energy with which they could push their Reign of Terror. Led by the priests, the Royalist mob broke into the prisons and murdered seventy or eighty prisoners who were accused of revolutionary violence. One prison was set on fire, and all its inmates perished miserably in the flames.
The disturbances in Lyons were soon quelled, and Hoche, having annihilated the force which the English had landed in the Bay of Quiberon, gradually succeeded in introducing tranquillity into La Vendée. Many of the Royalists came to his camp to seek terms of reconciliation with the Republic.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 432: History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 535.]
[Footnote 433: "Mirabeau, Marat, Brissot, Danton, Robespierre were all heads cut off in succession; and all succeeding heads were saved only by having recourse to one head and one arm in the Emperor Napoleon."--Life and Works of John Adams, vol. vi., p. 547.
Though Mirabeau died a natural death, he would unquestionably have been guillotined had he lived a few months longer.
Meda, the officer of the Convention who arrested Robespierre and his associates at the Hôtel de Ville, thus describes the event: "The head of my column moved forward; a terrible noise ensued; my ten pieces of artillery were brought forward and ready; those opposed to me in like manner. I threw myself between the two lines. I flew to the cannoneers of the enemy. I spoke to them of their country; of the respect due to the national representation; in short, I do not well remember what I said, but the result was that they all came over to us. I instantly dismounted, seized my pistols, addressed myself to my grenadiers, and made for the staircase of the Hôtel de Ville." He describes the manner in which he forced his way up the stairs, broke open the door, and found about fifty people assembled in the room in great confusion. Robespierre was sitting at a table, his head leaning upon his hand. "I rushed upon him," he continues, in his narrative, "presented my sabre to his breast, 'Yield, traitor,' I cried. 'It is thou art the traitor,' he replied, 'and I will have thee shot.' I instantly drew out one of my pistols, and fired at him. I aimed at his breast, but the ball hit him about the chin, and shattered all his left jaw. He fell from his chair. At the sound of the explosion his brother threw himself through the window. The uproar was immense. I cried 'Vive la République!'"]
[Footnote 434: Lacretelle.]
[Footnote 435: Thiers, vol. iii., p. 84.]
[Footnote 436: "This popular body had powerfully served the Revolution when, in order to repel Europe, it was necessary to place the government in the multitude, and to give the Republic all the energy of defense; but now it only obstructed the new order of things."--Mignet, 282.]
[Footnote 437: "At one time France had seventeen hundred thousand fighters on foot."--Toulongeon, vol. iii., p. 194.]
[Footnote 438: Thiers, vol. iii., p. 186.]
[Footnote 439: "The first act of the Representatives was to publish a proclamation, in which they declared that they would respect all private property, excepting, however, that of the Stadtholder; that the latter, being the only foe of the French Republic, his property belonged to the conquerors as an indemnification for the expenses of the war; that the French entered as friends of the Batavian nation, not to impose upon it any religion or any form of government whatever, but to deliver it from its oppressors, and to confer upon it the means of expressing its wishes. This proclamation, followed up by corresponding acts, produced a most favorable impression."--Thiers, vol. iii., p. 184.]
[Footnote 440: "Tuscany, forced, in spite of herself, to give up her neutrality by the English ambassador, who, threatening her with an English squadron, had allowed her but twelve hours to decide, was impatient to resume her part, especially since the French were at the gates of Genoa. Good understanding and friendship were re-established between the two states."--Thiers, vol. iii., p. 230.]
XXXVIII. DISSOLUTION OF THE CONVENTION
Famine in Paris.--Strife between the Jeunesse Dorée and the Jacobins.--Riots.--Scene in the Convention.--War with the Allies.--A new Constitution.--Insurrection of the Sections.--Energy of General Bonaparte.--Discomfiture of the Sections.--Narrative of the Duchess of Abrantes.--Clemency of the Convention.--Its final Acts and Dissolution, and Establishment of the Directory.
Let us return to Paris. The unprecedented severity of the winter had caused fearful suffering among the populace of Paris. The troubled times had broken up all the ordinary employments of peace. The war, which had enrolled a million and a half of men under arms, had left the fields uncultivated and deserted. A cruel famine wasted both city and country. The Jacobins, who, though their clubs were closed, still met at the corners of the streets and in the coffee-houses, took advantage of this public misery to turn popular indignation against the victorious Thermidorians. Tumults were again renewed, and hostile partisans met in angry conflicts. The young men of the two parties had frequent encounters in the pits of the theatres, bidding each other defiance, and often proceeding to blows.
At the Théâtre Feydean, as in many other places, there was a bust of Marat, who was still idolized by the Jacobins. The young men of the Jeunesse Dorée, in expression of their detestation of Marat, and as an insult to the Jacobins, climbed the balcony, threw down the bust, and with shouts of execration dragged it through the mire of the streets.
The Jacobins, exasperated, swore to avenge the insult. Strongly armed, they paraded the streets, carrying a bust of Marat in triumph, and swearing bloody vengeance upon any who might attempt to disturb their march. The firmness of the Convention alone averted a sanguinary conflict. The public distress, intense and almost universal, embarrassed and overwhelmed the Convention with the most difficult questions in the endeavor to afford relief. On the 15th of March the supply of food in Paris was so small that it was deemed necessary to put the inhabitants upon rations, each individual being allowed but one pound of bread per day. Agitation and tumults were now rapidly increasing, and there were daily riots. The Convention was continually besieged and insulted by haggard multitudes with petitions which assumed the tone of fiercest threats. Scenes of confusion ensued which bade defiance to all law, and which there was no authority to repress.
On the 20th of May there was one of the most fearful tumults which the Revolution had yet witnessed. At five in the morning the générale was beating in the public squares and the tocsin ringing in the faubourgs. The populace were rapidly mustering for any deeds of violence to which their leaders might conduct them. At eleven o'clock the Convention commenced its sitting. One of the members brought in a plan, which he had secretly obtained, of a very efficiently-organized insurrection. A crowd, mostly of women, filled the galleries. As the plan was read, which appalled the deputies, the galleries vociferously applauded. The Convention passed a few harmless decrees, such as, 1st, that the city government was responsible for any attack upon the Convention; 2d, that all the citizens were bound to receive orders from the Convention; and 3d, that there should be no insurrection. These decrees but provoked the derision of the galleries. The tumult now became so great, the women shouting "Bread!" and shaking their fists at the president and the deputies, that all business was at a stand, and not a word of debate could be heard.
At length, some soldiers were sent into the galleries with bayonets, and the women were driven into the streets. They soon, however, returned, aided by their friends. They battered down all the doors and broke in and filled the hall with an armed, shouting, brutal mob. Some of the citizens rallied for the defense of the Convention, and a fierce battle raged within the hall and around the doors. Pistols and muskets were discharged, swords clashed, bayonet crossed bayonet, while yells and shrieks and imprecations deafened the ear. Drunken women strode over the benches and clambered to the president's chair. A young deputy, Feraud, was stabbed, then shot; his head was cut off, and, pierced by a pike, was thrust into the face of the president, Boissy d'Anglas, who most heroically maintained his post and his composure through all these perilous scenes. For six hours the tumult raged unabated. It was now seven o'clock in the evening, and the mob drove all the deputies, like a flock of sheep, into the centre of the hall, surrounded them with bristling bayonets and pikes, and ordered them to issue decrees for the relief of the people. At length, near midnight, a detachment of the National Guard arrived, dispersed the crowd around the palace, and, entering the hall with fixed bayonets, scattered the rioters. Tranquillity being restored, one of the members rose and said,
"It is then true that this Assembly, the cradle of the Republic, has once more well nigh been its tomb. Fortunately, the crime of the conspirators is prevented. But, Representatives, you would not be worthy of the nation if you were not to avenge it in a signal manner."
The rest of the night was passed in devising schemes to crush the Jacobin power which had organized this insurrection. The Duchess of Abrantes, who was then in Paris, thus alludes to these events: "While the most frightful scenes," she writes, "were passing in the Convention, the respectable inhabitants of Paris shut themselves up in their houses, concealed their valuables, and awaited, with fearful anxiety, the result. Toward evening my brother, whom we had not seen during the day, came home to get something to eat; he was almost famished, not having tasted food since the morning. Disorder still raged, and we heard the most frightful noise in the streets, mingled with the beating of drums. My brother had scarcely finished his hasty repast when General Bonaparte arrived to make a similar claim upon our hospitality. He also had tasted nothing since the morning, for all the restaurateurs were closed. He soon dispatched what my brother had left, and as he was eating he told us the news of the day. It was most appalling; my brother had informed us but of part. He did not know of the assassination of the unfortunate Feraud, whose body had been cut almost piecemeal. 'They took his head,' said Bonaparte, 'and presented it to poor Boissy d'Anglas, and the shock of this fiend-like act was almost death to the president in his chair. Truly,' added he, 'if we continue thus to sully our Revolution, it will be a disgrace to be a Frenchman.'"[441]
Alarmed by the advance of anarchy, the Convention immediately instituted proceedings against several prominent Jacobin members, who were known to be ringleaders of the insurrection. They were arrested and consigned to imprisonment in the Castle of Ham. Paris was declared to be in a state of siege, and Pichegru, then in the full lustre of his glory, was appointed commander of the armed force. The carriages which conveyed the arrested deputies to the Castle of Ham had to pass through the Elysian Fields. The Jacobins assembled in strong numbers and endeavored to rescue them. The energy of Pichegru repelled the attempt. A fight ensued, with cannon and small arms, in which several lives were lost.
While these melancholy scenes were transpiring in Paris, the combined fleets and armies of England, Austria, and Naples were fiercely assailing the Republic at every vulnerable point. England, being undisputed mistress of the sea, had nothing to fear from the conflagration which she was kindling all over Europe. To stimulate impoverished Austria to the war, the British government loaned her $23,000,000 (£4,600,000). She augmented her own naval force to a hundred thousand seamen, put into commission one hundred and eight ships of the line, and raised her land forces to one hundred and fifty thousand men.[442]
The question to be decided was, whether France had a right to abolish monarchy and establish a republic. It is in vain for the Allies to say that they were contending against the outrages which existed in France, for their hostile movements preceded these scenes of carnage, and were the efficient cause of nearly all the calamities that ensued. And, deplorable as was the condition of France during the Reign of Terror, even that reign was far more endurable by the masses of the people than the domination of the old feudal despotism.
Carlyle makes the following appalling statement, the truth of which will not be denied by any careful student of the Old Régime:
"History, looking back over this France through long times--back to Turgot's time, for instance, when dumb Drudgery staggered up to its king's palace, and, in wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor, and winged raggedness, presented hieroglyphically its petition of grievances, and, for answer, got hanged on a new gallows forty feet high--confesses mournfully that there is no period in which the general twenty-five millions of France suffered less than in this period which they named the Reign of Terror!
"But it was not the dumb millions that suffered here; it was the speaking thousands, and hundreds, and units, who shrieked and published, and made the world ring with their wail, as they could and should; that is the grand peculiarity. The frightfulest births of time are never the loud-speaking ones, for these soon die; they are the silent ones, which live from century to century."[443]
The Royalist emigrants, taking advantage of the clemency of the Thermidorians, began now to return to France in great numbers, and were very active every where in trying to promote a counter-revolution, and in forming conspiracies to overthrow the Republic and re-establish the Bourbons. They were supplied with immense sums of money to expend as bribes.
A new Constitution was formed to meet the new emergencies of the country. Instead of one General Assembly, they had two legislative bodies. The Senate, called the Council of the Ancients, consisted of two hundred and fifty members, of at least forty years of age, and all were to be either widowers or married; one third to be renewed every year. The lower house, called the Council of the Five Hundred, was to be composed of members of at least thirty years of age, to be renewed also annually by one third. Instead of an executive of sixteen committees, five Directors were intrusted with the executive power, to be renewed annually by one fifth. Thus organized, the ship of state was again launched upon its stormy voyage, to encounter tempests without and mutiny within. This Constitution was the work of the moderate Republican party, and restored the ascendency of the middle class. As such it was obnoxious to the Jacobins.[444] France was now so rent by hostile parties that no Constitution could long stand.
The old Constituent Assembly had, by a decree which was intended to be very patriotic and self-denying, excluded itself from the Legislative Assembly which was to succeed it. This act, however, proved to be injudicious and disastrous. The Legislative Assembly, wishing to secure a majority friendly to moderate Republicanism in the two bodies to be elected under the new Constitution, decreed that two thirds of their own members should be elected to the two new legislative bodies. This decree, which was accepted with great unanimity by France as a whole, was exceedingly obnoxious to the Royalists and to the Jacobins of Paris, both of whom hoped to obtain a majority under the new Constitution. These two extremes now joined hands, and, as usual, appealed for support to insurrection and the terrors of the mob. There was no excuse for this violence, for the Constitution was accepted almost unanimously by France, and the decrees by an immense majority. It was in Paris alone that there was any opposition, and even there the opposition was only to the decrees. Still, Royalists and Jacobins united to crush the will of the nation by a Parisian mob.
Paris was divided in forty-eight electoral sections or wards. The section of Lepelletier was the focus of the gathering storm. The tocsin was rung, drums beat, and armed bands collected. The Convention sent General Menou, a kind-hearted man, to surround this section and disarm it. Overawed by the high rank of the leaders, Menou parleyed with them, and, at length, alarmed by their numbers, their strength, and their determination, by a sort of capitulation disgracefully retreated.
Napoleon Bonaparte was then in Paris, out of employment, and was that evening at the Théâtre Feydeau. Some friends came and informed him of the scenes which were transpiring. He immediately left the theatre and hastened to the gallery of the Assembly, to witness the effect which would be produced upon that body by the tidings of the retreat of Menou.[445]
He found the Assembly in great commotion. Some one had moved the arrest of Menou, and his trial for treason. It was a scene of tumult and alarm, many speaking at once. Barras, who had acquired some reputation for intrepidity and energy, was appointed as chief of the forces in the place of Menou. Barras, who was well acquainted with the energetic character of Napoleon, and who probably saw him in the gallery, immediately requested that General Bonaparte should be appointed as his second in command. Barras knew his man, and was willing to surrender to the young brigadier-general the entire superintendence of the military arrangements to quell the revolt.
The Convention had five thousand troops at its command. The sections now, with clamor and tumult, were marching upon them with forty-five thousand. Barras was a man of commanding stature and of powerful frame. Napoleon, though he had acquired at Toulon a high reputation in the army, was but little known in Paris. When Barras introduced to the Convention the young general, a small, slender, pale-faced, smooth-cheeked youth, who seemed to be not more than eighteen years of age, all were surprised.
"Are you willing," inquired the president, "to undertake the defense of the Convention?"
"Yes," was the laconic reply.
The president hesitated, and then continued, "But are you aware of the magnitude of the undertaking?"
Napoleon fixed that eagle eye upon him which few could meet without quailing, and replied, "Perfectly; and I am in the habit of accomplishing that which I undertake. But one condition is indispensable. I must have the unlimited command, entirely untrammeled by any orders from the Convention."
There was no time for debate; and even the most stupid could see that in such an hour the public safety could only be secured by the prompt, concentrated action of a single mind, sufficiently powerful to meet the emergency. The characteristic traits of Napoleon's character were perhaps never more conspicuously displayed than on this occasion--his self-reliance, his skill in the choice of agents, his careful preparation against the possibility of defeat, and his fortitude in doing whatever might be necessary for the accomplishment of his plans.
Not a moment was lost. At Sablons, a few miles from Paris, there was a park of forty pieces of artillery. Napoleon dispatched a young soldier, whom he well knew, of most chivalrous daring and impetuosity, Joachim Murat, to secure the guns. At the head of three hundred horse he was almost instantly on the gallop, and arrived at Sablons just in time to rescue the artillery from a smaller band of the insurrectionists, who had also been dispatched to secure it. The guns were brought to the Tuileries. They were promptly ranged to sweep all the avenues leading to the Tuileries. The cavalry and a part of the infantry were placed in reserve in the garden of the palace and in the Carrousel. The Convention awoke fully to a sense of its danger and to the energy of its commander when soldiers brought eight hundred muskets into the hall, with which the deputies were to arm themselves and advance to battle if necessary. Detachments of troops were dispatched to seize by surprise all the provisions and ammunition in Paris, and convey them to a safe dépôt in the Tuileries. A hospital for the wounded was established in the palace, provided with necessaries for every emergency. The troops of all kinds at Napoleon's disposal, variously estimated at from five to eight thousand, were strongly posted in the leading streets, at the bridges, in the Place Vendôme, and in the Place de la Révolution. A strong detachment was sent to occupy the heights of Meudon, Napoleon intending to retreat there, with the Convention, in case of defeat. One section in Paris had voted with the immense majority of the nation for the decrees. Chests of arms were sent to that section to arm the voters in defense of the laws. A detachment was sent to the road to St. Germain, to intercept any cannon from being brought from that direction.
All this was accomplished in one short night, the 4th of October, Napoleon seeming to infuse his own energy into every one around him. In the mean time the sections, though by no means aware of the spirit they were doomed to encounter, were not idle. They had organized a kind of insurrectionary government, outlawed the committees of the Convention, and had established a tribunal to punish those who should resist its sovereignty. Several energetic generals, Jacobins, and also Royalists, creeping from their retreats, offered their services to lead the attack upon the Convention. General Danican, a Royalist, who had been a general of brigade in the civil war which had desolated La Vendée, was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces of the insurrection. He had the National Guard, forty thousand strong, well armed, officered, and disciplined, under his command. The morning of the 5th dawned.
The alarm-bells were now ringing and the générale beating. The armed hosts of the sections were mustering at their appointed rendezvous and preparing to march upon the Convention. The members, in their seats, in silence and awe awaited the assault, upon the issue of which their lives were suspended. Napoleon, pale, solemn, and perfectly calm, was waiting, resolved that the responsibility of the first blow should fall upon his assailants, and that he would take the responsibility of the second.
Soon the enemy were seen advancing from every direction, in masses which filled the narrow streets of the city. With music and banners they marched to attack the besieged on every side, confident, from their numbers, of an easy victory. They did not believe that the few and feeble troops of the Convention would dare to resist the populace of Paris, but cherished the delusion that a few shots from their own side would put all opposition to flight. Thus unhesitatingly they came within sweep of the grapeshot with which Napoleon had charged his guns. The troops of the Convention stood firm. The insurgents opened a volley of bullets upon them. It was the signal for an instantaneous discharge, direct, sanguinary, merciless, from every battery. A storm of grape swept the streets. The columns of the assailants wavered, turned, fled, and still the storm pursued them. One of the strongest battalions of the insurgents had posted itself on the steps of the Church of Saint Roche, where it occupied a commanding position for firing upon the gunners of the Convention. Napoleon directed his artillery to advance upon them by the cul de sac Dauphin, and immediately threw into their crowded ranks a storm of grapeshot. The insurgents fought manfully for a time, but were soon compelled to retreat, leaving the steps of the church covered with the slain. As they fled, Napoleon pushed his artillery up the street, and, wheeling to the right and the left, swept the whole length of the Rue St. Honoré. In two hours the victory was achieved, forty thousand men were vanquished by five thousand, the streets were cleared, and Napoleon returned in calm triumph to the Tuileries.[446]
It is interesting to catch a glimpse of Napoleon in his domestic life at this time. The Duchess of Abrantes writes, "My parents arrived in Paris on the 4th of September. Two days after my father was very ill. Bonaparte, apprised by my brother, came immediately to see us. He appeared to be affected by the state of my father, who, though in great pain, insisted on seeing him. He came every day, and in the morning he sent or called himself to inquire how he had passed the night. I can not recollect his conduct at that period without sincere gratitude.
"He informed us that Paris was in such a state as must necessarily lead to a convulsion. The sections were in, if not open, at least almost avowed insurrection. The section Lepelletier, which was ours, was the most turbulent, and, in fact, the most to be dreaded. Its orators did not scruple to deliver the most incendiary speeches. They asserted that the power of the assembled people was above the laws. 'Matters are getting from bad to worse,' said Bonaparte; 'the counter-revolution will shortly break forth, and it will, at the same time, become the source of disasters.'
"As I have said, he came every day; he dined with us and passed the evening in the drawing-room, talking in a low tone beside the easy-chair of my mother, who, worn out with fatigue, dozed for a few moments to recruit her strength, for she never quitted my father's pillow. I recollect that, one evening, my father being very ill, my mother was weeping and in great tribulation. It was ten o'clock. At that time it was impossible to induce any of the servants of the hotel to go out after nine. Bonaparte said nothing. He ran down stairs and posted away to Duchannais, whom he brought back with him in spite of his objections. The weather was dreadful; the rain poured in torrents. Bonaparte had not been able to meet with a hackney coach to go to M. Duchannais; he was wet through. Yes, indeed, at that period Bonaparte had a heart susceptible of attachment.
"Meanwhile we became more and more alarmed every day by the dangers which manifested themselves around us. Paris rung with the tumult of the factions, each of which drew the sword and hoisted its standard. Against the Convention, then the only real authority, were arrayed the sections, which for some days past again declared war against it. Paris resembled a garrison town. At night we heard the sentries calling to and answering one another, as in a besieged town. The strictest search was made for arms and ammunition.
"For some years my mother had been subject to nervous paroxysms. At such times she disliked to have any body about her. On reaching the drawing-room I found her all in tears and in one of the most violent spasms. General Bonaparte was with her, endeavoring to soothe her. He told me that on his arrival he found her on the point of attacking the adjunct of the section to prevent his entering my father's chamber. 'I should be glad to spare your mother such scenes,' said he; 'I have not much influence, nevertheless I will go myself to the section. I will see the president if possible and settle the business at once. Paris is all on fire, especially since this morning. It is necessary to be very cautious in every thing one does and in all one says. Your brother must not go out any more. Attend to all this, for your mother is in a sad state.'
"This was a dreadful night for my father. The next morning the générale was beat. The streets were already very unsafe, though people were still passing to and fro in Paris, as though they were not going to cut one another's throats a few hours afterward. The tumult became very great at dusk; the theatres were nevertheless open. Indeed, we are a nation of lunatics!
"On the morning of the 12th Vendémiaire (October 4) Bonaparte, who had called according to custom, appeared to be lost in thought. He went out, came back, went out again, and again returned when we were at our dessert. 'I breakfasted very late,' said he, 'at Bourrienne's. They talked politics there till I was quite tired of the subject. I will try to learn the news, and if I have any thing interesting I will come and tell you.'
"We did not see him again. The night was tumultuous, especially in our section. The whole Rue de la Loi was bristling with bayonets. Barricades were already set up in our streets. On the morning of the 13th (October 5) my father was very ill. For some hours we flattered ourselves that matters would be adjusted between the Convention and the rebels; but about half past four the firing of the cannon began. The effect on my poor father was terrible. He gave a piercing shriek, calling for assistance, and was seized with the most violent delirium. All the scenes of the Revolution passed in review before him, and every discharge that he heard was a blow struck at him personally. What a day! what an evening! what a night! Every pane of glass was broken in pieces. Toward evening the section fell back upon us. The fighting was continued almost under our window, but when it had come to St. Roche we imagined that the house was tumbling about our ears.
"My father was in the agonies of death; he shouted, he wept. Never, no, never, shall I suffer what I did during that terrible night. Next day tranquillity was restored, we were told, in Paris. I can scarcely give any account of the 14th. Toward evening Bonaparte came for a moment; he found me dissolved in tears. When he learned the cause his cheerful and open countenance suddenly changed. My mother entered at that moment. She knew no more than I how important a part Bonaparte had played on that great day. 'Oh!' said my mother, 'they have killed my husband. You, Napoleon, can feel for my distress. Do you recollect that on the first Prairial, when you came to sup with me, you told me that you had just prevented Barras from bombarding Paris? Do you recollect it? For my part I have not forgotten it.'
"Many persons have alleged that Napoleon always regretted that day. Be that as it may, he was always exceedingly kind to my mother in these moments of affliction, though himself in circumstances that could not but outweigh all other interests. He was like a son--like a brother."[447]
The Convention treated the insurrectionists, who had thus been so severely punished, with the utmost clemency.[448] Napoleon received the thanks of the Convention and a brilliant reception. The Convention united Belgium with France; decreed that the punishment of death should be abolished as soon as a general peace with Europe could be effected; changed the name of the Place of the Revolution to the Place of Concord; pronounced an amnesty for all acts connected with the Revolution, excepting one person implicated in the last revolt; and then, on the 26th of October, 1795, the President of the Convention pronounced these words,
"The National Convention declares that its mission is accomplished, and its session is closed."
With one united shout--The Republic forever!--the deputies left the hall and dispersed to their homes.
To the States-General fell the task, after a terrific struggle with king and nobles, to create the Constituent Assembly, a great national congress, whose function it was to moderate the despotism of the throne by conferring upon a nation of twenty-five millions of people, after ages of oppression, constitutional liberty. The Constituent Assembly, which succeeded the States-General, abolished those old institutions of feudal servitude which had become utterly unendurable, and established a constitutional monarchy, taking as a model, in the main, the British Constitution. The Legislative Assembly then took the place of the Constituent, to enact laws in harmony with this Constitution. It soon, however, found that the king was in league with despotic Europe to overthrow constitutional liberty and restore the old despotism. It consequently suspended the king, and the Constitution with which his power was inseparably interwoven, and dissolved itself.[449] The National Convention, which succeeded, commenced its deliberations on the 21st of September, 1792.
"The Convention," says Thiers, "found a dethroned king, an annulled Constitution, an administration entirely destroyed, a paper money discredited, old skeletons of regiments worn out and empty. Thus it was not liberty that it had to proclaim in presence of an enfeebled and despised throne, it was liberty that it had to defend against all Europe--a very difficult task. Without being for a moment daunted, it proclaimed the Republic in the face of the hostile armies; it then sacrificed the king, to cut off all retreat from itself; it subsequently took all the powers into its own hands, and constituted itself a dictatorship. Voices were raised in its bosom which talked of humanity, when it wished to hear of nothing but energy; it stifled them. This dictatorship, which the necessity of the general preservation had obliged it to arrogate to itself over all France, twelve of its members soon arrogated to themselves over it, for the same reason, and on account of the same necessity. From the Alps to the sea, from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, these twelve dictators seized upon all, both men and things, and commenced the greatest and the most awful struggle with the nations of Europe ever recorded in history. They spilt torrents of blood, till, having become useless from victory, and odious by the abuse of strength, they fell.
"The Convention then took the dictatorship again into its own hands, and began, by degrees, to relax the springs of that terrible administration. Rendered confident by victory, it listened to humanity, and indulged its spirit of regeneration. It aimed at every thing good and great, and pursued this purpose for a year; but the parties crushed under its pitiless authority revived under its clemency. Two factions, in which were blended, under infinite variety of shades, the friends and the foes of the Revolution, attacked it by turns. It vanquished the one and the other, and, till the last day, showed itself heroic amid dangers. Lastly, it framed a Republican Constitution, and, after a struggle of three years with Europe, with the factions, with itself, mutilated and bleeding, it dissolved itself, and transmitted the government of France to the Directory."[450]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 441: Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, p. 90.]
[Footnote 442: Thiers, vol. iii., p. 242. New Annual Register.]
[Footnote 443: Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 460.]
[Footnote 444: "This Constitution was the best, the wisest, the most liberal, and the most provident that had as yet been established or projected; it contained the result of six years' revolutionary and legislative experience."--Mignet, p. 301.]
[Footnote 445: Las Casas.]
[Footnote 446: There is no exaggeration in the following account of the condition of France at this time: "Since France had become Republican every species of evil had accumulated upon its devoted head. Famine, a total cessation of commerce, civil war, attended by its usual accompaniments--conflagration, robbery, pillage, and murder. Justice was interrupted; the sword of the law wielded by iniquity; property spoliated; confiscation rendered the order of the day; the scaffold permanently erected; calumnious denunciations held in the highest estimation. Nothing was wanting to the general desolation."--Hist. de la Conv., vol. ii., p. 215, 216.]
[Footnote 447: Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, p. 118.]
[Footnote 448: "After this memorable conflict, when Bonaparte had been publicly received with enthusiasm by the Convention, who declared that he and Barras deserved well of their country, a great change took place in him, and the change in regard to attention to his person was not the least remarkable. He now never went out but in a handsome carriage, and he lived in a very respectable house, Rue des Capucines. In short, he had become an important, a necessary personage, and all without noise, as if by magic."--Duchess of Abrantes.]
[Footnote 449: The States-General held its session from May 6, 1789.]
[Footnote 450: Thiers, Fr. Rev., vol. iii., p. 333.]
XXXIX. THE DIRECTORY
Constitution of the Directory.--Distracted State of Public Affairs.--New Expedition to La Vendée.--Death of the Dauphin.--Release of the Princess.--Pacification of La Vendée.--Riots in London.--Execution of Charette.--Napoleon takes command of the Army of Italy.--The first Proclamation.--Triumphs in Italy.--Letter of General Hoche.--Peace with Spain.--Establishment of the Cispadane Republic.--Negotiations with England.--Contemplated Invasion of Ireland.--Memorials of Wolfe Tone.--Deplorable State of Public Affairs.--Description of Napoleon.--Composition of the Directory.
The government of the Directory went into operation on the 27th of October, 1795. The two legislative bodies, the Council of the Ancients and the Council of the Five Hundred, met and chose for the five directors Lareveillère Lepeaux, Le Tourneur, Rewbel, Carnot, and Barras. "Among these," says Thiers, "there was not a man of genius, nor even any man of high reputation, excepting Carnot. But what was to be done at the end of a sanguinary revolution which, in a few years, had devoured several generations of men of genius of every description? In the Assemblies there was not left one extraordinary orator; in diplomacy there remained not one celebrated negotiator."[451] The state of public affairs at this time was deplorable in the extreme. Innumerable factions disturbed the state. A very sanguinary war was raging around the frontiers. The embers of civil war were still smoldering and frequently bursting out into flame. Three powerful parties were struggling almost with the energies of despair for the supremacy--the old Royalists, the Thermidorians or moderate Republicans, and the Jacobins, who wielded, as the great instrument of terror, the energies of the Parisian mob. Many of the most intelligent men already foresaw that there was no hope for distracted France but in the action of some mighty mind which could mould the tumultuous elements and evolve order from the confusion.[452]
The British government, undismayed by the disaster of Quiberon, now sent another expedition to the shores of La Vendée to rouse the Royalists to insurrection. The expedition consisted of two thousand English infantry, five hundred horse, several regiments of French emigrants, a great number of officers to take command of the marshaled peasantry, and arms, ammunition, provisions, clothing, and gold in abundance. Should this expedition successfully land and rally around it the Royalist insurgents in promising numbers, it was immediately to be followed by another still more powerful. The Count d'Artois (Charles X.) was placed in command of this force. Charette, a very intrepid Royalist chieftain, had raised some ten thousand peasants, and was in command of the coast to welcome the invaders. But General Hoche fell upon the insurgent Vendeeans and scattered them; and the English fleet, after hovering for some time along the coast, being unable to effect a landing, and disappointed in the support they hoped to have met, abandoned the enterprise and returned to England.[453]
While the coast of France was thus threatened the Allies on the Rhine gained some very decisive victories, and drove the routed Republicans before them. There was no money in the treasury of the Directory. The paper money, which had been freely issued, had become almost worthless, and the armies were now in destitution and rags. Such were the difficulties with which the new government had to grapple.[454]
On the 8th of June the dauphin died in the Temple. While he lived he was considered by the Royalists the legitimate King of France, under the title of Louis XVII. Upon his death the emigrants declared the Count of Provence king, and he assumed the title of Louis XVIII. It will be remembered that the Convention sent some deputies to arrest Dumouriez, and that he seized these commissioners and handed them over to the Austrians as hostages. The Directory now exchanged the young princess, who still survived in woeful captivity, for these commissioners and a few other distinguished prisoners held by the Austrians. It was the 19th of December when this unhappy child left her cell, where she had endured agonies such as few on earth had known, to be conveyed back to the palaces of her maternal ancestors.
The guns of Napoleon, quelling the insurgent sections, had established the government of the Directory. To secure Paris and France from similar scenes of violence, an imposing force was organized, called the Army of the Interior, and Napoleon was placed in command. As by magic, under his efficient command, this body was organized into the highest discipline and efficiency, and, overawing the discontented, maintained public order. A formidable camp of these troops was established at Grenelle. But for Napoleon the Directory could not have come into being. But for Napoleon it could not have lived a year, struggling against the conspiracies which ever crowded it.[455] General Hoche, operating with singular wisdom and humanity, succeeded in the pacification of the inhabitants of La Vendée. They surrendered their arms, and peace was restored to that distracted region. Still William Pitt clamored for war against the French Republic. The English people were indignant at these unjust assaults against a neighboring nation struggling to throw off the chains of intolerable servitude, and demanded peace with France. The liberty-loving Englishmen met in immense gatherings in the open air, and denounced the war system in the most bold and decisive resolves. As the king rode to Parliament the populace pursued him, pelted his carriage with stones, broke the windows, and it was asserted that an air-gun was fired at him. Pitt, riding on horseback, was recognized by the populace, and with difficulty escaped from their hands covered with mud. Fox and Sheridan in Parliament were loud and eloquent in the denunciation of the war measures of the ministry.[456] Pitt endeavored to defend himself against the assaults of the opposition by saying that English blood had not been shed. "True," replied Sheridan, "English blood has not been shed, but English honor has oozed from every pore."
The Allies, exhilarated by their successes on the Rhine, prepared to press the war with new vigor. Pitt obtained from Parliament a new loan of thirty-five millions of dollars. General Bonaparte was promoted from the command of the Army of the Interior to that of the Army of Italy. He immediately entered upon that Italian campaign which gave him renown throughout the world.
Though the Vendeeans had surrendered their arms and were rejoicing in the enjoyment of peace, Charette wandered about the country, refusing all overtures at reconciliation, and striving, with great energy, to rouse new forces of insurrection. The entire pacification of La Vendée now depended upon the capture of Charette. With almost unparalleled energy and bravery he succeeded for several months in eluding his foes. At last, on the 24th of March, 1796, he fell into an ambuscade. He was armed to the teeth, and fought with the ferocity of a tiger at bay. He received several sabre-blows before he fell and was secured. At his examination he with dignity averred his detestation of republicanism and his devotion to royalty. He had deluged the land with the blood of civil war, and, as a traitor, was doomed to die. On the 30th of March he was led out to execution. A platoon of soldiers was drawn up but a few paces before him. He stood erect, with his eyes unbandaged, and, apparently without the tremor of a nerve, gave the command to fire. He fell dead, pierced by many bullets. He had displayed marvelous heroism in a bad cause. Refusing to submit to laws established by the overwhelming majority of his countrymen, he was deluging the land in blood in the endeavor to rivet again upon France the chains of the most intolerable despotism. The Royalists all over Europe mourned his death. But France rejoiced, for the fall of Charette terminated the civil war.
One hundred thousand men had been under the command of General
Hoche in the strife of La Vendée. These were now at liberty to march to repel the foreign invader. Two powerful armies, of eighty thousand each, were collected on the Rhine. But they could not hold their ground against the outnumbering Austrians. In one of these engagements the distinguished young general Marceau was killed. He was struck by a ball fired by a Tyrolean marksman, and fell from his horse mortally wounded. His soldiers, on the rapid retreat, were unable to rescue him, and he was left in his blood to the humanity of the victors. The Austrians generously did every thing in their power for his relief, but he died, three days after, in the twenty-seventh year of his age.
About thirty thousand French soldiers, in rags, destitute of the munitions of war, and almost famished, were ineffectually struggling against their foes on the southern slopes of the Apennines. Napoleon was placed in command of these starving troops, but the government was unable to supply him with any funds for the prosecution of the war. On the 27th of March he placed himself at the head of these enfeebled and discouraged battalions. Young generals, who subsequently obtained great renown--Angereau, Massena, Laharpe, Serrurier, and Berthier--composed the officers of his staff. The levy en masse had filled the ranks with young men from good families, well informed, distinctly understanding the nature of the conflict, detesting the old feudal despotism which allied Europe was striving to impose upon them anew, and enthusiastically devoted to the principles of liberty and equal rights which the Revolution was endeavoring to implant. Though most of them were young, they had many of them spent years in the field, had seen many bloody battles, and, inured to the hardships of war, were veteran soldiers. Sixty thousand Piedmontese and Austrians, under Colli and Beaulieu, crowded the northern slopes and the crest of the mountains, endeavoring to force their way through the defiles upon France. Napoleon's first words to his troops roused them as with electric fire.
"Soldiers," said he, "you are ill fed, almost naked. The government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage, do you honor, but procure you neither glory nor advantage. I am about to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. You will there find large cities, rich provinces; you will there find honor, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will your courage fail you?"
On the 12th of April his troops were in motion. A series of desperate battles and of resplendent victories ensued. At the close of two weeks Napoleon issued the following proclamation:
"Soldiers, in a fortnight you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one pairs of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen thousand prisoners, and killed or wounded more than ten thousand men. You had hitherto been fighting for barren rocks, rendered glorious by your courage, but useless to the country. You now rival, by your services, the army of Holland and the Rhine. Destitute of every thing, you have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy and often without bread. The Republican phalanxes, the soldiers of liberty alone, could have endured what you have endured. Thanks be to you for it, soldiers. Your grateful country will owe to you its prosperity; and if your conquest at Toulon foreboded the glorious campaign of 1793, your present victories forbode one still more glorious. The two armies which so lately attacked you boldly, are fleeing affrighted before you. The perverse men who laughed at your distress, and rejoiced in thought at the triumph of your enemies, are confounded and trembling.
"But, soldiers, you have done nothing, since more remains to be done. Neither Turin nor Milan is yours. The ashes of the conquerors of Tarquin are still trampled upon by the murderers of Basseville."[457]
Napoleon now summoned all his energies to drive the Austrians out of Italy. In two months the work was done; and Paris, France, Europe was electrified by the narrative of deeds of daring and success, such as war had never recorded before. In all the towns and cities of Italy the French armies were received as deliverers, for the subjugated Italians were eager to throw off the hateful yoke of Austrian despotism. Napoleon, having unbounded confidence in himself, and but very little respect for the weak men who composed the Directory, took all matters of diplomacy, as well as war, into his own hands, and, sustained by the enthusiasm of his soldiers, settled the affairs of Italy according to his own views of expediency.
The Royalists, hoping for the overthrow of the Republic and for the return of Louis XVIII., were exceedingly chagrined by these victories. They left no means of calumny untried to sully the name of Napoleon. Europe was filled with falsehoods respecting him, and reports were circulated that General Hoche was to be sent from Paris to arrest him in the midst of his army. These rumors assumed such importance that the government wrote a letter to Napoleon contradicting them; and General Hoche, with the magnanimity of a man incapable of jealousy, over his own name published a letter expressing his admiration of the commander of the Army of Italy.
"Men," he wrote, "who, concealed or unknown during the first years of the foundation of the Republic, now think only of seeking the means of destroying it, and speak of it merely to slander its firmest supporters, have, for some days past, been spreading reports most injurious to the armies, and to one of the general officers who commanded them. Can they, then, no longer attain their object by corresponding openly with the horde of conspirators resident at Hamburg? Must they, in order to gain the patronage of the masters whom they are desirous of giving to France, vilify the leaders of the armies? Why is Bonaparte, then, the object of the wrath of these gentry? Is it because he beat themselves and their friends in Vendémiaire?[458] Is it because he is dissolving the armies of kings, and furnishing the Republic with the means of bringing this honorable war to a glorious conclusion? Ah! brave young man, where is the Republican soldier whose heart does not burn with the desire to imitate thee? Courage, Bonaparte! lead our victorious armies to Naples, to Vienna; reply to thy personal enemies by humbling kings, by shedding fresh lustre over our armies, and leave to us the task of upholding thy glory."
Still the Royalists were busy with incessant plots and intrigues for the overthrow of the government. The treasury was utterly bankrupt, paper money, almost utterly worthless, flooded the land, and the finances were in a state of inextricable embarrassment. The Jacobins and the Royalists were equally eager to demolish the Directory by any conceivable measures of treason and violence. Never was a nation in a more deplorable state, harassed by a foreign war which demanded all its energies, and torn by domestic dissensions which no human wisdom seemed capable of healing.
The Jacobins adopted even the desperate measure to feign a Royalist insurrection; to scatter white cockades, the emblem of Bourbon power; to shout Vive le Roi! and to discharge musketry and throw petards into the streets, that the people, alarmed by the peril of Bourbon restoration, might throw themselves into the arms of the Jacobins for protection.[459] A mob of nearly a thousand most determined men marched, in the night of the 10th of September, upon the camp at Grenelle, hoping to fraternize with the soldiers in this treasonable endeavor to overthrow the government. Several hundreds fell dead or wounded in this frantic attempt.
The Directory now attempted to enter into peaceful relations with other powers, and effected a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Spain. Envoys were also sent to the Ottoman Porte and to Venice for the same purpose. Piedmont had sued for peace and obtained it. The Italians of Upper Italy, exulting in their emancipation from the Austrians, under the protection of Napoleon established the Cispadane Republic. Without the support of his strong arm they could not for a day resist the encroachments of the surrounding despotisms. The first National Assembly of this infant republic met at Modena, October 16, 1796. The people were electrified with delight at this unexpected achievement of freedom. The Assembly sent an address to Napoleon, informing him of the principles of their new government.
"Never forget," said Napoleon, in his reply, "that laws are mere nullities without the force necessary to support them. Attend to your military organization, which you have the means of placing on a respectable footing. You will then be more fortunate than the people of France, for you will arrive at liberty without passing through the ordeal of revolution."
The Directory had for some time been attempting to effect peace with England. On the 18th of December the British government stated on what terms it would consent to sheathe the sword. M. Thiers expresses the feelings of France in reference to this offer in the following terms:
"Thus France, having been iniquitously forced into war, after she had expended enormous sums, and from which she had come off victorious--France was not to gain a single province, while the northern powers had just divided a kingdom between them (Poland), and England had recently made immense acquisitions in India. France, who still occupied the line of the Rhine, and who was mistress of Italy, was to evacuate the Rhine and Italy at the bare summons of England! Such conditions were absurd and inadmissible. The very proposal of them was an insult, and they could not be listened to."[460]
To conquer a peace, the Directory now meditated a direct attack upon England. The Catholic Irish, over three millions in number, hating implacably their English conquerors, were ardent to rise, under the guarantee of France, and establish a republican government. They had sent secret agents to Paris to confer with the Directory. Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the Irish revolutionists, addressed memorials to the French Directory soliciting aid.
"The Catholics of Ireland," said he, "are 3,150,000, all trained from their infancy in an hereditary hatred and abhorrence of the English name. For these five years they have fixed their eyes most earnestly on France, whom they look upon, with great justice, as fighting their battles, as well as that of all mankind who are oppressed. Of this class I will stake my head there are 500,000 who would fly to the standard of the Republic if they saw it once displayed in the cause of liberty and their country.
"The Republic may also rely with confidence on the support of the Dissenters, actuated by reason and reflection, as well as the Catholics impelled by misery and inflamed by detestation of the English name. In the year 1791 the Dissenters of Belfast first formed the Club of United Irishmen, so called because in that club, for the first time, Dissenters and Catholics were seen together in harmony and union. Corresponding clubs were rapidly formed, the object of which was to subvert the tyranny of England, establish the independence of Ireland, and frame a free republic on the broad basis of liberty and equality.
"The Catholics also have an organization, commencing about the same time with the clubs last mentioned, but composed of Catholics only. In June last it embraced the whole peasantry of the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught, three fourths of the nation, and I have little doubt that it has since extended into Munster, the remaining province. The eyes of this whole body, which may be said, almost without a figure, to be the people of Ireland, are turned with the most anxious expectation to France for assistance and support. The oath of their union recites that they will be faithful to the united nations of France and Ireland."[461]
An expedition to Ireland was secretly resolved upon. A fleet of fifteen sail of the line, twenty frigates, six luggers, and fifty transports, containing sixteen thousand troops, sailed on the 16th of December to land in Bantry Bay, on the coast of Ireland. But the very night after the squadron left port a heavy storm arose, in which one ship foundered and the fleet was widely dispersed. A singular series of casualties ensued. Some of the ships entered the bay, but not finding their companions, after waiting a short time, returned to France. Other ships of the expedition soon after entered, but, finding the bay deserted, they also returned. The expedition thus proved a total failure.[462]
The inefficient Directory was quite unable to rectify the disorders into which the internal affairs of the state were plunged. They uttered loud complaints, which did but increase discontent and disgust. The press, being entirely free, indulged in the utmost violence; Royalists and Jacobins assailing the feeble government without mercy and thwarting its operations in every possible way. The army of Italy was triumphant--almost miraculously so. Every where else the Republic was in disgrace. The Directory endeavored to throw the blame of the public calamities upon the two Councils, and published the following message, which was as true as it was ill-advised:
"All departments are distressed. The pay of the troops is in arrear; the defenders of the country, in rags and enervated by want, in disgust are led to desertion. The hospitals are destitute of furniture, fire, and drugs. The charitable institutions, utterly impoverished, repel the poor and infirm. The creditors of the state, the contractors who supply the armies, with difficulty obtain but a small portion of the sums that are their due. Distress keeps aloof men who could perform the same services better and cheaper. The roads are cut up; the communications interrupted. The public functionaries are without salary; from one end of the Republic to the other judges and administrators may be seen reduced to the horrible alternative either of dragging on, with their families, a miserable existence, or of being dishonored by selling themselves to intrigue. The evil-disposed are every where busy. In many places murder is being organized, and the police, without activity, without energy, because it is without pecuniary means, can not put a stop to these disorders."
All eyes were directed to the achievements of Napoleon, who, with superhuman energy, was destroying army after army of the Allies, astounding Europe by his exploits, and exciting the admiration of his countrymen. Thiers thus describes the position he then occupied in the public mind:
"Sickness, together with the excessive fatigues of the campaign, had weakened him extremely. He could scarcely sit on horseback; his cheeks were hollow and livid. His whole appearance was deplorable. His eyes alone, still bright and piercing as ever, indicated that the fire of his soul was not extinguished. His physical proportions formed a singular contrast with his genius and his renown, a contrast amusing to soldiers at once jovial and enthusiastic. Notwithstanding the decline of his strength, his extraordinary energy supported him and imparted an activity which was applied to all objects at once.
"He had begun what he called the war against robbers. Intriguers of all kinds had thronged to Italy for the purpose of introducing themselves into the administration of the armies and profiting by the wealth of that fine country. While simplicity and indigence pervaded the armies of the Rhine, luxury pervaded that of Italy--luxury as great as its glory. The soldiers, well clothed and well fed, were every where cordially received, and lived in pleasure and abundance. The officers, the generals, participated in the general opulence, and laid the foundations of their fortunes.
"Bonaparte, who had within him all the passions, but who, at that moment, was engrossed by one passion, that of glory, lived in a simple and austere manner, seeking relaxation only in the society of his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, and who had come, at his desire, to his head-quarters. Indignant at the disorders of the administration, he strictly scrutinized the minutest details, verified by personal inspection the accounts of the companies, denounced the dishonest administrators without mercy, and caused them to be prosecuted."
Among the Directors, Carnot was one of the noblest of men. The purity of his character slander has never attempted to taint. Barras was a fearless soldier and a shameless debauchee. He boasted of the profligacies in which he openly indulged, and he rioted in boundless extravagance, which he supported through corruption and bribes. Rewbel was a lawyer, a man of ability and integrity.[463] These three men had belonged to different political parties during the Revolution, and each detested the others. Lareveillère was an honest man, but destitute of those commanding qualities so essential to the post he occupied. Le Tourneur was a vain, good-natured man who merely echoed the voice of Carnot. All the Directors but Barras occupied, with their families, apartments in the Palace of the Luxembourg. In the public mind this discordant Directory consisted of two parties, Barras, Rewbel, and Lareveillère in the majority, and Carnot and Le Tourneur in the opposition.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 451: Thiers, History of the French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 338.]
[Footnote 452: "France, exhausted by every species of suffering, had lost even the power of uttering a complaint; and we had all arrived at such a point of depression that death, if unattended by pain, would have been wished for even by the youngest human being, because it offered the prospect of repose, and every one panted for that blessing at any price. But it was ordained that many days, months, and years should still continue in that state of horrible agitation, the true foretaste of the torments of hell."--Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes, p. 296.]
[Footnote 453: A Republican does not view this endeavor on the part of the British government to foment civil war in France as a Royalist views it. "It is painful," says Mr. Alison, "to reflect how different might have been the issue of the campaign had Great Britain really put forth its strength in the contest, and, instead of landing a few thousand men on a coast bristling with bayonets, sent thirty thousand men to make head against the Republicans till the Royalist forces were so organized as to be able to take the field with regular troops." It was this persistent determination, on the part of the British government and allied Europe, that France should not enjoy free institutions, which led to nearly all the sanguinary scenes of the French Revolution, and which, for nearly a quarter of a century, made Europe red with blood.]
[Footnote 454: "All these forces [of the Republic] were in a state of extreme penury, and totally destitute of the equipments necessary for the carrying on of a campaign. They had neither caissons, nor horses, nor magazines. The soldiers were almost naked and the generals, even, frequently in want of the necessaries of life. Multitudes had taken advantage of the relaxation of authority following the fall of Robespierre to desert and return to their homes, and the government, so far from being able to bring them back to their colors, were not even able to levy conscripts in the interior to supply their place."--Alison, vol. i., p. 369.
Paper money had been issued to the almost incredible amount of 2,000,000,000 dollars, or 10,000,000,000 francs. This paper money had so depreciated that a pound of sugar cost eighty dollars in paper money.]
[Footnote 455: Thiers, Hist. French Rev., vol. iii., p. 353.]
[Footnote 456: Ibid., vol. iii., p. 364.]
[Footnote 457: M. Basseville, an envoy of the French Republic at Rome, was attacked by a mob and cruelly murdered.]
[Footnote 458: Quelling the insurgent sections.]
[Footnote 459: Thiers's French Revolution, vol. iv., p. 10.]
[Footnote 460: Thiers's French Revolution, vol. iv., p. 66.]
[Footnote 461: Wolfe Tone's First Memorial to the French Directory, vol. ii., p. 187.]
[Footnote 462: "It is a curious subject for speculation what might have been the result had Hoche succeeded in landing with sixteen thousand of his best troops on the Irish shores. To those who consider, indeed, the patriotic spirit, indomitable valor, and persevering character of the English people, and the complete command they had of the sea, the final issue of such a contest can not appear doubtful; but it is equally evident that the addition of such a force and so able a commander to the numerous bodies of Irish malcontents would have engendered a dreadful domestic war, and that the whole energies of the empire might for a very long period have been employed in saving itself from dismemberment."--Alison's History of Europe, vol. i., p. 444.]
[Footnote 463: "Carnot, Barras, Rewbel, and Lareveillère had been members of the Convention; and, although none of them had been famous during the Reign of Terror for any atrocious act, still the three first had voted the death of the king--a vote which, notwithstanding the fatal though powerful considerations that may be presented in alleviation, placed them among the most furious Jacobins, and was prejudicial to the respect with which they ought to have been invested."--Memoirs of Lavalette.]