Lectures on the French Revolution

by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

The Convention began its sittings, September 20, in the Riding School, where the Législative had met; in the month of May 1793 it adjourned to the Tuileries. There were about fifty or sixty Jacobins. The majority, without being Girondins, were prepared generally to follow, if the Girondins led. Pétion was at once elected president, and all the six secretaries were on the same side. The victory of the Gironde was complete. It had the game in its hands. The party had little cohesion and, in spite of the whispered counsels of Sieyès, no sort of tactics. Excepting Buzot, and perhaps Vergniaud, they scarcely deserve the interest they have excited in later literature, for they had no principles. Embarrassed by the helpless condition of the Législative, they made no resistance to the massacres. When Roland, Condorcet, Gorsas, spoke of them in public, they described them as a dreadful necessity, an act of rude but inevitable justice. Roland, Minister of the Interior, had some of the promoters to dine with him while the bloodshed was going on, and he proposed to draw a decent veil over what had passed. Such men were unfit to compete with Robespierre in ruthless villainy, but they were equally unfit to denounce and to expose him. That was the policy which they attempted, and by which they perished.

The movement towards a permanent Republic was not pronounced, beyond the barrier of Paris. The constituencies made no demand for it, except the Jura. Two others declared against monarchy. Thirty-four departments gave no instructions; thirty-six gave general or unlimited powers. Three, including Paris, required that constitutional decrees should be submitted to popular ratification. The first act of the Convention was to adopt that new principle. By a unanimous vote, on the motion of Danton, they decided that the Constitution must be accepted by the nation in its primary assemblies. But some weeks later, October 16, when Manuel proposed to consult the people on the question of a Republic, the Convention refused. The abolition of monarchy was carried, September 21, without any discussion; for the history of kings, said Bishop Grégoire, is the martyrology of nations. On the 22nd the Republic was proclaimed, under the first impression of the news from Valmy, brought by the future king of the French. The repulse of the invasion provoked by the late government coincided with the establishment of the new.

The Girondins, who were in possession, began with a series of personal attacks on the opposite leaders. They said, what everybody knew, that Marat was an infamous scoundrel, that Danton had not made his accounts clear when he retired from office on entering the Convention, that Robespierre was a common assassin. Some suspicion remained hanging about Danton, but the assailants used their materials with so little skill that they were worsted in the encounter with Robespierre. The Jacobins expelled them from their Club, and Louvet's motion against Robespierre was rejected on November 5. Thus they were weakened already when, on the following day, the question of the trial of the king came on. It was not only the first important stage in the strife of the parties, but it was the decisive one. The question whether Lewis should live or die was no other than the question whether Jacobin or Girondin should survive and govern.

A mighty change occurred in the position of France and in the spirit of the nation, between the events we have just contemplated and the tragedy to which we are coming. In September the German armies were in France, and at first met with no resistance. The peril was evidently extreme, and the only security was the life of the king. Since then the Prussians and Austrians had been ignominiously expelled; Belgium had been conquered; Savoy had been overrun; the Alps and the Rhine as far as Mentz were the frontiers of the Republic. From the German Ocean to the Mediterranean not an army or a fortress had been able to resist the revolutionary arms. The reasonable alarm of September had made way for an exorbitant confidence. There was no fear of all the soldiery of Europe. The French were ready to fight the world, and they calculated that they ran no graver risk than the loss of the sugar islands. It suited their new temper to slay their king, as it had been their policy to preserve him as a hostage. On the 19th of November they offered aid and friendship to every people that determined to be free. This decree, really the beginning of the great war, was caused by remonstrances from Mentz where the French party feared to be abandoned. But it was aimed against England, striking at the weakest point, and reducing its warlike power by encouraging Irish disaffection.

On the 12th of August Rebecqui had proposed that the king should be tried by the Convention that was to meet, and that there should be an appeal to the people. On October 1 the question was brought before the Convention, and a Commission of twenty-four was appointed to examine the evidence. They reported on the 6th of November; and from that moment the matter did not rest. On the following day, Mailhe, in the name of the jurists, reported that there was no legal obstacle, from the inviolability acknowledged by the Constitution. Mousson replied that since Lewis was deposed, he had no further responsibility. A very young member sprang suddenly into notoriety, on the 13th, by arguing that there was no question of justice and its forms; a king deserved death not for what he did, but for what he was. The speaker's name was St. Just. On November 20, before the debate had gone either way, Roland appeared, with news of an important discovery. The king had an iron safe in his palace, which the locksmith had betrayed. Roland had found that it contained 625 documents. A committee of twelve was directed to examine them, and they found the proofs of a great scheme of corruption, and of the venality of Mirabeau. On December 3 it was resolved that the king should be tried by the Convention; the order of proceedings was determined on the 6th, and on the 10th the indictment was brought in. On the next day Lewis appeared before his judges, and was interrogated by the President. He said, in his replies, that he knew nothing of an iron safe, and had never given money to Mirabeau, or to any deputy. When he got back to prison the unhappy man exclaimed, "They asked questions for which I was so little prepared that I denied my own hand." Ten days were allowed to prepare the defence. He was assisted by Malesherbes, by the famous jurist Tronchet, and by Desèze, a younger man, who made the speech. It was unconvincing, for the advocates perceived, no better than their client, where the force and danger of the accusation lay.

Everybody believed that Lewis had brought the invader into the country, but it was not proved in evidence. If the proofs since published had been known at the time, the defence must have been confined to the plea that the king was inviolable; and the answer would have been that he is covered by the responsibility of ministers, but responsible for what he does behind their back. At the last moment several Girondins proposed that sentence should be pronounced by the nation, in primary assemblies—an idea put forward by Faure on November 29. This was contrary to the spirit of representative democracy, which consults the electors as to men, and not as to measures properly the result of debate. It was consistent with the direct action of Democracy, which was the theory of Jacobinism. But the Jacobins would not have it. By compelling the vote on the capital question, they would ruin their adversaries. If the Girondins voted for death, they would follow the train of the party that resolutely insisted on it. If they voted against, they could be accused of royalism. When the question "Guilty or not guilty?" was put, there was no hesitation; 683 voted guilty, one man, Lanjuinais, answering that he was a legislator, not a judge. The motion, to leave the penalty to the people, which was made in the interest of the Girondins, not of the king, failed by 423 to 281, and ruined the party that contrived it. The voting on the penalty began on the evening of January 17, and as each man gave his voice from the tribune, it lasted far into the following day. Vergniaud declared the result; he said that there was a majority of five for death. Both parties were dissatisfied, and suspected fraud. A scrutiny was held, and it then appeared that those who had voted simply for the capital penalty were 361, and that those who had voted otherwise were 360. Majority, 1. But when the final vote was taken on the question of delay, there was a majority of 70 for immediate execution.

That the decision was the result of fear has been stated, even by Brissot and Carnot. The duke of Orleans had written to the President that he could not vote at the trial of his kinsman. The letter was returned to him. He promised his son that he would not vote for death, and when they met again exclaimed, "I am not worthy to be your father!" At dinner, on the fatal day, Vergniaud declared that he would defend the king's life, even if he stood alone. A few hours later he voted for death. Yet Vergniaud was soon to prove that he was not a man whom intimidation influenced. The truth is, that nobody had a doubt as to guilt. Punishment was a question rather of policy than of justice.

The army was inclined to the side of mercy. Custine had offered, November 23, to save Lewis, if Prussia would acknowledge the Republic. The offer was made in vain. Dumouriez came to Paris in January, and found that there was nothing to be done. He said afterwards, "It is true he was a perfidious scoundrel, but it was folly to cut his head off." The Spanish Bourbons made every effort to save the head of the house. They offered neutrality and mediation, and they empowered their agent to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in opportune bribery. They promised, if Lewis was delivered up to them, that they would prevent him from ever interfering in French affairs, and would give hostages for his good behaviour. They entreated George III. to act with them in a cause which was that of monarchy and of humanity. Lansdowne, Sheridan, and Fox urged the government to interpose. Grenville made known that peace would be preserved if France gave up her conquests, but he said not a word for the king. Information was brought to Pitt, from a source that could be trusted, that Danton would save him for £40,000. When he made up his mind to give the money, Danton replied that it was too late. Pitt explained to the French diplomatist Maret, afterwards Prime Minister, his motive for hesitation. The execution of the king of France would raise such a storm in England that the Whigs would be submerged.

Lewis was resigned to his fate, but he expected that he would be spared, and he spoke of retiring to the Sierra Morena, or of seeking a retreat for his old age among the faithful republicans of Switzerland. When his advocates came to tell him that there was no hope, he refused to believe them. "You are mistaken," he said; "they would never dare." He quickly recovered his composure, and declined to ask permission to see his family. "I can wait," he said; "in a few days they will not refuse me." A priest who applied for leave to attend him was sent to prison. As a foreigner was less likely to be molested, the king asked for the abbé Edgeworth, of Firmount, who had passed his life in France, but might be considered an Irishman. Garat, the Minister of the Interior, went to fetch him. On their way he said, "He was weak when in power; but you will see how great he is, now that he is in chains."

On the following day Lewis was taken through a vast parade of military and cannon to the scaffold in the Place de la Concorde, a little nearer to the Champs Elysées than the place where the obelisk of Luxor stands. He was nearly an hour on the way. The Spanish envoy had not made terms with the agents who were attracted by the report of his unlimited credit, and he spent his doubloons in a frantic attempt at rescue as the prisoner passed, at a foot pace, along the Boulevard. An equivocal adventurer, the Baron de Batz, who helped to organise the rising of Vendémiaire, which only failed because it encountered Bonaparte, had undertaken to break the line, with four or five hundred men. They were to make a rush from a side street. But every street was patrolled and every point was guarded as the coach went by carrying the prisoner. De Batz was true to the rendezvous, and stood up waving a sword and crying, "Follow me and save the king!" It was without effect; he vanished in the crowd; one companion was taken and guillotined, but the police were able to report that no incident had occurred on the way.