The danger of the situation, nevertheless, remained great. The royalists, both in Lyons and Toulon, held out, and the rebellion in La Vendée became more formidable every day. In this department the destructive tendencies dominant in other parts of France were tempered by strong conservative instincts. No violent feeling of antagonism existed between nobles and peasants. The nobles lived at home and came into personal contact with the tenant-farmers. The country was wholly agricultural; there were few towns and no industries. The peasants, excessively credulous and superstitious, were easily led by their priests, and were ready to hazard the loss of whatever advantages the revolution brought them for the sake of keeping their faith intact. The attempt to deprive them of the priests to whom they were attached first rendered them hostile to the revolution. The attempt to carry out the forced levy of soldiers decreed in March was the immediate cause of insurrection. For the republic they had no sympathy, and refused to leave their homes to fight in its defence. A general rising took place, extending over the whole of La Vendée and part of Deux Sèvres. The Government, compelled to send every available soldier to the frontier, was quite unable to cope with the insurgents. Raw and undisciplined levies, hastily brought together in the neighbouring departments, were no match for them. The character of the country was that of an almost impregnable fortress. The interior, called the Bocage, was hilly, thickly wooded, and intersected by small streams flowing at the bottom of steep ravines. The villages lay far apart. Roads and lanes, often impassable for wheels, ran a tortuous course up and down-hill, between high hedges and forests of furze and broom. On the sea-coast the country, though flat, was readily defended, being marshy and cut up by wide ditches. A large portion of the population were poachers and smugglers, who were skilled marksmen, and the very men to carry on the guerilla warfare which now arose in every part of a country so inaccessible to the regular soldier. Defeat told heavily on the republicans, who lost stores and ammunition, missed their way in flight, and were cut down one by one by the peasantry. The Vendeans, on the other hand, if the enemy withstood their first onset, disappeared by tracks known only to themselves, and returned to their farms and ploughs, prepared to resume the contest on a more favourable occasion.
In the conduct of a war of this description there was naturally little method. The insurgent bands sought out the nobles and put them at their head. The stream of the Sèvre Nantaise divided the country into two parts, and the leaders on the two sides of the river rarely attempted concerted action. In the lower district Charette, a noble, exercised the chief authority. In the upper, two nobles, De Lescure and Bonchamps, and two peasants, Stofflet and Cathelineau, commanded.
Repeated successes were won by the Vendeans, who fought with all the ardour inspired by religious enthusiasm, and were ready to follow their leaders to the death. Priests, always present with the armies, stimulated their courage, promising to those who fell immediate entrance into Paradise. One after another the towns lying on the edge of the disturbed country fell into the insurgents’ possession. In June Saumur was captured, giving them the passage of a bridge across the Loire. Cathelineau crossed to the right bank, entered Angers, and marched against Nantes; while Charette, in Lower Vendée, agreed to open an attack on the same place from the south. But the peasants, whose custom it was to disperse after a few days’ service, had neither inclination nor heart for an expedition directed against a distant town. Many of those who followed Cathelineau deserted on the way. Nantes was bravely defended, and the assault repelled (June 29). Cathelineau received a mortal wound. Charette, south of the Loire, failed to get possession of the bridge across the river, and the Vendeans on the north bank dispersed, returning by boats to their own country.
Objects pursued by the Allies.
While the Vendeans triumphed in the west, in the east the allies were victorious. The armies of Coburg and Brunswick mustered 250,000 men. After the re-conquest of Belgium, Coburg laid siege to the French fortresses of Condé and Valenciennes. These surrendered in July. About the same time Mainz was retaken by Brunswick, and had the two generals advanced, the one from the Scheldt, the other from the Rhine, there was every probability of their making themselves masters of the capital, and with the capital, of France. The opportunity, however, was let slip. The powers had their own separate objects in view, and cared more for attaining them than for suppressing the revolution.
England designed to extend her maritime dominion and her trade by the conquest of French colonies and the destruction of the French marine. A body of English and Hanoverian troops was sent under the Duke of York to help the Austrians to capture French border fortresses, and especially to gain possession of the port of Dunkirk, where the existence of a French naval station had always been an object of jealousy to English statesmen. The alliance between Austria and Prussia was fast breaking down. Austria had given her consent to the acquisition of Polish provinces by Prussia. Prussia, on her side, had undertaken to support the Austrian plan of exchanging Belgium for Bavaria. Neither power, however, acted openly or honourably towards the other. Prussia secretly encouraged opposition to the plan of exchange. Austria urged Russia to cut Prussia’s share of Poland down to the smallest possible portion, and to delay her entering into possession of it. This state of tension was increased when the second partition of Poland was actually carried out in March and April. In consequence a change of ministry took place at Vienna. The supporters of the Prussian alliance were dismissed from office, and Baron Thugut was entrusted by the Emperor with the sole direction of foreign affairs. It was the aim of Thugut’s ambition to give to Austria a dominant position on the continent. The Prussian alliance he regarded in the light of an impediment to the accomplishment of his schemes, since Prussia was Austria’s rival in Germany and jealous of Austrian aggrandisement. For the time he let drop the idea of exchanging Belgium for Bavaria. That plan could not be carried out without the co-operation of Prussia, and the chances of Prussia’s co-operation decreased in proportion as she laid firmer hold on her new acquisitions in Poland. England, moreover, was unwilling to see Belgium passing out of the Emperor’s possession, and Thugut was eager to secure the friendship of England, in order the more effectually to keep Prussia in check. He held it, therefore, the surer policy to leave the plan in abeyance, and meanwhile to make conquest of French territory, more especially of Alsace and Lorraine, which provinces at the making of peace might be disposed of as appeared most consonant to Austrian interests. The idea of attempting to reach Paris was, accordingly, not entertained with favour by any of the powers. England and Austria both wished to operate on the French frontier, while Prussia did not care to engage deeply in hostilities in the west while affairs in Poland remained unsettled. It was, besides, the belief both of generals and diplomatists, that the strife of factions within France must result in the collapse of all government, and that in the following year a march to Paris could be effected without difficulty.
Murder of Marat.
But while the allies besieged fortresses in Flanders, and operations lagged on the Rhine, immense exertions were being made within France to increase the size of the armies, and an iron despotism was established which placed all the resources of the country at the disposition of the Government. As the departments one after another submitted, deputies from the Convention were sent into them to bring them the more completely under the control of the party which had secured ascendancy in Paris by the insurrection of June 2 (p. 155). Men who had espoused the cause of the proscribed deputies were excluded from office, and were expelled from the clubs, which from this time were only frequented by ardent supporters of the Mountain. The body of the population watched the establishment of a ruthless tyranny in their midst without attempting resistance. The will and the union requisite for action were both lacking, and the few who dared either by act or word to venture opposition to the emissaries of the Mountain or of the Commune of Paris, paid the penalty by loss of liberty if not of life. Amongst those who had placed faith in the Girondists and their ideals was a young woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday. Like them, she had dreamed of the establishment of a republic founded on the political virtue and intelligence of the people; and when the mob of Paris rose and drove with insult from the Convention those who in her eyes were the heroic defenders of the universal principles of truth and justice, she bitterly resented the wrong that had been done not only to the men themselves, but to that France of which she regarded them as the true representatives. Owing to Marat’s persistent cry for a dictatorship and for shedding of blood, it was he who, in the departments, was accounted especially responsible both for the expulsion of the Girondists and for the tyranny which now began to weigh as heavily upon the whole country as it had long weighed upon the capital. Incapable as all then were of comprehending the causes which had brought about the fall of the Girondists, Charlotte Corday imagined that by putting an end to this man’s life, she could also put an end to the system of government which he advocated. Informing her friends that she wished to visit England, she left Caen and travelled in the diligence to Paris. On her arrival she purchased a knife, and afterwards obtained entrance into Marat’s house on the pretext that she brought news which she desired to communicate to him. She knew that he would be eager to obtain intelligence of the movements of the Girondist deputies still in Normandy. Marat was ill at the time, and in a bath when Charlotte Corday was admitted. She gave him the names of the deputies who were at Caen. ‘In a few days,’ he said, as he wrote them hastily down, ‘I will have them all guillotined in Paris.’ As she heard these words she plunged the knife into his body and killed him on the spot (July 13). The cry uttered by the murdered man was heard, and Charlotte, who did not attempt to escape, was captured and conveyed to prison amid the murmurs of an angry crowd. It had been from the first her intention to sacrifice her life for the cause of her country, and glorying in her deed, she met death with stoical indifference. ‘I killed one man,’ she said, when brought before the revolutionary court, ‘in order to save the lives of 100,000 others.’
Sanguinary tendencies of the Government.
Thus perished by the hands of an assassin the man who, since the revolution began, had persistently maintained that assassination was a justifiable mode for the accomplishment of political ends. His murder brought about contrary results to those which the woman who ignorantly and rashly had flung away her life, hoped by the sacrifice to effect. Marat had not been the creator of the circumstances which enabled him to exert influence, and there was no lack of men equally sanguinary, and equally fanatic, ready to usurp the place left vacant by his death. He was regarded as a martyr by no small portion of the working population of Paris. The influence which he had exerted over them was in reality due, not so much to his exhortations to massacre, as to the fact that amongst the many writers who had put themselves forward as the spokesmen of the lower orders, he alone had truly at heart the destruction of the existing material misery. His murder excited indignation beyond the comparatively narrow circle of those who took an active part in political life, while at the same time it added a new impulse to the growing cry for blood. After the expulsion of the Girondists, power drifted more and more into the hands of those who were most violent in language, and who were prepared to be most violent in act. The more moderate section of the Mountain, composed of Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, rapidly lost influence. They were without means by which to exert control over their colleagues, and were driven to use exaggerated and sanguinary language in order to escape the charge of being themselves bad patriots and secret supporters of royalists and federalists. The deputies forming the right and centre of the Convention kept silence, or ceased to appear in their seats. The nation remained passive, incapable of resistance. Every day the Government displayed a more and more ferocious character. It was cruel, because it was weak in the sense that it had little material force on which it could rely for support, if its authority were once disputed. It was cruel also, because it was resolute and fanatic, determined to maintain itself at whatever cost, and at the same time under the influence of theories and ideas which could not be carried into practice except by resort to despotic means and by the destruction of individual as well as of political liberty.