CHAPTER X.
FALL OF THE MONTAGNARDS.
Reaction.
It is calculated that during the fourteen months which had elapsed since the ejection of the Girondists, about 16,000 persons had perished throughout France by the sentence of revolutionary courts. With the proscription of the Robespierrists the Terror as a system of government came to an end. Collot and Billaud, in overthrowing Robespierre, had deprived themselves of the two main engines by which the machinery of the Terror had been kept in motion. After the execution of its members the Commune had been broken up, and the Jacobins were enfeebled. The Mountain at once asserted its independence of the two committees; the Plain, in turn, asserted its independence of the Mountain. From this time the committees were renewed by a fourth every month, and the outgoing members rendered incapable of immediate re-election. Within a few weeks all the men who conducted the Government during the Terror had resigned or had been deprived of office.
The fall of Robespierre and of the committees was felt as much in Paris as it was in the Convention. No sooner did the incessant action of the guillotine cease than the revolutionary authorities fell into contempt, and the revolutionary laws, which the Terror alone had sustained, ceased to be observed. There was again freedom of action, of speech, and of the press. Hundreds and thousands of young men collected in the sections and public places, declaring war on the Jacobins, and demanding the release of friends and relations, the abolition of revolutionary committees, the imprisonment and trial of their late oppressors. They belonged to all ranks of life, but were mostly skilled artisans, clerks in offices, shopmen, tradesmen, and sons of nobles and capitalists. As in 1789, the agitation had its centre in the Palais Royal, and, as then, found its leaders in young authors and journalists. In the departments the reaction proceeded with equal rapidity. Nowhere was any attempt made to resist the new revolution. The names of Robespierre and Couthon were given over to execration by the same men who a week before had made a show of delight in honouring them. The petty tyrant of yesterday, ejected from office, went to join his victims in prison; and, as in Paris, all classes of the population speedily took advantage of the relaxation of the Terror to slip their necks free of the yoke of the revolutionary laws.
Upon the destruction of the dictatorship of the committees, supreme power reverted to the Convention. That body, however, had as little coherence now as it had had in the first months of its existence. The restitution of its liberty split it into numerous sections. It was torn by violent party spirit, and had no determinate policy or aim, but drifted onwards, following not directing the course of events. All agreed in condemnation of Robespierre, but in that alone. The Montagnards were divided amongst themselves. Only a small minority was prepared to maintain in its entirety the Terror as a system of government—Billaud and Collot and their companions in office, who feared for their own lives. A few, such as Romme and Soubrany, resolutely opposed social and economical changes which would, in the end, lead to the return of the middle-class to power. Others again, as the financier Cambon and the Dantonist Thuriot, struggled to maintain the ascendancy of the Mountain over the Plain, but declared war on Billaud and Collot, who, following in the course of Hébert and Robespierre, sought, by aid of clubs and revolutionary committees, to tyrannise over the Mountain. The Thermidorians, so-called from the name of the revolutionary month in which the new revolution had been effected, Tallien, Fréron, and others of the men who had conspired to destroy Robespierre, took up a position between the Mountain and the Plain, and for the time possessed the leadership of the Convention; but they had no policy except that of yielding sufficiently to public opinion to maintain ascendancy, and at the same time of holding in check the reaction so as to prevent its reaching themselves. One after another demands made by the anti-Terrorist press and by gatherings in the Palais Royal were complied with. The Jacobin Club, the resort of Collot, Billaud, and their partisans, was closed (November 12). The Revolutionary Committees were reduced in number and shorn of their powers. Thousands of prisoners were released and their property restored to them. Throughout the country new men were placed in office, while members of revolutionary committees and other inferior tools of the Terror were imprisoned by hundreds. A trial going on before the Revolutionary Court at Paris revealed in all their horrible details the massacres committed at Nantes, and raised a cry for vengeance against Carrier. Abandoned by the Thermidorians and almost the entire Mountain, Carrier was sent before the court for trial, and thence in his turn to the scaffold (December). Billaud, Collot, and other marked Terrorists, already denounced in the Convention by Danton’s friends, felt that danger was every day drawing nearer to themselves. Their fate was to all appearance sealed by the readmission to the Convention (December 8) of seventy-three deputies of the right, imprisoned in 1793 for signing protests against the expulsion of the Girondists.
By the return of these deputies the complexion of the Assembly was entirely altered. It was they who had formed the phalanx which had supported the Gironde, and they now sought to undo the work of the Convention since the insurrection by which their party had been overwhelmed. They demanded that confiscated property should be restored to the relatives of persons condemned by the revolutionary courts; that emigrants who had fled in consequence of Terrorist persecutions should be allowed to return; that those deputies proscribed on June 2, 1793, who yet survived, should be recalled to their seats. The Mountain, as a body, violently opposed even the discussion of such questions. The Thermidorians split into two divisions. Some in alarm rejoined the Mountain; while others, headed by Tallien and Fréron, sought their safety by coalescing with the returned members of the right. A committee was appointed to report on accusations brought against Collot, Billaud, Barère, and Vadier (December 27, 1794). In a few weeks the survivors of the proscribed deputies entered the Convention amidst applause (March 8, 1795), and it was clear that, in spite of every effort made by the left to delay a decision, the four accused men would be called upon to account for the tyranny that had been exercised by the two committees unless the Convention were overpowered by force.
The revolt of Germinal 12.
There was at this time great misery prevalent in Paris, and imminent peril of insurrection. After Robespierre’s fall, maximum prices were no longer observed, and assignats were only accepted in payment of goods at their real value compared with coin. The result was a rapid rise in prices, so that in December prices were double what they had been in July, and were continuing to rise in proportion as assignats decreased in value. The policy pursued by the Convention tended of necessity to hasten the depreciation of the paper money. Girondists, Thermidorians, and a portion of the Mountain concurred in denouncing the economic system imposed on the Convention by Hébert and Robespierre. The system of requisitions was gradually abandoned, the armies were again supplied by contract, and the maximum laws, already a dead letter, were repealed (December 24). The abolition of maximum prices and requisitions increased the already lavish expenditure of the Government, which, to meet the deficit in its revenues, had no resource but to create more assignats, and the faster these were issued the faster they fell in value and the higher prices rose. In July 1794, they had been worth 34 per cent. of their nominal value. In December they were worth 22 per cent., and in May 1795, they were worth only 7 per cent. Want of food was the more acutely felt owing to the winter having been one of great severity. The Seine was covered for weeks with ice, and wood and coal were, like other articles, dear and scarce. All persons living on fixed incomes suffered intensely. Even those who lived on wages were seriously affected. Wages had indeed risen, but not in proportion to prices. Starvation prices prevailed. Workmen earned from five to eleven shillings a day in paper money, while a multitude of State officials, pensioners and creditors, received no more than from three to six shillings a day. Yet at this time a pound of bread cost eight shillings, of rice thirteen, of sugar seventeen, and other articles were all proportionately dear. It is literally true that more than half the population of Paris was only kept alive by occasional distributions of meat and other articles at low prices, and the daily distribution of bread at three-halfpence a pound. In February, however, this source of relief threatened to fail. Farmers preferred to send their corn anywhere else than to Paris, where only paper money was to be had. It was only with extreme difficulty that the Government, which since the annihilation of the Commune had supplied Paris with bread, performed its task. The rations fell from one pound to half a pound, and soon to a few ounces per head. Numerous deaths took place, the result of destitution or actual starvation. An insurrection, however, though constantly threatened, for weeks failed to break out. One cause was that the people had grown hopeless of improving their condition by insurrection; another, that those journalists, clerks, and others, who at the opening of the revolution had incited popular movements, were now, although suffering themselves, found on the other side, and were prepared to fight in defence of the Convention, which they none the less detested, sooner than endure a revival of the Terror. Material suffering offered, however, a ready handle for Terrorist agitators; and as the peril of insurrection increased, so too, within the Convention, did the violence of party strife. The Mountain, threatened with proscription, sought to turn the position of the right and to obtain credit outside, by demanding the immediate end of provisional government and the putting in force of the democratic constitution promulgated by the Convention in 1793, after the ejection of the Girondists. On April 1, or Germinal 12, bread riots, begun by women, broke out in every section. Bands collected and forced their way into the Convention, shouting for bread, but offering no violence to the deputies. Occasionally the demand was made for the release of imprisoned patriots and for the Constitution of 1793. The crowd was already dispersing when forces arrived from the sections and cleared the House. The insurrection was a spontaneous rising for bread, without method or combination. The Terrorists had sought, but vainly, to obtain direction of it. Had they succeeded, the Mountain would have had an opportunity of proscribing the right. Their failure gave the right the opportunity of proscribing the left. The transportation to Cayenne of Billaud, Collot, Barère, and Vadier was decreed, and the arrest of fifteen other Montagnards, accused without proof, in several cases without probability, of having been accomplices of the insurgents. The Thermidorians showed themselves more vindictive than the Girondists, and it was on the proposition of Tallien that amongst those proscribed were included Thuriot and Cambon, men whose hands, compared with his own, were clear of blood.
The insurrection of Germinal 12 gave increased strength to the party of reaction. The Convention, in dread of the Terrorists, was compelled to look to it for support. The bands of young men who assembled in the Palais Royal, called ‘Fréron’s army,’ often rendered useful service by clearing the Tuileries Gardens of discontented and threatening groups. Already the dress, language, and manners in vogue during the Terror were laid aside. Red caps gave place to hats. The habit of addressing strangers by the familiar ‘thou,’ and the use of the word ‘citizen,’ were dropped in drawing-rooms. No Jacobin could set foot in the Palais Royal without experiencing insults and blows. Busts of Marat, which had been set up in every public building, were pulled down and broken, and both theatres and streets became the scene of incessant riots.
Reaction in the Departments.