From Paris the radical movement radiated in all directions. Pamphlets and newspapers were spread broadcast. The Jacobin club established a regular correspondence with branch clubs or kindred societies which sprang up in other French towns. The radicals were everywhere inspired by the same zeal and aided by a splendid organization.
[Sidenote: Radical Leaders]
Of the chief radical leaders, it may be convenient at this point to introduce three—Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. All belonged to the bourgeoisie by birth and training, but by conviction they became the mouthpieces of the proletariat. All played important rôles in subsequent scenes of the Revolution.
[Sidenote: Marat]
Marat (c. 1742-1793), had he never become interested in politics and conspicuous in the Revolution, might have been remembered in history as a scientist and a man of letters. He had been a physician, and for skill in his profession, as well as for contributions to the science of physics, he had received an honorary degree from St. Andrews University in Scotland, and for a time he was in the service of the count of Artois. The convocation of the Estates-General turned his attention to public affairs. In repeated and vigorous pamphlets he combated the idea then prevalent in France that his countrymen should adopt a constitution similar to that of Great Britain. During several years' sojourn in Great Britain he had observed that that country was being ruled by an oligarchy which, while using the forms of liberty and pretending to represent the country, was in reality using its power for the promotion of its own narrow class interests. He made up his mind that real reform must benefit all the people alike and that it could be secured only by direct popular action. This was the simple message that filled the pages of the Ami du peuple—the Friend of the People—a newspaper which he edited from 1789 to 1792. With fierce invective he assailed the court, the clergy, the nobles, even the bourgeois Assembly. Attached to no party and with no detailed policies, he sacrificed almost everything to his single mission. No poverty, misery, or persecution could keep him quiet. Forced even to hide in cellars and sewers, where he contracted a loathsome skin disease, he persevered in his frenzied appeals to the Parisian populace to take matters into their own hands. By 1792 Marat was a man feared and hated by the authorities but loved and venerated by the masses of the capital. [Footnote: Marat was assassinated on 13 July, 1793, by Charlotte Corday, a young woman who was fanatically attached to the Girondist faction.]
[Sidenote: Danton]
No less radical but far more statesmanlike was Danton (1759-1794), who has been called "a sort of middle-class Mirabeau." The son of a farmer, he had studied law, had purchased a position as advocate of the Royal Council, and, before the outbreak of the Revolution, had acquired a reputation not only as a brilliant young lawyer, but also as a man of liberal tastes, fond of books, and happy in his domestic life. Like Mirabeau, he was a person of powerful physique and of stentorian voice, a skilled debater and a convincing orator; unlike Mirabeau, he himself remained calm and self-possessed while arousing his audiences to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Like Mirabeau, too, he was not so primarily interested in the welfare of his own social class as in that of the class below him: what the nobleman Mirabeau was to the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois Danton was to the Parisian proletariat. Brought to the fore, through the favor of Mirabeau, in the early days of the Revolution, Danton at once showed himself a strong advocate of real democracy. In 1790, in conjunction with Marat and Camille Desmoulins, he founded the Cordelier Club, the activities of which he directed throughout 1791 and 1792 against the royal family and the whole cause of monarchy. An influential member of the commune of Paris, he was largely instrumental in crystallizing public opinion in favor of republicanism, Danton was rough and courageous, but neither venal nor bloodthirsty.
[Sidenote: Robespierre]
Less practical than Danton and further removed from the proletariat than Marat, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) nevertheless combined such qualities as made him the most prominent exponent of democracy and republicanism. Descended from a middle-class family of Irish extraction, Robespierre had been a classmate of Camille Desmoulins in the law school of the University of Paris, and had practiced law with some success in his native town of Arras. He was appointed a criminal judge, but soon resigned that post because he could not endure to inflict the death penalty. In his immediate circle he acquired a reputation as a writer, speaker, and something of a dandy. Elected to the Third Estate in 1789, he took his place with the extreme radicals in that body—the "thirty voices," as Mirabeau contemptuously called them. Robespierre had read Rousseau from cover to cover and believed in the philosopher's doctrines with all his heart so that he would have gone to death for them. In the belief that they eventually would succeed and regenerate France and all mankind, he was ready to work with unwearied patience. The paucity of his followers in the National Assembly and the overpowering personality of Mirabeau prevented him from exercising much influence in framing the new constitution, and he gradually turned for support to the people of Paris. He was already a member of the Jacobin Club, which, by the withdrawal of its more conservative members in 1791, came then under his leadership. Thenceforth the Jacobin Club was a most effective instrument for establishing social democracy (although it was not committed to republicanism until August, 1792), and Robespierre was its oracle. Robespierre was never a demagogue in the present sense of the word: he was always emphatically a gentleman and a man of culture, sincere and truthful. Although he labored strenuously for the "rights" of the proletariat, he never catered to their tastes; to the last day of his life he retained the knee-breeches and silk stockings of the old society and wore his hair powdered.
We are now in a position to understand why the constitutional monarchy floundered. It had no great leaders to strengthen it and to conduct it through the narrow strait. It was bound to strike the rocks of reaction on one side or those of radicalism on the other. Against such fearless and determined assailants as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, it was helpless.