The servility of the colleagues of Robespierre in the Convention was by no means based upon any feeling of sympathy for him. The dictator filled them with an unspeakable alarm, but beneath the marks of admiration and enthusiasm which they lavished on him out of fear was concealed an intense hatred. We can gather as much by reading the reports of various deputies inserted in the Moniteur of August 11, 15, and 29, 1794, and notably that on ``the conspiracy of the triumvirs, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just.'' Never did slaves heap such invectives on a fallen master.
We learn that ``these monsters had for some time been renewing the most horrible prescriptions of Marius and Sulla.'' Robespierre is represented as a most frightful scoundrel; we are assured that ``like Caligula, he would soon have asked the French people to worship his horse . . . He sought security in the execution of all who aroused his slightest suspicion.''
These reports forget to add that the power of Robespierre obtained no support, as did that of the Marius and Sulla to whom they allude, from a powerful army, but merely from the repeated adhesion of the members of the Convention. Without their extreme timidity the power of the dictator could not have lasted a single day.
Robespierre was one of the most odious tyrants of history, but he is distinguished from all others in that he made himself a tyrant without soldiers.
We may sum up his doctrines by saying that he was the most perfect incarnation, save perhaps Saint-Just, of the Jacobin faith, in all its narrow logic, its intense mysticism, and its inflexible rigidity. He has admirers even to-day. M. Hamel describes him as ``the martyr of Thermidor.'' There has been some talk of erecting a monument to him. I would willingly subscribe to such a purpose, feeling that it is useful to preserve proofs of the blindness of the crowd, and of the extraordinary docility of which an assembly is capable when the leader knows how to handle it. His statue would recall the passionate cries of admiration and enthusiasm with which the Convention acclaimed the most threatening measures of the dictator, on the very eve of the day when it was about to cast him down.
4. Fouquier-Tinville, Marat, Billaud-Varenne, &c.
I shall devote a paragraph to certain revolutionists who were famous for the development of their most sanguinary instincts. Their ferocity was complicated by other sentiments, by fear and hatred, which could but fortify it.
Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was one of those who have left the most sinister memories. This magistrate, formerly reputed for his kindness, and who became the bloodthirsty creature whose memory evokes such repulsion, has already served me as an example in other works, when I have wished to show the transformation of certain natures in time of revolution.
Needy in the extreme at the moment of the fall of the monarchy, he had everything to hope from a social upheaval and nothing to lose. He was one of those men whom a period of disorder will always find ready to sustain it.
The Convention abandoned its powers to him. He had to pronounce upon the fate of nearly two thousand accused, among whom were Marie-Antoinette, the Girondists, Danton, Hebert, &c. He had all the suspects brought before him executed, and did not scruple to betray his former protectors. As soon as one of them fell into his power—Camille Desmoulins, Danton, or another—he would plead against him.