He did not, however, come often to the Council—to less than a quarter of its sittings, at the most; moreover, the men who composed it still looked upon him with suspicion; and when, on the 4th of May, the committees were drawn up, his name was omitted. He asked on the next day to be inscribed on the committee that contained Sieyès, and his request was granted.
The activity of Danton during these few months was not even shown at the Cordeliers; though that club occasionally heard him, it was at the Jacobins that he principally spoke.
This famous club, on which the root of the Revolution so largely depends, was at this period by no means the extreme and Robespierrian thing with which we usually associate the name. It hardly even called itself “the Jacobins” yet, but clung rather to its original name of “Friends of the Constitution.” Its origin dated from the little gathering of Breton deputies who were in the habit, while the Assembly was still at Versailles, of meeting together to discuss a common plan of action. When the Assembly came to Paris, this society, in which by that time a very large number of deputies had enrolled themselves, took up their place in the hall of the Dominicans or “Jacobins,” just off the Rue St. Honoré. (Its site is just to the east of the square of Vendôme to-day.) It was a union of all those who desired reform, and in the first part of the year 1790 it had been remarkable for giving a common ground where the moderate and extremist, all who desired reform, could meet. The Duc de Broglie figures among its presidents. It was the Royalists, the extreme Court party, that dubbed these “Friends of the Constitution” “Jacobins,” and it was not till somewhat later that they themselves adopted and gloried in the nickname. It was composed not only of deputies, but of all the best-born and best-bred of the Parisian reformers, drawn almost entirely from the noble or professional classes, and holding dignified sessions, to which the public were not admitted.
Almost at the same moment, namely, towards the autumn and winter of 1790, two features appeared in it. First, the Moderates begin to leave it, and the schism which finally produced the “Feuillants” is formed; secondly, there come in from all over France demands from the local popular societies to be affiliated to the great club in Paris. These demands were granted. There arises a kind of “Jacobin order,” which penetrates even to the little country towns, everywhere preaches the same doctrine, everywhere makes it its business to keep a watch against reaction. These local clubs depended with a kind of superstition upon the decrees of what, without too violent a metaphor, we may call the “Mother House” in Paris; it was this organisation that aroused the apathy of provincial France and trained the new voters in political discussion, and it was this also that was later captured by Robespierre, who, like a kind of high priest, directed a disciplined body wherever the affiliated societies existed.
Danton first joined the society at the very moment when this double change was in progress, in September 1790. His energies, which were employed in the club to arrange the difficulty with the Moderates (if that were possible), were also used (to quote a well-known phrase) in “letting France hear Paris.” The Cordeliers had been essentially Parisian; steeped in that feeling, Danton spoke from the Rue St. Honoré to the whole nation.
It is with the end of March that he begins to be heard, in a speech attacking Collot d’Herbois; for that unpleasant fellow was then a Moderate. It is apropos of that speech that the “Sabbots Jacobites” give us the satirical rhyme on Danton, which recalls his face when he spoke, looking all the uglier for the energy which he put into his words:—
“Monsieur Danton,
Quittez cet air farouche,
Monsieur Danton,
On vous prendrez pour un démon.”[85]