Danton knew all this, and he is sufficiently clear-headed to comprehend the danger; but the furrow is laid out, traced, and by himself. Since the 10th of August Paris holds France down while a handful of revolutionaries tyrannize Paris.[3402]
I.—Jacobin advantages.
Their sway in the section assemblies.—Maintenance,
re-election and completion of the Commune.—Its new chiefs,
Chaumette, Hébert and Pache.—The National Guard recast.
—Jacobins elected officers and sub-officers.—The paid band
of roughs.—Public and secret funds of the party.
Owing to the composition and the holding of the section assemblies, the original source of power has remained Jacobin, and has become of a darker and darker hue; accordingly, the electoral processes which, under the legislative body, had fashioned the usurping Commune of the 10th of August, are perpetuated and aggravated under the Convention.[3403] "In nearly all the sections[3404] it is the sans-culottes who occupy the chair, arrange things inside the chamber, place the sentinels and provide the censors and auditors. Five or six spies, familiar with the section, and paid forty sous a day, remain during the session, and ready to undertake any enterprise. These same individuals will take orders from one Committee of Surveillance to another,.. so that if the sans-culottes of one section are not strong enough they may call in those of a neighboring section."—In such assemblies the elections are decided beforehand, and we see how the faction keeps forcibly in its hands, or obtains by force, every elective position. The Council of the Commune, in spite of the hostile inclinations of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, succeeds at first in maintaining itself four months; then, in December,[3405] when it is at last compelled to break up, it reappears through the authorization of the suffrage, reinforced and completed by its own class, with three chiefs, a syndic-attorney, a deputy and a mayor, all three authors or abettors of the September massacre; with Chaumette, Anaxagoras, so-called, once a cabin-boy, then a clerk, always in debt, a windbag, and given to drink; Hébert, called "Père Duchesne," which states about all that is necessary for him; Pache, a subaltern busy-body, a bland, smooth-faced intriguer, who, with his simple air and seeming worth, pushes himself up to the head of the War Department, where he used all its resources for pillaging, and who, born in a door-keeper's lodgings, returns there, either through craft or inclination, to take his dinner.—The Jacobins, with the civil power in their hands, also grab the military power. Immediately after the 10th of August,[3406] the National Guard is reorganized and distributed in as many battalions as there are sections, each battalion thus becoming "a section in arms"; by this we may judge its composition, and the kind of rabble-rousers they select as officers and non-commissioned officers. "The title of National Guard," writes a deputy, "can no longer be given to the lot of pikemen and substitutes, mixed with a few bourgeois, who, since the 10th of August, maintain the military service in Paris." There are, indeed, 110,000 names on paper; when called out on important occasions, all who are registered may respond, if not disarmed, but, in general, almost all stay at home and pay a sans-culotte to mount guard in their place. In fact, there is for the daily service only a hired reserve in each section, about one hundred men, always the same individuals. This makes in Paris a band of four or five thousand roughs, in which the squads may be distinguished which have already been seen in September: Maillard and his 68 men at the Abbaye, Gauthier and his 40 men at Chantilly, Audouin, the Sapper of the Carmelites," and his 350 men in the suburbs of Paris, Fournier, Lazowski and their 1,500 men at Orleans and Versailles.[3407] As to the pay of these and that of their civil auxiliaries, the faction is not troubled about that; for, along with power, it has seized money. To say nothing of its rapine in September,[3408] and without including the lucrative offices at its disposition, four hundred of these being distributed by Pache alone, and four hundred more by Chaumette,[3409] the Commune has 850,000 francs per month for its military police. Other bleedings at the Treasury cause more public money to flow into the pockets of its clients. One million per month supports the idle workmen which fife and drum have collected together to form the camp around Paris. Five millions of francs protect the petty tradesmen of the capital against the depreciation in value of certificates of credit. Twelve thousand francs a day keep down the price of bread for the Paris poor.[3410] To these regularly allowed subsidies add the funds which are diverted or extorted. On one side, in the War Department, Pache, its accomplice before becoming its mayor, organizes a steady stream of waste and theft; in three months he succeeds in bringing about a deficiency of 130,000,000, "without vouchers."[3411] On another side, the Duke of Orleans, become Philippe-Egalité, dragged along by the men once in his pay, with a rope around his neck and almost strangled, has to pay out more than ever, even down to the very depths of his purse; to save his own life he consents to vote for the King's death, besides resigning himself to other sacrifices;[3412] it is probable that a large portion of his 74,000,000 of indebtedness at his death is due to all this.—Thus in possession of civil and military offices, of arms and money, the faction, masters of Paris, has nothing to do but master the isolated Convention, and this it invests on all sides.[3413]
II.—Its parliamentary recruits.
Their characters and minds.—Saint-Just.—Violence of the
minority in the Convention.—Pressure of the galleries.
—Menaces of the streets.
Through the elections, the Jacobin advance-guard of fifty deputies is already posted there; while, owing to the fascination it has to excitable and despotic natures, to brutal temperaments, narrow, disjointed minds, weak imaginations, doubtful honesty, and old religious or social rancor, it succeeds in doubling this number at the end of six months.[3414] On the benches of the extreme "Left," around Robespierre, Danton and Marat, the original nucleus of the September faction, sit men of their stamp, first, the corrupt, like Chabot, Tallien and Barras, wretches like Fouché, Guffroy and Javogues, crazy enthusiasts like David, savage maniacs like Carrier, paltry simpletons like Joseph Lebon, common fanatics like Levasseur, Baubot, Jeanbon-Saint-André, Romme and Lebas. Add also, and especially, the future iron-handed representatives, uncouth, authoritarian, and narrow-minded, excellent troopers for a political militia, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Rewbell, and Bentabole, "a lot of ignorant bastards," said Danton,[3415] "without any common sense, and patriotic only when drunk. Marat is nothing but a bawler. Legendre is fit for nothing but to cut up his meat. The rest are good for little else than voting by either sitting down or standing up, but they are cold blooded and have broad shoulders." From amongst these energetic nonentities we see ascending a young monster, with calm, handsome features, Saint-Just. He is a kind of precocious Sylla, 25 years old and a new-comer, who springs at once from the ranks and, by dint of atrocities, obtains a prominent position.[3416] Six years before this he began life by a domestic robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left the house during the night, carrying off the plate and jewels, which he squandered while living in a lodging house in the Rue Fromenteau, in the center of Parisian prostitution;[3417] on the strength of this, and at the demand of his friends, he is shut up in a house of correction for six months. On returning to his lodgings he occupied himself with writing an obscene poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a fit of rage resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution. He possessed a "blood calcified by study," a colossal pride, an unhinged conscience, a pompous, gloomy imagination haunted with the bloody recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence so warped and twisted as to be comfortable only among excessive paradoxes, shameless sophistry, and devastating lies.[3418] All these dangerous ingredients which, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition, long and silently boiling within him, have led to a constant defiance, a determined callousness, an automatic rigidity, and to the summary politics of the Utopian dictator and exterminator.—It is plain that such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather than yield to the majority that it will introduce into the debate boos and hisses, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols, sabers and even the "blunder busses" of a veritable combat.
"Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins, blackguards, fools and hogs," such are the usual terms in which they address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.[3419] The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on his hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to leave his seat and demand that "he be removed.' Bazire tries to snatch a declaration presented by him "out of his hands." Bourdon, from the department of Oise, cries out to him that if he "dares to read it he will assassinate him."[3420] The chamber "has become an arena of gladiators."[3421] Sometimes the entire "Mountain" darts from its benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those on the right; both clash in the center of the room amidst furious screams and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the "Mountain" having drawn a pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.[3422] After the middle of December prominent members of the "Right," constantly persecuted, threatened and outraged," reduced to "being out every night, are compelled to carry arms in self-defense,"[3423] and, after the King's execution, "almost all" bring them to the sessions of the Convention. Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack, and they are not disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March 9, finding that they are only forty-three, they agree to launch themselves in a body "at the first hostile movement, against their adversaries and kill as many as possible" before perishing.[3424]