The French Revolution - Volume 3

by Hippolyte Taine

Such is his title, his personality and role. In this artificial and declamatory tragedy of the Revolution he takes the leading part; the maniac and the barbarian slowly retire in the background on the appearance of the cuistre; Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who attracts all the attention.[3187]—If we want to understand him we must look at him as he stands in the midst of his surroundings. At the last stage of a dying intellectual vegetation, on the last branch of the eighteenth century, he is the final freak and dried fruit of the classical spirit.[3188] He has retained nothing of a worn-out system of philosophy but its lifeless dregs and well-conned formulae, the formulae of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal, concerning "the people, nature, reason, liberty, tyrants, factions, virtue, morality," a ready-made vocabulary,[3189] expressions too ample, the meaning of which, ill-defined by the masters, evaporates in the hands of the disciple. He never tries to get at this; his writings and speeches are merely long strings of vague abstract periods; there is no telling fact in them, no distinct, characteristic detail, no appeal to the eye evoking a living image, no personal, special observation, no clear, frank original impression. It might be said of him that he never saw anything with his own eyes, that he neither could nor would see, that false conceptions have intervened and fixed themselves between him and the object;[3190] he combines these in logical sequence, and simulates the absent thought by an affected jargon, and this is all. The other Jacobins alongside of him likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them spout and spread out so complacently and lengthily as he. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing.[3191] When we, in astonishment, ask ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectarian preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the other of listening. So much the better if the container is empty; the emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still, if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous words justice, humanity, mean to him piles of human heads, the same as a text from the gospels means to a grand inquisitor the burning of heretics.—Through this extreme perversity, the cuistre spoils his own mental instrument; thenceforth he employs it as he likes, as his passions dictate, believing that he serves truth in serving these.

Now, his first passion, his principal passion, is literary vanity. Never was the chief of a party, sect or government, even at critical moments, such an incurable, insignificant rhetorician, so formal, so pompous, and so dull.—On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it was a question of life or death, he enters the tribune with a set speech, written and re-written, polished and re-polished,[3192] overloaded with studied ornaments and bits for effect,[3193] coated by dint of time and labor, with the academic varnish, the glitter of symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods, exclamations, omissions, apostrophes and other tricks of the pen.[3194]—In the most famous and important of his reports,[3195] I have counted eighty-four instances of personifications[3196] imitated from Rousseau and the antique, many of them largely expanded, some addressed to the dead, to Brutus, to young Barra, and others to absentees, priests, and aristocrats, to the unfortunate, to French women, and finally to abstract substantives like Liberty and Friendship. With unshaken conviction and intense satisfaction, he deems himself an orator because he harps on the same old tune. There is not one true tone in his elaborate eloquence, nothing but recipes and only those of a worn-out art, Greek and Roman common-places, Socrates and the hemlock, Brutus and his dagger, classic metaphors like "the flambeaux of discord," and "the vessel of State,"[3197]s coupled together and beauties of style which a pupil in rhetoric aims at on the college bench;[3198]times a grand bravura air, so essential for parade in public;[3199] centimes a delicate strain of the flute, for, in those days, one must have a tender heart;[31100] in short, Marmontel's method in "Belisarius," or that of Thomas in his "Eloges," all borrowed from Rousseau, but of inferior quality, like a sharp, thin voice strained to imitate a rich, powerful voice. All is a sort of involuntary parody, and the more repulsive because a word ends in a blow, because a sentimental, declamatory Trissotin poses as statesman, because the studied elegance of the closet become pistol shots aimed at living breasts, because an epithet skillfully directed sends a man to the guillotine.—The contrast is too great between his talent and the part he plays. With such a talent, as mediocre and false as his intellect, there is no employment for which he is less suited than that of governing men; he was cut out for another, which, in a peaceable community, he would have been able to do. Suppress the Revolution, and Marat would have probably ended his days in an asylum. Danton might possibly have become a legal filibuster, a highwayman or gangster, and finally throttled or hung. Robespierre, on the contrary, might have continued as he began,[31101] a busy, hard-working lawyer of good standing, member of the Arras Academy, winner of competitive prizes, author of literary eulogies, moral essays and philanthropic pamphlets; his little lamp, lighted like hundreds of others of equal capacity at the focus of the new philosophy, would have burned moderately without doing harm to any one, and diffused over a provincial circle a dim, commonplace illumination proportionate to the little oil his lamp would hold.

But the Revolution bore him into the Constituent Assembly, where, for a long time on this great stage, his amour propre, the dominant feeling of the pedant, suffered terribly. He had already suffered on this score from his earliest youth, and his wounds being still fresh made him only the more sensitive.—Born in Arras in 1758, orphaned and poor, protégé of his bishop, a bursar through favor at the college Louis-le-Grand, later a clerk with Brissot under the revolutionary system of law-practice, and at length settled down in his gloomy rue des Rapporteurs as a pettifogger. Living with a bad-tempered sister, he has adopts Rousseau, whom he had once seen and whom he ardently studies, for his master in philosophy, politics and style. Fancying, probably, like other young men of his age and condition, that he could play a similar part and thus emerge from his blind alley, he published law pleadings for effect, contended for Academy prizes, and read papers before his Arras colleagues. His success was moderate: one of his harangues obtained a notice in the Artois Almanac; the Academy of Metz awarded him only a second prize; that of Amiens gave him no prize, while the critic of the "Mercure" spoke of his style as smacking of the provinces.—In the National Assembly, eclipsed by men of great and spontaneous ability, he remains a long time in the shade, and, more than once, through obstination or lack of tact, makes himself ridiculous. With his sharp, thin, attorney's visage, "dull, monotonous, coarse voice and wearisome delivery,"—"an artesian accent" and constrained air,[31102] his constantly putting himself forward, his elaboration of commonplaces, his evident determination to impose on cultivated people, still a body of intelligent listeners, and the intolerable boredom he caused them—all this is not calculated to render the Assembly indulgent to errors of sense and taste.[31103] One day, referring to certain acts of the "Conseil:" "It is necessary that a noble and simple formula should announce national rights and carry respect for law into the hearts of the people. Consequently, in the decrees as promulgated, after the words Louis, by the grace of God," etc., these words should follow:

"People, behold the law imposed on you! Let this law be considered sacred and inviolable for all!" Upon this, a Gascon deputy arises and remarks in his southern accent, "Gentlemen, this style is unsuitable—there is no need for sermons.[31104] (cantique)."

General laughter; Robespierre keeps silent and bleeds internally: two or three such mishaps nettle such a man from head to foot. It is not that his stupid remarks seem silly to him; no pedant taken in the act and hissed would avow that he deserved such treatment; on the contrary, he is content to have spoken as becomes a philosophic and moral legislator, and so much the worse for the narrow minds and corrupt hearts unable to comprehend him.—Thrown back upon himself, his wounded vanity seeks inward nourishment and takes what it can find in the sterile uniformity of his bourgeois moderation. Robespierre, unlike Danton, has no cravings. He is sober; he is not tormented by his senses; if he gives way to them, it is only no further than he can help, and with a bad grace. In the rue Saintonge in Paris, "for seven months," says his secretary,[31105] "I knew of but one woman that he kept company with, and he did not treat her very well. .. very often he would not let her enter his room": when busy, he must not be disturbed. He is naturally steady, hard-working, studious and fond of seclusion, at college a model pupil, at home in his province an attentive advocate, a punctual deputy in the Assembly, everywhere free of temptation and incapable of going astray.—"Irreproachable" is the word which from early youth an inward voice constantly repeats to him in low tones to console him for obscurity and patience. Thus has he ever been, is now, and ever will be; he says this to himself, tells others so, and on this foundation, all of a piece, he builds up his character. He is not, like Desmoulins, to be seduced by dinners, like Barnave, by flattery, like Mirabeau and Danton, by money, like the Girondists, by the insinuating charm of ancient politeness and select society, like the Dantonists, by the bait of joviality and unbounded license—he is the incorruptible. He is not to be deterred or diverted, like the Feuillants, Girondists, and Dantonists, like statesmen or specialists, by considerations of a lower order, by regard for interests or respect for acquired positions, by the danger of undertaking too much at once, by the necessity of not disorganizing the service and of giving play to human passions, motives of utility and opportunity: he is the uncompromising champion of the right.[31106] "Alone, or nearly alone, I do not allow myself to be corrupted; alone or nearly alone, I do not compromise justice; which two merits I possess in the highest degree. A few others may live correctly, but they oppose or betray principles; a few others profess to have principles, but they do not live correctly. No one else leads so pure a life or is so loyal to principles; no one else joins to so fervent a worship of truth so strict a practice of virtue: I am the unique."—What can be more agreeable than this mute soliloquy? From the very first day it can be heard toned down in Robespierre's address to the Third-Estate of Arras;[31107] the last day it is spoken aloud in his great speech in the Convention;[31108] during the interval, it crops out and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or reports, in exordiums, parentheses and perorations, permeating every sentence like the drone of a bag-pipe.[31109]—Through the delight he takes in this he can listen to nothing else, and it is just here that the outward echoes supervene and sustain with their accompaniment the inward cantata which he sings to his own glory. Towards the end of the Constituent Assembly, through the withdrawal or the elimination of every man at all able or competent, he becomes one of the conspicuous tenors on the political stage, while in the Jacobin Club he is decidedly the tenor most in vogue.—"Unique competitor of the Roman Fabricius," writes the branch club at Marseilles to him; "immortal defender of popular rights," says the Jacobin crew of Bourges.[31110] One of two portraits of him in the exhibition of 1791 bears the inscription: "The Incorruptible." At the Moliere Theatre a drama of the day represents him as launching the thunderbolts of his logic and virtue at Rohan and Condé. On his way, at Bapaume, the patriots of the place, the National Guard on the road and the authorities, come in a body to honor the great man. The town of Arras is illuminated on his arrival. On the adjournment of the Constituent Assembly the people in the street greet him with shouts, crown him with oak wreaths, take the horses from his cab and drag him in triumph to the rue St. Honoré, where he lodges with the carpenter Duplay.—Here, in one of those families in which the semi-bourgeois class borders on the people, whose minds are unsophisticated, and on whom glittering generalities and oratorical tirades take full hold, he finds his worshippers; they drink in his words; they have the same opinion of him that he has of himself; to every person in the house, husband, wife and daughter, he is the great patriot, the infallible sage; he bestows benedictions night and morning; he inhales clouds of incense; he is a god at home. The faithful, to obtain access to him form a line in the court.[31111] One by one they are admitted into the reception room, where they gather around portraits of him drawn with pencil, in stump, in sepia and in water color, and before miniature busts in red or gray plaster. Then, on the signal being given by him, they penetrate through a glass door into the sanctuary where he presides, into the private closet in which the best bust of him, with verses and mottoes, replaces him during his absence.—His worshippers adore him on their knees, and the women more than the men. On the day he delivers his apology before the Convention "the passages are lined with women[31112].... seven or eight hundred of them in the galleries, and but two hundred men at most;" and how frantically they cheer him! He is a priest surrounded by devotees."[31113] In the Jacobin club, when he delivers his "amphigory," there are sobs of emotion, "outcries and stamping of feet almost making the house tumble."[31114] An onlooker who shows no emotion is greeted with murmurs and obliged to slip out, like a heretic that has strayed into a church on the elevation of the Host.—The faster the revolutionary thunderbolts fall on other heads, so does Robespierre mount higher and higher in glory and deification. Letters are addressed to him as "the founder of the Republic, the incorruptible genius who foresees all and saves all, who can neither be deceived nor seduced;"[31115] who has "the energy of a Spartan and the eloquence of an Athenian;"[31116] "who shields the Republic with the aegis of his eloquence;"[31117] who "illuminates the universe with his writings, fills the world with his renown and regenerates the human species here below;"[31118] whose" name is now, and will be, held in veneration for all ages, present and to come;"[31119] who is "the Messiah promised by the Eternal for universal reform."[31120] An extraordinary popularity," says Billaud-Varennes,[31121] a popularity which, founded under the Constituent Assembly, "only increased during the Legislative Assembly," and, later on, so much more, that, "in the National Convention he soon found himself the only one able to fix attention on his person.... and control public opinion.... With this ascendancy over public opinion, with this irresistible preponderance, when he reached the Committee of Public Safety, he was already the most important being in France." After three years, a chorus of a thousand voices,[31122] which he formed and directs, repeats again and again in unison his litany, his personal creed, a hymn of three stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and which he daily recites to himself in a low tone of voice, and often in a loud one:

"Robespierre alone has discovered the best type of citizen! Robespierre alone, modestly and without shortcomings, fits the description! Robespierre alone is worthy of and able to lead the Revolution!"[31123]

Cool infatuation carried thus far is equivalent to a raging fever, and Robespierre almost attains to the ideas and the ravings of Marat.

First, in his own eyes, he, like Marat, is a persecuted man, and, like Marat, he poses himself as a "martyr," but more skillfully and keeping within bounds, affecting the resigned and tender air of an innocent victim, who, offering himself as a sacrifice, ascends to Heaven, bequeathing to mankind the imperishable souvenir of his virtues.[31124]

"I arouse against me the pride of everybody;[31125] I sharpen against me a thousand daggers. I am a sacrifice to every species of hatred. ... It is certain that my head will atone for the truths I have uttered. I have given my life, and shall welcome death almost as a boon. It is, perhaps, Heaven's will that my blood should indicate the pathway of my country to happiness and freedom. With what joy I accept this glorious destiny!"[31126]—

"It is hardly in order to live that one declares war against tyrants, and, what is still more dangerous, against miscreants.... The greater their eagerness to put an end to my career here below, the more eager I shall be to fill it with actions serving the welfare of my fellow-creatures."[31127]