Thus fell the Gironde party, a party rendered illustrious by great talents and great courage, a party which did honour to the young republic by its horror of bloodshed, its hatred of crime and anarchy, its love of order, justice, and liberty; a party unfitly placed between the middle class, whose revolution it had combated, and the multitude, whose government it rejected. Condemned to inaction, it could only render illustrious certain defeat, by a courageous struggle and a glorious death. At this period, its fate might readily be foreseen; it had been driven from post to post; from the Jacobins by the invasion of the Mountain; from the commune by the outbreak of Pétion; from the ministry by the retirement of Roland and his colleagues; from the army by the defection of Dumouriez. The convention alone remained to it, there it threw up its intrenchments, there it fought, and there it fell. Its enemies employed against it, in turn, insurrection and conspiracy. The conspiracies led to the creation of the Commission of Twelve, which seemed to give a momentary advantage to the Gironde, but which only excited its adversaries the more violently against it. These aroused the people, and took from the Girondists, first, their authority, by destroying the Twelve; then, their political existence, by proscribing their leaders.
The consequences of this disastrous event did not answer the expectations of any one. The Dantonists thought that the dissensions of parties were at an end: civil war broke out. The moderate members of the committee of public safety thought that the convention would resume all its power: it was utterly subdued. The commune thought that the 31st of May would secure to it domination; domination fell to Robespierre, and to a few men devoted to his fortune, or to the principle of extreme democracy. Lastly, there was another party to be added to the parties defeated, and thenceforth hostile; and as after the 10th of August the republic had been opposed to the constitutionalists, after the 31st of May the Reign of Terror was opposed to the moderate party of the republic.
CHAPTER VIII
FROM THE 2ND OF JUNE, 1793, TO APRIL, 1794
It was to be presumed that the Girondists would not bow to their defeat, and that the 31st of May would be the signal for the insurrection of the departments against the Mountain and the commune of Paris. This was the last trial left them to make, and they attempted it. But, in this decisive measure, there was seen the same want of union which had caused their defeat in the assembly. It is doubtful whether the Girondists would have triumphed, had they been united, and especially whether their triumph would have saved the revolution. How could they have done with just laws what the Mountain effected by violent measures? How could they have conquered foreign foes without fanaticism, restrained parties without the aid of terror, fed the multitude without a maximum, and supplied the armies without requisition. If the 31st of May had had a different result, what happened at a much later period would probably have taken place immediately, namely, a gradual abatement of the revolutionary movement, increased attacks on the part of Europe, a general resumption of hostilities by all parties, the days of Prairial, without power to drive back the multitude; the days of Vendémiaire, without power to repel the royalists; the invasion of the allies, and, according to the policy of the times, the partition of France. The republic was not sufficiently powerful to meet so many attacks as it did after the reaction of Thermidor.
However this may be, the Girondists who ought to have remained quiet or fought all together, did not do so, and, after the 2nd of June, all the moderate men of the party remained under the decree of arrest: the others escaped. Vergniaud, Gensonné, Ducos, Fonfrède, etc., were among the first; Pétion, Barbaroux, Guadet, Louvet, Buzot, and Lanjuinais, among the latter. They repaired to Evreux, in the department de l'Eure, where Buzot had much influence, and thence to Caen, in Calvados. These made this town the centre of the insurrection. Brittany soon joined them. The insurgents, under the name of the assembly of the departments assembled at Caen, formed an army, appointed general Wimpfen commander, arrested Romme and Prieur de la Marne, who were members of the Mountain and commissaries of the convention, and prepared to march on Paris. From there, a young, beautiful, and courageous woman, Charlotte Corday, went to punish Marat, the principal author of the 31st of May, and the 2nd of June. She hoped to save the republic by sacrificing herself to its cause. But tyranny did not rest with one man; it belonged to a party, and to the violent situation of the republic. Charlotte Corday, after executing her generous but vain design, died with unchanging calmness, modest courage, and the satisfaction of having done well. [Footnote: The following are a few of the replies of this heroic girl before the revolutionary tribunal:—"What were your intentions in killing Marat?"—"To put an end to the troubles of France."—"Is it long since you conceived this project?"—"Since the proscription of the deputies of the people on the 31st of May."—"You learned then by the papers that Marat was a friend of anarchy?"—"Yes, I knew he was perverting France. I have killed," she added, raising her voice, "a man to save a thousand; a villain, to save the innocent; a wild beast, to give tranquility to my country. I was a republican before the revolution, and I have never been without energy.">[ But Marat, after his assassination, became a greater object of enthusiasm with the people than he had been while living. He was invoked on all the public squares; his bust was placed in all the popular societies, and the convention was obliged to grant him the honours of the Panthéon.
At the same time Lyons arose, Marseilles and Bordeaux took arms, and more than sixty departments joined the insurrection. This attack soon led to a general rising among all parties, and the royalists for the most part took advantage of the movement which the Girondists had commenced. They sought, especially, to direct the insurrection of Lyons, in order to make it the centre of the movement in the south. This city was strongly attached to the ancient order of things. Its manufactures of silver and gold and silken embroidery, and its trade in articles of luxury, made it dependent on the upper classes. It therefore declared at an early period against a social change, which destroyed its former connexions, and ruined its manufactures, by destroying the nobility and clergy. Lyons, accordingly, in 1790, even under the constituent assembly, when the emigrant princes were in that neighbourhood, at the court of Turin, had made attempts at a rising. These attempts, directed by priests and nobles, had been repressed, but the spirit remained the same. There, as elsewhere, after the 10th of August, men had wished to bring about the revolution of the multitude, and to establish its government. Châlier, the fanatical imitator of Marat, was at the head of the Jacobins, the sans-culottes, and the municipality of Lyons. His audacity increased after the massacres of September and the 21st of January. Yet nothing had as yet been decided between the lower republican class, and the middle royalist class, the one having its seat of power in the municipality, and the other in the sections. But the disputes became greater towards the end of May; they fought, and the sections carried the day. The municipality was besieged, and taken by assault. Châlier, who had fled, was apprehended and executed. The sections, not as yet daring to throw off the yoke of the convention, endeavoured to excuse themselves on the score of the necessity of arming themselves, because the Jacobins and the members of the corporation had forced them to do so. The convention, which could only save itself by means of daring, losing everything if it yielded, would listen to nothing. Meanwhile the insurrection of Calvados became known, and the people of Lyons, thus encouraged, no longer feared to raise the standard of revolt. They put their town in a state of defence; they raised fortifications, formed an army of twenty thousand men, received emigrants among them, entrusted the command of their forces to the royalist Précy and the marquis de Virieux, and concerted their operations with the king of Sardinia.
The revolt of Lyons was so much the more to be feared by the convention, as its central position gave it the support of the south, which was in arms, while there was also a rising in the west. At Marseilles, the news of the 31st of May had aroused the partisans of the Girondists: Rebecqui repaired thither in haste. The sections were assembled; the members of the revolutionary tribunal were outlawed; the two representatives, Baux and Antiboul, were arrested, and an army of ten thousand men raised to advance on Paris. These measures were the work of the royalists, who, there as elsewhere, only waiting for an opportunity to revive their party, had at first assumed a republican appearance, but now acted in their own name. They had secured the sections; and the movement was no longer effected in favour of the Girondists, but for the counter-revolutionists. Once in a state of revolt, the party whose opinions are the most violent, and whose aim is the clearest, supplants its allies. Rebecqui, perceiving this new turn of the insurrection, threw himself in despair into the port of Marseilles. The insurgents took the road to Lyons; their example was rapidly imitated at Toulon, Nîmes, Montauban, and the principal towns in the south. In Calvados, the insurrection had had the same royalist character, since the marquis de Puisaye, at the head of some troops, had introduced himself into the ranks of the Girondists. The towns of Bordeaux, Nantes, Brest, and L'Orient, were favourable to the persons proscribed on the 2nd of June, and a few openly joined them; but they were of no great service, because they were restrained by the Jacobin party, or by the necessity of fighting the royalists of the west.
The latter, during this almost general rising of the departments, continued to extend their enterprises. After their first victories, the Vendéans seized on Bressuire, Argenton, and Thouars. Entirely masters of their own country, they proposed getting possession of the frontiers, and opening a way into revolutionary France, as well as communications with England. On the 6th of June, the Vendéan army, composed of forty thousand men, under Cathelineau, Lescure, Stofflet, and La Rochejaquelin, marched on Saumur, which it took by storm. It then prepared to attack and capture Nantes, to secure the possession of its own country, and become master of the course of the Loire. Cathelineau, at the head of the Vendéan troops, left a garrison in Saumur, took Angers, crossed the Loire, pretended to advance upon Tours and Le Mans, and then rapidly threw himself upon Nantes, which he attacked on the right bank, while Charette was to attack it on the left.
Everything seemed combined for the overthrow of the convention. Its armies were beaten on the north and on the Pyrenees, while it was threatened by the people of Lyons in the centre, those of Marseilles in the south, the Girondists in one part of the west, the Vendéans in the other, and while twenty thousand Piedmontese were invading France. The military reaction which, after the brilliant campaigns of Argonne and Belgium, had taken place, chiefly owing to the disagreement between Dumouriez and the Jacobins, between the army and the government, had manifested itself in a most disastrous manner since the defection of the commander-in-chief. There was no longer unity of operation, enthusiasm in the troops, or agreement between the convention, occupied with its quarrels, and the discouraged generals. The remains of Dumouriez's army had assembled at the camp at Famars, under the command of Dampierre; but they had been obliged to retire, after a defeat, under the cannon of Bouchain. Dampierre was killed. The frontier from Dunkirk to Givet was threatened by superior forces. Custine was promptly called from the Moselle to the army of the north, but his presence did not restore affairs. Valenciennes, the key to France, was taken; Condé shared the same fate; the army, driven from position to position, retired beyond the Scarpe, before Arras, the last post between the Scarpe and Paris. Mayence, on the other side, sorely pressed by the enemy and by famine, gave up all hope of being assisted by the army of the Moselle, reduced to inaction; and despairing of being able to hold out long, capitulated. Lastly, the English Government, seeing that Paris and the departments were distressed by famine, after the 31st of May and the 2nd of June, pronounced all the ports of France in a state of blockade, and that all neutral ships attempting to bring a supply of provisions would be confiscated. This measure, new to the annals of history, and destined to starve an entire people, three months afterwards originated the law of the maximum. The situation of the republic could not be worse.