The accused were brought before the revolutionary tribunal; their attitude was haughty, and full of courage. They displayed an audacity of speech, and a contempt of their judges, wholly unusual: Danton replied to the president Dumas, who asked him the customary questions as to his name, his age, his residence: "I am Danton, tolerably well known in the revolution; I am thirty-five years old. My residence will soon be nothing. My name will live in the Panthéon of history." His disdainful or indignant replies, the cold and measured answers of Lacroix, the austere dignity of Philippeaux, the vigour of Desmoulins, were beginning to move the people. But the accused were silenced, under the pretext that they were wanting in respect to justice, and were immediately condemned without a hearing. "We are immolated," cried Danton, "to the ambition of a few miserable brigands, but they will not long enjoy the fruit of their criminal victory. I draw Robespierre after me—Robespierre will follow me." They were taken to the Conciergerie, and thence to the scaffold.
They went to death with the intrepidity usual at that epoch. There were many troops under arms, and their escort was numerous. The crowd, generally loud in its applause, was silent. Camille Desmoulins, when in the fatal cart, was still full of astonishment at his condemnation, which he could not comprehend. "This, then," said he, "is the reward reserved for the first apostle of liberty." Danton stood erect, and looked proudly and calmly around. At the foot of the scaffold he betrayed a momentary emotion. "Oh, my best beloved—my wife!" he cried, "I shall not see thee again." Then suddenly interrupting himself: "No weakness, Danton!" Thus perished the last defenders of humanity and moderation; the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice was raised against the dictatorship of terror; and from one end of France to the other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought to prevent this violent reign,—the Dantonists to stop it; all perished, and the conquerors had the more victims to strike the more foes arose around them. In so sanguinary a career, there is no stopping until the tyrant is himself slain. The Decemvirs, after the definitive fall of the Girondists, had made terror the order of the day; after the fall of the Hébertists, justice and probity, because these were impure men of faction; after the fall of the Dantonists, terror and all virtues, because these Dantonists were, according to their phraseology, indulgents and immorals.
CHAPTER IX
FROM THE DEATH OF DANTON, APRIL, 1794, TO THE 9TH THERMIDOR, (27TH JULY, 1794)
During the four months following the fall of the Danton party, the committees exercised their authority without opposition or restraint. Death became the only means of governing, and the republic was given up to daily and systematic executions. It was then were invented the alleged conspiracies of the inmates of the prisons, crowded under the law des suspects, or emptied by that of the 22nd Prairial, which might be called the law des condamnés; then the emissaries of the committee of public safety entirely replaced in the departments those of the Mountain; and Carrier, the protégé of Billaud, was seen in the west; Maigret, the protégé of Couthon, in the south; and Joseph Lebon, the protégé of Robespierre, in the north. The extermination en masse of the enemies of the democratic dictatorship, which had already been effected at Lyons and Toulon by grape-shot, became still more horrible, by the noyades of Nantes, and the scaffolds of Arras, Paris, and Orange.
May this example teach men a truth, which for their good ought to be generally known, that in a revolution all depends on a first refusal and a first struggle. To effect a pacific innovation, it must not be contested; otherwise war is declared and the revolution spreads, because the whole nation is aroused to its defence. When society is thus shaken to its foundations, it is the most daring who triumph, and instead of wise and temperate reformers, we find only extreme and inflexible innovators. Engendered by contest, they maintain themselves by it; with one hand they fight to maintain their sway, with the other they establish their system with a view to its consolidation; they massacre in the name of their doctrines: virtue, humanity, the welfare of the people, all that is holiest on earth, they use to sanction their executions, and to protect their dictatorship. Until they become exhausted and fall, all perish indiscriminately, both the enemies and the partisans of reform. The tempest dashes a whole nation against the rock of revolution. Inquire what became of the men of 1789 in 1794, and it will be found that they were all alike swept away in this vast shipwreck. As soon as one party appeared on the field of battle, it summoned all the others thither, and all like it were in turn conquered and exterminated; constitutionalists, Girondists, the Mountain, and the Decemvirs themselves. At each defeat, the effusion of blood became greater, and the system of tyranny more violent. The Decemvirs were the most cruel, because they were the last.
The committee of public safety, being at once the object of the attacks of Europe, and of the hatred of so many conquered parties, thought that any abatement of violence would occasion its destruction; it wished at the same time to subdue its foes, and to get rid of them. "The dead alone do not return," said Barrère. "The more freely the social body perspires, the more healthy it becomes," added Collot-d'Herbois. But the Decemvirs, not suspecting their power to be ephemeral, aimed at founding a democracy, and sought in institutions a security for its permanence in the time when they should cease to employ executions. They possessed in the highest degree the fanaticism of certain social theories, as the millenarians of the English revolution, with whom they may be compared, had the fanaticism of certain religious ideas. The one originated with the people, as the other looked to God; these desired the most absolute political equality, as those sought evangelical equality; these aspired to the reign of virtue, as those to the reign of the saints. Human nature flies to extremes in all things, and produces, in a religious epoch, democratic Christians—in a philosophical epoch, political democrats.
Robespierre and Saint-Just had produced the plan of that democracy, whose principles they professed in all their speeches; they wished to change the manners, mind, and customs of France, and to make it a republic after the manner of the ancients; they sought to establish the dominion of the people; to have magistrates free from pride; citizens free from vice; fraternity of intercourse, simplicity of manners, austerity of character, and the worship of virtue. The symbolical words of the sect may be found in the speeches of all the reporters of the committee, and especially in those of Robespierre and Saint-Just. Liberty and equality for the government of the republic; indivisibility for its form; public safety for its defence and preservation; virtue for its principle; the Supreme Being for its religion; as for the citizens, fraternity for their daily intercourse; probity for their conduct; good sense for their mental qualities; modesty for their public actions, which were to have for object the welfare of the state, and not their own: such was the symbol of this democracy. Fanaticism could not go further. The authors of this system did not inquire into its practicability; they thought it just and natural; and having power, they tried to establish it by violence. Not one of these words but served to condemn a party or individuals. The royalists and aristocrats were hunted down in the name of liberty and equality; the Girondists in the name of indivisibility; Philippeaux, Camille Desmoulins, and the moderate party, in the name of public safety; Chaumette, Anacharsis Clootz, Gobet, Hébert, all the anarchical and atheistical party, in the name of virtue and the Supreme Being; Chabot, Bazire, Fabre-d'Eglantine, in the name of probity; Danton in the name of virtue and modesty. In the eyes of fanatics, these moral crimes necessitated their destruction, as much as the conspiracies which they were accused of.
Robespierre was the patron of this sect, which had in the committee a more zealous, disinterested, and fanatic partisan than himself, in the person of Saint-Just, who was called the Apocalyptic. His features were bold but regular, and marked by an expression determined, but melancholy. His eye was steady and piercing; his hair black, straight, and long. His manners cold, though his character was ardent; simple in his habits, austere and sententious, he advanced without hesitation towards the completion of his system. Though scarcely twenty-five years old, he was the boldest of the Decemvirs, because his convictions were the deepest. Passionately devoted to the republic, he was indefatigable in the committees, intrepid on his missions to the armies, where he set an example of courage, sharing the marches and dangers of the soldiers. His predilection for the multitude did not make him pay court to their propensities; and far from adopting their dress and language with Hébert, he wished to confer on them ease, gravity, and dignity. But his policy made him more terrible than his popular sentiments. He had much daring, coolness, readiness, and decision. Rarely susceptible to pity, he reduced to form his measures for the public safety, and put them into execution immediately. If he considered victory, proscription, the dictatorship necessary, he at once demanded them. Unlike Robespierre, he was completely a man of action. The latter, comprehending all the use he might make of him, early gained him over in the convention. Saint-Just, on his part, was drawn towards Robespierre by his reputation for incorruptibility, his austere life, and the conformity of their ideas.
The terrible effects of their association may be conceived when we consider their popularity, the envious and tyrannical passions of the one, and the inflexible character and systematic views of the other. Couthon had joined them; he was personally devoted to Robespierre. Although he had a mild look and a partially paralysed frame, he was a man of merciless fanaticism. They formed, in the committee, a triumvirate which soon sought to engross all power. This ambition alienated the other members of the committee, and caused their own destruction. In the meantime, the triumvirate imperiously governed the convention and the committee itself. When it was necessary to intimidate the assembly, Saint-Just was intrusted with the task; when they wished to take it by surprise, Couthon was employed. If the assembly murmured or hesitated, Robespierre rose, and restored silence and terror by a single word.