History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814

by M. Mignet

They went on to abolish the decemviral system. The decree against the priests and nobles, who had formed two proscribed classes under the reign of terror, was revoked; the maximum was abolished, in order to restore confidence by putting an end to commercial tyranny; the general and earnest effort was to substitute the most elevated liberty for the despotic pressure of the committee of public safety. This period was also marked by the independence of the press, the restoration of religious worship, and the return of the property confiscated from the federalists during the reign of the committees.

Here was a complete reaction against the revolutionary government; it soon reached Marat and the Mountain. After the 9th of Thermidor, it had been considered necessary to oppose a great revolutionary reputation to that of Robespierre, and Marat had been selected for this purpose. To him were decreed the honours of the Panthéon, which Robespierre, while in power, had deferred granting him. He, in his turn, was now attacked. His bust was in the convention, the theatres, on the public squares, and in the popular assemblies. The jeunesse dorée broke that in the Théâtre Feydeau. The Mountain complained, but the convention decreed that no citizen could obtain the honours of the Panthéon, nor his bust be placed in the convention, until he had been dead ten years. The bust of Marat disappeared from the hall of the convention, and as the excitement was very great in the faubourgs, the sections, the usual support of the assembly, defiled through it. There was, also, opposite the Invalides, an elevated mound, a Mountain, surmounted by a colossal group, representing Hercules crushing a hydra. The section of the Halle-au-blé demanded that this should be removed. The left of the assembly murmured. "The giant," said a member, "is an emblem of the people." "All I see in it is a mountain," replied another, "and what is a Mountain but an eternal protest against equality." These words were much applauded, and sufficed to carry the petition and overthrow the monument of the victory and domination of a party.

Next were recalled the proscribed conventionalists; already, some time since, their outlawry had been reversed. Isnard and Louvet wrote to the assembly to be reinstated in their rights; they were met by the objection as to the consequences of the 31st of May, and the insurrections of the departments. "I will not," said Chénier, who spoke in their favour, "I will not so insult the national convention as to bring before them the phantom of federalism, which has been preposterously made the chief charge against your colleagues. They fled, it will be said; they hid themselves. This, then, is their crime! would that this, for the welfare of the republic, had been the crime of all! Why were there not caverns deep enough to preserve to the country the meditations of Condorcet, the eloquence of Vergniaud? Why did not some hospitable land, on the 10th Thermidor, give back to light that colony of energetic patriots and virtuous republicans? But projects of vengeance are apprehended from these men, soured by misfortune. Taught in the school of suffering, they have learnt only to lament human errors. No, no, Condorcet, Rabaud-Saint- Etienne, Vergniaud, Camille Desmoulins seek not holocausts of blood; their manes are not to be appeased by hecatombs." The Left opposed Chénier's motion. "You are about," cried Bentabole, "to rouse every passion; if you attack the insurrection of the 31st of May, you attack the eighty thousand men who concurred in it." "Let us take care," replied Sieyès, "not to confound the work of tyranny with that of principles. When men, supported by a subordinate authority, the rival of ours, succeeded in organizing the greatest of crimes, on the fatal 31st of May, and 2nd of June, it was not a work of patriotism, but an outrage of tyranny; from that time you have seen the convention domineered over, the majority oppressed, the minority dictating laws. The present session is divided into three distinct periods; till the 31st of May, there was oppression of the convention by the people; till the 9th Thermidor, oppression of the people by the convention, itself the object of tyranny; and lastly, since the 9th of Thermidor, justice, as regards the convention, has resumed its rights." He demanded the recall of the proscribed members, as a pledge of union in the assembly, and of security for the republic. Merlin de Douai immediately proposed their return in the name of the committee of public safety; it was granted, and after eighteen months' proscription, the twenty-two conventionalists resumed their seats; among them were Isnard, Louvet, Lanjuinais, Kervelegan, Henri La Rivière, La Réveillère-Lépaux, and Lesage, all that remained of the brilliant but unfortunate Gironde. They joined the moderate party, which was composed daily more and more of the remains of different parties. For old enemies, forgetting their resentments and their contest for domination, because they had now the same interests and the same object, became allies. It was the commencement of pacification between those who wished for a republic against the royalists, and a practicable constitution, in opposition to the revolutionists. At this period all measures against the federalists were rescinded, and the Girondists assumed the lead of the republican counter- revolution.

The convention was, however, carried much too far by the partisans of reaction; in its desire to repair all and to punish all, it fell into excesses of justice. After the abolition of the decemviral régime, the past should have been buried in oblivion, and the revolutionary abyss closed after a few expiatory victims had been thrown into it. Security alone brings about pacification; and pacification only admits of liberty. By again entering upon a course characterized by passion, they only effected a transference of tyranny, violence, and calamity. Hitherto the bourgeoisie had been sacrificed to the multitude, to the consumers now it was just the reverse. Stock-jobbing was substituted for the maximum, and informers of the middle class altogether surpassed the popular informers. All who had taken part in the dictatorial government were proceeded against with the fiercest determination. The sections, the seat of the middle class, required the disarming and punishment of the members of their revolutionary committees, composed of sans-culottes. There was a general hue and cry against the terrorists, who increased in number daily. The departments denounced all the former proconsuls, thus rendering desperate a numerous party, in reality no longer to be feared, since it had lost all power, by thus threatening it with great and perpetual reprisals.

Dread of proscription, and several other reasons, disposed them for revolt. The general want was terrible. Labour and its produce had been diminished ever since the revolutionary period, during which the rich had been imprisoned and the poor had governed; the suppression of the maximum had occasioned a violent crisis, which the traders and farmers turned to account, by disastrous monopoly and jobbing. To increase the difficulty, the assignats were falling into discredit, and their value diminished daily. More than eight milliards worth of them had been issued. The insecurity of this paper money, by reason of the revolutionary confiscations, which had depreciated the national property, the want of confidence on the part of the merchants, tradesmen, etc., in the stability of the revolutionary government, which they considered merely provisional, all this had combined to reduce the real value of the assignats to one- fifteenth of their nominal value. They were received reluctantly, and specie was hoarded up with all the greater care, in proportion to the increasing demand for it, and the depreciation of paper money. The people, in want of food, and without the means of buying it, even when they held assignats, were in utter distress. They attributed this to the merchants, the farmers, the landed and other proprietors, to the government, and dwelt with regret upon the fact that before, under the committee of public safety, they had enjoyed both power and food. The convention had indeed appointed a committee of subsistence to supply Paris with provisions, but this committee had great difficulty and expense in procuring from day to day the supply of fifteen hundred sacks of flour necessary to support this immense city; and the people, who waited in crowds for hours together before the bakers' shops, for the pound of bad bread, distributed to each inhabitant, were loud in their complaints, and violent in their murmurs. They called Boissy d'Anglas, president of the committee of subsistence, Boissy-Famine. Such was the state of the fanatical and exasperated multitude, when its former leaders were brought to trial.

On the 12th Ventôse, a short time after the return of the remaining Girondists, the assembly had decreed the arrest of Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, Barrère and Vadier. Their trial before the convention was appointed to commence on the 3rd Germinal. On the 1st (20th of March, 1795), the Décade day, and that on which the sections assembled, their partisans organized a riot to prevent their being brought to trial; the outer sections of the faubourgs Saint Antoine and Saint Marceau were devoted to their cause. From these quarters they proceeded, half petitioners, half insurgents, towards the convention, to demand bread, the constitution of '93, and the liberation of the imprisoned patriots. They met a few young men on their way, whom they threw into the basins of the Tuileries. The news, however, soon spread that the convention was exposed to danger, and that the Jacobins were about to liberate their leaders, and the jeunesse dorée, followed by about five thousand citizens of the inner sections, came, dispersed the men of the faubourgs, and acted as a guard for the assembly. The latter, warned by this new danger, revived, on the motion of Sieyès, the old martial law, under the name of loi de grande police.

This rising in favour of the accused having failed, they were brought before the convention on the 3rd Germinal. Vadier alone was contumacious. Their conduct was investigated with the greatest solemnity; they were charged with having tyrannized over the people and oppressed the convention. Though proofs were not wanting to support this charge, the accused defended themselves with much address. They ascribed to Robespierre the oppression of the assembly, and of themselves; they endeavoured to palliate their own conduct by citing the measures taken by the committee, and adopted by the convention, by urging the excitement of the period, and the necessity of securing the defence and safety of the republic. Their former colleagues appeared as witnesses in their favour, and wished to make common cause with them. The Crêtois (the name then given to the remnant of the Mountain) also supported them warmly. Their trial had lasted nine days, and each sitting had been occupied by the prosecution and the defence. The sections of the faubourgs were greatly excited. The mobs which had collected every day since the 1st Germinal, increased twofold on the 12th, and a new rising took place, in order to suspend the trial, which the first rising had failed to prevent. The agitators, more numerous and bold on this occasion, forced their way through the guard of the convention, and entered the hall, having written with chalk on their hats the words, "Bread," "The constitution of '93," "Liberty for the patriots." Many of the deputies of the Crête declared in their favour; the other members, astounded at the tumult and disorder of this popular invasion, awaited the arrival of the inner sections for their deliverance. All debating was at an end. The tocsin, which had been removed from the commune after its defeat, and placed on the top of the Tuileries, where the convention sat, sounded the alarm. The committee ordered the drums to beat to arms. In a short time the citizens of the nearest sections assembled, marched in arms to assist the convention, and rescued it a second time. It sentenced the accused, whose cause was the pretext for this rising, to transportation, and decreed the arrest of seventeen members of the Crête who had favoured the insurgents, and might therefore be regarded as their accomplices. Among these were Cambon, Ruamps, Leonard Bourdon, Thuriot, Chasle, Amar, and Lecointre, who, since the recall of the Girondists, had returned to the Mountain. On the following day they, and the persons sentenced to transportation, were conveyed to the castle of Ham.

The events of the 12th of Germinal decided nothing. The faubourgs had been repulsed, but not conquered; and both power and confidence must be taken from a party by a decisive defeat, before it is effectually destroyed. After so many questions decided against the democratists, there still remained one of the utmost importance—the constitution. On this depended the ascendancy of the multitude or of the bourgeoisie. The supporters of the revolutionary government then fell back on the democratic constitution of '93, which presented to them the means of resuming the authority they had lost. Their opponents, on the other hand, endeavoured to replace it by a constitution which would secure all the advantage to them, by concentrating the government a little more, and giving it to the middle class. For a month, both parties were preparing for this last contest. The constitution of 1793, having been sanctioned by the people, enjoyed a great prestige. It was accordingly attacked with infinite precaution. At first its assailants engaged to carry it into execution without restriction; next they appointed a commission of eleven members to prepare the lois organiques, which were to render it practicable; by and by, they ventured to suggest objections to it on the ground that it distributed power too loosely, and only recognised one assembly dependent on the people, even in its measures of legislation. At last, a deputation of the sectionaries went so far as to call the constitution of '93 a decemviral constitution, dictated by terror. All its partisans, at once indignant and filled with fears, organized an insurrection to maintain it. This was another 31st of May, as terrible as the first, but which, not having the support of an all-powerful commune, not being directed by a general commandant, and not having a terrified convention and submissive sections to deal with, had not the same result.

The conspirators, warned by the failure of the risings of the 1st and 12th Germinal, omitted nothing to make up for their want of direct object and of organization. On the 1st Prairial (20th of May) in the name of the people, insurgent for the purpose of obtaining bread and their rights, they decreed the abolition of the revolutionary government, the establishment of the democratic constitution of '93, the dismissal and arrest of the members of the existing government, the liberation of the patriots, the convocation of the primary assemblies on the 25th Prairial, the convocation of the legislative assembly, destined to replace the convention, on the 25th Messidor, and the suspension of all authority not emanating from the people. They determined on forming a new municipality, to serve as a common centre; to seize on the barriers, telegraph, cannon, tocsins, drums, and not to rest till they had secured repose, happiness, liberty, and means of subsistence for all the French nation. They invited the artillery, gendarmes, horse and foot soldiers, to join the banners of the people, and marched on the convention.

Meantime, the latter was deliberating on the means of preventing the insurrection. The daily assemblages occasioned by the distribution of bread and the popular excitement, had concealed from it the preparations for a great rising, and it had taken no steps to prevent it. The committees came in all haste to apprise it of its danger; it immediately declared its sitting permanent, voted Paris responsible for the safety of the representatives of the republic, closed its doors, outlawed all the leaders of the mob, summoned the citizens of the sections to arms, and appointed as their leaders eight commissioners, among whom were Legendre, Henri La Rivière, Kervelegan, etc. These deputies had scarcely gone, when a loud noise was heard without. An outer door had been forced, and numbers of women rushed into the galleries, crying, "Bread and the constitution of '93!" The convention received them firmly. "Your cries," said the president Vernier, "will not alter our position; they will not accelerate by one moment the arrival of supplies. They will only serve to hinder it." A fearful tumult drowned the voice of the president, and interrupted the proceedings. The galleries were then cleared; but the insurgents of the faubourgs soon reached the inner doors, and finding them closed, forced them with hatchets and hammers, and then rushed in amidst the convention.