The French Revolution

by Sir Charles Edward Mallet

The reaction against the Commune had unmistakably begun. On the day after the decree of the Convention the first number of the Vieux Cordelier appeared. The Hébertists, defeated in the Jacobins, had made their headquarters at the Cordeliers Club; and in order to emphasise the difference between the new doctrines and the spirit which had inspired the Cordeliers in their earlier days, Camille Desmoulins gave to his protest the title of the club, where his wit and Danton's eloquence had once held undisputed sway. Danton and his friends were known to sympathise with the opinions of the new journal. Robespierre corrected the first number in proof. Desmoulins began by denouncing the Hébertists, but as the tide of reaction rose and the friends of moderation gathered courage, he passed on to attack the whole system of the Terror, and in the famous third number of his paper he boldly arraigned its tyranny and crimes. Two days later, on the 17th December, the Convention, on the motion of Danton's adherents, decreed the arrest of three agents of the Commune, Vincent, Ronsin and Maillard. Proposals were freely put forward for renewing and remodelling the Government itself. Bodies of petitioners appeared at the bar of the Convention asking for mercy towards the suspects. Robespierre proposed the appointment of a commission to consider all cases of unjust arrest. Camille Desmoulins appealed to Robespierre and passionately urged the cause of mercy. 'The liberty I worship is no unknown God.... It is happiness, reason, equality, justice.... Robespierre, friend and comrade of my schooldays, whose eloquent words our children will read often, recall the history and philosophy that we learned. Remember that love is stronger and lives longer than fear, that reverence and religion spring from kindly treatment ... and that no men can mount on blood-stained steps to heaven. Why,' cried the writer bitterly, as he wound up his powerful appeal, 'why has compassion become a crime in France?'

To such a height had the reaction attained, when, on the 21st December, Collot d'Herbois suddenly arrived in Paris. He was welcomed by the Hébertists as a deliverer. 'The giant has arrived,' cried Hébert gladly, 'the faithful defender of the Sansculottes,' and Collot at once espoused the cause of his allies. Full of vigour and self-confidence, the executioner of Lyons entertained no scruples about the Terror. He denounced all ideas of moderation. His presence reanimated the Committee, cheered the party of the Commune, and abashed the hopes of the reaction. The capture of Toulon, which occurred about the same time, served to increase the prestige of the Government. Many who had welcomed Desmoulins' appeal began to feel that they had been too precipitate. The Commune, gathering courage, demanded and obtained the release of its imprisoned agents. The commission to enquire into cases of unjust arrest was cancelled. Collot d'Herbois quickly made his influence felt at the Jacobins and in the Committee, and all the waverers, as usual, rallied to the stronger side. Robespierre, alarmed at the turn events were taking, began to dissociate himself from his new allies, lamented the bitterness of party feeling, and declared that his object was 'to overwhelm factions, foreigners and moderates, but not to ruin patriots.' Even Danton took occasion to declare his loyalty to the Government, and endeavoured to restrain the incautious declarations of his friends.

All through January and February, 1794, the struggle of parties continued, and the fiercest animosities prevailed. At the Jacobins, Desmoulins' colleagues renewed their onslaught on the followers of Hébert, but no longer with the same success. Robespierre laboured steadily by perpetual speeches to secure his ascendency in the club, and studiously avoided committing himself to either side. But his position changed. He began to display undisguised hostility towards Philippeaux and Fabre d'Églantine, the most outspoken members of the moderate party. He assumed a tone of paternal reproach towards Camille Desmoulins, and proposed that the Vieux Cordelier, which he had once cordially welcomed, should be burned. Danton, disheartened, and embarrassed, relapsed into listless inactivity, and contented himself with deprecating personal attacks. The chances of a reaction against the Terror passed away, and the Government daily offered a stronger front to the enmity of Hébertists and Dantonists alike.

At last, after many weeks of struggle and intrigue, the crisis came. At the end of February, St. Just returned to Paris from a mission in the provinces, and brought a new influence to bear upon events. St. Just was the loyal disciple of Robespierre, but he possessed far more energy and decision than his chief. He shared Robespierre's dislike of Hébert, but he did not share his kindly feeling towards Danton. Desmoulins had ridiculed the stiff pomposity of the young Committee-man's demeanour, and to St. Just ridicule was an unpardonable wrong. While Robespierre pleaded indisposition and held aloof from the meetings of the Committee, St. Just declared himself without disguise. He proposed to enforce the authority of the Government by sacrificing Dantonists and Hébertists alike. He denounced significantly 'the greatest criminals, who are only trying to destroy the scaffold because they dread the prospect of mounting it themselves.' His presence seems to have roused his colleagues, as the arrival of Collot had roused them before. The Commune was once more made to feel the weight of the Committee's authority. A decree of the Convention confiscated the property of the suspects in order to provide for destitute patriots, and by this great bribe diminished the influence which the Commune enjoyed with the needy poor. The Hébertists, now thoroughly alarmed, made a last effort to assert themselves. They held stormy meetings at the Cordeliers Club, and indulged in reckless schemes of insurrection. But even Collot d'Herbois seems to have felt that the leaders of the Commune had gone too far, and he gave his consent to the policy of the Committee. St. Just took the lead in the attack. On the night of the 13th March, Hébert and his principal colleagues were arrested. Next day, Robespierre reappeared in the Convention and resumed his place at the Jacobin Club. For the first time in the history of the Revolution the less extreme party, with legitimate authority behind it, had asserted itself against the forces of insurrection, had assumed the offensive and had won the day.

On the one side the enemies of the Government had fallen. It only remained for them to dispose of the rest. The extreme Terrorists had consented to allow their friends in the Commune to perish, but only on condition that the advocates of mercy should perish too. The moderate party had many supporters in the Convention, and were a serious danger to the supremacy of the Committee. They counted on the support of Danton, and though Danton gave them little encouragement, they used his great name to forward their designs. 'Danton sleeps,' said Desmoulins, as he took up his pen again to attack the system and the agents of the Terror, 'Danton sleeps, but it is the sleep of a lion, and he will wake to defend us.' But Danton's power and energy seemed destined never to wake again. Heartily weary of conspiracies and factions, discerning plainly enough the danger which confronted him but unable to rouse himself to avert it, disdaining to take measures to defend himself or to fight his opponents with their own weapons of intrigue, Danton remained undecided and inert. He would not compass his enemies' destruction, and he did not believe that his enemies would dare to compass his. Perhaps he relied on Robespierre's friendship, and forgot that Robespierre was not the man to risk his own ascendency in order to save another's life. At any rate when the crisis came, Robespierre swallowed any scruples that he felt, and consented to unite the Government by abandoning Danton to his opponents. On the night of the 30th March, Danton, Desmoulins and their colleagues were arrested, and next day Robespierre came forward and denounced the 'broken idol' in the Convention. Danton's bearing before the Revolutionary Tribunal was marked by his habitual scornful courage. 'My abode,' he said, in answer to the judge's questions, 'will soon be in eternity; my name you will find in the Pantheon of history.' He defended himself hotly and proudly against the ridiculous charges of royalist conspiracy. His vigorous eloquence created so profound an impression that his accusers trembled for the consequences, and took exceptional measures to cut the trial short. On the 5th April, Danton was guillotined. 'I see now,' he said, 'that in times of Revolution, power falls ultimately to the greatest scoundrels.... Ah, better be a poor fisherman than meddle with the governing of men!'

The fall of Danton left Robespierre by far the most conspicuous man in France. For character and reputation he had no rival in the Committees, and it was largely on his popularity that the Government rested for support. In some points Robespierre compared favourably with his colleagues. His life was frugal, pure and decent. His dress was always neat. His sense of decorum never deserted him. His devotion to his principles and his hatred of license and irreverence were sincere. He represented admirably the complacent Philistinism of a certain type of French bourgeois. His language breathed of virtue and emotion. His long-winded, didactic generalities, his perpetual appeals to morality and conscience imposed on well-intentioned, narrow minds, and, no doubt, imposed upon his own. Robespierre's followers, women especially, with whom his influence was great, took him at his own valuation. They did not discover his amazing egotism. They did not resent the qualities which make him appear to us the typical prig of history. They liked the long abstract discourses, which were the fashion of his time and sect. They liked his plain respectability. They liked his war upon corruption. They liked his feeling for religion and his copious sentiment. They were charmed by his high-sounding and unpractical ideals. They marvelled when he recited, as he never tired of doing, the tale of his own virtues. Robespierre was essentially a priest, and he exercised a priest's fascination, preaching unceasingly and claiming without scruple the admiration of his flock. 'I have never bowed,' he cried, 'beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption.' 'Surrounded by assassins, I have little to reconcile me to life except my love for my country and my thirst for justice.' 'I am a living martyr to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime.' 'If such truths must be dissembled, then bring me the hemlock.' He was for ever proclaiming himself the champion of morality, for ever protesting his readiness to die in its cause. He reiterated it so often, and he believed it so intensely, that he made his followers believe it too.

Moreover, Robespierre's sentiment was genuine. He had brought with him from Arras the reputation of a young provincial lawyer, upright, industrious and tender-hearted, fond of indifferent verse and of pet-birds. In his early days he had resigned an honourable office rather than condemn a man to death. He had from the first figured as the friend of humanity, as the defender of the unfortunate and the oppressed. If any question arose of suppressing disorder, he had always raised his voice against severity. He had pleaded for the abolition of the penalty of death. He had championed the cause of coloured men. He had more than once shown his sympathy for priests. Later on, he had defended the seventy-three members of the Convention, who were attacked for protesting against the arrest of the Gironde. He was known to have resented the treatment of Madame Elizabeth and the insults offered by Hébert to the Queen. He had taken no part personally in the enormities of the proconsuls of the Terror. He had repudiated the immorality and materialism of the leaders of the Commune. He had helped to secure the recall of Carrier. Conscious cruelty had no place in his speeches or ideals.

But when one turns from Robespierre's speeches to his actions, a different tale is told. In vain his apologists recapitulate his language, and dwell on his protestations of virtue, on his ceaseless iteration of benevolent designs. His career stands out in flagrant contrast to his oft-repeated principles, and the record of his career no apologies can explain away. The most noticeable characteristics of Robespierre's public life were his lack of initiative, his disingenuous reserve, and his profound incompetence as a practical politician. There is hardly a single great measure of the Terror, except the development of the Revolutionary Tribunal, in which Robespierre took a leading part. His method was to combat every proposal and every party, but rarely to make a proposal himself. If a critical occasion came, Robespierre always waited to see the issue before he declared himself. He never threw off his nervous hesitation. He never committed himself to violent risks, or took the initiative in violent courses. These characteristics are illustrated at each stage of his career. In the difficult days of July, 1791, at the time of the 'Massacre of the Champ de Mars,' he conducted himself with exemplary caution. A year later, on the 10th August, he remained in the background till the battle was decided, but he joined the Commune openly on the 11th, when the victory was won. Later still, though he detested the doctrines of the Hébertists, he did not venture to attack them straightforwardly. He only threw out hints against them until he saw which way the tide was running, and then he tried to discredit them by arguing that atheism was an aristocratic idea! He was absent, on the plea of illness, while their fate was being decided in the Committee, but he was well enough to re-appear in public the morning after their arrest. He encouraged Desmoulins cordially in his crusade against the Commune; but he changed his tone as soon as Collot d'Herbois' reappearance turned the scale against Desmoulins' views, and he finally threw over without a struggle the man who had been for years his warm admirer and friend. With equal treachery he sacrificed Danton as soon as it was evident that the strongest party was bent on Danton's destruction, and directly the arrest was made, he came forward to denounce a colleague, at whose side, only a few weeks before, he had proudly asked to stand. Of course it is possible that Robespierre was able, with his remarkable faculty of self-deception, to persuade his conscience in every case that he was acting as the interests of virtue required. But it is difficult by any sophisms to excuse such heartless opportunism, and to avoid the conviction that, whoever fell, Robespierre was determined to be upon the winning side.

Hardly less noticeable than his tortuous manœuvring was his incompetence in practical affairs. His speeches were treatises full of vague and abstract speculation, in which the same forms and phrases constantly appeared, but singularly lacking in definiteness and meaning, with very little bearing upon facts, and generally without any practical conclusions or result. He seemed to talk for the sake of talking, but the listeners, who accepted his theory as their gospel, never seemed to tire of the voice of the priest. At the height of the struggle between the rival parties in January, 1794, Robespierre solemnly invited the Jacobins to consider 'the crimes of the English Government and the vices of the British Constitution.' At another time of stirring interest and activity, he busied himself with drawing up a lengthy indictment of the monarchs of the world. At another time, he contributed to a practical discussion some luminous remarks, in which he insisted that the outbreak of the Revolution had been largely due to the determination of 'the London Cabinet ... to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI,' and that Pitt was 'an imbecile ... who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean,' conceived plans only worthy of a madhouse. It is no wonder if his colleagues in the Government, who were nearly all of them vigorous men of action, came to regard him with something like contempt. All through the Revolution Robespierre's attitude was the same. He never displayed much practical ability. The overthrow of the monarchy, the establishment of the Republic, the defeat of the invaders, the triumph of the Revolutionary Government, the organisation of the national defence, owed little to him. On the Committee of Public Safety his services, apart from matters of police, were unimportant. He did little useful work himself, and his jealous interference only hampered and embarrassed those who did. He never went on mission. The equipment of the army and navy, the management of the food supply, the control of the proconsuls, the administration of the country, the heroic labours of the terrible Committee, rested in other hands. Robespierre was only its tireless rhetorician, watching, manœuvring, expatiating incessantly on his ideals, his virtues and himself. Even after the fall of Danton, when he had ample scope for his designs, all that he contributed as a practical reformer to the Utopia which he had described a hundred times, was a masquerade to the discredit of religion and the most sanguinary police-law which the world has seen.

But wrapped as Robespierre was in self-complacency, he was always sufficiently awake to suspect and envy others. The doctrine of mistrust was a part of the Jacobin creed. The habit of suspecting others seemed to grow upon all those who professed the faith, and gradually to distort their views and to discolour their judgment. The Robespierre of 1794, the jealous, nervous, inflated fanatic, was a very different being from the earnest, narrow-minded lawyer, who had set out from Arras five years before to take his part in regenerating France. As Marat had developed, under the influence of the Jacobin theory and amid the desperate excitements of the time, from a soured idealist into the furious advocate of murder, so Robespierre had developed too. The mania of panic and suspicion had settled upon him. The peril which he and his colleagues encountered had convinced him that he was a martyr, and that all who did not recognise his virtues were conspirators seeking for his death. 'Gazing on the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled down,' he cried in his last great speech in the Convention, 'I have sometimes trembled lest I should be soiled by the impure neighbourhood of wicked men.... I know that it is easy for the leagued tyrants of the world to overwhelm a single individual; but I know also what is the duty of a man who can die in defence of humanity.' In the latter part of Robespierre's career it seemed that nothing was too innocent for him to mistrust or too improbable for him to suspect. 'I am not obliged to reflect,' he told Garat, 'I always rely on first impressions.' He believed that his instinct could not err, and his instinct always was to think the worst. 'Evidently,' he said one day to Garat, early in the spring of 1793, 'the Girondists are conspiring.' 'Where?' asked Garat. 'Everywhere,' answered Robespierre. He needed no facts to prove it. His virtue, the watchdog of the Republic, told him it was true. At one moment Lafayette was the traitor, at another Brissot, at another Dumouriez, at another Hébert. Servan, he insisted, was given a command in the Pyrenees, in order to hand over the keys of France to Spain. 'Is there no doubt of this in your mind?' asked Garat. 'None whatever,' replied the infallible pedant. Again and again Robespierre denounced mysterious conspiracies and treasons in Paris, in the departments, in the Commune, in the Convention. He had no doubt whatever that he was unmasking traitors, and traitors he could not scruple to send to the guillotine. In particular, the generals of the Republic were singled out by Robespierre as objects of alarm. It was he who sent Custine to the scaffold, and scouted the suggestion that it was necessary to offer written proofs of his guilt. It was he who took the chief part in denouncing Houchard and in consigning him to a similar fate. It was he who first threw doubts on the good faith of Kellermann. It was he who, upon no evidence whatever, ordered the arrest of Hoche upon a charge of treason[11].