The growth of this fever of suspicion, which was common to most of the Jacobin party, but which was specially marked in Marat and in Robespierre, enables one to understand how a man naturally neither cruel nor unprincipled became so largely responsible for the bloodshed of the Terror. Robespierre's apologists have vainly endeavoured to defend him against this reproach, and to maintain that he always wished to stop it. But even their defence of Robespierre contains conclusive evidence of his guilt. His position, after the fall of Danton, was unquestionably strong. In the two governing Committees, though he had enemies and critics, he was closely supported by Couthon and St. Just. His popularity in Paris was considerable. His reputation within his own party stood higher than that of any of his colleagues. The Jacobin Club was his stronghold. On the triumph of the Committee in March, 1794, the Commune had been reconstituted, and its new heads, Fleuriot and Payan, were devoted to Robespierre's interest. The Revolutionary Army of the capital had been dissolved, but Hanriot, Robespierre's firm friend, retained his command in the National Guard, and was zealous in Robespierre's service. The ministries also had been suppressed. Twelve new commissions had been appointed to administer affairs in their place, and in the appointments to these commissions Robespierre's influence was naturally large. Had Robespierre really cared to use his power to mitigate the Terror, it is difficult to believe that he could not have done so with success. In the existing state of public opinion he could, for such an enterprise, have commanded overwhelming support. The great majority of the Convention, as their conduct both before and after proved, were only waiting for an opportunity to throw their weight into the scale of mercy.
But the fact is that Robespierre's influence was used throughout in the opposite direction. He detested, it is true, the disorderly excesses that had accompanied the Terror in the departments. He wished to centralise and regulate the system, to make it uniform, moral and decorous, to take the power of the sword out of the hands of men whom he distrusted and disliked. But he did not wish to end it. The police-law of April, 1794, which directed that all conspirators should be brought to Paris for trial, and the establishment of a new Bureau of police under the supervision of St. Just and of Robespierre himself, were designed to prevent the occurrence of enormities like those of Carrier in the provinces, and to deprive Robespierre's opponents in the Committee of General Security of their monopoly in matters of police. But they were not measures of compassion. From the first, Robespierre had taken a prominent part in founding and developing the Revolutionary Tribunal. Again and again he had protested against its delays and its unnecessary forms. When he attained the climax of his power, he swept those forms away. In the Revolutionary Tribunal he had staunch adherents. His work in the Committee of Public Safety was always largely concerned with questions of police. The Terror was an essential part of his system. He honestly believed that his Utopia could not flourish until he had consumed the wicked, and against the wicked accordingly he sharpened the sword of death.
With this crusade against the enemies of his ideal he mingled schemes of arbitrary benevolence. Both St. Just and Robespierre were determined to found the State which Rousseau had conceived, wherein all should be equal, virtuous, enlightened, without poverty or riches, irreverence or sin. As a step towards it they determined to establish Rousseau's Church. On the 18th Floréal (7th May), Robespierre induced the Convention to decree its belief in a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. On the 20th Prairial (8th June), he celebrated, in one of the strangest pageants of history, the festival of the new Deity in France. Arrayed in a brilliant uniform, and carrying a bouquet of flowers and corn sheaves, Robespierre marched at the head of a procession out to the Champ de Mars, burned the symbols of Atheism and Vice, and inaugurated the new religion. 'Here,' he cried, 'is the Universe assembled. O Nature, how sublime, how exquisite, thy power! How tyrants will pale at the tidings of our feast.' And within two days of this ideal festival he set to work to re-organise the machinery of the guillotine. A few weeks before he had taken a chief part in establishing, on the demand of his adherent Maignet, an extraordinary tribunal at Orange in the South, and had drawn up with his own hand a paper of instructions, which laid it down that the conscience of the judges was to be the only test of the guilt of the accused. In the law of the 22nd Prairial this monstrous principle was carried further. The decree provided that the Revolutionary Tribunal should be divided into four sections to expedite its work, that prisoners should thenceforward be tried in batches, that they should no longer have counsel to defend them or be allowed to call witnesses for their defence, and that the question of their guilt should be left to the enlightened conscience of the jury! The results of this proposal were that, in the six or seven weeks which followed, the number of victims guillotined mounted to over thirteen hundred, a number considerably exceeding the total reached during the first fifteen months of the tribunal's existence. In face of this measure, which was unquestionably Robespierre's work, it is idle to pretend that he wished to check the Terror. No doubt he disliked its extravagance and license. No doubt he wished to strike some of the Terrorists. But apart from that there is no evidence that he attempted to stop it, and against him there is the whole tenour of his policy and the testimony of this nefarious decree.
But Robespierre's ascendency was destined to be brief. The majority of his colleagues had begun to dread him. They knew that he was jealous of their authority. After the 10th June he held himself more and more aloof[12]. He did not resign his place on the Committee; but finding that he could not make its members accept his ascendency, he began to form schemes for purging the Government afresh, to dissociate himself from his colleagues, and to concentrate his forces in the Commune and at the Jacobin Club. At last, aware that a breach was inevitable, St. Just and others urged him to take vigorous measures against his opponents. But Robespierre, always incapable of decisive action, preferred to confine himself to speeches and to vague hints of conspiracy and treason. On the 8th Thermidor (26th July), in a long and mysterious speech, marked by his habitual and astonishing egotism, he denounced the plots against the Convention, and demanded the punishment of evil men. But he named no one, and his threats frightened all. That night the combination which had been gradually forming against him came to a head. Tallien, Billaud, Bourdon and others, Dantonists and Hébertists, all parties alike determined to unite, to save their lives. On the morrow, the 9th Thermidor, the crisis came, and the Convention, for once acting with unanimity and vigour, rejected Robespierre's appeal and boldly ordered his arrest. For a few hours the issue of the struggle hung doubtful. The Commune rallied to Robespierre's defence. He was delivered from prison and carried to the Hôtel de Ville in triumph. Hanriot summoned his artillerymen to the rescue, and once again the Commune proposed to raise an insurrection. But the name of the Commune was no longer a watchword in the capital. The Convention held its ground with unusual courage. It outlawed all the chief conspirators. It took prompt measures to organise resistance, to rouse Paris, to summon the forces of the Sections to its aid. The prestige of the National Assembly, when united, was still redoubtable, and Hanriot's troops hesitated to attack it. Early in the dawn of the following day the Conventional forces assumed the offensive, and marched on the Hôtel de Ville. The insurrection collapsed, and Robespierre and his confederates died. At last the lawful authority in France, so long paralysed and broken, had dared to act decisively, and to use force to make itself obeyed. From the moment that its vigour revived its triumph was assured, and with its triumph the reaction began.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Even M. Hamel admits this (Hist. de Robespierre, III. p. 499 et seq.), although he endeavours, in a manner that is not convincing, to throw the responsibility on to Carnot. Carnot claimed to have saved Hoche's life. He certainly joined in ordering his release from prison almost immediately after Robespierre's fall.
[12] Robespierre himself said, on the 8th Thermidor, that for the last six weeks he had 'absolutely abandoned his functions as a member of the Committee of Public Safety.' Louis Blanc argues that he was therefore not responsible for the Terror. But another of Robespierre's admirers, Hamel, has taken pains to prove that Robespierre was constantly present at the Committee's meetings up to the 9th Thermidor, and decides that his alleged retirement must consequently have been 'toute morale' (vol. III. pp. 594-601).