At this juncture, Robespierre was earnestly entreated by one of his more resolute adherents, St Just, to play a bold game for the dictatorship, which he represented as the only means of saving the Republic from anarchy. Anonymous letters to the same effect also poured in upon him; and prognostics of his greatness, uttered by an obscure fortune-teller, were listened to by the great demagogue with something like superstitious respect. But for this personal elevation he was not prepared. Pacing up and down his apartment, and striking his forehead with his hand, he candidly acknowledged that he was not made for power; while the bare idea of doing anything to endanger the Republic amounted, in his mind, to a species of sacrilege. At this crisis in his fate, therefore, he temporised: he sought peace, if not consolation, in solitude. He took long walks in the woods, where he spent hours seated on the ground, or leaning against a tree, his face buried in his hands, or earnestly bent on the surrounding natural objects. What was the precise tenor of his meditations, it would be deeply interesting to know. Did the great promoter of the Revolution ponder on the failure of his aspirations after a state of human perfectibility? Was he torn by remorse on seeing rise up, in imagination, the thousands of innocent individuals whom, in vindication of a theory, he had consigned to an ignominious and violent death, yet whose removal had, politically speaking, proved altogether fruitless?
It is the more general belief, that in these solitary rambles Robespierre was preparing an oration, which, as he thought, should silence all his enemies, and restore him to parliamentary favour. A month was devoted to this rhetorical effort; and, unknown to him, during that interval all parties coalesced, and adopted the resolution to treat his oration when it came with contempt, and, at all hazards, to have him proscribed. The great day came, July 26 (8th Thermidor), 1794. His speech, which he read from a paper, was delivered in his best style—in vain. It was followed by yells and hootings; and, with dismay, he retired to the Jacobins, to deliver it over again—as if to seek support among a more subservient audience. Next day, on entering the Convention, he was openly accused by Tallien and Billaud-Varennes of aspiring to despotic power. A scene of tumult ensued, and, amid cries of Down with the tyrant! a writ for his committal to prison was drawn out. It must be considered a fine trait in the character of Robespierre the younger, that he begged to be included in the same decree of proscription with his brother. This wish was readily granted; and St Just, Couthon (who had lost the use of his legs, and was always carried about in an arm-chair), and Le Bas, were added to the number of the proscribed. Rescued, however, from the gendarmes by an insurrectionary force, headed by Henriot, Robespierre and his colleagues were conducted in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville. Here, during the night, earnest consultations were held; and the adherents of Robespierre implored him in desperation, as the last chance of safety for them all, to address a rousing proclamation to the sections. At length, yielding unwillingly to these frantic appeals, he commenced writing the required address; and it was while subscribing his name to this seditious document, that the soldiers of the Convention burst in upon him, and he was shot through the jaw by one of the gendarmes. At the same moment, Le Bas shot himself through the heart. All were made prisoners, and carried off—the dead body of Le Bas not excepted.
While residing for a short time in Paris in 1849, we were one day conducted by a friend to a large house, with an air of faded grandeur, in the eastern faubourgs, which had belonged to an aged republican, recently deceased. He wished me to examine a literary curiosity, which was to be seen among other relics of the great Revolution. The curiosity in question was the proclamation, in the handwriting of Robespierre, to which he was in the act of inscribing his signature, when assaulted and made prisoner in the Hôtel de Ville. It was a small piece of paper, contained in a glass-frame; and, at this distance of time, could not fail to excite an interest in visitors. The few lines of writing, commencing with the stirring words: 'Courage, mes compatriotes!' ended with only a part of the subscription. The letters, Robes, were all that were appended, and were followed by a blur of the pen; while the lower part of the paper shewed certain discolorations, as if made by drops of blood. And so this was the last surviving token of the notorious Robespierre! It is somewhat curious, that no historian seems to be aware of its existence.
Stretched on a table in one of the anterooms of the Convention; his head leaning against a chair; his fractured jaw supported by a handkerchief passed round the top of his head; a glass with vinegar and a sponge at his side to moisten his feverish lips; speechless and almost motionless, yet conscious!—there lay Robespierre—the clerks, who, a few days ago, had cringed before him, now amusing themselves by pricking him with their penknives, and coarsely jesting over his fall. Great crowds, likewise, flocked to see him while in this undignified posture, and he was overwhelmed with the vilest expressions of hatred and abuse. The mental agony which he must have experienced during this humiliating exhibition, could scarcely fail to be increased on hearing himself made the object of unsparing and boisterous declamations from the adjoining tribune.
At three o'clock in the afternoon (July 28), the prisoners were placed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and at six, the whole were tied in carts, the dead body of Le Bas included, and conducted to execution. To this wretched band were added the whole family of the Duplays, with the exception of the mother; she having been strangled the previous night by female furies, who had broken into her house, and hung her to the iron rods of her bedstead. They were guiltless of any political crime; but their private connection with the principal object of proscription was considered to be sufficient for their condemnation. The circumstance of these individuals being involved in his fate, could not fail to aggravate the bitterness of Robespierre's reflections. As the dismal cortège wended its way along the Rue St Honoré, he was loaded with imprecations by women whose husbands he had destroyed, and the shouts of children, whom he had deprived of parents, were the last sounds heard by him on earth. Yet he betrayed not the slightest emotion—perhaps he only pitied the ignorance of his persecutors. In the midst of the feelings of a misunderstood and martyred man, his head dropped into the basket!
These few facts and observations respecting the career of Robespierre, enable us to form a tolerably correct estimate of his character. The man was a bigot. A perfect Republic was his faith, his religion. To integrity, perseverance, and extraordinary self-denial under temptation, he united only a sanguine temperament and moderate abilities for the working-out of a mistaken principle. Honest and zealous in his purpose, his conduct was precisely analogous to that of all religious persecutors—sparing no pain or bloodshed to accomplish what he believed to be a good end. Let us grant that he was a monomaniac, the question remains as to his general accountability. If he is to be acquitted on the score of insanity, who is to be judged? Not so are we to exempt great criminals from punishment and obloquy. Robespierre knew thoroughly what he was about; and far as he was misled in his motives, he must be held responsible for his actions. Before entering on the desperate enterprise of demolishing all existing institutions, with the hope of reconstructing the social fabric, it was his duty to be assured that his aims were practicable, and that he was himself authorised to think and act for the whole of mankind, or specially commissioned to kill and terrify into his doctrines. Instead of this, there is nothing to shew that he had formed any distinct scheme of a government to take the place of that which he had aided in destroying. All we learn is, that there hovered in his mind's eye some vague Utopia, in which public affairs would go on very much of themselves, through the mere force of universal Benevolence, liberated from the bosom of Nature. For his folly and audacity in nourishing so wild a theory, and still more for the reckless butcheries by which he sought to bring it into operation, we must, on a review of his whole character, adhere to the popular belief on the subject. Acquitted, as he must necessarily be, of the charge of personal ambition, he was still a monster, only the more dangerous and detestable for justifying murder on the ground of principle.
W.C.