The great struggle now began between the Jacobins and the Girondists, or virtually between the leaders of the two factions, the old rivals, Robespierre and Brissot. All the ultra-republicans, who were represented by the Deputation of Paris, grouped themselves on the top benches of the convention to the left of the president, and were called the Mountain—a name henceforth identified with its prophet, Robespierre. The question still was, What was to be done with the king? The Jacobins were for killing him, the Girondists for putting him aside. The wretched weakness, vacillation, and cowardliness of the Girondists make them objects of contempt, without exciting in us the kind of horrified awe inspired by the monstrous feats of those Titanic fiends, the Jacobins. By what fatality is it in France that the honest-meaning party is always the cowardly one that dares not assert itself, but bows down, cowed by the cynical audacity of the anarchists? The Girondists might have turned the scales, even at this crisis, if they had had the courage of their consciences; but they were cowards. Their policy was to run with the hare and cry with the hounds, and it met with the fate it deserved. But we must not anticipate. The Mountain, on the other hand, did not lack the courage of its creed; it out-heroded Herod in its fury against the king and all appertaining to the old order which he represented. Roman history was its Bible, and the examples there recorded were for ever on its lips. All citizens were heroes, Cincinnatuses, Catos, Ciceros, etc.; all sovereigns were Neros and Caligulas. The Girondists turned these fine texts against their rivals by accusing them of plotting to set up a triumvirate, to be composed of Robespierre, Marat, and Danton. This was only three weeks after the orgy of blood which ushered in the reign of Robespierre and of Terror. Danton mounted the tribune, and made an eloquent defence of Robespierre, who never spoke impromptu when he could avoid it. Marat then rose—for the first time in the convention—and was hooted down; but he persisted, and made them listen while he exposed his revolting doctrines of wholesale murder and anarchical rule.
So the days passed, in boisterous invective, idle perorations, and savage threats of one party against another. The Girondists, however, were worsted in the fight, and the [pg 526] strength of the position remained with Robespierre and his more bloody and unscrupulous faction, who had from the starting traced out his plan, and adhered to it without flinching. The king was foredoomed to the scaffold, but some semblance of legality should accompany the decree. So strong was the Jacobin influence at this crisis that those who did not share the murderous design were terrified into seeming to do so, and, while looking with horror at the regicide in preparation, were cowed into silent acquiescence. M. Thiers, in his History of the Revolution, says: “Many of the deputies who had come down with the intention of voting for the king were frightened at the fury of the people, and, though much touched by the fate of Louis XVI., they were terrified at the consequences of an acquittal. This fear was greatly increased at the sight of the Assembly and of the scene it presented. That scene, dark and terrible, had shaken the hearts of all, and changed the resolution of Lecointre of Versailles, whose personal bravery cannot be doubted, and who had not ceased to return to the galleries the menacing gestures with which they were intimidating the Assembly. Even he, when it came to the point, hesitated, and dropped from his mouth the terrible and unexpected word, ‘death.’ Vergniaud, who had appeared most deeply touched by the fate of the king, and who had declared that ‘nothing could ever induce him to condemn the unhappy prince’—Vergniaud, at the sight of that tumultuous scene, pronounced the sentence of death.” It must truly have been an appalling spectacle, the like of which the civilized world had never before beheld. Mercier, in his Sketches of the Revolution, gives us an animated and glowing picture of the court during the trial: “The famous sitting which decided the fate of Louis lasted seventy-two hours. One would naturally suppose that the Assembly was a scene of meditation, silence, and a sort of religious terror. Not at all. The end of the hall was transformed into a kind of opera-box, where ladies in négligée were eating ices and oranges, drinking liqueurs, and receiving the compliments and salutations of comers and goers. The huissiers (bailiffs) on the side of the Mountain acted the part of the openers of the opera-boxes. They were employed every instant in turning the key in the doors of the side galleries, and gallantly escorting the mistresses of the Duke of Orleans, caparisoned with tri-colored ribbons. Although every mark of applause or disapprobation was forbidden, nevertheless, on the side of the Mountain, the Duchess Dowager,[119] the amazon of the Jacobin bands, made long ‘ha-a-has!’ when she heard the word ‘death’ strongly twang in her ears.
“The lofty galleries, destined for the people during the days which preceded this famous trial, were never empty of strangers and people of every class, who there drank wine and brandy as if it had been a tavern. Bets were open at all the neighboring coffee-houses. Listlessness, impatience, fatigue, were marked on almost every countenance. Each deputy mounted the tribune in his turn, and every one was asking when his turn came. Some deputy came, I know not who, sick, and in his morning-gown and night-cap. This phantom [pg 527] caused a great deal of diversion in the Assembly. The countenances of those who went to the tribune, rendered more funereal from the pale gleams of the lights, when in a slow and sepulchral voice they pronounced the word ‘death!’—all these physiognomies which succeeded one another, their tones, their different keys; d'Orleans hissing and groaning when he voted the death of his relative; some calculating if they should have time to dine before they gave their vote; women with pins pricking cards to count the votes; deputies who had fallen asleep and were waked up in order to vote; Manuel, the secretary, sliding away a few votes, in order to save the unhappy king, and on the point of being put to death in the corridors for his infidelity—these sights can never be described as they passed. It is impossible to picture what they were, nor will history be able to reach them.”
Amongst the timid Girondists who dared not vote for acquittal, and shrank from decreeing the king to death, many hit upon a half-measure, which was that of coupling their vote—for death with conditions that practically negatived it. This cowardly transaction is said to have given rise to some trickery in the counting of the votes, which enabled the scrutineers to make the majority of one voice by which the sentence of death was carried. It was this sham proceeding which prompted Sièyes to say when recording his vote, “Death—without palaver!”
Robespierre's figure stands out with vivid and terrible brilliancy against the background of this picture. He dismissed the question of the king's innocence or guilt—that had, he knew right well, nothing whatever to do with the issue—and proceeded to demand his death on the grounds of urgent political expediency. “The death of the king was not a question of law, but of state policy, which, without quibbling about his guilt or innocence, required his death; the life of one man, if ever so innocent, must be sacrificed to preserve the lives of millions.” There was honesty at any rate in this plain speaking, and so it was better than the odious hypocrisy displayed by the other actors in the tragic farce. On Robespierre's descending from the tribune, his brother Augustin, rose and demanded in the name of the people “that Louis Capet shall be brought to the bar, to declare his original accomplices, to hear sentence of death pronounced on him, and to be forthwith conducted to execution.” Wild confusion covered this extravagant motion, but no notice was taken of it. The 21st of January was near at hand; even the Mountain could afford to wait so long.
On the 10th of March, the Revolutionary Tribunal was decreed. A month later there broke out a violent altercation between Robespierre and some of the Girondists in the Convention; numbers clamored for the “expulsion of the twenty-two” obstreperous Girondists; they were arraigned before the bar where the king whom they so basely betrayed had lately stood; the trial lasted four days; even that tribunal, used to dispense with all proof of guilt in its victims, could not decide on condemning twenty-two men at one fell swoop without some shadow of reason, and there was none to be found. But Robespierre was not going to lose his opportunity for a quibble; impatient of the delay, he drew up a decree that [pg 528] “whenever any trial should have lasted three days, the tribunal might declare itself satisfied with the guilt of the prisoners, might stop the defence, close the discussions, and send the accused to death!” This abominable document was read and inscribed on the register of the tribunal the same evening, the Girondists were at once condemned, and sent to the scaffold next morning.
To Be Concluded Next Month.
The Better Christmas.
“'Tis not the feast that changes with the ever-changing times,