Among the three monsters mentioned, Danton had that energy which the Girondists wanted, and was well acquainted with the secret movements of those insurrections to which they possessed no key. His vices of wrath, luxury, love of spoil, dreadful as they were, are attributes of mortal men;—the envy of Robespierre, and the instinctive blood-thirstiness of Marat, were the properties of fiends. Danton, like the huge serpent called the boa, might be approached with a degree of safety when gorged with prey—but the appetite of Marat for blood was like the horse-leech, which says, "Not enough"—and the slaughterous envy of Robespierre was like the gnawing worm that dieth not, and yields no interval of repose. In glutting Danton with spoil, and furnishing the means of indulging his luxury, the Girondists might have purchased his support; but nothing under the supreme rule in France would have gratified Robespierre; and an unlimited torrent of the blood of that unhappy country could alone have satiated Marat. If a colleague was to be chosen out of that detestable triumvirate, unquestionably Danton was to be considered as the most eligible.
On the other hand, men like Brissot, Vergniaud, and others, whose attachment to republicanism was mixed with a spirit of virtue and honour, might be well adverse to the idea of contaminating their party with such an auxiliary, intensely stained as Danton was by his share in the massacres of September. They might well doubt, whether any physical force which his revolutionary skill, and the arms it could put in motion, might bring to their standard, would compensate for the moral horror with which the presence of such a grisly proselyte must strike all who had any sense of honour or justice. They, therefore, discouraged the advances of Danton, and resolved to comprise him with Marat and Robespierre in the impeachment against the Jacobin chiefs, which they designed to bring forward in the Assembly.
The most obvious means by which the Girondists could ascertain their safety and the freedom of debate, was by levying a force from the several departments, each contributing its quota, to be called a Departmental Legion, which was to be armed and paid to act as a guard upon the National Convention. The subject was introduced by Roland, [Sept. 24,] in a report to the Assembly, and renewed on the next day by Kersaint, a spirited Girondist, who candidly declared the purpose of his motion: "It was time," he said, "that assassins and their prompters should see that the law had scaffolds."
The Girondists obtained, that a committee of six members should be named, to report on the state of the capital, on the encouragement afforded to massacre, and on the mode of forming a departmental force for the defence of the metropolis. The decree was carried for a moment; but, on the next day, the Jacobins demanded that it should be revoked, denying that there was any occasion for such a defence to the Convention, and accusing the ministers of an intention to surround themselves with a force of armed satellites, in order to overawe the good city of Paris, and carry into effect their sacrilegious plan of dismembering France.[317] Rebecqui and Barbaroux replied to this charge by impeaching Robespierre, on their own testimony, of aspiring to the post of dictator. The debate became more tempestuous the more that the tribunes or galleries of the hall were filled with the violent followers of the Jacobin party, who shouted, cursed, and yelled, to back the exclamations and threats of their leaders in the Assembly. While the Girondists were exhausting themselves to find out terms of reproach for Marat, that prodigy stepped forth, and raised the disorder to the highest, by avowing himself the author and advocate for a dictatorship. The anger of the Convention seemed thoroughly awakened, and Vergniaud read to the deputies an extract from Marat's journal, in which, after demanding two hundred and sixty thousand heads, which was his usual stint, he abused the Convention in the grossest terms, and exhorted the people to ACT[318]—words, of which the import was by this time perfectly understood.
This passage excited general horror, and the victory for a moment seemed in the hands of the Girondists; but they did not pursue it with sufficient vigour. The meeting passed to the order of the day; and Marat, in ostentatious triumph, produced a pistol, with which he said he would have blown out his brains, had a decree of accusation been passed against him. The Girondists not only lost the advantage of discomfiting their enemies by the prosecution of one of their most noted leaders, but were compelled for the present to abandon their plan of a departmental guard, and resign themselves to the guardianship of the faithful citizens of Paris.[319]
This city of Paris was at the time under the power of the intrusive community, or Common Council, many of whom had forced themselves into office on the 10th of August. It was the first act of their administration to procure the assassination of Mandat, the commandant of the national guard; and their accompts, still extant, bear testimony, that it was by their instrumentality that the murderers of September were levied and paid. Trained Jacobins and pitiless ruffians themselves, this civic body had raised to be their agents and assistants an unusual number of municipal officers, who were at once their guards, their informers, their spies, their jailors, and their executioners. They had, besides, obtained a majority of the inhabitants in most of the sections, whose votes placed them and their agents in command of the national guard; and the pikemen of the suburbs were always ready to second their excellent community, even against the Convention itself, which, in point of freedom of action, or effective power, made a figure scarcely more respectable than that of the King after his return from Varennes.
Roland almost every day carried to the Convention his vain complaints, that the course of the law for which he was responsible, was daily crossed, thwarted, and impeded, by the proceedings of this usurping body. The considerable funds of the city itself, with those of its hospitals and other public establishments of every kind, were dilapidated by these revolutionary intruders, and applied to their own purposes. The minister at length, in a formal report to the Convention, inculpated the Commune in these and such like offences. In another part of the report, he intimated a plot of the Jacobins to assassinate the Girondists, possess themselves of the government by arms, and choose Robespierre dictator. Louvet denounced Robespierre as a traitor, and Barbaroux proposed a series of decrees; the first declaring the Convention free to leave any city, where they should be exposed to constraint and violence; the second resolving to form a conventional guard; the third declaring, that the Convention should form itself into a court of justice, for trial of state crimes; the fourth announcing, that in respect the sections of Paris had declared their sittings permanent, that resolution should be abrogated.
Instead of adopting the energetic measures proposed by Barbaroux, the Convention allowed Robespierre eight days for his defence against Louvet's accusation, and ordered to the bar, [Nov. 5,] ten members of the Community, from whom they were contented to accept such slight apologies, and evasive excuses, for their unauthorised interference with the power of the Convention, as these insolent demagogues condescended to offer.
The accusation of Robespierre though boldly urged by Louvet and Barbaroux, was also eluded, by passing to the order of the day; and thus the Convention showed plainly, that however courageous they had been against their monarch, they dared not protect the liberty which they boasted of, against the encroachment of fiercer demagogues than themselves.[320]
Barbaroux endeavoured to embolden the Assembly, by bringing once more from his native city a body of those fiery Marseillois, who had formed the vanguard of the mob on the 10th of August. He succeeded so far in his scheme, that a few scores of those Federates again appeared in Paris, where their altered demeanour excited surprise. Their songs were again chanted, their wild Moresco dances and gestures again surprised the Parisians; and the more, as in their choruses they imprecated vengeance on the Jacobins, called out for mercy to the "poor tyrant," so they termed the King, and shouted in the cause of peace, order, and the Convention.[321]