READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER LVI.

THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.

WHILE the French were thus throwing down the gauntlet to all Europe, their own country seemed sinking into anarchical dissolution. Paris was filled with tumult, insurrection, and robbery. At the denunciations of Marat against “forestallers”, the shops were entered by the mob, who carried off articles at their own prices, and sometimes without paying at all. The populace was agitated by the harangues of low itinerant demagogues. Rough and brutal manners were affected, and all the courtesies of life abolished. Moderate persons of no strong political opinions were denounced as “suspected”, and their crime stigmatized by the newly-coined word of moderantisme. The variations of popular feeling were recorded like the heat of the weather, or the rising of a flood. The principal articles in the journals were entitled, “Thermometer of the Public Mind”; the Jacobins talked of the necessity of being “up to the level”. Many of the provinces were in a disturbed state. A movement had been organizing in Brittany ever since 1791, but the death of the Marquis de la Rouarie, its principal leader, had for the present suspended it. A more formidable insurrection was preparing in La Vendée.

Chiefly agricultural, with few roads or large towns, and thus almost isolated from the rest of France, La Vendée had been little infected by the new opinions. It contained a class of haughty gentlemen, warmly attached to their ancient feudal customs and privileges, who had not joined the emigration, and still resided on their estates; while the peasantry were superstitiously devoted to their priests. La Vendée, from its undulating surface, numerous streams, narrow roads, and the cover afforded by hedges and small woods, is well adapted to defensive warfare. On March 10th, 1793, the day appointed for levying men for the war, the insurrection broke out at several points at once, principally under the leadership of Cathelineau, a working man, Stofflet, a gamekeeper, and Athanase Charette, a naval officer styling himself Le Chevalier Charette. They were afterwards joined by Henry de la Rochejaquelein, Bonchamps, De Lescure, D'Elbée, and others; under whose auspices a force was raised of some 40,000 or 50,000 men, in seven divisions of unequal size. In the course of April and May they took Bressuire, Thouars, Parthenay, and other places, and they applied for assistance to England and Spain.

It was in the midst of these disturbances, aggravated by a suspicion of General Dumouriez’s treachery, that the Revolutionary Tribunal was erected. Danton, after his return from Belgium, whither he had been dispatched by the Convention to inquire into the state of that country and the conduct of Dumouriez, had become impressed with the necessity of establishing a dictatorship, in order to restore order and enable France to meet the dangers with which she was surrounded. In this view Robespierre agreed. The Tribunal was first formally proposed in the Convention, March 9th, by Carrier, afterwards notorious by his massacres at Nantes, urged by Cambacérès on the 10th, and completed that very night at the instance of Danton, who rushed to the tribune, and insisted that the Assembly should not separate till the new Court had been organized. The Girondists had hoped at least to adjourn the subject; but Danton told them that there was no alternative between the proposed tribunal and the more summary method of popular vengeance. The extraordinary tribunal of August, 1792, had not been found to work fast enough, and it was now superseded by this new one, which became, in fact, only a method of massacring under the form of law. The Revolutionary Tribunal was designed to take cognizance of all counter-revolutionary attempts, of all attacks upon liberty, equality, the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, the internal and external safety of the State. A commission of six members of the Convention was to examine and report upon the cases to be brought before it, to draw up and present the acts of accusation. The tribunal was to be composed of a jury to decide upon the facts, five judges to apply the law, a public accuser, and two substitutes; from its sentence there was no appeal.

Meanwhile Dumouriez had returned to the army, very dissatisfied that he had failed in his attempts to save the King and baffle the Jacobins. He had formed the design of invading Holland, dissolving the Revolutionary Committee in that country, annulling the decree of December 15th, offering neutrality to the English, a suspension of arms to the Austrians, reuniting the Belgian and Batavian Republics, and proposing to France a reunion with them. In case of refusal, he designed to march upon Paris, dissolve the Convention, extinguish Jacobinism; in short, to play the part of Monk in England. This plan was confided to four persons only, among whom Danton is said to have been one; it is, at all events, certain that he supported Dumouriez at this time, as appears from his praises of him in the Convention.

Dumouriez, having directed General Miranda to lay siege to Maastricht, left Antwerp for Holland, February 22nd, and by March 4th had seized Breda, Klundert, and Gertruydenberg. England had dispatched 2,000 guards to the aid of the Dutch, and at her instance Austria had pushed forward 112,000 men under Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg. Clairfait, with his army, at this time occupied Bergheim, where he was separated from the French only by the little river Roer and the fortress of Jülich. Coburg, having joined Clairfait, March 1st, crossed the Roer, defeated the French under Dampierre at Altenhoven, and thus compelled Miranda to raise the siege of Maastricht, and retire towards Tongres. Aix-la-Chapelle was entered by the Austrians after a smart contest, and the French compelled to retreat upon Liége, while the divisions under Stengel and Neuilly, being cut off by this movement, were thrown back into Limburg. Large bodies of the French made for the frontier in disorderly flight. The Austrians then crossed the Meuse, took Liége, March 6th, and following up their success, arrived within two days’ march of Brussels. The Flemings, disgusted by the brutalities and extortions of the Jacobin Commissioners, and encouraged by the presence of the Austrians, rose against the French. Dumouriez, who was on the point of crossing the frith called Hollands Diep, at the mouth of the Meuse, was directed to return into Belgium, to arrest the progress of the Austrians. His first acts on arriving there were to abrogate all the doings of the Commissioners, to shut up the Jacobin clubs, and order the restoration of all stolen property. He concentrated his forces, about 50,000 men, at Louvain. From this place he wrote a threatening letter to the Convention, March 11th, denouncing the proceedings of the Ministry, the acts of oppression committed in Belgium, and the Decree of December 15. This letter threw the Committee of General Defence into consternation. It was resolved to keep it secret, and Danton and Lacroix set off for Dumouriez’s camp, to try what they could do with him, but found him inflexible.

Dumouriez routed the Austrians at Tirlemont, March 16th, but was defeated by Prince Coburg at Neerwinden, on the 18th, where the battle was decided by a charge of the Archduke Charles, which routed the French. In an interview with the Austrian Colonel Mack, at Ath, he announced to that officer his intention to march on Paris, establish a Constitutional Monarchy, and proclaim the Dauphin. The Duke of Chartres (Louis Philippe) was present at this conference. The Austrians were to support Dumouriez’ advance upon Paris, but not to show themselves except in case of need, and he was to have the command of what Austrian troops he might select. The French now continued their retreat, which, in consequence of these negotiations, was unmolested. The Archduke Charles and Prince Coburg entered Brussels March 25th, and the Dutch towns were shortly after retaken.

When Dumouriez arrived with his van at Courtrai, he was met by three emissaries of the Jacobins, sent apparently to sound him. He bluntly told them that his design was to save France, whether they called him Caesar, Cromwell, or Monk, denounced the Convention as an assembly of tyrants, and said that he despised their decrees. All this the emissaries reported to the Convention on their return. At St. Amand he was met by Beurnonville, then Minister of War, who was to supersede him in the command, and by four commissaries dispatched by the Convention. Camus, one of these, presented to him, in the midst of his officers, a decree summoning him to the bar of the Convention. After an angry altercation, in which Dumouriez declared that he would not submit himself to the Revolutionary Tribunal so long as he had an inch of steel at his side, Camus boldly pronounced him suspended from his functions, whereupon Dumouriez called in some hussars, and arrested the commissaries and Beurnonville, who were handed over to Clairfait, and ultimately carried to Maastricht.

The allies were so sanguine that Dumouriez’ defection would put an end to the Revolution, that Lord Auckland and Count Stahremberg, the Austrian Minister, looking upon the dissolution and flight of the Convention as certain, addressed a joint note to the States-General, requesting them not to shelter such members of it as had taken any part in the condemnation of Louis XVI. But Dumouriez’ army was not with him. On the road to Condé he was fired on by a body of volunteers and compelled to fly for his life (April 4th). In the evening he joined Colonel Mack, when they employed themselves in drawing up a proclamation in the name of Prince Coburg, which was published on the following day. Dumouriez ventured once more to show himself to his army, but was received with such visible marks of dissatisfaction, that he was compelled to return to the Austrian quarters at Tournai with a few companions, among whom was the Duc de Chartres. Thus terminated Dumouriez’ political and military career.

The situation of France at this time seemed almost desperate. The army of the North was completely disorganized through the defection of Dumouriez; the armies of the Rhine and Moselle were retreating; those of the Alps and Italy were expecting an attack; on the eastern end of the Pyrenees the troops were without artillery, without generals, almost without bread, while on the western side the Spaniards were advancing towards Bayonne. Brest, Cherbourg, the coasts of Brittany, were threatened by the English. The ocean ports contained only six ships of the line ready for sea, and the Mediterranean fleet was being repaired at Toulon. But the energy of the revolutionary leaders was equal to the occasion. The Convention seized the direction of military affairs, and dispatched eight commissaries, among them Carnot, not only to superintend the operations of the army, but also to keep it under the surveillance of the Assembly. Dumouriez was declared a traitor, a price was set upon his head, and General Dampierre was appointed to his vacant place. In compliance with a petition of the Commune, it was voted that a camp of 40,000 men should be formed under the walls of Paris.

But the most important measure suggested by the present posture of affairs was the establishment, at the instance of Barère, of the Comité de Salut Public, or Committee of Public Safety, April 6th, 1793. There already existed a Comité de Sûreté Générale (or Committee of General Security), established October 2nd, 1792, but this was rather a board of police than a political body. The new Committee was to be composed of nine Members of the Convention, who were to deliberate in secret, to watch over and accelerate the deliberation of the Ministry, and to control the measures of the Executive Council. Thus it was in fact little short of a dictatorship of nine persons; though, by way of check upon them, they were to have no power over the national treasury, were to be renewed every month, and were to render to the Convention every week an account of their proceedings, and of the situation of the Republic. The Girondists did not oppose the erection of this Committee. Nearly half its first members were indeed taken from the centre or the right of the Convention; the rest from the more moderate section of the Mountain, including, however, the terrible Danton. Robespierre and the more violent Jacobins were not yet admitted; an exclusion which they resented by agitating and getting up inflammatory petitions. After this period, the Committee of General Security was charged with the administration of the police, became in fact a sort of executive power, while the functions of the new Committee were higher and more general, and indeed essentially functions of government. Nevertheless, the Committee of General Security recognized no authority superior to its own, except the decrees of the Convention, till after the fall of the Girondists; when the Committee of Public Welfare, instead of consulting, began to dictate to it.

By the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal and of the Committee of Public Safety, all the instruments of the Reign of Terror had been provided; but Robespierre and the men who were to wield them were still in the background. The deadly struggle for place and power between the Gironde and the Mountain was, however, in progress. The Convention was the daily scene of the quarrels of the two parties, which sometimes rose to such a pitch of violence that swords were drawn and the lives of the members threatened. The inviolability of the deputies had been abolished by a decree of April 1st, by which the two parties voted their right to proscribe one another. The populace was incited to agitate against the Girondists. On the 8th of April, a deputation from the Section Bon Conseil declared in the Convention that the public voice condemned Gaudet, Gensonne, Brissot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Buzot, and other members of that party. On the same day the Convention had decreed that all the members of the Bourbon family, including Philippe Egalité, should be detained at Marseilles. On the 15th of April a deputation from thirty-five of the forty-eight Sections, headed by Pache, now Mayor of Paris, presented to the Convention a petition demanding in the most violent language the expulsion of twenty-two of the leading Girondists; and when Fonfrède suggested an appeal to the sovereign people of France, in their primary assemblies, the Commune, by a fresh deputation, intimated that the Sections did not contemplate any such appeal, but required the punishment of the traitors—that is, in other words, the execution of a judgment not pronounced. The Girondists did not venture to persist in their demand for an appeal, though they had a majority in the Assembly, and contented themselves with decreeing that the National Convention reprobated as calumnious the petition presented by the thirty-five Sections, and adopted by the Council General of the Commune; and with directing that this decree should be forwarded to the different departments. But they procured a decree for the arraignment of Marat before the Revolutionary Tribunal for having signed an incendiary address as president of the Jacobin Club. This most impolitic act resulted, as might have been foreseen, only in the triumph of Marat and the Jacobins, from which faction the jury of that tribunal were selected, and most of whose members were friends of Robespierre. Some of these jurymen were so ignorant that they could neither read nor write, others were habitually intoxicated. Marat did not even pretend to defend himself; on the contrary, he assumed the part of accuser instead of defendant, boasted of what he had done, and laid all the blame on the Girondists. He was of course immediately acquitted (April 24th). On his release the mob bore him on their shoulders to the hall of the Convention, through which they defiled amidst the cheers of the galleries and the ill-concealed fear of the deputies. At the Jacobins that evening Marat congratulated himself that he had put a rope round the necks of the Girondists.

At this time Danton would willingly have effected a reconciliation with the Gironde. He prepared a grand banquet in the Park of Sceaux, to which the leaders of that party were invited. But when Danton proposed an amnesty for the past, Guadet, though with silent disapprobation of Vergniaud, replied with an unconditional refusal. The Girondists had now proclaimed themselves the advocates of security and order, and could not with any consistency ally themselves with Danton, the patron of the Septembrists, and still the advocate of violence. Danton ascribed their rejection of him to personal hatred, and for his own safety threw in his lot with the Mountain, though he had repented of his former courses, and even after the banquet publicly voted with the Gironde on the question whether the Government should be named by the people or by the legislative body. It is also said that in a nocturnal conference at Charenton with Pache, Robespierre, Henriot, and others, he opposed a massacre of the Girondists, and preferred to extort a decree against them by threats and intimidation. The Gironde made some feeble attempts to oppose the Commune and the Jacobins with their own weapons. The Commune, by a Decree of May 1st, had ordered a levy to be made in Paris of 12,000 men for the war in La Vendée, and had laid a heavy income-tax upon the rich. These measures excited great discontent among the clerks, apprentices, and other young men of the better classes subject to the conscription; riots ensued, which were stimulated by the Gironde and by articles in Brissot’s Patriote. But such partisans were no match for a mob of sans-culottes, a regular army of whom was taken into pay at the instance of Robespierre. On the 2nd of May the Convention was compelled by the threats of the Hôtel de Ville to place a maximum on the price of corn. The Girondists, after a vain attempt to remodel the Municipality, obtained, on the motion of Barère, the appointment of a Commission of Twelve, armed with extraordinary power, and selected from their own party (May 18th). This step tended to bring matters to an issue between the contending factions. The Twelve forbade nocturnal assemblies of the Sections, dismissed Boulanger from the command of the National Guard, and by ordering the arrest of two administrators of police, provoked a trial of strength between the parties. A deputation from the Commune appeared at the bar of the Convention, May 25th, to demand that Hébert, “a magistrate estimable for his virtues and enlightenment”, should be restored to his functions. Amidst the clamour which ensued, the Girondist Isnard, then President of the Assembly, in an angry and foolish speech, declared that France had confided the national representatives to Paris, and if they were attacked, he threatened in the name of all France that Paris should be annihilated, that the spot which it had occupied should soon be sought in vain.

Girondists stronger in the Provinces.

The Girondists had unquestionably a majority in the provinces, though the Commissioners of the Convention had done their best to spread terror through the length and breadth of the land. Vast numbers were arrested and imprisoned in some of the principal towns, without either charge or examination. At Sedan the Commissioner declared that sans-culottes were the only citizens; Chabot, at Toulouse, told the people that they wanted no priests, that the citizen, Christ, was the first Sans-culotte. It was only a few of the larger municipalities, as Bordeaux and Rouen, that were able to defend themselves against these outrages. The walls of Bordeaux had been covered with placards threatening to revenge its deputies, if killed; the party of Barbaroux, at Marseilles, had manifested anti-revolutionary sentiments, and Girondist addresses had been presented from that town, as well as from Bordeaux, Lyons, Avignon, Nantes, and other places. But there was no hope of deriving material aid from the provinces; the fate of France was to be decided at Paris, and here the Girondists could reckon only on three of the forty-eight Sections, the Butte-des-Moulins, Quatre-vingt-douze, and Du Mail. Robespierre, who had been gradually organizing the means of overthrowing the Gironde, observed in the Jacobin Club, May 26th : “The Faubourg St. Antoine will crush the Section du Mail. Generally speaking, the people should repose on their strength; but when all laws are violated, when despotism is at its height, they ought to rise. This moment is come. For my own part, I declare that I place myself in insurrection against the President and all the members of the Convention”. Some stormy scenes ensued in that Assembly, and the decreasing majority in favour of the Gironde showed that the Marais was going over to the Mountain. The Convention, menaced by a deputation, voted the release of Hebert and the other prisoners.

The insurrection which overthrew the Girondists was organized by commissioners from thirty-six of the Sections, who met at the Evêché. They were about 500 in number, including 100 women, and assumed the name of the Central Club. The destruction of the Gironde was resolved on at a meeting of this Assembly, May 29th; Robespierre, with his usual craft, withdrew as the moment of action approached.

Early in the morning of May 31st the Central Club, having previously declared the Commune and the Department in a state of insurrection, sent Commissaries to the Hôtel de Ville to declare that the people of Paris annulled the constituted Municipal authorities; and they exhibited the unlimited powers which they had received from thirty-three Sections to save the Republic. Upon this the Municipal officers and General Council abdicated, but were immediately reinstated in their functions. The latter now assumed the title of Revolutionary Council General; an epithet which signified that all the usual laws and observances were suspended. Henriot was named Provisional Commander-General of the Parisian forces. An act of impeachment against the Girondists was drawn up; every man was offered a day’s wages of forty sous, and the tocsin was sounded in every quarter. In order to give the movement an appearance of order, and to convert it into what was called “a moral insurrection”, the Jacobins had convened a meeting of deputies from the forty-eight Sections and representatives of the authorities of the Department, who elected a commission of eleven, to be incorporated with the Council General of the Commune. These men pretended to restrain any open violence. But the Girondists were soon undeceived by the appearance of petitioners, violently demanding that the price of bread should be fixed at three livres, that workshops should be established to make arms for the sans-culottes, that Commissioners should be sent to Marseilles and other southern towns, that the Ministers Le Brun and Clavière should be arrested, that the obnoxious twenty-two members, as well as the twelve, should be arrested. Soon after arrived the members of the administration of the Department, the authorities of the Commune, and the Commissioners of the Sections, accompanied by a crowd of savages armed with clubs, pikes, and other weapons. L'Huillier, the procureur Général Syndic, their spokesman, denounced by name several of the leading Girondists, stigmatized the crime they had been guilty of in threatening to destroy Paris, the centre of the arts and sciences, the cradle of liberty. The populace now spread themselves in the Assembly, and fraternized with the Mountain. In this scene of indescribable confusion, Robespierre demanded the accusation of the “accomplices of Dumouriez”, and of all those named by the petitioners. Vergniaud, the orator of the Gironde, was too terrified to reply; in his alarm, he had himself moved that the address of the previous petitioners should be printed and circulated in the Departments! The debate was closed by the adoption of a decree proposed by Barère: “That the armed force of the Department of Paris should be in permanent requisition till further orders; that the Committee of Public Safety, in concert with the constitutional authorities, should investigate the plots denounced at the bar; that the Twelve should be suppressed; that a proclamation explaining these proceedings should be forwarded to all the Departments” (May 31st.)

These measures, and especially the establishment of a permanent insurrectionary force with regular pay, convinced the Girondists that their power was at an end. Their discouragement was completed by the news that the men of the three Sections on which they relied, had fraternized with those of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Some now proposed to fly into the provinces and raise an insurrection, but this was negatived by the majority. On the following day they absented themselves from the Convention. When that body assembled, June 2nd, it was surrounded by 80,000 armed men, with 163 guns. Among them were the 12,000 men destined for La Vendée, who had been purposely detained at Courbevoie. A scene of indescribable tumult and violence ensued. Hoping to overawe the people by the majesty of the National Assembly, Herault de Séchèlles, who that day presided, descended with the greater part of the members among the crowd, he himself with his hat on, the rest uncovered. Addressing Henriot, who with his staff was stationed in in the court leading to the Carrousel, he asked what the people wanted? remarked that the Convention was occupied only with promoting its happiness. “The people”, replied Henriot, “has not come here to listen to phrases, but to give orders. What it wants is thirty-four criminals”. Then, reining back his horse, he shouted in a voice of thunder, “Cannoniers to your guns!”. The members of the Convention, after attempting a retreat through the gardens, from which they were driven by Marat and his myrmidons, were compelled to resume their sitting in profound dejection.

The Commune and the Jacobins were, now victorious. It was a repetition of the 10th August for the Gironde. On the motion of Couthon a list of the deputies to be proscribed was read in the Convention; Marat added to or retrenched from it as he pleased. A decree was passed for the arrest of twenty-one of the leading Girondists, including Vergniaud, Brissot, Gensonne, Guadet, Gorsas, Pétion, Barbaroux, Buzot, Rabaud St. Etienne, Lasource, Lanjuinais, Louvet, and others; also of the Ministers, Clavière and Le Brun, and of the whole Commission of Twelve, except Fonfrède and St. Martin—in all, thirty-three persons. Isnard and Fouchet, having resigned their functions, were not arrested, but were forbidden to leave Paris. The proscribed Girondists were merely placed under the surveillance of gendarmes, from which most of them contrived to escape, and fled to the Departments of the Eure and the Calvados, to Lyons, Nimes, Moulins, and other places. Vergniaud, Valazé, and Gensonné remained in custody. Seventy-three deputies, who subsequently signed a protest against the arrest of the Girondists, were expelled from the Convention and imprisoned.

Thus the Gironde fell by the same power it had itself employed to overwhelm the nobles, proscribe the priests, and sap the throne—the power of the Parisian mob. They had relied too much on their oratory and their journals, were vain enough to imagine that they could control the spirit which they had conjured up, and complacently assumed the name of hommes d’état or statesmen. They were indeed, by the admission of Danton himself, vastly superior to the Montague in talents and education; “but”, he added, “we have more audacity than they, and the canaille is at our command”. Such, no doubt, was the true state of the case. The Girondists had lost all influence with the mob, and it was not till too late that they attempted to find a counterpoise in the provinces. A strong reactionary spirit existed in many parts of France, which required only leading, and the arrest of the Girondists was followed by some serious insurrections. At Caen an association, calling itself the “Central Assembly of resistance to oppression”, published a violent manifesto against the Jacobins of Paris. Two commissioners, Prieur and Romme, whom the Convention had dispatched into the Calvados, were arrested and confined in the Castle of Caen. Felix Wimpfen, a brave soldier, who headed the insurrection in this quarter, failed, however, in the attempt to raise an army, and the Girondists, who had fled to the Calvados, now made their way to Quimper and embarked for Bordeaux. The authorities of this city had declared themselves in a state of provisional independence under the title of “Popular Commission of Public Safety”. At Rennes the primary assemblies voted a violent address to the Convention. At Lyons, when news arrived of the insurrection in the Calvados, the citizens openly raised the standard of revolt, fortified the town, levied an army of 20,000 men, and opened communications with the emigrants and the King of Sardinia. Disturbances had broken out in this city before the end of May. The Girondists, united with the royalists, had had some serious encounters with the republican party, led by Chalier, a member of the Municipality; the Gironde proved victorious, and Chalier was seized and executed July 16th. An army of counter-revolutionists, formed at Marseilles, and increased by battalions from Aix, Nimes, Montauban, Toulouse, and other places, marched towards Lyons, took possession of Avignon, Arles, and both banks of the Rhone; Carteaux, at the head of a small force, was the only obstacle to their junction with the Lyonese. Even at Paris a reactionary spirit was displayed in several of the Sections.

The death of Marat was another result of the fall of the Girondists. In the neighborhood of Caen, whither many of them had fled, lived Charlotte Corday, a descendant, it is said, of a sister of the great Corneille. She was then about twenty-five years of age, having been born at St. Saturnin near Seéz, in July, 1768. A partisan of the Gironde, and enraged by its fall, she proceeded to Paris; obtained admission to Marat on pretence of giving him some valuable information on the state of the Calvados; found him in a bath, and plunged a knife into his breast with so determined a thrust that he expired in a few minutes (July 13th, 1793). She attempted not to escape, and being condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, met her fate with serenity and courage. It was a just retribution that the apostle of massacre and murder should fall by the dagger of an assassin; but his death only enhanced his popularity and inaugurated his apotheosis. In November his remains were carried to the Pantheon in place of those of Mirabeau, which were ejected.

Amidst these dangers and alarms the new republican Constitution, drawn up from the ideas of Condorcet but modified by Robespierre, was decreed by the Convention, June 23rd. It is unnecessary to describe the Constitution of '93”, or of An I, since it was soon virtually suspended by the dictatorial authority assumed by the Committee of Public Safety. It was only issued as a reply to the Girondist contention that the Mountain desired to establish an absolutism.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1793

It was fortunate for France during this domestic anarchy that the allies combined against her, divided by their own selfish views and jealousies, had no well-concerted plan of action. After the flight of Dumouriez, General Dampierre, his successor, had collected the scattered remnants of the French army in a camp at Famars; and he proceeded to form entrenched camps at Cassel, Lille, Maubeuge, Charleroi, and Givet. The Imperial army under Prince Coburg entered the French territory, April 9th, but the movements of that commander were as slow and indecisive as those of the Duke of Brunswick had been; and though Lille, Condé, Valenciennes, and Maubeuge were threatened, nothing of importance was done. Coburg was of opinion that the strife of parties would reduce France to a state of impotence, and that about the spring of 1794 an invasion might be securely undertaken. Hence he had already determined in April to attempt nothing further in the ensuing campaign of 1793 than the reduction of some frontier fortresses. The Duke of York, with 10,000 English, having disembarked at Ostend, April 20th, proceeded to join the Dutch and Hanoverian divisions. Their united cantonments extended from Tournai and Courtrai to the sea. In vain the Duke of York and the Austrian general, Clairfait, urged an advance; Coburg would not stir. His views respecting the campaign were, no doubt, a good deal influenced by the Austrian policy at this time, which was to secure the reconquered Belgian provinces; the states of which were restored to their former rights, and the Archduke Charles was appointed Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands. Attacks were made by the French with the view of saving Condé; against the better judgment of Dampierre, who saw their inutility, but was urged to them by the Convention. In one of these, May 8th, he sought and found his death in preference to the alternative of the guillotine. At length the allies attacked the French at Famars, and drove them from their camp, May 23rd. The victory was won by the Duke of York turning the French flank; Coburg had wasted his time in useless manoeuvres. A twelve days’ march might now have brought the allies to Paris; but Coburg would not leave the frontier towns behind him. The French army, in a state of disorganization, had retreated under the walls of Bouchain.

On the death of Dampierre, Custine, commander of the of the army of the Rhine, was appointed to his post. Before Custine’s departure, Frederick William, soon after the battle of Neerwinden, had crossed the Rhine at Bacharach, dispersed some republican battalions, intercepted Custine’s communications between Mainz and Worms, and compelled him to retreat behind the Lauter. Custine was joined here by the army of the Moselle; but though he had 60,000 men against 40,000 Prussians, he ventured not to attack them. The Prussians, on their side, though reinforced by an Austrian corps under Wurmser, and by the emigrants under Condé, confined their whole attention to the reduction of Mainz. Custine, before proceeding to take the command of the army of the North, made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to relieve that place (May 17th). He was succeeded in the command of the army of the Rhine by Houchard, and in that of the army of the Moselle by Alexander Beauharnais, husband of the celebrated Josephine. The allies did not act cordially together. Austria was jealous of Prussia’s designs on Poland, and had counter schemes of aggrandizement of her own: of an exchange of territory with Bavaria, of seizing Alsace, of occupying, in her own name, the French frontier fortresses. Great Britain was more intent on acquiring Dunkirk, and seizing the French possessions in the East Indies, than on pushing the continental war with vigour; Prussia had little to gain in the struggle; disliked the Austrian schemes, and wished to husband her forces, in case they should be wanted in Poland; but it was important for her to drive the French from Mainz, the key of Germany. Hence the mighty preparations of the allies for the campaign of 1793 were chiefly employed in the reduction of two towns, Mainz and Valenciennes. The former place capitulated to the Prussians, July 22nd. Condé had surrendered to the Austrians, July 12th; and on the 28th, Valenciennes also capitulated. The garrisons of Mainz and Valenciennes, amounting to upwards of 20,000 men, were dismissed, on condition of not bearing arms against the allies for a year; but this did not prevent the French from employing them with great effect against the Vendéans. Custine, suspected of collusion with the enemy, had been summoned to Paris on the motion of Bazire, before the surrender of Mainz. Kilmaine, his successor, withdrew the army of the North from Caesar’s camp before Bouchain, and established it with little molestation in a strong position behind the Scarpe, between Douai and Arras (August 10th).

While such was the posture of affairs on the northern frontier, a Spanish army under Don Ricardos had entered France on the eastern side of the Pyrenees, had laid siege to Perpignan, captured St. Laurent and the fort of Bellegarde. The Spaniards had also been successful on the western side of that chain, and menaced St. Jean Pie de Port. The Corsicans had risen in insurrection towards the end of May, at the instigation of Pascal Paoli, who was named Generalissimo or Governor of the Island. The clergy reinstated, the emigrants recalled, the emissaries of the French Republic proscribed, and Corsica thrown into the hands of the English—such was the programme of the insurgents. Some slight successes in Piedmont were all that the French could set off against these reverses.

The vigour of the Revolutionary Government seemed to increase as danger became wider and more imminent. On the 10th of July the powers of the Committee of Public Safety expired, and a new election was held. Barère was reelected; Danton did not obtain a single vote, but he was in some degree represented by his friends Hérault de Séchelles and Thuriot. St. Just, Couthon, and Robert Lindet retained their places; the remaining three, Gasparin, Prieur, and Jean Bon St. André, were Jacobins of the deepest dye. Couthon and St. Just obtained the admission of Robespierre, on the retirement of Gasparin, July 27th, but it was not till the spring of the following year that he attained to supreme authority. Thus was inaugurated the tyranny of absolute and uncontrolled democracy. The number of the Committee was raised to twelve, on the motion of Danton, September 6th; when Billaud Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Granet were admitted. The members now divided themselves into smaller committees. Barère and Hérault de Séchelles assumed the Department of Foreign Affairs; Billaud Varennes and Collot d'Herbois that of the Interior; Robespierre and St. Just, that of Legislation. The Ministers waited every evening on the Committee for instructions.

ROBESPIERRS IN POWER

The fresh organization of the Committee was soon testified by its measures. On the 1st of August it was decreed that Marie Antoinette, whose son was now taken from her, should be transferred to the Conciergerie and arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal; that the expenses of her children should be reduced to those necessary for two private individuals; that all the Capets should be banished, but Elizabeth not till after the judgment of Marie Antoinette; that the Royal tombs and mausoleums at St. Denis and elsewhere should be destroyed on August 10th; that the expenses and equipages of general officers should be reduced to what was strictly necessary; that only patriotic expressions, or the names of ancient Republicans and martyrs of liberty, should henceforth be employed as watchwords; that all foreigners, belonging to countries at war with France, not domiciliated previously to July 14th, 1789, should be arrested, and their papers seized; that the barriers of Paris should be closed, and nobody suffered to pass unless charged with a public mission; that a camp should be formed between Paris and the army of the North; that all Frenchmen refusing to receive assignats should be subject to a fine of 800 livres, and on a second offence of double that sum, with twenty years of imprisonment in irons.

The decree against foreigners seems to have been suggested by the finding, as it was asserted, of some papers on the person of an Englishman arrested at Lille, which were said to implicate Pitt in a vast conspiracy to burn several of the French arsenals, to forestall articles of the first necessity, to depress the value of assignats, etc. The papers are manifest forgeries, nor was the Englishman on whom they were said to have been found ever produced and examined. Granier, however, proposed in consequence in the Convention, August 7th, that Pitt was the enemy of the human race, and that everybody was justified in assassinating him. At the instance of Couthon, the latter clause was omitted, but the Convention solemnly decreed the former.

On the 10th of August, the anniversary of the capture of the Tuileries, the establishment of the new Constitution was celebrated by a grand public melodramatic fête, arranged by the painter David. The Convention having discharged the principal function for which it was elected, ought now to have given place to another Assembly. But this would also have involved the dissolution of the Committee of Public Safety; and neither the Convention nor the Committee was inclined to relinquish its hold on power. Danton had proposed to make the Committee a provisional Government, to grant it fifty million livres; but the Committee found it prudent to accept only the grant. Its establishment had raised a party against it called Hébertistes, from Hébert, one of its principal members, who was supported by Chaumette, Vincent, and Ronsin. These men were embittered by seeing Robespierre, with whom they had formerly acted, in possession of supreme power, whilst they themselves were excluded. A few days after the fête it was decreed that, till the enemy was expelled from France, all Frenchmen were in permanent requisition for the armies. Bachelors were to enlist, married men were to forge arms and transport provisions; women were to make tents, clothing, etc.; children were to scrape lint; old men were to excite the warriors by preaching in public places hatred of Kings and the unity of the Republic. France became one vast camp. To stimulate the Republicanism of the people, it was proposed to publish, under the title of Annales du Civisme, the most striking instances of patriotic devotion. The Committee of Public Safety also directed that such tragedies as Brutus, William Tell, Gaius Gracchus, etc., should be performed thrice a week, once at the public expense.

The generals, as well as the Girondists, were made to feel the power of the new Committee. Biron, commander of the army La Vendée, was summoned to Paris to give an account of his conduct. Rossignol, his successor, was intrusted to perpetrate every sort of enormity. “In two months”, said Barère, “La Vendée will cease to exist”. Custine, on his arrival in Paris, had been arrested, and conveyed to the Abbaye. On the fall of Valenciennes, he was condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and guillotined August 28th. Robespierre urged on his death, and complained of the dilatoriness of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which he said had “hampered itself with lawyer-like forms”, and proposed that it should be reformed. At this time Robespierre first became President of the Convention. On September 5th a decree was passed dividing the “Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal” into four sections, all acting simultaneously and with equal power; increasing the number of judges to sixteen, including the President and Vice-President, the number of the jury to sixty, and the substitutes of the public accusers to five. Chaumette proposed a revolutionary army to traverse the Departments, accompanied by the guillotine; and suggested that the gardens of the Tuileries should be used for plants serviceable in the hospitals. Danton, like Robespierre, complained of the slowness of the Revolutionary Tribunal—the head of an aristocrat should fall every day! He also procured two decrees:

1. That there should be an extraordinary assembly of the Sections every Sunday and Thursday, and that each citizen attending them should receive, if he wished it, forty sous;

2. That one hundred millions should be placed at the disposal of the Ministry to fabricate arms.

These decrees were voted with enthusiasm. A deputation from the Jacobins demanded that the Girondists should be speedily brought to justice; a subject which had been agitated in the Jacobin Club a few days before. Towards the close of the sitting, Barère, as member of the Committee of Public Safety, presented a Report embodying the prayers of the various petitions. Besides the measures already noticed, it was decreed that a standing army of 6,000 men and 1,200 gunners should be maintained in Paris to execute revolutionary laws and measures of public safety; that Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Clavière, Le Brun, and his secretary Baudry, should be immediately arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Brissot had been arrested at Moulins. A decree forbidding domiciliary visits during the night was revoked. Barère observed in his Report, that according to the grand mot of the Commune, terror was to be the order of the day. In this memorable sitting of September 5th, the Reign of Terror was thus distinctly and avowedly inaugurated. The Revolution from its commencement had indeed been a Reign of Terror, and particularly since the massacres of September; but now these atrocities were to be committed orderly and legally, and the means of committing them were permanently organized.

We will here give a few specimens of the legislation of the period. Collot d'Herbois proposed and carried a law that whoever possessed a store of the chief necessaries of life without giving notice of them to the authorities, and offering them daily for sale at the prices which they should fix, should be put to death as a usurer and monopolist. Cambon, thinking to raise the value of the paper money by diminishing the quantity in circulation, proposed that 1,500 million assignats, bearing the image of the King, should no longer circulate; and as the value of all paper of course immediately fell, Couthon carried a motion that any one passing assignats at less than their nominal value should be liable to twenty years’ imprisonment in chains, and another that the investing of money in foreign countries should be punished with death!

To render despotism complete two things were still want­ing : the loi des suspects, and the investing of the Government with uncontrolled power. 

The loi des suspects, passed September 17th, defined suspected persons to be: 1, those who by their conduct, their relations, their conversation, or their writings, had shown themselves enemies of liberty; 2, those who could not prove their means of living, and the discharge of their civic duties; 3, those who had refused certificates of civism; 4, public functionaries deprived or suspended by the Convention; 5, çi-devant nobles, their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, also the agents of emigrants; 6, those who had emigrated between July 1st, 1789, and the publication of the law of April 8th, 1792, notwithstanding that they might have returned into France within the term fixed by that law. Suspected persons were to be arrested and kept under guard at their own cost. Under the extensive and vague definitions of this dreadful law not a man in France was safe. It was, moreover, to be wielded by Robespierre, who had told Garat: “I have no need to reflect. I am always guided by my first impressions!”. It was ordered that 50,000 committees should be formed throughout France for the purpose of discovering enemies of the Revolution; and about half that number were actually established, composed of five members, each receiving five francs a day.

The new Constitution was suspended October 10th, on the motion of St. Just, and the Government, till the conclusion of peace, declared revolutionary; a term which denoted the suspension of all custom and law, and signified sometimes the sovereign authority of the mob, in this case, the sovereign authority of the Government or Committee of Public Safety. The Committee now had the surveillance of the Executive Council, the Ministers, the Generals, and all Corporations— in short, a dictatorship.

Marie Antoinette's death.

After the transference of Marie Antoinette to the Conciergerie, her fate could be no longer doubtful. She was suffered to languish two or three months in that dungeon, deprived almost of the common necessaries of life. After her separation from her son, a shoemaker named Simon, of brutal manners, had been appointed tutor to the young Prince, whom he endeavored to render as low and debased as himself. The Queen was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, October 14th, when Fouquier Tinville revived against her all the calumnies circulated in her earlier days. Hébert, who next brutally and cynically insulted the descendant of a long line of Emperors, had been a check-taker at the Théâtre des Variétés, had been discharged for dishonesty, and had been convicted of robbing his furnished lodgings. Yet he was now a leading member of the Commune! The political charges against Marie Antoinette were, having sent large sums of money to the Emperor, having favored the Coalition, having exerted an undue influence over her husband, having endeavored to excite a civil war, etc. Her condemnation was a matter of course, and she was executed on October 16th.

The murder of the Queen was soon followed by the execution of the Girondists. On the 24th of October twenty-one Girondists, of that party, including Brissot, Vergniaud, and Gensonné, were arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and found guilty on the 30th of a conspiracy against the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, and the liberty and safety of the French people. The real cause of their fate was their having opposed Robespierre and the Mountain, and endeavored to decentralize the Revolution, that is, to resist the Paris mob by means of the Departments: but their own conduct, and especially their treatment of the King, deprives them of our commiseration. When their trial had lasted three or four days, a Jacobin deputation having demanded of the Convention that juries should be empowered to put an end to a criminal prosecution whenever they considered themselves satisfied, Robespierre proposed and carried a law (October 29th) that the jury should be interrogated on this point after a trial had lasted three days. On the following morning this law was read to the Revolutionary Tribunal by the Public Accuser, and, after a short deliberation, a verdict of guilty was pronounced against all the prisoners, though not one of them had yet made his defence.

The next victim of note was the Duke of Orleans, who had been kept in arrest at Marseilles since the spring, and had thence been transferred to the Conciergerie. He was condemned on the most inadequate evidence, but it is impossible to feel any pity for him. He met his fate with a hardened indifference, November 7th. Two days after Madame Roland with undaunted courage, exclaimed at the scaffold, “0 Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”. Her husband, who had escaped into Normandy, on hearing of her death, committed suicide on the high road near Rouen. Among other victims of this period may be mentioned Bailly, the astronomer and çi-devant Mayor of Paris, the deputies Barnave, Kersaint, and Rabaud St. Etienne, the Generals Houchard, Brunet, and Lamartière, and Madame du Barri, the mistress of Louis XV. Of the Girondists who had escaped into the provinces, Salles and Guadet were captured and executed in June, 1794; Barbaroux shot himself near Castillon; Valady, arrested near Perigueux, was executed in that town in December, 1793; the bodies of Pétion and Buzot were discovered half devoured by wolves. A few, as Louvet and Lanjuinais, succeeded in escaping.

 In accordance with a maxim that all that is not new in revolutions is pernicious, was introduced a fantastic alteration of the calendar. As Royalty had been abolished September 21st, 1792, it was resolved that the French era should begin from that event, as the commencement of the first year of the Republic. The year was to be composed of twelve months, each of thirty days, divided into decades, each tenth day being a day of repose, instead of Sunday. The names of the days in each decade were primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi, nonidi, decadi. The five supplementary days inserted at the end of the year, and entitled sansculotides, formed a kind of festival, of which the first day was sacred to genius, the second to labour, the third to actions, the fourth to recompenses, the fifth to opinion. New names for the months adapted to their character, were suggested by Fabre d'Eglantine. The first month, which answered nearly to October, was called Vendémiaire, followed by Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor. The new calendar was decreed October 24th, 1793, and on the following day, in conformity with it, the procès verbal of the Convention was dated 4 Brumaire an II de la Republique Française. It would, however, be unjust to conceal that the Revolutionary Government adopted some useful schemes. The Polytechnic and Normal schools were prepared, the foundations of a civil code were laid, the Grand Livre, in which all the national creditors were inscribed, was opened, a uniformity of weights and measures was established, and the decimal system introduced.

THE WORSHIP OF REASON

There now remained little to alter or abolish except in the article of religion. Both Robespierre and the Deists, and Hébert and the Atheists, were resolved to set aside Christianity, but they were not exactly agreed as to what they should substitute in its place. The Commune, however, in which the Atheists and Materialists ruled supreme, took the lead. Chaumette, the procureur-general, who fancied himself a philosopher, was one of the principal leaders in this crusade against Christianity. On the 10th of November he obtained a decree of the Commune for inaugurating the “worship of Reason” in the metropolitan Cathedral of Notre Dame. Already, in the month of October, the churches had been desecrated, the images thrown down, and the plate and other ornaments carried off. The Goddess of Reason, represented by an actress, was now installed at Notre Dame. In the nave was erected a sort of mountain, having a temple at the top, with the inscription, A la Philosophie. A woman, dressed as the Goddess of Liberty, came forth from the temple, seated herself on a sort of cloud, having at her feet a truncated column with a lamp called the flambeau de la vérité. Here she received the homage of a choir of girls dressed in white, whilst a hymn composed by Marie Joseph Chenier was chanted by all the sans-culottes present. The Goddess of Reason was now carried in procession to the Convention; Chaumette introduced her by a speech at the bar; the actress, descending from her throne, was embraced by the President, and took a seat by his side. By such absurd and blasphemous farces did these new Republicans, the legislators of a great nation, delude and disgrace themselves.

These scenes were accompanied with a perfect carnival of atheism, folly, and debauchery. Members of the Convention might be seen dancing the carmagnole with girls of the town dressed in sacerdotal habits. The relics of St. Genevieve were publicly burnt in the Place de Grève, and a procès-verbal of the proceedings was dispatched to the Pope. On November 20th the Section of l'Unité sent an enormous mass of church plate as an offering to the Convention. Their deputies were adorned with priestly vestments, and carried a black flag, typifying the destruction of fanaticism. They sung the air Marlbroug est mort et enterré, and danced in the middle of the hall amid the applause of the Convention. The churches were converted into public-houses, the sculptures of Notre Dame were ordered to be destroyed, and wooden saints, missals, breviaries, and Bibles were consumed in bonfires. The rural districts, however, refused to imitate the madness and profanities of the capital.

Robespierre disapproved of these proceedings. Although a man of blood, he was also a man of order; although a Deist, he was, like his master Rousseau, for tolerating all religions, including that of the Roman Catholic Church. On November 21st he denounced the Atheists to the Jacobin Club as more dangerous enemies of the Revolution even than the priests and Royalists, and stigmatized their tenets as subversive of all political society. “Atheism”, he said, “is aristocratic, while the idea of an Omnipotent Being watching over innocence and punishing triumphant crime is altogether popular”. He adopted the phrase of Voltaire, that if a God did not exist it would be necessary to invent one; and he concluded by moving that Society should be purged of the traitors concealed in its bosom, and the Committees reorganized. These propositions were unanimously adopted. After this speech the indecent scenes which had disgraced Paris were no longer exhibited. One of the motives of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety for suppressing them was the scandal which they created in foreign countries. Danton supported Robespierre, and Hébert and Chaumette found themselves compelled to make a sort of public recantation of their atheistical tenets.

 While such was the state of Paris, the Revolutionary Government was gradually triumphing over its enemies in the provinces. The insurgents of La Vendée had been tolerably successful up to October. Robespierre’s protégé, Rossignol, proved totally incompetent for the command of the army sent against them, and sustained some defeats; but he carried out to the letter his instructions to burn and destroy all that he could. His successor, Lechelle, was a man of the same calibre; but Kleber, Marceau, and Westermann, though nominally under his command, acted independently of him, and inflicted on the Vendéans a succession of defeats at Chatillon-sur-Sevre, La Tremblaye, and Chollet, where Bonchamp was killed, at Granville, at Le Mans, and finally dispersed them at Savenay, December 22nd. An English expedition under Lord Moira fitted out for their aid arrived too late. Henri de Larochejaquelein was killed in a skirmish in the following March by two Republican grenadiers, whose lives he was endeavoring to save. La Vendée was converted into a smoking desert. In the south Marseilles had opened its gates to Carteaux, August 25th. But this success decided the revolt of Toulon, a step which the inhabitants had been some months contemplating. Having opened communications with Admiral Hood, who was cruising off that port, the English fleet, accompanied by a Spanish and a Neapolitan squadron, entered the harbour August 27th, and took possession of the place, after a short resistance from a few of the French vessels. On the following day Admiral Hood published a Declaration that he took possession of Toulon in the name of Louis XVII. Two English regiments from Gibraltar, under General O'Hara, and between 12,000 and 13,000 Spanish, Piedmontese, and Neapolitan troops, were subsequently introduced into the town, and the forts around it were occupied. Lyons had been besieged by Kellermann since August 8th. The operations were really conducted by Dubois Crance, but little progress was made till the end of the month, when the besieging force was largely increased and 100 guns brought into play. The hopes of the inhabitants rested on a diversion to be made by a Piedmontese corps, which, however, was defeated by Kellermann; and Lyons, after sustaining a terrible bombardment, and being reduced to the extremity of famine, was compelled to surrender, October 9th. On the 12th the Convention decreed that the portion of the town inhabited by the rich should be demolished, that its name should be effaced from the towns of the Republic; that what remained of it should henceforth be called Commune Affranchie; and, in the mock sublime of that epoch, it was ordained that a column should be erected on the ruins with the inscription, “Lyons made war upon liberty : Lyons exists no more”.

NAPOLEON AT THE SIEGE OF TOULON

The reduction of Lyons was soon followed by that of Toulon. The force of the allies was weakened by those dissensions which attended all the operations of the Coalition. The inhabitants of Toulon were divided into the two parties of Constitutionalists and Royalists. As the former were the more numerous, and possessed all the municipal offices, the English consulted their views. The Spaniards, on the other hand, adopted all the more warmly the minority, whose religious and political principals coincided with their own. This party demanded the recall of the clergy, and that the Count of Provence should be summoned to Toulon as Regent of France; but as these measures were opposed by the Constitutionalists, they were declined by Admiral Hood. The Spaniards then demanded that the Toulon fleet should be delivered to their Sovereign as a member of the House of Bourbon, although by the capitulation of the town it had been expressly given into English keeping, and the demand was therefore refused. These bickerings laid the foundation of a rupture between Spain and England. The English Government, in conformity with its principle of not prescribing any particular form of government to the French, had even disapproved of Admiral Hood’s act in taking possession of Toulon in the name of Louis XVII. The siege of Toulon was first undertaken by Carteaux, a çi-devant painter. He was accompanied by the deputy Salicetti, a Corsican, who retained at Toulon his countryman, Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young captain of artillery. The siege made little progress till after the reduction of Lyons; the troops from which place, together with large draughts from the army of Italy, raised the besieging army to more than 60,000 men. The command of this force was now given to Dugommier, an experienced general; but the Convention appointed five commissaries to watch over him, namely, Barras, Fréron, Salicetti, Augustine Robespierre (Maximilian’s younger brother), and Ricord, with instructions that Toulon must be taken, pointing clearly to the alternative of the guillotine. The attack was ultimately conducted after Bonaparte’s plan, who saw that a fort occupied by the English on a tongue of land separating the inner and outer roadsteads, was the key of the whole position. The fort was attacked by a picked French column, on the night of December 16th, and, after a desperate resistance, taken. As some of the surrounding forts had also been reduced by the Republicans, General O'Hara, the commander-in-chief, who, with Lord Hood and Sir Gilbert Elliot, formed a directorial commission, found himself compelled to evacuate Toulon; but not before the arsenal and a large part of the French fleet had been burnt, under the conduct of Commodore Sir Sidney Smith. Three ships of the line and twelve frigates were carried off by the English. About 4,000 Toulonese were put on board the allied fleets. The Republican Commissioners, Fréron, Barras, and the younger Robespierre, took a horrible vengeance on the citizens, and within three months butchered more than 3,000 persons.

Elsewhere, also, the Republican Government signalized its triumphs by a series of the most horrible massacres, executed by its proconsuls. At Bordeaux, which had embraced the Girondist cause but for a moment, Tallien and his colleague, Ysabeau, caused 108 persons to be guillotined. Here these two proconsuls lived in state, with a guard at their door, and, while the town was almost in a state of famine, required to be served with the finest wines, the most exquisite delicacies. Tallien acquired a fortune by his peculations. These atrocities were more than rivalled by Fréron and Barras at Marseilles, and Collot d'Herbois and Fouché at Lyons. At Marseilles was established a Commission of Six, divided for the sake of expedition into two courts, without public accuser or jury. The persons accused, having been asked their names, professions, and fortunes, were sent down to the executioner’s cart, which was always standing before the Palais de Justice, and the judges appearing on the balcony, pronounced sentence of death. The head of this horrible tribunal, a young man of twenty, condemned 160 persons in ten days. Fréron, in pursuance of his idea, “that every rebel city should disappear from the face of the earth”, mutilated most of the public buildings and monuments of Marseilles, and called it, “the nameless town”. He and Barras appropriated 800,000 francs, which they ought to have paid into the treasury, as the spoils of this city, on pretence that their carriage had been over­turned in a ditch. At Lyons Couthon at first seemed inclined to show some mercy; but he was superseded towards the end of October by Collot d'Herbois and Fouché, who suppressed the rising with great cruelty. About forty houses were demolished by artillery, and a great many more damaged; but to raze Lyons to the ground was found to be too vast an undertaking.

But all these atrocities were outdone by the infamous  Carrier, at Nantes. His first act on arriving at Nantes, October 8th, when the Vendéan war was still going on, was to form the Campagnie de Marat, to make domiciliary visits, and arrest suspected persons, of whom 600 were thrown into prison. He threatened to throw half the town of L'Orient into the sea, and ordered General Haxo to exterminate all the inhabitants of La Vendée, and burn their dwellings. The noyades, or drownings, commenced towards the end of Brumaire. Priests sentenced to transportation were placed in a vessel, with a sort of trap-door, which proceeded down the Loire, and, the bolts being withdrawn, the unhappy victims were drowned. The lowest estimate of the victims of Carrier’s blood-thirstiness during the four months of his operations at Nantes amounts to 15,000.

1793. Siege of Dunkirk. The Austrians driven back, Dec.

 We will now return to the campaign of 1793. After the fall of Valenciennes, a rapid march on Paris would probably have proved successful. The immense northern frontier of France was defended only by a few isolated camps, while the allies had nearly 300,000 men between Basle and Ostend. But their conduct was guided first by their own selfish and separate interests, and next by the ancient routine maxims of strategy, which required the reduction of the frontier fortresses. Prince Coburg, therefore, resolved to reduce Quesnoy, and the Duke of York had instructions from London to lay siege to Dunkirk. From Paris as a centre Carnot directed all the operations of the French armies on the vast circumference threatened. The Duke of York sat down before Dunkirk towards the end of August, 1793. His total force, including 12,000 Austrians under Alvinzi, amounted to about 36,000 men. These were divided into two corps, one of siege, the other of observation; the first being commanded by himself, while the other, under Marshal Freitag, was posted at Hondschoote. Houchard, an ignorant, incapable man, had succeeded Kilmaine in the command of the French army of the North. He was popular with the soldiery; but the fate of Custine rendered him somewhat solicitous about his own. This feeling was increased by a visit from the terrible Billaud Varennes, who caused twenty-two adjutants-general to be arrested in one night! Next morning Houchard found himself without a staff. By orders from Paris, Houchard attacked Freitag at Hondschoote, September 8th, and completely defeated him. Freitag was slain in the engagement, but Walmoden, who succeeded him, effected a retreat to Furnes. The Duke of York was now in a perilous situation. He was encamped in a sort of peninsula: instead of an English fleet, which he had expected, a French squadron had arrived, and molested his right flank; if the victorious enemy advanced, he must either lay down his arms or be driven into the sea; he was, therefore, compelled to raise the siege precipitately, abandoning fifty-two guns and his baggage. It was generally thought, even in England, that had Houchard pushed on, the Duke and his whole army must have been captured; but that general suffered him to form a junction with Walmoden at Furnes, where they presented too strong a front to be attacked. Houchard contented himself with dispersing an isolated Dutch force at Menin, September 13th. Advancing thence, two days after, to meet the Austrian General Beaulieu, his troops were seized with one of those unaccountable panics so frequent in the wars of the Revolution. Cries having arisen of “We are betrayed! Sauve qui peut!”, the French fled in disorder to Lille. For this misfortune, and for not having attacked the Duke of York, Houchard was deprived of his command and subsequently guillotined. He was succeeded by Jourdan.

Le Quesnoy surrendered to the Austrians September 9th, after a siege of fourteen days. Prince Coburg now determined to close the campaign by the reduction of Maubeuge and Landrecies, which would render him master of the valley of the Sambre, and to march on Paris the following year. But Jourdan, acting under the directions of Carnot, who was present, saved Maubeuge by defeating the Austrians at Wattignies, a neighboring height, after a battle which lasted two days (October 16th). General Ferrant, Commandant of Maubeuge, who had neglected to assist the army of liberation, was arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed. But the victory of Wattignies was followed by no results. General Davesnes having failed through sheer capacity in an attempt to invade maritime Flanders, expiated with his head his want of success; and Jourdan himself was deprived of the command for not passing the Sambre after his victory. The retreat of the Austrians was unmolested, and they soon after took up their winter quarters in the environs of Le Quesnoy, Valenciennes, and Condé. The Duke of York did the same at Tournai, covering Flanders, while the French established themselves at Guise.

Towards the Rhine, the Prussians, after the capture of Mainz, had remained almost entirely inactive, notwithstanding the pressing invitations of Wurmser, the Austrian general in Alsace, to join him in vigorous operations. The views of the Prussians were fixed on Poland, and the French campaign was little more than a blind to their projects in that quarter. A temporary disappointment there, coupled with some discussions with Austria, induced Frederick William suddenly to abandon his allies. Austria had wished to reap the Bavarian succession after the death of the Elector Charles Theodore, who had no legitimate children; but had been induced to relinquish the project through the repugnance to it of the Bavarians themselves, the opposition of the next heirs, the Princes of Zweybrucken, as well as of Prussia, the representations of England, and lastly also, the unwillingness of Charles Theodore himself to consent. Although Austria had abandoned this claim, yet, as her decision was unknown to Prussia, she brought it forward in some negotiations which took place at the King of Prussia’s head-quarters towards the end of August, with the view of merely covering some demands for a share of Poland, and making a merit of relinquishing Bavaria. The discovery of this duplicity excited the King of Prussia’s indignation, which was increased by the knowledge that Austria intended seizing Alsace for herself. Frederick William’s ill humour was further increased by news from Poland to the purport that the negotiations for securing his share of that country were going on anything but favorably. He now recollected that he had promised his aid in the French war solely for the campaign of 1793, and that only on condition of acquisitions in Poland; and about the middle of September he announced to the Austrians his intention of quitting the Coalition. In this step he completely disregarded the treaty which he had entered into with England only two months before for the better prosecution of the war with France. Towards the end of September, Frederick William II withdrew from his army, alleging the necessity of joining his troops assembling on the frontiers of Poland. Thus was the first blow struck at the Coalition.

The French had made two ineffectual attempts to pass the Rhine; they had also been repulsed with great loss in an attack upon the Duke of Brunswick’s position at Pirmasens, September 14th; but neither this success nor the remonstrances of the British Ambassador, could stimulate the Duke to action. At length he was induced to join Wurmser in an attack upon the French lines between Weissenburg and Lauterburg, October 13th; when the French, defeated at every point, were compelled to evacuate those two places, and to make a hasty retreat towards the Geisberg. Wurmser entered Hagenau October 17th; but he also displayed some remissness, and allowed the French to escape to Strassburg. This town would probably have opened its gates to the Austrians if Wurmser would have assured the inhabitants that possession of it should be taken in the name of Louis XVII; but such an arrangement was contrary to the policy of the Austrian Cabinet, which aimed at the recovery of Alsace. But the plot was discovered. St. Just and Lebas arrived at Strassburg October 22nd, as Commissioners of the Convention. St. Just immediately began to display his power. The day after his arrival he degraded the Commandant Lacour to the ranks, for having struck a soldier in a moment of excitement. On the 24th he proclaimed that “If there are in the army any traitors, or even any men indifferent to the people’s cause, we bring with us the sword to strike them!”. He erected the military tribunal attached to the army of the Rhine into a special and Revolutionary Commission; and he ordered General Eisenberg and a number of officers who had been surprised by the enemy and fled, to be shot in the redoubt of Hahnheim. Thus the Reign of Terror prevailed even in the camp. St. Just, who has been characterized as having a head of fire with a heart of ice, was its fitting instrument. The citizens of Strassburg were treated like the soldiery. The property of the rich, even their beds and apparel, was confiscated for the use of the army. A forced loan of nine millions (£360,000), payable in twenty-four hours, was exacted from a certain list of persons.

Wurmser had engaged in the siege of Landau, in which he expected the cooperation of the Prussians. But the Duke of Brunswick having failed in an attempt upon the castle of Bitsch, in the Vosges, took occasion to effect a retreat, which he had long contemplated, and retired to Kaiserslautern. He was followed by the French, under Hoche, who, however, after some engagements (28th, 29th, and 30th of December), were forced to retreat. The Duke of Brunswick’s movements having exposed the Austrian right, Hoche dispatched a division of 12,000 men through the Vosges to take them in flank, while Pichegru attacked them in front. Hoche himself assailed and dispersed without a blow the Palatine and Bavarian troops at Werdt, December 22nd, 1793. Wurmser was now compelled to retreat in disorder to the Geisberg; the armies of the Rhine and Moselle formed a junction, while the retrograde movement of the Austrians had also united them with the Prussians. But the Austrians being attacked and defeated by the French at the Geisberg, December 26th, Wurmser, disgusted with the conduct of the Prussians, resolved to abandon them, and crossed the Rhine between Philippsburg and Mannheim, December 30th; when the Prussians fell back towards Mainz. Thus, as the result of the campaign in this quarter, the French reoccupied the lines of Weissenburg, raised the blockade of Landau, recovered Alsace, and took up their winter quarters in the Palatinate.

Spain, Italy, India, and the West Indies.

On the Spanish frontier, where the French were not able to employ an adequate force, the campaign of 1793 left the Spaniards in possession of St. Elmo, Collioure, and Port Vendre, on the eastern side of the Pyrenees. On the western, nothing important was done, and the Spaniards maintained their positions. On the side of Piedmont, Massena succeeded in holding the Austro-Sardinian army in check. The French arms were for the most part unsuccessful in the colonies. In the East Indies Chandernagore, Pondicherry, and one or two smaller settlements fell into the hands of the English, who also captured in the West Indies, Tobago, St. Pierre, and Miquelon, but failed in attempts upon Martinico and St. Domingo. In the last named island, the negroes had risen against their masters; the Commissioners Santhonax and Polverel, dispatched thither by the Republican Government with unlimited powers, sided with the insurgents, admitted the coloured population to a sudden and complete participation in all political rights, and rendered the colony one vast scene of desolation.

As the Revolution proceeded, parties continued to separate. The Gironde had supplanted the Constitutionalists, and had  in its turn been overthrown by the Montague. The Revolution, it has been said, like Saturn, devoured its own children. In the democratic residuum still left we find three distinct Factions. First, the ultra-democrats, called Hébertistes and Enragés, who were for terror in all its wildest excesses, for atheism in its most absurd and blasphemous forms. In contradistinction to this faction had sprung up what was called le parti de la clemence, or party of mercy, at the head of which was Camille Desmoulins; and, strange to say, Danton also seemed to incline to it. Danton was not incorruptible, like Robespierre, but he had more of human nature in his composition. He had made a comfortable fortune by his patriotism, had married a young wife, and was inclined to enjoy the position he had achieved. Between these two parties stood that of Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon, who desired a sort of political and regulated terror, which they disguised under the sacred name of justice. Being now members of the Government, they had become more conservative without being a whit less cruel; and they were indignant at seeing the direction of the populace, by means of which they had themselves risen, taken out of their hands by men like Hébert and his companions. As the year 1793 drew to a close, it became evident that a deadly struggle between these parties was at hand.

Robespierre at first showed symptoms of adhesion to the “Party mercy”. Camille Desmoulins, who had been his schoolfellow, had started a journal called the Vieux Cordelier, in which he advocated the principles of the old Cordelier Club, now governed by Hébert’s party. Robespierre had saved Danton as well as Desmoulins from being expelled from the Jacobins; had patronized the Vieux Cordelier, had even revised the first two numbers. But the brilliant and fickle author soon overstepped the bounds of discretion. In his third number, he not obscurely likened the atrocities of the Reign of Terror, which he ascribed to the treacherous plans of the Hébertistes, to some of the worst passages in the history of the Roman Emperors; and, under pretence of denying, betrayed his real design by protesting beforehand against any comparison which malignity might draw between the present times and those whose pictures he had borrowed from Tacitus. By this language he offended a large number of the Mountain, who had participated in, or approved of these atrocities. Id his fourth number he went still further. He demanded a Committee of Clemency, the flinging open of the prisons, and the liberation of 200,000 suspects. Unluckily, on that very day, Robespierre had proposed in the Convention a Committee of Justice, the new name for Terror; which, however, was not adopted.

It is probable that Robespierre had patronized for a while the Party of Clemency only that he might the more securely overwhelm that of the Hébertistes. The contest, however, was initiated by the Cordelier Club, then under the influence of Hébert and Collot d'Herbois, by sending several insolent deputations to the Convention. Robespierre, by defending Camille Desmoulins, seemed to have incurred the dangerous charge of moderantisme. He explained and defended his views in his Report on the Principles of the Revolutionary Government, presented to the Convention in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, December 25th, 1793. He there described the course of the Government as lying between two extremes, weakness and modérantisme on the one hand, rashness and excess on the other; and he evidently hinted at the denunciation of Hebert and Baron Clootz. But at this time he had begun to quail under the attacks of Hébert and the Cordeliers. He publicly denied having taken any part in Camille Desmoulins’ Journal, and even proposed that it should be burnt. He also turned upon his former coadjutor, Fabre d'Eglantine, who was placed in confinement. And to show that the charge of moderantisme, or clemency, was an unjust imputation, he concluded by proposing a decree for accelerating the judgment of foreigners and generals charged with crimes like those of Dumouriez, Custine, Lamarliere, and Houchard.

The Hébertistes thought of trying their strength by an insurrection. They took occasion of the distress produced by the severe winter to spread pamphlets, attributing to the Convention all the miseries of Paris; but they failed in their attempt to excite the Commune, and consequently to raise the mob, which now looked up exclusively to the Committee of Public Safety. Among the citizens of a better class there was but one voice of scorn and horror for Hébert and his companions; while at the decisive moment, Henriot, the military leader of the Commune, went over to Robespierre. On the night of March 13th, 1794, after a speech by St. Just in the Convention, Hebert, and the leaders of his party, Chaumette, Vincent, Clootz, Ronsin, and others, were arrested. Their trial, which lasted three days, was, like the others of that epoch, a mere parody of justice; but though the charges brought against them were futile, most of them richly deserved their fate. They were executed, March 24th, to the number of nineteen. Their execution was followed by considerable changes. The Commune was reconstructed; Pache, the Mayor, was replaced by Lescot Fleuriot; the revolutionary army was disbanded; and the Cordelier Club was broken up.

The Dantonists were the next victims. Danton had been troublesome by demanding an examination of the conduct of public functionaries, and that the Committees should give an account of their acts. As if a Government which had declared itself revolutionary, that is irresponsible, was to be questioned! Tallien brought about an interview between Robespierre and Danton, in which the latter is said to have shed tears. On the very same day that Robespierre had determined on his death, he took Danton in his carriage for an excursion beyond the barriers! Camille Desmoulins was included in the proscription. It is probable that he owed his fate to the spite of St. Just. On the night of March 30th, Danton, Desmoulins, Phillippeaux, and Lacroix were arrested, after a deliberation of the two Committees united. Legendre next day demanded that they should be tried at the bar of the Convention. Robespierre opposed, and St. Just gave them the coup de grâce in an harangue in which he had the effrontery to say that he denounced them as the last partisans of royalty! Chabot, Bazire, Fabre d'Eglantine, Delaunay, Julien (of Toulouse), were also at this time prisoners at the Luxembourg, on a charge of forgery, and they were tried with the Dantonists, April 2nd; also Hérault de Séchelles and Westermann. Danton’s defence was audible on the other side of the Seine. But it was to no purpose; the prisoners were of course foredoomed. The trial was stopped on the fourth day, and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, though not a fourth part of the prisoners had been heard in their defence. From their violence, and the symptoms displayed by the audience, the Court was afraid to pass sentence on the accused at the bar; it was read to them by their jailer. They were guillotined April 5th.

TIUMPH OF ROBERPIERRE

By the defeat of the two factions of Dantonists and Hébertistes, the Committee of Public Safety seemed to have acquired irresistible power. The triumph of Robespierre was complete. The Convention decreed the dissolution of the Ministerial Council, and the formation in its stead of twelve Committees, for the discharge of the various functions of government. Robespierre filled these boards with obscure persons. The Municipality was also reformed, and the posts in it distributed according to Robespierre's bidding. The tribunals of the Departments were suppressed, and that of Paris became the sole one. Society was to be reorganized, and every individual brought under the immediate control of Government. But in this plenitude of power Robespierre trembled for his existence. The members of the governing Committee looked upon one another with hatred and suspicion, as if each were plotting against his colleague’s life, whilst all were regarded by moderate people with abhorrence. A strong body of men slept in Robespierre’s house, and, armed with clubs, accompanied him in his walks. At meals, two pistols were placed by his plate, and he ate nothing that had not been previously tasted. To show that the Government could not be charged with moderantisme, the executions kept their usual course. Good and bad were involved in a like fate. Among the victims of this period may be mentioned Dépresmenil, Le Chapelier, the venerable Malesherbes, Lavoisier the chemist, General Dillon, Chaumette, Gobel, the apostate bishop. The execution of numbers of women outdoes the other brutalities of the Reign of Terror. The wives of Danton and Camille Desmoulins, the Princess Elizabeth, the saint-like sister of Louis XVI, were sent to the scaffold. Robespierre is said to have told Maret, the book­seller, that he had wished to save Madame Elizabeth, but that Collot d'Herbois prevented it. The latter, who had been an unsuccessful actor and indifferent writer, was the only one of Hébert’s faction who had obtained a seat in the Committee of Public Safety.

Robespierre, having triumphed over the Atheists, proceeded to establish the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul by a decree of the Convention! (18th Floréal, May 7th, 1794). It was not, however, the God of the Scriptures, but the God of Reason, substituted for the Goddess of Reason. The new Calendar was retained, by which Sundays were abolished, and, in their stead, every tenth day was set apart for worship. A fête, planned by David the painter, was got up in honor of the new Deity, intended to outrival that of the Hébertistes (June 8th). An amphitheatre was erected in the gardens of the Tuileries, with seats for the members of the Convention, whilst over the basin was erected a group of monsters representing Atheism, Egotism, Discord, and Ambition. Robespierre, who might himself be called the incarnation of the last three, caused himself to be named President of the Assembly for the occasion, and dressed himself in a sky-blue coat. The members of the Convention walked in procession to the Champ de Mars, dressed in the uniform of representatives en mission, with feathers in their hats, and a three-coloured sash. In the midst of them was an antique car, drawn by eight oxen with gilt horns, and carrying a trophy composed of instruments of art. Robespierre, as President, marched at the head of the deputies; his colleagues in the Committees kept as far behind him as they could, in order, it is said, to make his position appear the more invidious; for they had already resolved on his destruction. In the centre of the Champ de Mars rose a symbolical mountain, on which the deputies took their seats, and a hymn to the Supreme Being was sung, composed by the same Marie Joseph Chenier, whose facile muse had a little while before celebrated the triumph of atheism. Robespierre was at the height of his glory. But his fall and that of his supporters was not far distant.

THE FINAL LAW

St. Just had given offence by his haughtiness; he had had a violent quarrel with Carnot, and a complete schism had taken place in the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon now stood alone. The treatment Robespierre had met with at the fête determined him to strike the terrorists of the Committee of General Security, and the Commissioners of the Convention who had rendered themselves notorious by their cruelties, such as Fouché, Fréron, Tallien, Carrier. With this view he introduced the terrible law called the “Law of 22nd Prairial” (June 10th), intended to accelerate the trial of the conspirators. By this law the Revolutionary Tribunal was again reformed. It was now to consist of a president, three vice-presidents, a public accuser and four substitutes, twelve judges, and fifty jury­men; and for practice it was to be divided into sections of twelve members, each section having not fewer than seven jurors. Its object was said to be to punish the enemies of the people; in which category were included those who had sought to create dearth, to inspire discouragement, to spread false news, to mislead public opinion, to corrupt the public conscience, to alter the energy and purity of revolutionary and republican principles, etc., etc. The accused were not to be allowed counsel; it was not necessary to call witnesses; the decision was left to “the conscience of jurymen enlightened by the love of their country”. There was no appeal, and the sole punishment was death! By Article 20, all previous laws relating to the Tribunal were abrogated. This would do away with the law which forbade any member of the Convention to be brought before the Tribunal, unless a decree of accusation had been previously obtained against him; and thus the Convention would be placed at the mercy of Robespierre and his two colleagues; since the signatures of three members of the Committee of Public Safety sufficed to send a man to trial. The Convention took the alarm, and though Robespierre and Couthon succeeded in carrying the article, it was not till after a long and warm discussion which served to expose their motives. Robespierre and Couthon were next day called to a severe account by the rest of the Committee, who had not been consulted, when a violent scene ensued. Billaud Varennes charged Robespierre with wishing to guillotine the members of the Convention; Robespierre retorted by accusing Billaud of counter-revolutionary projects. Stormy scenes also took place in the Convention. Bourdon and Tallien were so alarmed by Robespierre’s threats that the former took to his bed for a month, while the latter wrote him a humble letter of submission.

After this Robespierre ceased to attend the Committee. This was a mistake, as it enabled his adversaries all the Committee better to combine against him. It was evidently a political move, though a mistaken one. As he had overcome the Hébertistes or Enragés by means of the indulgens, and the indulgens by the cry for “justice”, so now he wanted to overthrow his opponents in the Committee by reconciling himself with the moderate party and the remnant of the Girondists. In a speech at the Jacobins, 18th Messidor (July 1st), he denounced the system of terror, at the same time proclaiming unceasing war against all counter-revolutionists. In another address at the same place, 23rd Messidor, he pursued the same subject, and demanded that Fouché should be brought to account for his atrocities at Lyons. In an artful passage of the former speech, he complained that the calumnies forged against him in London were repeated by his enemies in Paris; thus insinuating that all who said anything to his prejudice were implicated in the great foreign conspiracy recently invented and denounced.

THE CHEMISES ROUGES

The story of this conspiracy had been got up on occasion of an attempt to assassinate Collot d'Herbois by a man named Admiral, and was subsequently applied to a suspected design of a young woman named Cécile Rénault on the life of Robespierre. No satisfactory evidence was produced against Cécile; she had, however, avowed that she preferred a king to 50,000 tyrants, and that she had gone to Robespierre’s house to see what a tyrant was like. The Committee of General Security contrived to involve fifty-two other persons of all ranks, ages, and sexes in this pretended conspiracy. It is said that Robespierre had nothing to do with their trial, that it was, in fact, got up by his enemies to place him in an invidious light; that in order to forward this object, Fouquier Tinville, the Public Accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal, at the suggestion of a member of the Committee, ordered fifty-four red shirts, the costume of parricides, to be prepared for the condemned persons. The procession of the victims (June 17th, 1794) was all the more striking, as the guillotine had now been removed to the Barrière du Trône, and the carts had consequently to pass through the Faubourg St. Antoine. This affair of the Chemises Rouges, as it was called, was soon followed by that of a pretended conspiracy in the prisons. The Committee of Public Safety authorized Hermann, a Commissioner of Civil Administration, to investigate plots in prisons, by an arrêté, dated 7th Messidor an II (June 25th, 1794), and signed by Robespierre, Billaud Varennes, and Barère. Robespierre, therefore, appears to have retained the power of signing decrees, though he had now absented himself from the Committee; but we are not aware that any later signature can be produced. An arrêté for the execution of some prisoners, though signed by St. Just, 2nd Thermidor (July 20th), bears neither the name of Robespierre nor of Couthon. One of the substitutes of the Public Accuser charged Hermann with proposing to the Committee “to sweep out the prisons in order to depopulate France and make Robespierre dictator”. A list was made out of 159 persons confined in the Luxembourg, including the Prince d'Hénin, the Duke de Gêvres, thirty-nine nobles, the ex-prior of the Chartreux, several general and other officers, bankers, etc. They were nearly all condemned and executed 19tli, 21st, 22nd Messidor (July 7th, 9th, 10th). These executions were followed by that of several prisoners in the Carmes.

It is impossible to ascertain Robespierre’s share in these atrocities after his withdrawal from the Committee. It is, however, certain that after that event the number of executions vastly increased. In the forty-five days which elapsed from the assumed date of his retirement (June 11th) till his overthrow on the 9th Thermidor (July 27th), 1,285 persons were guillotined, while during the forty-five days immediately preceding, only 577 persons had suffered. It was after his retirement that people were sent to the guillotine in what were called fournées or batches, by which speedy method one person was often executed in mistake for another. We must recollect, however, that Robespierre had at least facilitated this wholesale butchery by his law of 22nd Prairial.

The Committees of Public Safety and of General Security endeavored to persuade the Convention that they were all embarked in a common cause; that a massacre of the deputies was intended, and they tried to convince each individually of his personal danger. Robespierre and Couthon, on the other hand, in their speeches at the Jacobins, professed the greatest respect for the Convention. Every means was used to show Robespierre in an invidious light as a would-be dictator and a patron of superstition and priestcraft. With the last view, a false and ridiculous story was invented of his being a disciple of one Catharine Theot, a crazy old woman, who, like Joanna Southcott in England, gave out that she was the mother of God. The Convention was convulsed with laughter at the story, whilst Robespierre gnashed his teeth with rage. With respect to the political charge, St. Just actually proposed in a meeting of the two Committees (July 23rd) that Robespierre should be named Dictator. The anecdote is recorded and believed by the republican editors of the Histoire Parliamentaire, on the authority of a man who had heard it from Barère, and is confirmed by Barère’s Memoires, published subsequently to the Histoire Parliamentaire.

Robespierre might probably have overcome his enemies by an insurrection, for Lescot Fleuriot, the Major of Paris, and Henriot, the Commander of the National Guard, were devoted to him. But Robespierre had never openly approved this mode of action, though he had sometimes secretly stimulated it. He relied on his moral influence, and imagined that he should overcome all opposition by the speech which he had prepared. The Committee endeavored to come to an agreement with him and his party, and had sent for him for that purpose, 5th Thermidor (July 22nd). But a reconciliation was found to be impracticable.

After the failure of this attempt at accommodation, nothing remained but a trial of strength in the Convention. Robespierre’s enemies bound themselves by an oath that they would assassinate him in the midst of the Assembly, if they failed in persuading it against him. Robespierre began the attack by a long speech, 8th Thermidor (July 26th), in which he explained and defended his principles, and repelled the charge of aiming at a dictatorship. He concluded by proposing to purge and renew both the Committees, to constitute a United Government under the Convention, and to punish traitors. His speech, though elaborated and written with great care, was very ill suited to his purpose. It consisted of vague and general charges, and was but the preface to a Report to be delivered the following day by St. Just, in which their opponents were to be personally denounced. Hence it excited general alarm, nor would Robespierre respond to the cries of “Name! Name!”. The manner in which his speech was received seems to have alarmed Robespierre himself. He read it in the evening at the Jacobins, where it was heard with great applause; but he called it his “testament of death”, talked of drinking the hemlock. His friends exhorted him to try an insurrection, but he declined. On the same evening some emissaries of the Mountain persuaded several members of the Right to join them, and thus to escape the guillotine and put an end to the Reign of Terror.

On the morning of 9th Thermidor (July 27th), St. Just mounted the tribune of the Convention and began to read his Report. He had announced his intention to do so overnight in the Committee of Public Safety, and had not concealed that he should attack some of its members. He had scarcely read a few lines when he was violently interrupted by Tallien and Billaud Varennes, who denounced the designs of Robespierre and his accomplices, and accused them of a plot to massacre the Convention. These remarks were received with loud and general applause. Robespierre rushed to the tribune, but his voice was drowned with cries of A bas le tyrant! Tallien violently exclaimed, that if the Convention had not the courage to decree the accusation of the “new Cromwell”, he would stab him to the heart; at the same time drawing forth and brandishing a dagger. He then demanded that Henriot and his état-major should be accused, that the Assembly should sit in permanence. Both were decreed by acclamation, amidst cries of Vive la Republique! as well as the arrest of Dumas, Boulanger, and Dufraise, three of Robespierre’s boldest partisans. Robespierre, who still remained at the tribune, made several ineffectual attempts to obtain a hearing; his voice was always drowned by cries of A bas le tyran! and by the bell of the President Thuriot. His arrest was now decreed amid cries of Vive la liberté! Vive la République! His brother Augustine demanded to share his fate. Couthon, St. Just, and Lebas were also ordered to be arrested.

When the news of the arrest of the five members reached the General Council of the Commune, which had assembled about six o'clock in the evening, they drew up a proclamation calling upon the people to rise, ordered the tocsin to be rung, the Sections to be convoked, and the cannoniers to repair to the Hôtel de Ville. The Jacobin Club also declared themselves in correspondence with the Commune. Henriot had been arrested by two members of the Convention  Coffinhal and Louvet were therefore sent in his place to liberate the prisoners. They brought Robespierre to the Town Hall about nine o'clock in the evening. By orders from the Commune the concierge of the Luxembourg had refused to receive him, and he had therefore gone to the Bureau of Police, with the view, apparently, of obtaining a trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal; and, as he hoped, a triumphant acquittal, like Marat. The other prisoners were also successively brought to the Town Hall. Meanwhile the Convention had resumed its sitting, and Henriot, who had also been liberated by Louvet and Coffinhal, had proceeded thither with his état-major and some cannoniers, with the intention of shutting up the Chamber. On his arrival, the President, putting on his hat in sign of distress, exclaimed, “The moment is come when we must die at our posts!”. The deputies responded with cries of approbation, and the spectators showed the same enthusiasm. Henriot, having in vain exhorted the cannoniers to fire, took fright and returned at full gallop to the Hotel de Ville. The Assembly now proceeded to outlaw him, as well as the five arrested members, and all functionaries who should take part against the Convention.

It soon became evident that the tide of public opinion had turned. At the summons of the Commune the Sections had assembled about nine o'clock in the evening, and the insurgents had desired them to march their battalions to the Hotel de Ville. But they were in a state of uncertainty; only some vague accounts had reached them of a quarrel between the Convention and the Commune, and therefore for the most part they sent but a few men to the Hotel de Ville; while, on the arrival of a summons from the Convention, their battalions proceeded thither, defiled through the hall, and swore to protect the Assembly. As the Sections of the faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marceau alone showed any willingness to respond to the appeal of the Commune, the Convention found itself strong enough to begin the attack. Barras and Fréron were dispatched before midnight with two columns against the Hotel de Ville; while a sufficient guard, with artillery, was left to protect the assembly. Meanwhile, at the Hotel de Ville, the Council of the Commune, with Robespierre and the other outlawed deputies, were sitting in conclave. An insurrection was debated. Robespierre was at first irresolute; but as the night wore on, and no other hope appeared, he reluctantly consented to a rising.

The case did not seem altogether desperate. The Place de Grève was filled with armed men and cannons; the aid of the Sections was confidently anticipated, from their having sent deputations. But soon after midnight rumours began to arrive of their defection; emissaries from the advanced guard of the Conventional forces began to penetrate among the armed masses in front of the Hôtel de Ville, and raised the cry of Vive la Convention! which was answered by several voices; the proclamation of outlawry was read, on which the crowd dispersed. When Henriot descended, he found that all his troops and cannoniers had vanished. At the same time the heads of Barras and Fréron’s columns were beginning to appear; presently they surrounded the Hotel de Ville, with loud shouts of Vive la Convention Nationale! Some of them penetrated into the Council Chamber, when a strange sight presented itself. The elder Robespierre was seen, his jaw broken by a pistol-bullet; Lebas had blown out his brains; Augustine Robespierre had thrown himself out of window, but survived the fall; Couthon had contrived to escape from the Council Chamber, but was seized by the mob and nearly thrown into the Seine; Coffinhal, accusing Henriot of cowardice, had thrown him out of window into a drain; he himself succeeded in escaping and concealed himself two or three days in an island in the Seine, but was ultimately captured; St. Just alone awaited his fate with tranquillity. Robespierre was conveyed to the apartments of the Committee of Public Safety, where, stretched on a table, wounded and dejected, he was exposed to the gaze and maledictions of the spectators. In the course of the forenoon he was transferred to the Conciergerie, and thence brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, together with his accomplices. After their identity had been proved, they were sent to the scaffold, about five o'clock in the evening of 10th Thermidor.

Robespierre had few or none of the qualities which are commonly supposed to characterize the leaders of great revolutions. He had neither commanding ability, nor personal courage, nor the popular manners and address which conciliate friends and partisans; his person was small and mean, his voice shrill and disagreeable, his countenance repellent, his habits selfish and egotistical in the extreme. He dressed himself with scrupulous neatness; continued to wear hair-powder, though the disuse of it was a distinctive mark of Jacobinism; abhorred the bonnet rouge and the slang of the Revolution. He had the profoundest sense of his own talents, and of his own virtue. To what then must be attributed the influence of such a man, in those turbulent times? First, he seemed to be the living image of Rousseau’s sentimentality, which played so great a part in the Revolution. His discourses were made up of commonplaces from Rousseau about the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, which he continuously and monotonously repeated, without adding a single new idea of his own. But amidst these commonplaces there was always a particular passage of sentiment and pathos respecting himself, his merits, the labours of his painful career, his personal sufferings. By dint of labour he had acquired a style which bore some distant resemblance to Rousseau’s. He was not covetous of money, and it is said that at his lodgings were found only an assignat of fifty livres, and some orders of the Constituent Assembly for his pay as deputy, which he had not used. His passion was not avarice but ambition, springing from boundless egotism and pride. His honesty, cautiousness, cunning, and perseverance were among the chief means of his success. Intensely jealous of anyone who enjoyed popularity, he had the art to destroy his opponents without exposing himself, by setting them against one another, and then withdrawing from the scene of danger. He had no compunction in sacrificing human life to any extent. In his case, however, this does not appear to have arisen, as with Collot d'Herbois, Fouché, Carrier, and others of the period, from a mere savage thirst for human blood, but because he thought such a course a necessary means for carrying out his fanatical policy.

With the death of Robespierre the Reign of Terror may be said to have ended. From the first establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal, down to the 9th Thermidor, between 2,000 and 3,000 persons had perished by the guillotine in Paris. More than a third of these victims were persons belonging to the lower classes, such as workmen, soldiers, seamstresses, and women servants. Bailleul, who was seven months in the Conciergerie, says that almost all the persons who perished under his eyes belonged to the class of citizens, and even smaller citizens. During this period the public executioner was accustomed to apply daily to the Revolutionary Tribunal, to know how many carts would be required. But the Reign of Terror also interfered tyrannically in all the affairs of life.

The journals were subjected to a censorship; letters were officially and publicly opened at the post-office; the taxes were unjustly levied; requisitions for money, horses, and other articles were arbitrarily, and often fraudulently, made by the public officers under terror of the guillotine. Nobody, not even the Treasury, could tell the sums levied. To be rich was often a cause of accusation, and always a certain ground of condemnation.

It has been thought that if the coup d’état of the 9th Thermidor had been favorable to Robespierre, the French Republic would have terminated with him instead of Napoleon, and that, once in possession of supreme power, he would have used it with moderation. This is unlikely, as though he had the art to supplant his enemies, he had neither the genius nor the courage which would have enabled him for any considerable time to have been the ruler and dictator of a great nation. The facility with which his overthrow was effected shows that his influence was already on the wane ; and it seems probable that nothing but a military despotism could have rescued France from the anarchy into which she had fallen.

CHAPTER LVII.

NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE, 1787-1796