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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5426ece --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #68582 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68582) diff --git a/old/68582-0.txt b/old/68582-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 10bc8db..0000000 --- a/old/68582-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,16275 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Danton, by Hilaire Belloc - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Danton - A study - -Author: Hilaire Belloc - -Release Date: July 21, 2022 [eBook #68582] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTON *** - - - - - - - DANTON - - A STUDY - - BY - HILAIRE BELLOC, B.A. - LATE BRACKENBURY SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, - OXFORD - - New York - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1899 - - - - - TO - - ANTHONY HENLEY - - - - -PREFACE - - -An historian of just pre-eminence in his university and college, in a -little work which should be more widely known, has summed up the two -principal characters of the Revolution in the following phrases: “the -cold and ferocious Robespierre, the blatant Danton.”[1] The judgment is -precipitate and is tinged with a certain bias. - -An authority of still greater position prefaces his notebook on the -Revolution by telling us that he is going to describe the beast.[2] The -learned sectarian does not conceal from his readers the fact that a -profound analysis had led to a very pronounced conviction. So certain is -he of his ground, that he treats with equal consideration the evidence -of printed documents, of autograph letters, and of a chance stranger -speaking in a country inn of a thing that had happened forty years before. - -The greatest of French novelists and a principal poet has given us in -“Quatre-vingt-treize” a picture moving and living. Yet even in that -work much is admitted, for the sake of contrast and colour, which no -contemporary saw. The dialogue between Danton and Marat, with its -picturesque untruths, is an example.[3] - -If facts so conflicting be stated as true by men of such various calibre, -it would seem a very difficult task to write history at all. Yet there is -a method which neither excludes personal conviction, nor necessitates -the art of deceit, nor presupposes a primitive ignorance. - -It is to ascertain what is positively known and can be proved, and with -the facts so gathered—only with these—to paint a picture as vivid as -may be; on a series of truths—with research it grows to respectable -proportions—to base a conviction, general, wide, and capable of constant -application, as to the character of a period or of a man. - -Such was the method of Fustel de Coulanges, and on his model there -has arisen from the minute, the sometimes pedantic accuracy of French -scholars, a school which is the strongest in Europe. - -The method I have been describing has also this advantage, that the least -learned may enter upon such a path without confusion and may progress, -and that a book of no pretensions can yet, by following these rules, at -least avoid untruth. With inferior tools, and on an over-rough plan, I -shall yet attempt in this life of Danton to follow the example. - -The motto which is printed at the head of this book, and which is -borrowed from the most just of biographers, must give a note to the -whole of my description. What was the movement which founded our modern -society? what were its motives, its causes of action, its material -surroundings? And what was the man who, above all others, represented -that spirit at its most critical moment? - -To find a right answer to such questions it is necessary to do two things. - -First, we must make the sequence of cause and effect reasonable. In -giving an explanation or in supposing a motive, we must present that -which rational men, unbiassed, will admit. To put in the same character -irreconcilable extremes is to leave no picture. To state a number of -facts so that no thread connects them, so that they surprise by contrast -but leave only confusion in the mind, is a kind of falsehood. It is the -method most adopted by partisans; they frame a theory upon the lines -of which such and such facts will lie, but they omit, or only mention -as anomalies, facts which are equally true, but which would vitiate -their conclusions. We must (to use a mathematical metaphor) _integrate_ -the differentials of history; make a complete and harmonious whole of a -hundred aspects; strike a curve which shall unite in a regular fashion -what has appeared as a number of scattered points. Till we can say, “This -man—seeing all his character and innumerable known acts—_could not_ -have acted as such and such a report would have us believe;” or again, -till we can say, “This epoch, with its convictions, its environment, -its literature, _could not_ have felt the emotions which such and such -an historian lends it,”—till we can say this, we do not understand a -personality or a period. - -In the second place, we must recognise in all repeated and common -expressions of conviction, and in all the motives of a time of action, -some really existing ideal. There was a conviction common to many -thousands of Parliamentarians in the earlier stages of the English Civil -War. There was a genuine creed in the breasts of the well-paid Ironsides -of its later period. There was a real loyalty and an explicable theory of -kingship in the camp of Charles the First. - -So in the period of which we deal there was a clear doctrine of political -right, held by probably the strongest intellects, and defended by -certainly the most sustained and enthusiastic courage that ever adorned -a European nation. We must recognise the soul of a time. For were there -not a real necessity for sympathy with a period which we study, were -it possible for us to see entirely from without, with no attempt to -apprehend from within, then of many stupendous passages in history we -should have to assert that all those who led were scoundrels, that all -their lives were (every moment of them) a continuous piece of consummate -acting; that our enemies, in fine, were something greater and more wicked -than men. We should have to premise that all the vigour belonged to the -bad, and all the ineptitude to the good, and separate humanity into two -groups, one of righteous imbeciles, and the other of genius sold to hell. -No one would wish, or would be sincerely able to place _himself_ in -either category. - -We must postulate, then, of the Revolution that which Taine ridiculed, -that for which Michelet lived, and that which Carlyle never grasped—the -Revolutionary idea. And we must read into the lives of all the actors -in that drama, and especially of the subject of this book, some general -motive which is connected with the creed of the time. We must make his -actions show as a consonant whole—as a man’s—and then, if possible, -determine his place in what was not an anarchic explosion, but a regular, -though a vigorous and exceedingly rapid development. - -A hundred difficulties are at once apparent in undertaking a work of this -nature. It is not possible to give a detailed history of the Revolution, -and yet many facts of secondary importance must be alluded to. It is -necessary to tell the story of a man whose action and interest, nay, -whose whole life, so far as we know it, lies in less than five years. - -Danton’s earlier life is but a fragmentary record, collected by several -historians with extreme care, and only collected that it may supplement -our knowledge of his mature career. The most laborious efforts of his -biographers have found but a meagre handful of the facts for which they -searched; nor does any personal inquiry at his birthplace, from what is -left of his family or in his papers, augment the materials: the research -has been thoroughly and finally made before this date, and its results, -such as they are, I have put together in the second chapter of this book. - -He does not even, as do Robespierre, Mirabeau, and others, occupy the -stage of the Revolution from the first. - -Till the nation is attacked, his rôle is of secondary importance. We have -glimpses more numerous indeed, and more important, of his action after -than before 1789. But it is only in the saving of France, when the men of -action were needed, that he leaps to the front. Then, suddenly, the whole -nation and its story becomes filled with his name. For thirteen months, -from that 10th of August 1792, which he made, to the early autumn of the -following year, Danton, his spirit, his energy, his practical grasp of -things as they were, formed the strength of France. While the theorists, -from whom he so profoundly differed, were wasting themselves in a kind -of political introspection, he raised the armies. When the orators could -only find great phrases to lead the rage against Dumouriez’ treason, he -formed the Committee to be a dictator for a falling nation. All that was -useful in the Terror was his work; and if we trace to their very roots -the actions that swept the field and left it ready for rapid organisation -and defence, then at the roots we nearly always find his masterful and -sure guidance. - -There are in the Revolution two features, one of which is almost peculiar -to itself, the other of which is in common with all other great crises in -history. - -The first of these is that it used new men and young men, and -comparatively unknown men, to do its best work. If ever a nation -called out men as they were, apart from family, from tradition, from -wealth, and from known environment, it was France in the Revolution. -The national need appears at that time like a captain in front of his -men in a conscript army. He knows them each by their powers, character, -and conduct. But they are in uniform; he cares nothing for their family -or their youth; he makes them do that for which each is best fitted. -This feature makes the period unique, and it is due to this feature -that so many of the Revolutionary men have no history for us before the -Revolution. It is this feature which makes their biographies a vividly -concentrated account of action in months rather than in years. They come -out of obscurity, they pass through the intense zone of a search-light; -they are suddenly eclipsed upon its further side. - -The second of these features is common to all moments of crisis. Months -in the Revolution count as years, and this furnishes our excuse for -giving as a biography so short a space in a man’s life. But it is just -so to do. In every history a group of years at the most, sometimes a -year alone, is the time to be studied day by day. In comparison with the -intense purpose of a moment whole centuries are sometimes colourless. - -Thus in the political history of the English thirteenth century, the -little space from the Provisions of Oxford to the battle of Evesham -is everything; in the study of England’s breach with the Continental -tradition, the period between the Ridolphi plot and the Armada; in the -formation of the English oligarchy, the crisis of April to December 1688. - -This second feature, the necessity for concentration, would excuse a -special insistence on the two years of Danton’s prominence, even if his -youth were better known. The two conditions combined make imperative such -a treatment as I have attempted to follow. - -As to authorities, three men claim my especial gratitude, for the work in -this book is merely a rearrangement of the materials they have collected. -They are Dr. Bougeart, who is dead (and his clear Republicanism brought -upon him exile and persecution); M. Aulard, the greatest of our living -writers on the Revolutionary period; and Dr. Robinet, to whose personal -kindness, interest, and fruitful suggestion I largely owe this book. The -keeper of the Carnavalet has been throughout his long and laborious life -the patient biographer of Danton, and little can now be added to the -research which has been the constant occupation of a just and eminent -career. - -We must hope, in spite of his great age, to have from his hands some -further work; for he is one of those many men who have given to the -modern historical school of France, amid all our modern verbiage and -compromise, the strength of a voice that speaks the simple truth. - - - - -DANTON - -A STUDY - - - - -[Illustration: _This Portrait is presumably a David, both from its -style and from the fact that it is the companion picture to that of -Madame Danton which is certainly by that master. Its date is either the -Autumn of 1792 or possibly early 1793. It is mentioned by Madame Chapin, -Danton’s sister-in-law, in a letter which she writes during the Empire -to the two boys, Danton’s sons: she says “I am sending you the portrait -of your Father ... it has been retouched ... the coat especially has -been made dark-blue, as that is the colour he ordinarily wore. Madame -Dupin,” (Danton’s second wife) “has just seen it and calls it a striking -likeness.” Both this letter and the picture are in the possession of Dʳ -Robinet, to whom they were given by Danton’s grand-daughter & by whose -permission this portrait is reproduced._] - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - - PREFACE vii - - I. THE REVOLUTION 1 - - II. THE YOUTH OF DANTON 40 - - III. DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 57 - - IV. THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY 114 - - V. THE REPUBLIC 171 - - VI. THE TERROR 211 - - VII. THE DEATH OF DANTON 249 - - VIII. ROBESPIERRE 282 - - APPENDICES— - - I. NOTE ON THE CORDELIERS 321 - - II. NOTE ON CERTAIN SITES MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK 327 - - III. NOTE ON THE SUPPOSED VENALITY OF DANTON 331 - - IV. NOTE ON DANTON’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MASSACRES OF - SEPTEMBER 340 - - V. SHORT MEMOIR BY A. R. C. DE ST. ALBIN 347 - - VI. EXTRACTS SHOWING REIMBURSEMENT OF DANTON’S OFFICE 365 - - VII. EXTRACTS CONCERNING DANTON’S HOUSEHOLD 373 - - VIII. CATALOGUE OF DANTON’S LIBRARY 380 - - IX. EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMOIR WRITTEN IN 1846 BY THE SONS OF - DANTON 384 - - X. NOTES OF TOPINO-LEBRUN, JUROR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL 395 - - XI. REPORT OF THE FIRST COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY 403 - - INDEX 430 - - - - -THE LIFE OF DANTON - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE REVOLUTION - - -Before writing a life of Danton in English it is necessary to do three -things. First, to take a definite point of view with regard to the whole -revolutionary movement; secondly, to explain, so far as is possible, the -form which it took in France; thirdly, to show where Danton stood in the -scheme of events, the nature of his personality, the effects of his brief -action. This triple task is necessary to a book which, but for it, would -be only a string of events, always confused, often without meaning. - -What was the Revolution? It was essentially a reversion to the normal—a -sudden and violent return to those conditions which are the necessary -bases of health in any political community, which are clearly apparent in -every primitive society, and from which Europe had been estranged by an -increasing complexity and a spirit of routine. - -It has never been denied that the process of gradual remoulding is a -part of living, and all admit that the State (which lives like any other -thing) must suffer such a process as a condition of health. There is in -every branch of social effort a necessity for constant reform and check: -it is apparent to the administrator of every kind: it is the business of -a politician continually to direct and apply such correction:—the whole -body of the law of England is a collection of the past results of this -guiding force. - -But what are the laws that govern it? What is the nature of the condition -that makes reform imperative? What distinguishes the good from the bad in -the matter of voluntary change, and separates the conservative from the -destructive effort? - -It is in the examination of this problem that we may discover how great a -debt the last century owed to nature—a debt which demanded an immediate -liquidation, and was often only paid at the expense of violence. - -It would seem that the necessity of reform arises from this, that our -ideas, which are eternal, find themselves expressed in phrases and -resulting in actions which belong to material environment—an environment, -therefore, that perpetually changes in form. It is not to be admitted -that the innermost standards of the soul can change; if they could, the -word “reform” would lose all moral meaning, and a thing not being good -would cease to be desired. But the meaning of words, the effect on the -senses of certain acts, the causes of pleasure and pain in a society, the -definition of nationality—all these things of their nature change without -ceasing, and must as ceaselessly be brought into accordance with the -unchanging mind. - -What test can be applied by which we may know whether a reform is working -towards this rectification or not? None, except the general conviction -of a whole generation that this or that survival obstructs the way of -right living, the mere instinct of justice expressed in concrete terms -on a particular point. It is by this that the just man of any period -feels himself bound. This is not a formula: it seems a direction of the -loosest and of the most useless kind; and yet to observe it is to keep -the State sane, to neglect it is to bring about revolution. This much is -sure, that where there exists in a State a body of men who are determined -to be guided by this vague sense of justice, and who are in sufficient -power to let it frame their reforms, then these men save a State and -keep it whole. When, on the contrary, those who make or administer the -laws are determined to abide by a phrase or a form, then the necessities -accumulate, the burden and the strain become intolerable, and the -gravitation towards the normal standard of living, which should act as a -slight but permanent force, acts suddenly at a high potential and with -destructive violence. - -As an example of the time when the former and the better conditions -prevailed, I would cite the period between the eleventh and the -fourteenth centuries, when a change of the most fundamental kind -passed over the society of Europe, indeed a change from barbarism to -civilisation, and yet the whole went well. Reform, being continual, was -easy. New institutions, the Parliaments, the Universities, the personal -tax, rose as they were demanded, and the great transition was crowned -with the security and content that surrounded St. Louis. Simplicity, that -main condition of happiness, was the governing virtue of the time. The -king ruled, the knight fought, the peasant dug in his own ground, and the -priest believed. - -It is the lack of simplicity that makes of the three centuries following -the fifteenth (with vices due perhaps to the wickedness of the fifteenth) -an opposite example. Every kind of phrase, emblem, or cloak is kept; -every kind of living thing is sacrificed. Conditions cease to be -flexible, and the body of Europe, which after all still breathes, is shut -in with the bonds of the lawyers, and all but stifled. - -In the sixteenth century one would say that the political quarrels of -the princes were a mere insult to nature, but the people, though they are -declining, show that they still exist; the passions of their religions -enliven the dead game of the Tudors and the Valois. In the seventeenth -the pedants give their orders, the upper classes fight the princes, the -people are all but silent. Where were they in the Fronde, or in that less -heroic struggle the Parliamentary Wars? As the eighteenth century falls -further and further into decay all is gone; those who move in comfort -above the souls which they have beneath them for a pavement, the rich and -the privileged, have even ceased to enjoy their political and theological -amusements; they are concerned only with maintaining their ease, and to -do this they conjure with the name of the people’s memories. - -They build ramparts of sacred tombs, and defend themselves with the bones -of the Middle Ages, with the relics of the saint and the knight. - -It is this which necessitates and moulds the Revolution. The privileged -men, the lawyers especially, held to the phrase. They excused themselves -in a time most artificial by quoting the formulæ of a time when life was -most natural and when the soul was nearest the surface. They used the -name of the Middle Ages precisely because they thought the Middle Ages -were dead, when suddenly the spirit of the Middle Ages, the spirit of -enthusiasm and of faith, the Crusade, came out of the tomb and routed -them. - -I say, then, that the great disease of the time preceding the Revolution -came from the fact that it had kept the letter and forgotten the spirit. -It continued to do the same things as Europe at its best—it had entirely -neglected to nourish similar motives. Let me give an extreme example. -There are conditions under which to burn a man to death seems admissible -and just. When offences often occur which society finds heinous beyond -words, then no punishment seems sufficient for the satisfaction of the -emotion which the crime arouses. Thus during the Middle Ages (especially -in the latter part of their decay), and sometimes in the United States -to-day, a man is burned at the stake. But there are other conditions -under which a society shrinks with the greatest horror from such a -punishment. Security is so well established, conviction in this or that -so much less firm, the danger from the criminal so much less menacing, -that the idea of such an extreme agony revolts all men. Then to burn is -wrong, because it is unnecessary and undesired. But let us suppose the -lawyers to be bent on a formula, tenacious from habit and become angrily -tenacious from opposition, saying that what has been shall be; and what -happens? The Parliament of Strasbourg condemns a man to be burnt while -the States General are actually in session in 1789! - -Again, take the example of the land. There was a time when the relations -of lord and serf satisfied the heart. The village was a co-operative -community: it needed a protector and a head. Even when such a need was -not felt, the presence of a political personage, at the cost of a regular -and slight tax, the natural affection which long habit had towards a -family and a name—these made the relation not tolerable, but good. But -when change had conquered even the permanent manorial unit, and the -serf owned severally, tilling his private field; when the political -position of the lord had disappeared, and when the personal tie had -been completely forgotten—then the tax was folly. It was no longer the -symbol of tenure drawn in a convenient fashion, taken right out of the -cornfield from a primitive group of families; it had become an arbitrary -levy, drawn at the most inconvenient time, upsetting the market and the -harvest, and falling on a small farmer who worked painfully at his own -plot of ground. - -It is difficult to explain to English readers how far this deadening -conservatism had been pushed on the Continent. The constitution of -England and the habits of her lawyers and politicians were still, for all -their vices, the most flexible in Europe. Even Pitt could tinker at the -representative system, and an abominable penal code could be softened -without upsetting the whole scheme of English criminal law. To this day -we notice in England the most fundamental changes introduced, so to -speak, into an unresisting medium: witness those miniature revolutions, -the Income Tax and Employers’ Liability, which are so silent, and which -yet produce results so immeasurable. - -It has always been a difficulty in writing of the Revolution for English -readers, that in England the tendency to reform, though strong, was not -irresistible. It was a desire, but it was not a necessity, and that on -account of the quality which has just been mentioned, the lack of form -and definition in the English constitution and legal habit. - -But if we go a little deeper we shall see a further cause. Nothing will -so deaden the common sense of justice in a legislator or a lawyer, -nothing will separate him so much from the general feeling of his time, -as distinction of class from class. When a man cannot frequently meet -and sympathise with every kind of man about him, then the State lacks -homogeneity; the general sentiment is unexpressed, because it has no -common organ of expression, and you obtain in laws and legal decisions -not the living movement of the citizens, but the dead traditions of a few. - -Now by a peculiar bent of history, the stratification of society which is -so natural a result of an old civilisation, was less marked in England -than elsewhere in Europe. The society of the Continent is not more -homogeneous to-day, as contrasted with that of modern England, than was -the society of England a hundred years ago, as contrasted with that of -the Continent then; and any English traveller who is wise enough to note -in our time the universal type of citizen in France, will experience -something of the envy that Frenchmen felt when they noted the solid -England of the eighteenth century. There great lawyers were occasionally -drawn from the people; there a whole mass of small proprietors in land -or capital—half the people perhaps—kept the balance of the State, and -there a fluctuating political system could, for all its corruption, find -a place for the young bourgeois Wolfe to defeat the great gentleman -Montcalm. - -But while in England reform was possible (though perhaps it has been -fatally inadequate), in the rest of Europe it was past all hope. -Everywhere there must be organs of government, and these on the Continent -could no longer be changed, whether for better or worse: they had become -stiff with age, and had to be supplanted. Now to supplant the fundamental -organs of government, to make absolutely new laws and to provide an -absolutely new machinery—all this is to produce a violent revolution. - -You could not reform such a body as the Châtelet, nor replace by a series -of statutes or of decisions such a mass as the local coûtumes. Not even -a radical change in the system of taxation would have made the noblesse -tolerable; no amount of personal energy nor any excellence of advisers -could save a king enveloped with the mass of etiquette at Versailles. -These numerous symptoms of the lethargy that had overtaken European -society, even the disease itself, might have been swept away by a sharp -series of vigorous reforms. Indeed, some of these reforms were talked of, -and a few actually begun in the garrulous courts of Berlin and of St. -Petersburg. Such reforms would have merited, and would have obtained, the -name of Revolution, but they might have passed without that character -of accompanying excess which has delayed upon every side the liberties -of Europe. We should be talking of the old regime and of the Revolution -as we do now, but the words would have called up a struggle between old -Parliaments and young legists, between worn-out customs and new codes, -between the kings of etiquette and the kings of originality, between -sleep and the new science; the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries -would have been united by some curious bridge—not separated by an abyss. - -As it is, the word Revolution recalls scenes almost as violent as those -which marked the transition of Rome from the Republic to the Empire. -We remember the name not of Condorcet but of Marat: in place of the -divided Europe and complicated struggle which (on the analogy of the -Reformation) should have attended a movement upon which sympathy was so -evenly divided, in place of a series of long, desultory campaigns, you -have a violent shock of battle between the French and every government -in Europe; you have the world outlawing a people; you have, as a direct -consequence of such a pressure, the creation of a focus from whose -extreme heat proceeds the conquering energy of Napoleon. Blows terrible -and unexpected are struck in the first four years of the war, and there -appears in 1796 a portent—the sword that was not broken until it had cut -down and killed the old society of the West. - -To all these accidents which flow from the form the Revolution took, one -more must be added, and that the most important. The shock was of such -violence that all the old bonds broke. I mean the permanent things which -hold society together, not the dead relics, which would in any case have -disappeared. - -Many great changes have passed over Europe and have left the fundamentals -untouched; the Revolution, which might so easily have remoulded the -shape of society, did more and possibly worse: it rebuilt from the -foundations. How many unquestioned dogmas were suddenly brought out into -broad daylight! All our modern indecision, our confused philosophies, -our innumerable doubts, spring from that stirring of the depths. Is -property a right? May men own land? Is marriage sacred? Have we duties -to the State, to the family? All these questions begin to be raised. A -German Pole has denied the sequence of cause and effect. Occasionally a -man suddenly rises and asks, “Is there a God?” There is nothing left in -reserve for the amusement of posterity. - -Well, this unexampled violence, which, like the wind on the Red Sea, has -bared for a moment things that had lain hidden for centuries—this war of -twenty years and its results were due to the fact that the Revolution, -which might have started in a different form from almost any European -centre, started as fact from France. - -That France was the agent of the reform is the leading condition of the -whole story, for it was her centralisation that made the change so rapid -and so effectual, her temperament that framed the abstract formulæ which -could spread like a religion, her political position in Europe that led -to the crusade against her; and this war in its turn (acting on a Paris -that led and governed the nation) produced all the further consequences -of the Revolution from the Terror to Waterloo. - -Let us examine the conditions of the Revolution as a purely French thing, -see what it was that made it break out when it did, what guided its -course, what gave Paris its position, what led to the wars and the Terror. - -In the first place, the causes of the Revolutionary movement in France. -They were two: First, the immediate material necessity for reform which -coincided with the Revolutionary period; secondly, the philosophy which -had permeated society for a generation, and which, when once a change was -undertaken, guided and controlled the development of that change. - -As for the material circumstances that led to so urgent a necessity for -reform, they may be stated as follows:—The governmental machinery, which -had been growing more and more inefficient, had finally broken down; and -this failure had been accelerated by a series of natural accidents, the -most prominent among them being two successive years of scarcity. - -Now why was France alone in such a deplorable condition? Why was she all -but bankrupt, her navy in rapid decay, her armies ill-clothed, ill-fed, -in arrears of pay? Why could Arthur Young, observant, honest, and inept, -make his tour through France (in which the mass of accurate detail is -balanced by so astounding a misconception of French society[4]), and in -that book describe the land going out of cultivation, the peasant living -on grass, the houses falling down, the roads impassable? The answer is -discovered in the very causes that led to the past greatness of the -country. Because France alone in Europe was a vast centralised body—a -quality which had made the reign of Louis XIV.; because centralisation -could not continue to work under the old regime—a condition which led to -the abrupt wreck of 1788 and 1789. - -The government of France, in the century preceding the Revolution, might -be compared to a great machine made with admirable skill out of the -disjointed parts of smaller engines; a machine whose designer had kept -but a single end in view—the control of all the works by one lever in -the hand of one man. But (to continue the metaphor) the materials to -which his effort had been confined forbade simplicity; the parts would -be repaired with difficulty, or sometimes not at all; the cleaning and -oiling of the bearings was neglected, of necessity, on account of their -position; and after two generations of work the machine had ceased its -functions. It was clogged upon every side and rusty—still dependent upon -one lever, but incapable of movement. - -France had become a despotism, but a despotism which lacked organisation; -all centred in the king, with the result that none could act but he, and -yet, when he strove to act, the organs of action were useless. All had -been made dependent upon one fountain-head, yet every channel was stopped -up. - -It is of the utmost importance in studying the Revolution to appreciate -this fact: that nearly every part of the national life was sound, with -the exception of the one supreme function of government. I do not mean -that France and the world needed no new ideas, nor that a material change -in the form of the executive would have sufficed for society. But I mean -that, more than is usually the case in a time of crisis, a _political_ -act was the supreme need of the moment. - -Capital was not well distributed, but at least it was not centralised as -it is in our modern industrial societies. All men owned; the peasant was -miserable beyond words, but his misery was not the result of an “Economic -Law;” it was due to that much more tangible thing, misgovernment. The -citizen was apathetic, but potentially he was vigorous and alert. If -he knew nothing of the jury or of public discussion, it was the system -oppressing the man, not the man creating, or even permitting, the system. -In a word, the vices or the misfortunes of France were not to be traced -to the character of the social system or of the national temper. They -were to be found in an artificial centre, the Government. - -Now of all governments a pure despotism can most quickly establish -reforms. In Russia the serfs were freed, the Jews expelled, by a stroke -of the pen; in India you may see great financial experiments, great -military groups, come into being almost simultaneously with the decision -that creates them. Why could not the central government have saved -France? Because on every side its action was deadened by dead things, -which it pretended were alive; because throughout the provinces and towns -there lay thick the corpses of what had once been local institutions, and -because so far from the Crown removing these, it had left to them the -privileges which at one time were the salaries of their activity, but -which had now become a kind of bribe to continue inactive. - -How had this come about? How had a government been developed whose note -was centralisation and despotism, and which yet carefully preserved the -fossils of local administration? - -To answer that question it is necessary to consider the original matter -of which French society was composed and the influences that modified -without destroying this matter in the course of the Middle Ages. The -French, like every other national group in Western Europe, may be said to -have differentiated from the mere ruins of the Empire in that dark period -which follows the death of Charlemagne; until that epoch some shadow of -unity remained, and certainly the forces working against unity had not -yet begun to be national. The order of Rome, which had remained as an -accepted ideal for five hundred years, takes under Charlemagne a certain -substance and reality, as mystical and as strange, as full of approaching -doom and yet as actual as a momentary resurrection from the dead. It -ceases with the close of his reign, and what Dr. Stubbs has well called -“the darkness of the ninth century” comes down. - -The northern pirates fall on the north and west, and cut off the islands -from the mainland, giving us in England the barrier of the Danish -invasions, beyond which Anglo-Saxon history grows dim; they crush out -the customs, and even the religion, of the coasts of the Continent. The -Hungarian certainly, the heathen Slavs of the Baltic presumably, cut in -streams through the Germanic tribes. The Saracens held the Mediterranean. -Society fell back upon its ultimate units; in all that mechanical -disintegration the molecules of which it is composed remained. The -village community, self-sufficing, self-contained, alone preserved an -organisation and a life. - -For more than a century it hung upon a thread whether the Roman tradition -should survive, or whether our civilisation should fall into the savagery -which has apparently been elsewhere the fate of systems almost as strong. -A new thing arose in Europe, destined more than any other factor to -deflect the current of its Latin tradition. There was found, when the -light began to grow upon this darkness, in nearly every village a little -king. Whichever men had in the old times been possessed of power, local -officials, large owners of land, leaders in the great armies, emerge -from the cataclysm welded into one new class—the nobles; and with the -appearance of this caste, with the personal emotions and the strong local -feeling that their system developed, Europe becomes a feudal society. But -that society contained another element, which was destined to control -and at last to destroy the feudality. For strangely enough, this period, -which had thrown Europe into such anarchy, had produced an idea the very -opposite of such a character. The nationalities begin to arise. The -kings—weak shadows—nobles, often of small power, but no longer the mere -leaders of armies, become symbols of a local unit, separated from the -Empire. They stood for the nation round which the patriotism that you -will discover in the old epics was to gather. - -France, more perhaps than any of the new divisions, illustrates all this. -A small weak king, one Capet, was elected from among the nobles at the -end of the tenth century, and the family which ultimately toppled over -from the immensity of its burden, descended from him in direct line from -father to son through more than eight hundred years. - -In the early years of that crusading century which is the vigorous -opening of the life that was to produce our Europe, a discovery was made -which was destined to help this new kingship to take a very different -shape. In the loot of Amalfi, in a petty war, the Roman Code of Law was -rediscovered. - -It had the effect which might be imagined in a barbarous society which -the Normans and Hildebrand had at last aroused. It suddenly gave a text -and an accurate guide to those splendid but vague memories of Imperial -order and civilisation. - -Everywhere the Universities arise; from Bologna come out the corporation -of the lawyers, the students of the code, the men whose decisions were -final, who led mediæval society as the scientists lead ours to-day; -and everywhere they tended to the two bases of the Roman idea—absolute -sovereignty in the case of the State, absolute ownership in the case of -the Individual. - -The logical end of such a movement should have been the Empire—citizens -all equal before the law, the feudal system destroyed, the Church -dominated by the State, the will of the prince supreme. But Europe -contained a hundred elements beside the lawyers, though these were the -most permanent and active force of her civilisation. The Manorial unit -was strong; there are places where it survives to-day.[5] The aristocracy -was strong. In Poland and England it ended by conquering the Crown and -the Roman law. The Church, affected as it was by the new ideas, still had -a host of anomalous habits and institutions, grown up since the fall of -the Empire. - -In the anarchy of the dark ages the framework of intense local -differences had been constructed; the village, the guild, the chapter, -each had their special customs born of isolation. Finally, the spirit of -secondary nationalities was powerful in many places; notably among the -Germans it conquered every other tendency. - -Now France was especially favourable to the growth of the influences of -this law; she was very Roman by tradition, and by tradition Imperial. -Charlemagne had left his clothes to Germany, but his spirit to Gaul. -The sub-nationalities, Provence, Normandy, the Gascons, had, in spite -of their local patriotism, epics in which they harped on “Doulce -France Terre Majeure.” But though the national forces on the whole -inclined towards the lawyers and the Crown, the path by which absolute -centralisation could be reached was tortuous and had to be well chosen. -The nobles are slowly bereft of political power, but their privilege -remains; the peasant gradually acquires the land, but many feudal dues -lie on a tenure which has lost all its feudal meaning. The Church becomes -the king’s, but it remains in administration of its vast possessions: to -the last the Crown works through (or attempts to work through) the local -organisation that was once supreme and is fast dying. - -You may compare the progress of the Capetians towards absolute power to -the action of a gentleman who obtains an estate at the cost of perpetual -bribery, and finds himself crippled when he has at last succeeded. - -Finally, the lawyers themselves become sterilised in the general decay -which their policy has created. Even the Crown is half-allied to the -privileged bodies in practice, and altogether allied in sentiment; the -government which had for centuries created and sustained the people now -found itself remote from them and the source of its power cut off. - -I will give but a couple of examples to illustrate the centralisation -and the hopeless confusion that accompanied it. The first is from De -Tocqueville. A village near Paris wished to raise a small local rate to -mend the steeple of the church. They could not do so without appealing to -Versailles. The leave was granted after two years, but the steeple had -broken down. The second is from the records of the election of ’89. In -a bailiwick of Champagne it was discovered that no one accurately knew -the boundaries of the district, that the next bailiwick was similarly -ignorant, and finally an arbitrary line was drawn. This is one out of -dozens of cases. The population of Paris was not known; the number of -electors in every division was uncertain. - -Such was the France in which reform was necessary. The land, by a -continual and misdirected interference with exchange, was going out of -cultivation—or rather (for even in the worst cases of depression this -symptom is rare) it was yielding less and less as time went on. - -The classes into which society was divided had become separated by an -etiquette as rigorous as a religion, and though the thing has gone, the -phrases that described it are vigorous to this day, and lead continually -to the gravest misconception. A France where one Frenchman has grown so -like another still lets its literature run upon some of the old lines. - -Five great divisions should especially be noticed in connection with -the Revolution—the peasants, the artisans, the middle class, the -professionals, the noblesse; and side by side with these, a separate -thing, the Church, sharply divided into the higher and lower clergy. -Let me, at the risk of some digression, enter into the details of these -various groups. - -The peasants were the majority of the nation, as they are to-day. At -a rough guess, out of some five million heads of families, three and -a half at least were of this class. What were they? They were more -ignorant, more fearful, and more unhappy than ever the inhabitants of -French soil had been before. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that -the worst of the barbarian invasions had not produced among them such -special and intense misery as had the running down of the governmental -machine in the eighteenth century. Their songs had ceased. Search -the folk-lore of France, and you will find a kind of gap after the -centralisation was complete, and after the lords had left them—after the -seventeenth century. It is as though that oldest sign of communal life, -the traditions and the stories of the little circle of the village, had -died just before the death of the village itself. As to religion, with -which all this natural and fertile love of legend is so closely knit, -it lingered, but it lingered hardly. The priest still survived, but his -action was cut off by penury; in places the extreme physical needs of the -peasantry, whose lot he shared, entered into his life to an intolerable -degree, and a half-paganism resulted. Twenty, thirty pounds a year is not -enough for the celibate who holds the sacramental power in the village. -I will show you in the rural communes of France church after church part -of whose buildings are very old, part very new: and what is the reason? -That in all these places the church fell into ruins till the new State -came to rebuild it. You may discover many cases of restoration in the -eighteenth century where a great cathedral or a famous church or abbey -is renewed: it is the work of the upper clergy, and the dole out of -their vast fortunes. In the villages such cases are rare and eccentric. -The Revolution, for all its antagonism, gave to the Faith a new life. -There are to-day more monasteries and convents, more of the clergy, both -regular and secular, by far more missionaries, than there were in 1789, -but there are fewer bishops. - -The peasant owned land, his roof and a few acres beside; he had been -buying for generations, and the drift of the law when it turned feudal -tenant-right into ownership was in his favour. But this ownership of -the land, the foundation of his future citizenship, was for the moment -his curse. It made him an independent man, while he still had to pay -the dues of his feudal dependence. And independence works both ways. He -stood, ignorant and extremely poor, face to face with the all-powerful -State. His natural support and guide had left the village for the court; -the lord was nothing more than a name for endless annoyance and local -exaction. The symptom that comes just before death showed itself in the -ploughman and the labourer in the vineyard. He lost heart; he was too -tired and too beaten to work; the great burden of the State, its taxes, -its follies, had accumulated on his shoulders, and had bent them so low -that he could no longer stir the earth with vigour into harvests. - -Such men did not make the Revolution; they were the inert mass upon which -it worked. They did not sing the war-songs; they did not understand the -meaning of the invasions. No peasant marked the assemblies with the sense -or cunning of the fields, the sound of patois was lacking in the great -chorus, and as you read the Revolution you feel continually the lack of -something closely in touch with Nature, because the most French of all -Frenchmen had forgotten how to speak. - -The Revolution has made them; and to this day the heirs of the Republic -wonder at the peasant in his resurrection. From him come the humour, the -gaiety, the manhood; it is his presence in the suffrage that criticises -and tones down the crudities of political formulæ. He has re-created a -host of songs, he has turned all France into a kind of walled garden; -underneath the politicians, and in spite of them, he is working out -the necessary thing which shall put flesh on to the dry bones of the -Revolution,—I mean the reconciliation of the Republic and the Church. - -As to the artisans, they play in the story of the movement a subsidiary -but an interesting part. The artisans (in the sense in which I use the -term) were found only in the great towns. At least the artisans outside -these centres must be reckoned as part of the peasantry, for their spirit -was that of the village. These craftsmen of the towns did not form a -large percentage of the nation. Perhaps half-a-million families—perhaps -a trifle more. But their concentration, the fact that they could come in -hundreds and hear the orators, the fact that they alone, by the accidents -of their position, could form _mobs_, these were the causes of their -peculiar effect upon the Revolutionary movement. - -Like the peasant, the ouvrier gives hardly any type to politics. If we -except Hébert, on the strength of his being a vagabond ticket-collector, -there is hardly any one of prominence who comes from the labourers in -the towns. But the combined effort of the class was great and was as -follows:—It furnished for the party of revolt an angry and ready army of -the streets; it was capable of follies and of violence almost unlimited; -it was capable also of concentration and common action. It filled the -tribunes of the clubs, and more than once terrorised the Parliament. It -was patriotic, but wofully suspicious; and in all it did the main fault -was a lack, or rather a dislike, of delay, of self-criticism, and of -self-control: the ruling passion anger, and the motive of this anger the -partial information, the extreme false idea, of the political movement, -which it was willing to read into every speech delivered. - -I will attempt to say why this character, the worst and the most -dangerous of the period, was developed in the labour of the towns. In -the first place, the industrial system is of itself fatal to the French -character. It is not in the traditions of the nation; it is opposed to -the tendencies which the most superficial observer can discover in -them. The Frenchman saves and invests in small parcels, loves to work -with his own tools, is impatient of a superior unless it be in some -domestic relation, is attached to the home life, and above all is no good -specialist: “Il veut rester homme.” You will find too many artists, too -few machines in a crowd of them. - -It may be that a cheap distribution of power, or that some other economic -change, will reinstate the small capitalist; till then, for all his -industry, the French workman will be at a disadvantage. In the great -towns, in the manufactory, under a central control which has no political -basis of right, cut off from the fields for which the peasant in him -always yearns, he is like good wine turned sour. - -In the second place, the system of the old regime had produced an -aristocracy of labour such as many reformers demand in England to-day. -Mediæval restrictions, which had once applied to all workers, and had -been designed to limit competition between men all of whom were employed, -survived in 1789 as guilds and companies strictly protected by law, with -fixed hours of labour, fixed wages—every kind of barrier to exclude the -less fortunate artisans. A system that under St. Louis had made life more -secure for all, had, under his descendants, separated the workmen into -two classes of the over- and the under-paid, and these last increased. - -In the third place, the recent treaty of commerce with England had worked -most disadvantageously for French manufacture, and in all the great -towns, especially in Paris, thousands of men were out of work. - -In the fourth place, the general scarcity of agricultural produce struck -the ouvrier, even if he were employed at good wages, in the heaviest -fashion. - -Between the cornfield and the city came the taxes, the feudal dues, the -provincial frontier duties, and finally the octroi paid at the city -gates. So inept a method of continually harassing exchange could not but -react upon production, and even when the harvest was plentiful bread was -dear in the great cities. Even when these internal taxes did not diminish -the output, they raised the price in the towns. - -Finally, the Church, which, as we have seen, had none too firm a hold on -the villagers, had lost all power over the townsmen. To what was this -due? Presumably to the apathy which had overtaken the rich higher clergy, -a class which naturally congregated in the towns, especially in Paris, -and whose example influenced all the surrounding priests. Add to this the -destruction of the old unit of the _parish_ in the city. The industrial -system had broken up the neighbourliness of the capital. Men rarely -lived in their own houses, often changed their lodgings to follow their -work. There is no worse enemy to the parochial and domestic character -of our religion than the economic change from which we suffer. Now with -the Church was associated all the morality of their traditions; without -it they were lost. They had not read the philosophers; Rousseau had not -permeated so deep. For the matter of that, they would have cared little -for him or for Seneca; and, deprived of any code, they were at the mercy -of every passion and of all unreason. Only this much remained: that they -honestly hated injustice; that egotism had very little to do with their -anger; that they were capable of admirable enthusiasms. They had not the -little qualities of the rich, and they also escaped their vices. One -great virtue attached to them: they did nothing at the expense of the -country’s honour; no reactionary or foreigner bought them; they were -patriotic through all their errors. - -To these characters, which they brought into the Revolution, a further -accident must be added. They became disfranchised. As we shall see -later, the constitution of 1790, based upon the very sound principle -of representing those only who supported the State, gave no provision -(as it should have done) for making that support fall upon the shoulders -of all. It enfranchised the great bulk of Frenchmen—over four million -entered the ranks of the “Active Citizens”—but it disfranchised the very -class which sat in the galleries of the Parliament or ran to the Place de -Grève. The workman, living in lodgings or flats sublet, often changing -his residence, rarely paid any direct tax; he alone, therefore, lost the -vote to which practically every peasant was entitled. This accident (it -was not planned) worked in two ways. It added to the discontent of the -Parisian workman, but it also forbade his movements to take political -shape. To the very last the initiative was in the hands of others. - -These others were the three remaining divisions—the middle class, the -professionals, and the nobles. - -It would be an error to make too hard and fast the barriers between these -classes. In the cart that took the Dantonists to the guillotine all three -were to be found. Nevertheless it aids a history of the Revolutionary -period to distinguish each from each. - -The bourgeoisie meant almost anything from a small shopkeeper to a -successful lawyer. It was not so much the man’s occupation as his -breeding and domestic surroundings that made him of this rank. Let me -explain what I mean. Suppose the family of a linendraper (such as was -Priestley’s family or Johnson’s in England) possessed of several thousand -pounds. Let them put a son to the bar, and let the son succeed at the -profession; well, the man and his son, so different in their pursuits, -would yet remain in the class I desire to define, unless by some accident -they got “in with” one of the literary coteries with which the noblesse -mingled. And this separation would be something much more definite than -in the parallel case in England. This class of the bourgeoisie stood -like a great phalanx in the Revolution. Not one in ten of the class I am -attempting to describe had entered the salons; there was not (as there -is in an aristocratic state) any great desire to know the noblesse. An -accident of surroundings, of eminence, or of friendship might lift a man -from this class, but he would leave it with regret. - -Of this class were Robespierre, Marat (in spite of his aristocratic -milieu), Bonaparte,[6] Danton himself, Santerre, Legendre, Carnot, -Couthon, Barrère—dozens of all the best-known names in the second period -of the Revolution. - -Brewers, builders, large shopkeepers, a host of provincial lawyers—these -all over France, to the number of at least a million voters, formed a -true middle class such as we lack in England. Note also that they might -rise to a very considerable position without leaving this rank. A man -might be physician to the first houses, a king’s counsel, a judge, -anything almost except the colonel of a regiment, and yet be a bourgeois, -and his son after him. In the memoirs of the last century you will find -continually a kind of disgust expressed by the upper class against a set -just below them; it is the class feeling against the bourgeoisie, their -choice of words, their restrictions of fortune, their unfashionable -virtues. These men were often learned; among the lawyers they were the -pick of France; they had a high culture, good manners, in the case of -individuals wit, and sometimes genius, but they were not gentlefolk, and -had no desire to be thought so. - -Of those, however, who were technically bourgeois, possessing no coat -of arms nor receiving feudal dues, some had practically passed by an -accident of association into the upper class of all. They met constantly -in some salon, library, or scientific body members of the privileged -order; their dress, manners, and conceptions were those of the liberal -noblesse. To such men, very small in number and very influential, I -would give the name of Professionals. The class is complete if you -add to it the many noble names who stood prominent in the sciences or -the arts. It was recruited from legal families of long standing, from -financiers. It was polite, wealthy, often singularly narrow. Of such a -type were the Marquis de Condorcet, Bailly, Sieyès; even Roland might be -counted, though he hardly stood so high. These were the theorisers of the -Revolution, with no practical grievance, ignorant of the mob, despising -and misunderstanding the bourgeoisie (save in their political speeches); -they were the orators of the new regime, and died with the Girondins. - -As to the noblesse (who partly overlapped these last, and yet as a class -were so distinct), they formed a body with which this book will hardly -deal, and upon which I will touch but lightly. In very great numbers, the -bulk of them by no means rich (though some, of course, were the greatest -millionaires of their day), they were defined by a legal status rather -than an especial manner. - -He was noble whom the king had ennobled or who could prove an ancestry -from the feudal lords of the manors.[7] The family name was never -heard, only the territorial name preceded by the “de.” They had also -this in common, that the whole great swarm of families, thousands and -thousands, had a cousinship with that higher stratum which made the -court. This cousinship was acknowledged; it put them in the army; it -gave them the right to be spitted in a duel, and, above all, it exempted -them from taxes. It made them, wherever they went, a particular class, -to be revered by fools, and able to irritate their enemies merely by -existing—a privilege of some value. They held together in the heat of the -reform, and it was only from the higher part of the noblesse that the -deserters came—Mirabeau, Lafayette, and De Séchelles. The great bulk of -them were poor, and consequently determined in the matter of privilege -and feudal right that gave them their pittance. The class was richer than -the bourgeoisie, but numerous families in it had not the capital of a -bourgeois household, and many a poor lady boasts to-day of family estates -lost in the Revolution, whose ancestry had no estates at all, but only a -few tithes and a chance in the spoil to be had at court. - -Now to all these, without exception, reform seemed necessary; it was only -when the Revolution was in full swing that the opposition of particular -bodies appeared. The peasant was in misery; the artisan was angry; the -middle class, possessed of that feeling which Sieyès expressed in a -phrase: “Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État?—Rien;” and they were determined to -work upon the sequel: “Que doit-il être?—Tout.” To this general chorus -of demand the professionals added a strong conviction (in the abstract) -of the good of self-government and of the necessity for removing State -interference. The noblesse, as a class, expected nothing in particular -to happen, but they were not unwilling for a Parliament to meet; they -also suffered from the extreme complexity, or rather anarchy, into which -things had fallen. Talent saw itself wrecked by court intrigue; piety was -offended by the sight of a starving priest side by side with a careless, -wealthy, often irreligious member of the higher clergy. Moreover, there -ran through the nobility this curious feeling—an error which you will -always find in the more generous of a privileged class—namely, that in -some mysterious way their special rights might be abolished and they not -suffer for it—as though there were some vast sum in reserve, into which -the State had but to put its hand and relieve the poor without taxing -the rich. On the moral as on the material side this error obtained, and -Lafayette, a man created by privilege, thought that when privilege was -abolished his native virtues would lift him into the first rank. - -To all this attitude of expectancy, and to this instant demand for -reform, was added the insurmountable thing that made the Parliament -necessary. The great symptom of decay had shown itself—the revenue could -no longer be raised. Luckily for France, there existed in the last -century no such international finance as exists at present, and the fatal -temptation of external debt was not offered. With a population not quite -two-thirds what it is to-day, the country failed to raise one-twentieth -of what it now pays with ease. The debt was increasing with a terrifying -rapidity, and since all the methods of centralised routine had failed, -it was necessary to turn to the last resource, and the nation was asked -to vote a tax. With promises of redress, with an understanding that -the Assembly was to reform upon all sides, with a special demand for a -statement of grievances, but especially for the necessities of revenue, -the States General were summoned for the first time in a hundred and -seventy-five years. - -Such was the condition that preceded the Revolution. We have seen the -attitude of the various social classes and the material necessity that -prepared the reform. Now what were the ideas that were about to guide it? -What theory was moving the men who met at Versailles? What form would the -national character give to the changes which were in preparation? - -It will be necessary here to propose a paradox. The French character, -which has been blamed so frequently since the Revolution (and so justly) -for an excess of idealism, possesses at the same time a passion for the -positive, the objective, and the certain. In the same man you will -continually find some idea which pushes him to extremes, and in the -ordinary affairs of life a most exact sense of reality, even sometimes -an exasperating accuracy of detail. They are not alone in discovering an -antithesis in the national character; in England, Germany, or Northern -Italy it would be equally possible to show two apparently opposite -characteristics united in the same civic type. But perhaps the nearest -parallel we have at home to the contrasts of the French is to be seen in -the Scotch people; like the French, a nation of independents, thrifty, -investing continually in small sums, zealous of pence; like the French, -on the other hand, they delight in the abstract problem; they will attach -themselves to some idea, and hold it to the point of martyrdom. - -What was the result of these two tendencies? In some characters they -balanced each other. Condorcet comes to the mind as an example. But, -as with other nations, the two aspects of France appeared (in much -the greater number of her citizens) exalted to a violent degree that -corresponded with the extreme danger and the extreme hopes of a moment of -crisis. - -I do not mean that you would have found in France two factions, the one -of visionaries, the other of practical men; I mean that throughout the -Revolution the goal and the method of attaining it reflected this double -nature. Consider the decrees and their effects. At the sight of what the -Assemblies from 1789 to 1795 are trying to do you would say, “A set of -men attempting to build a city of dreams;” there is hardly anything so -unnatural but that they will attempt it; they are ready to reconstruct -from the foundation. The most violent period, that of 1794, is nothing -but an effort to make all men conform to civic virtue and believe the -necessary things; the most sane, that of 1791, is yet an attempt to -realise in the State an equality and a justice that can only exist in the -soul. - -But if you turn to their methods and to the measure of their success, -then you have a very different idea. They succeeded beyond all hope. -They struck in a few months the blows that remoulded all France. The -centralisation which the practical side of the character had created -was used to transform France as rapidly as though the nation had been -a household; and not only do they find means to do this, but, when the -necessity arises, they suddenly raise armies of three hundred thousand, -of a million; they find the commissariat somewhere in a starving people, -and they succeed. - -While, then, the nation was fitted for action to such a degree, what -was the theory which its idealism was about to embrace? There had -permeated throughout the noblesse and the bourgeoisie something more -than a philosophy. It was not only a set of eighteenth-century phrases, -of Reason, and Nature, and Right, but all these things turned into a -religion. The apostolic quality of Rousseau had touched the mind of -France. - -It is the fashion to belittle this man. Something in him angers our -successful and eager century, and yet but for him our century would not -have taken the shape it has. It is needless to recall the movement which -had preceded and which surrounded him. He did but complete the theory of -the social contract; he hardly did more than repeat the conclusions of -the rationalists; in the matter of economics he was entirely ignorant; -he fell continually into the error of superficiality where history or -where the details of institutions were concerned. A resident in England, -he imagined that her people were represented; writing his famous work -at Nuneham Courtenay, he could not see that the squire was everything -in the little village. He had all the faults of weakness; he invited -a persecution which he had not the wit to attack nor the stamina to -sustain. What, then, made him such a prophet? In the first place, the -power of words. All his critics in this country (with the exception -of Mr. Morley perhaps) have failed to appreciate how great this power -was. See what the Jacobean translation of the Bible has done in England; -note what the pure rhetoric of Burke, proceeding solely from passion and -untouched by any movement of reason, effected in England within a year of -the fall of the Bastille: it was this that Rousseau did in France. But -not this alone. If he possessed the power of words, he also had to an -extraordinary degree that other quality which does not reside in style -but in the texture of the mind. He could write in the pure abstract, -and produce a piece of clear exposition deduced in an unbreakable chain -from some fundamental dogma. He never commits the error of supposing -his first principles to rely upon reason; he postulates a Faith. He -allows that Faith to illumine his every sentence. He is certain that -the things common to all men are the things of immeasurable importance; -he is certain that the accidents of living are secondary. He is certain -that our being part of all nature is the condition of happiness and of -good; he is certain that the complexity of living which separates us from -Nature is an evil, and to a France tortured with age he proposes this -simple water of youth: that it should return to the first conditions of a -small hamlet; where the families met together dictate the law; where each -sees himself to be a part of the whole, and where the harmony that all -men sought comes easily to an ideal democracy hidden in happy valleys. It -is idle to argue that complexity was there; that France could not have at -once the patriotism of twenty million, and the institutions of a hundred, -hearths. Every one saw that difficulty, and in the midst of ’94 the most -fervent apostles of Rousseau compromised on the chief point, for the -principle of election, which he hated, remained of necessity the chief -method in their scheme of democracy. - -It is not the obstacles, but the motive force that you must examine if -you would comprehend the fervour of the Republic. And the motive force -was that passion for the conditions under which the race has passed how -many æons of its tutelage, the harking back to the prehistoric things, -the village and the tribe, all of whose spirit ran through the books that -preached simplicity with such admirable eloquence. - -There remains one feature to be discussed before we turn to a brief -outline of Danton’s place in the movement—a feature which will be of -capital importance throughout this book. That feature is the hegemony -of Paris. It was the rule of Paris that made the whole course of the -Revolution. In that focus of discussion and of passion the great advances -and the great blunders of the Revolution took place. Paris alone made -the 14th of July, almost alone the 10th of August, alone and against -France the 2nd of June. Many an historian has seen in her position an -error that should have been and could have been avoided. It is an opinion -which from the time of Mirabeau to our own day has lain in the mind of -French statesmen, that Paris must be jealously watched, played, forbidden -control. - -Why does Paris hold this position? Here is a city-state, eager, -concentrated, the centre in many things of our European civilisation; -that it should continually exert a moral influence over the State is -easily to be understood, but Paris did more—it conquered and dominated -the State, and France continually permitted that leadership. - -There is, I believe, a point of view from which this historical fact -becomes no longer an accident but a reasonable thing; and if we take that -point of view it will be possible to understand why from the beginning -she preserved the initiative, and became and remained till Thermidor the -mistress of France. - -The people of that country are, for much the greater part, the peasants -whom I have described. They have for centuries been owners of the soil, -and for at least two thousand years (perhaps far longer) they have found -all their social, all their physical, and most of their intellectual -interests in the intense but narrow life of a village community. In any -great expanse of view you see the white houses, all huddled together -without gardens, and between each group bare vast brown fields empty of -farmsteads. These peasants have in them an admirable cousinship with the -soil; their phrases and their proverbs are drawn directly from the fields -and rivers; they are as healthy as Nature herself. Such is the general -mass of France; but these innumerable villages, these vigorous swarms of -men who work in the sunlight, need a bond. Some concrete object must be -present to give true unity to many vague national impressions. Something -must be the _persona_ of these millions, and through the mouth of that -something they must hear action formulated, patriotism expressed, the -law defined. From it must come the executive, and of it are expected the -direct orders and the government by which, in times of crisis, a nation -is saved. - -This brain, which is necessary to a complex organism, might have been -found in a high priest or a despot; but we in England unconsciously look -for it in an oligarchy. Seeing the squires wanting, we think there is -nothing, and we draw doleful conclusions when we note the absence in the -French villages of the forces that invigorate our own. We complain of the -centralisation that atrophies, forgetting the oligarchy that cows and -debases the inferior class; and while we despise the political apathy -of French country life, we ignore the negation of society in our great -cities. - -The truth is that no definite system can escape attendant evils, and that -if one nation does not adopt the methods that have succeeded in another -it is because those methods are connected with instinct, and instinct can -neither be taught nor adopted. - -It was instinct that forbade the growth in France of oligarchic -institutions. Everything was ready for it; the feudal system would seem -its proper parent; the lords of the manors were so many seeds of what -should have been a territorial aristocracy. They were destined to fail, -and to say _why_ is impossible, because it is impossible to explain -Nature; we can only feel. Something in the genius of the nation makes -for equality with the depth and silence of a strong tide at night. -It is not the Roman law—all the nations had that. It is not even the -Church—there is a something in the Church which neglects if it does not -despise civic ideals. It is not the distribution of capital—that can be -distinctly proved to be an historical result and not a cause. No, it is -not an exterior force, but something from within which has produced this -passion, the soul (as it were) forming the body. “La France a fait la -France.” - -If aristocracy were impossible, what remained? The walled towns. They are -like pins on which the lace of France is stretched; the roads unite them -and make a web which supports the rural communes. Never far apart, always -living a life intensely their own, the walled towns stood guardian over -surrounding villages. Here was the cathedral or the abbey, the judges, -the college. It would give the name to a district, it would form with -its dependent communes a kind of little state. News from the outside was -concentrated here, and if a religious or political enthusiasm ran from -the Rousillion to the Artois, it was not the villages that caught fire in -the mass, but the towns, that passed the message on like beacons. - -Now as the roots of this municipal system were to be found in Rome, these -needed a little Rome to cap it. These towns being all of a kind, they of -necessity fell grouped under the largest of their class. The tendency was -well marked even before Gaul was re-united; the same force that made the -great archbishoprics makes the metropolitan civil influence. Thus Rheims, -Lyons,[8] and Toulouse stand out hierarchically the heads of provinces—a -very different kind of town from Canterbury (let us say) or Lichfield, -where once they talked of an archbishopric for Mercia. - -Well, as the power of the Crown increases (which is another way of -saying, “as the nation realises its memories of unity”), there increase -with it the means of communication, and especially the strong centralised -system which, as we have seen in another part of this chapter, had become -a fatal necessity to France. Remember also that till the very end of the -seventeenth century Paris had been uniquely the king’s town, and had -so been (with one short interval) for more than a thousand years. Here -was every single organ which the executive of a centralised government -may need, and (what is more important) here was the place where each -organ had grown; they were in the fibre of the place. Even if we go back -no farther than the Capetians, we have a full seven hundred years of -development in one spot from the familiar domestic origins, the little -barbarous court in the palace on the island to the great city of nearly a -million souls, whose terms and professions and classes, and whose every -institution had developed round the throne. - -When one remembers that the king had abandoned Paris but a hundred years; -that he had left in the capital by far the greater part of the central -machinery, especially the lawyers; that even from what he had taken many -relics remained, and that professional men of all classes had the family -tradition of the court in the capital—then we can understand what Paris -was, is, and must be to a France where no class is permitted to govern. -Add to this the increasing specialisation of function as the organism -develops—the concentration of the brain—and Paris of the eighteenth -century, abandoned as it is, hurt in its dignity, and a little uncertain -of its action, still fulfils the geography-books, and is the capital of -France. - -She herself hardly knew how certainly power would fall into her hands, -yet from the first mention of the States General it was fated. - -This, then, is the position as the States General meet. A nation in -absolute material need of reform, that must have new institutions, -especially new financial institutions, or die; classes separate from each -other, mutually ignorant of each other, yet all in some degree feeling -the position into which France had fallen: in the case of the bulk of the -people, misgovernment appearing in the form of starvation; in the case -of the upper classes and of the government itself, a conviction that the -existing system was contrary to all reason and opposed to every sound -interest. - -In this society, at least in that part of it that will be called upon to -govern, is a conviction—a religion, if you will—whose basis was the faith -of Rousseau. Conditions will moderate this for a time; the necessary -compromise with what exists, the desire for peace that was uppermost in -the first two years, will make men slow to uproot and destroy what may -touch the interests of friends and of large classes. They will always -attempt a legal though a rapid reform. But, in spite of them, on account -of that passionate conviction which underlay their most moderate actions, -the Revolution will move up towards the region of unattainable things. -The reformer will give way to the Republican idealist when once the -serious opposition of the court is felt; he in his turn will give way to -the man of passion and of action when the country is in danger; and even -the man of passion and of action—the man of realities—will give way to -the mere visionary before reaction can come to sweep the floor clean in -1794. - -Such will be the phases through which the form of the Revolution will -pass. As for the soul of it, France will be steadily transformed, and, in -spite of visionaries, reactions, and every political accident, a new and -a strong society will be created. So the salt water comes in through old -dykes; on its surface you will note the phases of a flood, innumerable -little streams, a torrent, a spreading lake, and ultimately calm, but -only one thing all the while is happening—where there has been land there -will be the sea. - -What place did Danton take in this transformation? Of his opinions in -detail, his habit of body and mind, his convictions, the accidents of his -life, it is the purport of this biography to treat. I will attempt only -a very brief description of his position, to make clear the drift of his -Revolutionary career, and with this close a chapter whose only object has -been to describe the surroundings of a character with which the rest of -this book is concerned. - -Danton belonged to the bourgeoisie in rank, to the less visionary in the -bent of his mind. A young and successful lawyer of thirty, the Revolution -found him unknown to politics and not desiring election. It was the -accident of oratory that gave him his first position. He discovered -himself to be a leader, and there grouped round him a knot of the most -ardent, some of them the most brilliant, younger reformers. The electoral -district to which he happened to belong became through him the most -democratic, and, in some ways, the most violent of Paris. - -That part of him which led to such a position was his sympathy. His -tenderness (and he had a great share of this quality) was hidden under -the energy of his rough voice, great frame, and violent gesture. His -pity he was slow to express. But the great crowd of men who were -unrepresented, the smaller but more influential class of those who felt -and knew but could not speak—these were attracted to him because he had -the instinct of the people. He was a demagogue at moments and for a -purpose, but never by profession nor for any period of time. What he was, -however, all his life and by nature, was a Tribune. - -The secret workings of the soil, the power that makes all the qualities -of a nation from its wine to its heroes, these had produced him as -they produce the tree or the harvest. He is the most French, the most -national, the nearest to the mother of all the Revolutionary group. He -summed up France; and, the son of a small lawyer in Champagne, he was a -peasant, a bourgeois, almost a soldier as well. When we study him it is -like looking at a landscape of Rousseau’s or a figure of Millet’s. We -feel France. - -His voice was a good symbol of his mind, for there was heard in it not -only the deep tone of a multitude, but that quality which comes from the -mingling of many parts—the noise of waters or of leaves. In his political -attitude he attained this collective quality, not by a varying point of -view which is confusion, but by an integration. His opinions erred on -the side of bluntness and of directness. They were expressed in plain -sentences of a dozen words; he abhorred the classical allusion, he was -chary of metaphor. He spoke as a crowd would speak, or an army, or a -tribe, if it had a voice. - -This was Danton, the public orator and the Tribune, who for two years -was heard at the Cordeliers, who spoke always for the purely democratic -reform, who opposed the moderates, and who helped to destroy the -compromise. Never identified with Paris, he yet saw clearly the necessity -of Paris. He admitted her claim, fenced with her arrogance, but never -worshipped her idols; once or twice he even dared to blame her worst -follies. Elected to the administration of the city, he played but a -slight rôle, and until the spring of 1792 there is in him no other -quality. - -The spring of 1792 produced the war with Europe, and from that date -Danton appears in another light. Had he died then, we should have known -him only by chance references, a centre of strong reforming speeches, -an obscure man in opposition. But with the outbreak of a war which he -had done nothing to bring on, and which his party thought unwise, Danton -shows that his character, in summing up his fellows, caught especially -their patriotism. France was the first thought, and if we could hear -not the debaters only, but all the voices of France when the invasion -began, it would be this immediate necessity of saving the country that -would drown all other opinions. Thence, and for a full year after, Danton -becomes the leading man of France. The ability which has led to his legal -success (now that his office is abolished and its reimbursement invested -in land) seems turned upon the political situation, and such ability -combined with such a representative quality pushes him to the front. Two -qualities appeared in him which he himself perhaps had not guessed—the -power of rapid organisation, and the power of so judging character as to -bring diplomacy to bear upon every accident as it arrived. - -It was not strictly he who made the 10th of August, but he was the -leader. He saw that with the king in power the Prussians would reach -Paris, and more than any man he organised the insurrection. That was the -one act of violence in his life. - -The rest of the nineteen months that fate allowed were spent in the -attempt to reconcile and harmonise all the forces he could gather for -the salvation of the nation, Perhaps it was his chief fault that in this -matter he held to no pure idea. - -A Republican and an ardent reformer, he yet seems to have thought France -of so much the first importance that he compromised and trafficked with -all possible allies. He attempted to stave off the war with England; he -attempted to keep Dumouriez; he tried to prevent vengeance from following -the Girondins; when the extremists captured the great Committee, he -acquiesced, and still wrestled with the forces of disunion. He would have -hidden, if possible, those wounds which weakened France in the eyes of -the world, and he waged a futile war with the pure idealists—the men of -one dogma, who in so many separate camps were destroying each other for -their civic faith, and preparing all the evils of a persecution. - -On another side of political action he appeared more resolute than any -man. It was he who saw the necessity of a strong government, he who -created the revolutionary tribunal, and he who is chiefly responsible for -the first Committee of Public Safety. He made the dictatorship, caring -nothing for the principle, caring only to throw back the foreigner. “He -stamped with his foot, and armies came out of the earth.” The violent -metaphor is just. There is a succession, a stream of great armies (they -say four millions of men!) pouring out from France for twenty years. If -you will glance at the head of that stream, and wonder when you read of -Napoleon what first called up the regiments, you may see on the Champ de -Mars in ’92, and later demanding the great levy of ’93, the presence of -Danton, the orator with the voice of command, the attitude of a charge, -the right arm thrown forward in the gesture of the sword. - -Possessed of astounding vigour, but lacking ambition, a lover of -immediate but not of permanent fame, his superb energy after a year -of effort spent itself in a demand for repose. In September 1793 he -thought his work done and his position secure. He went back into his -country home, walked in the fields he loved (and of which he talked -before his death), revelled in Arcis, filling himself with the convivial -pleasure that he had always desired. He came back in November secure and -happy—ready, almost from without and as a spectator, to continue the -task of welding the nation together. It was too late. He had created a -machine too strong for his control. He had seen the Terror swallow up the -Girondins, and had cried because he could not save them. - -With the winter he began his protests, his persistent demands for reason -and for common-sense; in the religious and in the political persecution -he called for a truce; always his effort turned to the old idea—a united -Republican France, strong against Europe, with exceptional powers against -treason in a time of danger, but with a margin on the side of mercy. - -He failed. The extreme theorists whom he despised had captured his -dictatorship, and in April 1794 they killed him. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE YOUTH OF DANTON - - -I shall attempt in the following chapter to tell all that is known of -the first thirty years of Danton’s life. Our knowledge of this period in -his career is extremely slight. It is based upon a minute research, but -a research undertaken only in the latter half of this century; and it is -to be feared that the scanty materials will never be seriously augmented. -Every year makes the task more difficult, and a century has rendered -impassable the gulf which Michelet, Bougeart, and even Dr. Robinet, have -been able to bridge with living voices. - -He was born at Arcis-sur-Aube,[9] a lesser town of the Champagne -Pouilleuse, that great flat which stretches out from the mountain of -Rheims beyond the twin peaks, till it loses itself in the uplands of -the river-partings. Here, though it is cold in winter, there are still -vineyards making their last bastion on the covered slopes of the hills -that form the northern boundary of the plain. - -The day of his birth was the 26th of October 1759;[10] the date gives -us his relation to the drama in which he was to be a chief actor. Five -months older than Desmoulins, born some months before De Séchelles, -eight years older than St. Just, he was the junior of Robespierre by one -and a half, of Mirabeau by ten years; Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette -were respectively five and four years his seniors. He was sixteen years -old when their predecessor died in ignominy and in dirt. Born six weeks -after the fall of Quebec, he received the lasting impressions of early -youth during the rapid decline of the French monarchy—the end of a slow -decay which threatened to be that of the nation itself. But just then -Rousseau was writing the _Contrat Social_, to be published in two years; -Voltaire was still in the full vigour of his attack, with nineteen years -of life before him; it was the year of Candide; Diderot was founding the -Encyclopædia. - -The time of his birth coincided with the rising of a certain sun which -has not yet set upon Europe, but the boy’s eyes turned to more immediate -things, and saw in a little provincial place the break-up of a wretched, -experimental reign. - -This point must be insisted upon, that a country town was the best -possible place for noting the collapse of misgovernment. The country -manors were more wretched, the provincial capitals more loud and able in -their expressions of opinion; but few places could show the fatal process -of disintegration more clearly than these little provincial centres, the -sub-prefectures of to-day. The confusion of power, the excess and the -ill-working of privilege, the complexity and weakness of government, -were there apparent upon every occasion. The wealth of the nation was -diminished most especially by the interference with exchange. This -(though ultimately a source of their penury) was less directly evident to -the villagers, while the large town with its varied production could (in -another form) disguise the evil; but to the small borough the experience -was direct and terrible. - -Again, the practical equality of educated men was there more apparent and -more sinned against than in the wider societies of the large towns. In -a place like Arcis-sur-Aube, isolated specimens of classes technically -distinct were continually in contact. The less the number of their caste -and order (and the less their importance), the more do the noblesse, -to this day, put on their pride; and yet the more necessary is it, in -the life of a small town, that they should associate with those whose -conversation and abilities are precisely their own. In Paris or in Lyons, -where large cliques were occupied in general interests, such differences -were often neglected; in the forgotten towns of the provinces never. - -On the other hand, the blind and dumb anger of the peasantry would hardly -reach Arcis. All over France the town misunderstood the countryside, and -in the early Revolution actually fought against it. This will appear -strange to an English reader, who sees scarcely any contrast between -a country market and an overgrown village. In England the distinction -hardly exists, but in France the borough is very separate from the -peasant society outside, and, though often smaller than some large -neighbouring village, it keeps to this day the Roman traditions of a city. - -We see, then, that Danton’s birthplace in great part accounts for the -peculiar bent of his future politics: practical, of legal effect, -inspired by no hatred, though strongly influenced by a personal -experience of misgovernment. But his parentage will show us still more -clearly how the conditions of his origin affected his career. - -He was of the lawyers. His father was _procureur_ in the bailiwick of -Arcis. It is difficult to explain the functions of his office at this -date and to an English reader, for it belongs to that “Administration” -which is so essentially Latin, and which we are but just beginning to -experience in England. Let it suffice to describe him as the _official_ -whose duty it was to supply that which in England the _institution_ of -the grand jury still in theory provides, as it did once in reality. It -was his business to “present” the cases and the accused to the local -criminal court—local, because in France the circuit of assize is -unknown. Added to this were many duties and privileges of registration, -of stamping and so forth; and the position required an accurate, and even -a minute knowledge of the royal law and provincial usage, the complicated -customary system of the old regime. - -It is perhaps of still more importance to appreciate the social position -of Jacques Danton. Belonging to the lower branches of the legal -profession, and placed in a lesser borough of Champagne, the father of -Danton held something of the same rank as would a small country solicitor -in one of our market-towns, with whatever additions of dignity might -follow from a permanent office in the municipality of the place. - -As to fortune, we do not accurately know the amount of the family income -during Danton’s boyhood, but we know that the office which was afterwards -purchased for him was worth some three to four thousand pounds; that the -money was found largely upon the credit of his father’s legacy,[11] and -that the house in which the family lived was their own—a useful rule -existing throughout provincial France. It is a substantial building, -among the best of the little town, standing in the market-place, with the -principal rooms giving upon the public square. What with the probable -capital and the known emoluments of his position, we may regard Jacques -Danton as a man disposing of an income of about four to five hundred -pounds a year. - -His mother was of a somewhat lower rank. She was the daughter of a -builder from the Champagne, and her brother was a master-carpenter of the -town. Of her two sisters, one had married a postmaster and the other a -shopkeeper, both in Troyes; her brother was the priest of Barberey, near -Arcis. - -The father died when the boy was two and a half years old, leaving four -children. We must presume, though we are not certain, that Danton had one -brother: and we know he had two sisters, one of whom married in Troyes; -the other died a nun at the same place in the middle of this century.[12] - -On both sides of his family, through the connections and marriages of -his relations, their employment, their dwellings, their descendants, we -see the origin of Danton absolutely separate from the lower and from the -higher ranks of the old regime. Only by an effort of imagination could he -later understand the workman or the peasant; only by daily conversation -could he appreciate the strange nobles of 1790, with their absence of -national pride. - -In fine, Danton came out of that middle class which has made the modern -world, and which still insecurely sustains it. “Respectability and its -gig” is an epigram that would exactly suit the dull and provincial -surroundings of his first home; but the converse of such provincialism -is sanity, order, and strength, and out of fuel so solid and so cold the -bourgeoisie has time and again built a consuming fire. - -From his father’s death, before he was three years old, till his ninth -year, the child was with his mother in the house at Arcis, for she had -from the little fortune just enough revenue to keep the family together -and to educate the children. The little boy was taught his Latin elements -in the town, and then sent to the “Lower Seminary” at Troyes.[13] - -It was the intention of his uncle at Barberey to make him a priest, and -in that case he would have passed through the regular stages, taking the -higher forms in the Upper Seminary, and finally being admitted to orders -a year or two after finishing his “Philosophie.” However, this programme -was never completed, and the Church lost in him the material for a -vigorous, charitable, and obscure country vicar. - -The decision was probably the result of one of those family meetings, -such as were habitually held in France to decide the career of an orphan -child, and which the Revolution raised to the dignity of an institution -with legal form. Some biographers have read the politics of a man of -thirty into the action of a little child, and have made this step a -precocious protest against clericalism. These biographers have no -children. - -The uncle consented to the change, and, with Madame Danton’s two married -sisters, agreed upon the bar as his future profession. He was sent to -Troyes and placed with the Oratorians, a religious order which has -had the honour of training so many of the great reformers. In their -College he went through that training which no amount of social change -or new theories in pedagogy has been able to uproot from the secondary -education of France. Little Greek, much Latin, two years all employed in -the literature of the late Roman republic and early empire—a groundwork -in the elements which gives the educated French an almost mediæval -familiarity with Roman thought; such was the course which the bourgeois -did and does go through in the French schools. A system founded upon -the humanities of the sixteenth, but developed in the classicism of the -seventeenth century, it has lost the Hellenism, the subtlety, and the -breadth of the former, while it has preserved the rigidity, the strength, -and the clearness which the latter owes to the influence of the Jesuits. -It fails to develop that initiative coupled with originality to which we -in England attach so much importance; it achieves, upon the other hand, a -strength in the convictions, and above all a soundness in the judgment, -which our public schools often fail to produce. - -From just such a curriculum came the exaggerated classicism of -Robespierre, the more brilliant but equally Latin style of Desmoulins, -though it must be admitted that the first is a reminiscence of Cornelius -Nepos, while the second is at times well modelled upon Tacitus himself. -The error of such imitation, however, never marred the speech of Danton -in his later life; he owed this singular freedom from the spirit of his -age to travel, to his vivid interest in surrounding things and men, and -to his intimacy with English and Italian.[14] - -Yet in a famous speech upon public education he makes a just reference to -the influence of this schooling upon the mind of his contemporaries, and -notes truly its tendency to turn men republican.[15] - -Unfortunately he did not remain at such a school long enough to receive -its last and most beneficial impressions. The head form at a French -school is called “Philosophie,” and the last year is spent largely in -reading the sociology and the metaphysics of the old world. Danton left -at the age of sixteen, when he had just completed “Rhétorique,” but what -he lost in polishing he gained in being left to his own development for -one more year of his life than were his fellows. - -Active, often rebellious, full of laughter, he showed his intelligence in -the final examinations, his vigour in an escapade that endeared him to at -least one of his school-fellows,[16] who has given us, with Rousselin, -the only notes we possess as to this period of his life. He ran off in -his last year to Rheims, seventy odd miles away, that he might see the -crowning of Louis XVI. Going and returning on foot, he satisfied the -desire which he had expressed to his school-fellows of “seeing how they -made a king.” So as a boy he went to look at the making of a king, and -afterwards, when he grew older, Danton himself unmade him. - -In 1780—his twenty-first year[17]—he entered the office of a solicitor -at Paris named Vinot. Apprenticed as a clerk in order to read law, and -above all to watch the procedure of the courts, he spent the next four -years in preparing for the bar. If we are to depend on a chance phrase -dropped just before his death, he was at that time entirely dependent -on his master and his pen.[18] We know, at any rate, that he received -no salary, but lodged and boarded with his employer; nor is it probable -that he received any money from home, for his mother had married again, -and a short time after this second husband (a certain Recordain) was so -deeply involved that Danton was begged to hand over the most part of his -inheritance to save the family. He did so, and remained with some five -or six hundred pounds only as his share of the family fortune. It was -invested in land near Arcis, and he kept it for his ultimate purpose of -buying a barrister’s practice in one of the higher courts. - -He was called to the bar (a process in the same form as taking a degree) -in 1785,[19] choosing, with provincial patriotism, Rheims as the place in -which formally to join the profession; but he intended to practise in the -capital, and returned thither at once. - -It is not easy to render to an English public the meaning of the various -courts before 1789. Even in France (so completely has the new order -supplanted the old anarchy) their forms have been forgotten, and research -purely antiquarian cannot give us more than disjointed particulars -as to their procedure.[20] There was a division corresponding to the -English between Common Law and Equity. This was to be discovered in every -country of the West, and had arisen of necessity from the imposition of -the king’s power and the Canon Law over those local customs, mixed with -reminiscences of Rome, which had once been the whole life of the early -Middle Ages. - -To the body of lawyers who in Paris (or in any of the great centres) -formed the courts for all ordinary pleas, the name of “Parliament” was -given. But that it comprised more persons, that it never went upon -circuit, and that it included many barristers as well as judges, the -Parliament of Paris corresponded more or less to what the English Bench -would be were our judges to form a kind of permanent council for advising -the Crown and registering its decrees, as well as for trying the cases -brought before them. To plead at their bar was no difficult matter. It -required but the taking of one’s degree in law, and the fees of entrance -were slight. Danton determined to adopt this branch of the profession, -and to use it as a stepping-stone towards the higher court, which he soon -reached. - -This higher court, “Court of Appeal,” as we should call it, or “Cour de -Cassation,” as it is named in the modern French system, bore a title -significant of the intense conservatism of old France. It was called -the “Court of the King’s Councils”—very much what we should have to-day -in England had we preserved in fact the theory that the king in his -council is the final authority. But though it bore a name drawn from the -Curia Regis of the thirteenth century, it had of course lost all its old -simplicity. It was a Bench like any other, but there pleaded at its bar -an order of lawyers strictly limited in number and highly privileged.[21] -It dealt, as did its parallel in the English system, mainly with disputed -inheritances, especially in matters of land, and, as we shall see, it -showed the true mark of a court of Chancery, in that it took more than a -hundred and thirty years to make up its mind. To plead before this court, -with its monopoly of valuable causes, was to have at once an assured -income and prestige; therefore its vacancies were prizes to be bought -and sold. Danton determined to plead so long at the common law courts as -might assure him, with economy, a substantial addition to the few hundred -pounds that formed his whole capital, and then to seek a loan that might -eke out these savings and place him at the Chancery bar. - -Young, eloquent, eminently capable of seeing a real issue, he was well -fitted for the lower practice, and he succeeded. Within two years he -had a sum to offer as part payment, which was at once a proof of his -business habits and of his talents. His family, therefore, especially -those members of it who had urged him to go to the bar, were willing to -advance the necessary sums in addition to his own savings and his little -patrimony. The purchase-money was delivered, and a bond to the amount of -£3000 (a sum which he could not then have furnished) was signed by his -aunts and uncles at Troyes. It was in March 1787[22] that this step was -taken, and this date was in some sense his entry into public life, for it -brought him into direct contact with the wealthy—that is, with the ruling -class. - -We have on this date a vivid anecdote surviving. A Latin oration had -to be delivered off-hand to the assembled college on the reception of -a candidate to the order. The subject set for Danton when he entered -the hall was “The Moral and Political Situation of the Country in their -relations with the Administration of Justice.” A fine theme for 1787! -Such a quaint scene the old regime delighted in, and its older members -delighted also in catching here and there a phrase of quotation which -they could understand. The genius and the memory of their candidate seem -on this occasion to have furnished something new, to have given them -less platitude than was expected. He mentioned reform; he spoke of the -struggle in which the Parliament was engaged against the ministers—a -struggle of which he wisely said, “They are fighting for the sacred -centres of civic liberty, but present no positive reform by which that -liberty may be brought into existence.” “Sacred centres” was, of course, -_aris et focis_. The speech was necessarily in a large measure a series -of _clichés_, a stringing together of the well-worn Latin mottoes. It -even contained _salus populi suprema lex_, but its argument was Danton’s -own. There is to be marked also this phrase, for it is the note of all -his future work: “Let the government feel the gravity of the situation -sufficiently to remedy it in the simple and in the natural way downwards -from its own authority.” - -The young men understood and applauded; the old men were assured that, if -they had not quite followed an unconventional harangue, it was due to the -originality of the speaker. Presumably their souls were softened by _aris -et focis_, and _salus populi suprema lex_. - -For the next two years his forensic reputation is continually rising. No -longer the Common Law pleader, with pathetic and oratorical appeals for -a shepherd against his lord, he had shown how large a part intellect had -to do with his power of commanding attention. On the intricacies of his -Chancery practice and the clearness and ability of his analysis we have -an excellent witness in one of the most learned of the modern Parisian -bar,[23] and three of his opinions, on the Amelinau, Dubonis, and De -Montbarey cases, have come down to us, and have received the favourable -criticism of an opponent. - -The last case (that of De Montbarey) shows us Danton defending the claims -of an old house and at work in the rustiest of all the legal grooves. It -had been on the stocks since 1657, and Danton, in attempting to give the -quietus to this intolerable longevity, uses a phrase which shows us the -feeling that spared one grave at least when the mob sacked St. Denis: -“Jeanne d’Albret[24] is a name dear to all Frenchmen, for it recalls the -memory of that other Jeanne d’Albret who was the mother of Henri IV.” - -There came to be his clients, among others De Barentin, the minister of -justice, and De Brienne,[25] comptroller-general; it is on his intimacy -with the former that his first recorded opinions on public affairs turn. -They will be dealt with in the next chapter. - -It is, of course, difficult to give an exact proof of a man’s private -income at any moment, but we are certain that Danton’s cannot have fallen -far short at this date of a thousand pounds a year. His immediate success -at the bar, the monopoly and privilege of the body to which he now -belonged (the work certain to come to the most inept was worth a lump sum -of 60,000 francs, to which talent would add indefinitely), his eloquence -and proved ability, the name of his clients, their importance and their -wealth—everything leads to this as a certain conclusion. Immense fortunes -were not then made in the profession; his position was not an obscure one. - -He married, on attaining this status, the daughter of a man who kept one -of the students’ restaurants, Charpentier by name. It was a café (Café -des Écoles) very much frequented by the University and the younger men at -the bar, and still one of the few remaining cafés of the last century. -Danton himself was a regular customer, and there is an interesting -picture, drawn by a friend, of the avocats in their special costumes at -this place. It occupied the site of what is now the south-western corner -of the Place de l’École,[26] nor has any change been made in it save the -raising of the road level. Looking on the river, and just over the river -from the Palais, it was the natural rendezvous for the young barristers -in the mid-day adjournment and after the court rose. - -Charpentier, the “limonadier” of Mdme. Roland, was a man worth from five -to six thousand pounds, part only invested in his business;[27] he had, -moreover, a little post under the Taxes, requiring a slight amount of -work and bringing in only a hundred pounds a year. When he married his -daughter to Danton, she was given 20,000 francs.[28] - -As will be seen later, it is of the first moment in proving Danton’s -position to know accurately the capital amount of which he disposed when -the Revolution broke out; for in the case of generous men in a democracy, -the accusation of venality is the most common and the hardest to rebut. - -Passionately fond of his wife, and successful in his profession, on the -threshold of a great career, I would apply to him a phrase which one of -his worst enemies has given us to describe a far lesser man, “Actif et -sain, robuste et glorieux, il aima sa femme et la parure.” - -We leave him, then, at the summit of a laborious and perhaps of an -arduous youth. He is twenty-eight years old, in the best of his vigour -and of his intelligence—the age at which Jefferson ten years before -had drafted his immortal paragraph; the age at which Napoleon, with his -moving island of men, was ten years later to break five armies of the -Austrians from Lodi to Campo Formio. - -What picture shall we make of him to carry with us in the scenes in which -he is to be the principal actor? - -He was tall and stout, with the forward bearing of the orator, full of -gesture and of animation. He carried a round French head upon the thick -neck of energy. His face was generous, ugly, and determined. With wide -eyes and calm brows, he yet had the quick glance which betrays the habit -of appealing to an audience. His upper lip was injured, and so was his -nose,[29] and he had further been disfigured by the small-pox, with which -disease that forerunner of his, Mirabeau, had also been disfigured. His -lip had been torn by a bull when he was a child, and his nose crushed in -a second adventure, they say, with the same animal. In this the Romans -would perhaps have seen a portent; but he, the idol of our Positivists, -found only a chance to repeat Mirabeau’s expression that his “boar’s head -frightened men.” - -In his dress he had something of the negligence which goes with extreme -vivacity and with a constant interest in things outside oneself; but it -was invariably that of his rank. Indeed, to the minor conventions Danton -always bowed, because he was a man, and because he was eminently sane. -More than did the run of men at that time, he understood that you cut -down no tree by lopping at the leaves, nor break up a society by throwing -away a wig.[30] The decent self-respect which goes with conscious power -was never absent from his costume, though it often left his language in -moments of crisis, or even of irritation. - -I will not insist too much upon his great character of energy, because it -has been so over-emphasised as to give a false impression of him. He was -admirably sustained in his action, and his political arguments were as -direct as his physical efforts were continuous, but the banal picture of -fury which is given you by so many writers is false. For fury is empty, -whereas Danton was full, and his energy was at first the force at work -upon a great mass of mind, and later its momentum. - -Save when he had the direct purpose of convincing a crowd, his speech had -no violence, and even no metaphor; in the courts he was a close reasoner, -and one who put his points with ability and with eloquence rather than -with thunder. But in whatever he undertook, vigour appeared as the taste -of salt in a dish. He could not quite hide this vigour: his convictions, -his determination, his vision all concentrate upon whatsoever thing he -has in hand. - -He possessed a singularly wide view of the Europe in which France stood. -In this he was like Mirabeau, and peculiarly unlike the men with whom -revolutionary government threw him into contact. He read and spoke -English, he was acquainted with Italian. He knew that the kings were -dilettanti, that the theory of the aristocracies was liberal. He had -no little sympathy with the philosophy which a leisurely oligarchy had -framed in England; it is one of the tragedies of the Revolution that he -desired to the last an alliance, or at least peace, with this country. -Where Robespierre was a maniac in foreign policy, Danton was more than a -sane—he was a just, and even a diplomatic man. - -He was fond of wide reading, and his reading was of the philosophers; it -ranged from Rabelais to the physiocrats in his own tongue, from Adam -Smith to the “Essay on Civil Government” in that of strangers; and of -the Encyclopædia he possessed all the numbers steadily accumulated. When -we consider the time, his fortune, and the obvious personal interest in -so small and individual a collection, few shelves will be found more -interesting than those which Danton delighted to fill.[31] - -In his politics he desired above all actual, practical, and apparent -reforms; changes for the better expressed in material results. He -differed from many of his countrymen at that time, and from most of his -political countrymen now, in thus adopting the tangible. It was a part of -something in his character which was nearly allied to the stock of the -race, something which made him save and invest in land as does the French -peasant,[32] and love, as the French peasant loves, good government, -order, security, and well-being. - -There is to be discovered in all the fragments which remain to us of his -conversations before the bursting of the storm, and still more clearly in -his demand for a _centre_ when the invasion and the rebellion threatened -the Republic, a certain conviction that the revolutionary thing rather -than the revolutionary idea should be produced: not an inspiring creed, -but a goal to be reached, sustained him. Like all active minds, his -mission was rather to realise than to plan, and his energies were -determined upon seeing the result of theories which he unconsciously -admitted, but which he was too impatient to analyse. - -His voice was loud even when his expressions were subdued. He talked no -man down, but he made many opponents sound weak and piping after his -utterance. It was of the kind that fills great halls, and whose deep -note suggests hard phrases. There was with all this a carelessness as to -what his words might be made to mean when partially repeated by others, -and such carelessness has caused historians still more careless to lend -a false aspect of Bohemianism to his character. A Bohemian he was not; -he was a successful and an orderly man; but energy he had, and if there -are writers who cannot conceive of energy without chaos, it is probably -because in the studious leisure of vast endowments they have never felt -the former in themselves, nor have been compelled to control the latter -in their surroundings. - -As to his private life, affection dominated him. Upon the faith of some -who did not know him he acquired the character of a debauchee. For -the support of this view there is not a tittle of direct evidence. He -certainly loved those pleasures of the senses which Robespierre refused, -and which Roland was unable to enjoy; but that his good dinners were -orgies or of any illegitimate loves (once he had married the woman to -whom he was so devotedly attached) there is no shadow of proof. His -friends also he loved, and above all, from the bottom of his soul, he -loved France. His faults—and they were many—his vices (and a severe -critic would have discovered these also) flowed from two sources: first, -he was too little of an idealist, too much absorbed in the immediate -thing; secondly, he suffered from all the evil effects that abundant -energy may produce—the habit of oaths, the rhetoric of sudden diatribes, -violent and overstrained action, with its subsequent demand for repose. - -Weighted with these conditions he enters the arena, supported by -not quite thirty fruitful years, by a happy marriage, by an intense -conviction, and by the talents of a man who has not yet tasted defeat. -I repeat the sentence applied to another: “Active and sane, robust and -ready for glory, the things he loved were his wife and the circumstance -of power.” - - - - -CHAPTER III - -DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS - - -A man who is destined to represent at any moment the chief energies of a -nation, especially a man who will not only represent but lead, must, by -his nature, follow the national methods on his road to power. - -His career must be nearly parallel (so to speak) with the direction of -the national energies, and must merge with their main current at an -imperceptible angle. It is the chief error of those who deliberately plan -success that they will not leave themselves amenable to such influences, -and it is the most frequent cause of their failure. Thus such men as -arrive at great heights of power are most often observed to succeed by -a kind of fatality, which is nothing more than the course of natures -vigorous and original, but, at the same time, yielding unconsciously to -an environment with which they sympathise, or to which they were born. - -It is not difficult to determine the accidents of action, temperament, -and locality which predispose to success in one’s own society. It is less -easy to appreciate what corresponds to them under foreign conditions. - -It was seen in the first chapter that Paris sums up in herself those -conditions in the case of the French nation; and it was seen also (a -point of peculiar importance) that Paris at the close of the eighteenth -century was ill at ease—out of herself, demanding her place and yet -anxious as to the means by which it might be attained. - -It might be imagined that this was a kind of usurpation. Such a belief -is entertained by most foreigners, and certainly it has not been lacking -among the more idealist of the French Republicans. Nevertheless, such a -view is erroneous, and the Girondists, for all their virtues, went (as we -shall discover) against the nature of things when they would have made of -Paris but one of the cities, or rather but “an aliquot voting part” of -the nation. The demand of Paris was essentially reasonable, and had to -be satisfied. Why? Because without her leadership not this thing or that -thing would have been done, but nothing would have been done. The crowds -who waited round the coaching inns in the country towns for news of the -city in the great early days of ’89, by their very attitude asked and -expected Paris to move. - -Paris, then, is Danton’s gate. It is up the flood of the Parisian tide -that he floats. That tide rises much higher than even he had thought -possible, and it throws him at last on the high inaccessible place of the -10th of August. Once there, from a pinnacle he sees all France. Just as -Cromwell was the Puritan soldier till he reached power, and then became, -or desired to become, the representative of England, so Danton is the -Parisian Frondeur till from a place of responsibility and direction -he aims partly at the realisation of French ideas, but mainly at the -integrity and salvation of France itself. - -Here he is, then, in the two years of active discussion that precede the -elections, by an accident of ambition, Parisian; one of a group of young -provincial lawyers, but the most successful of them all. Some months -after his marriage, in the course of 1788[33] (we are not certain of the -exact date), he moved into the house in which he lived to his death, six -angry years. It was the corner house of the Cour du Commerce and the Rue -des Cordeliers.[34] The house was better than that which he had inhabited -in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, when he bought his practice; on the -other hand, it was in a somewhat less expensive neighbourhood. We may -justly infer, however, from the greater size of his new apartments, and -from the fact that he kept his office still in the old house in the Rue -de la Tixanderie, just behind the Hotel de Ville, that he had prospered -in his profession, and the inference is sustained by our knowledge of the -importance of his cases and his clients. As to the exact situation which -he chose, it was doubtless determined by its proximity to the apartments -of his friends. Here lived Desmoulins, his chief friend, a year younger -than himself, coming (after his marriage in 1790) to live in the same -house; for then, as now, in Paris it was not the habit to take a whole -house but a flat, and Danton was on the first, Desmoulins on the second -floor. Just across the river, over the Pont Neuf, was the café on the -Quai de l’École which his father-in-law had kept, and above all, he was -here in the midst of the youth of the schools. It was the slope of the -famous hill of the University. Close by he would find the Café Procope, -of which Desmoulins had written with such enthusiasm, which had once -been illuminated with the little smile of Voltaire, which had heard -the assertion of Diderot, and which in 1788 was noisy every night with -discussion and speech and applause. All that atmosphere of debate which -comes unconsciously to young men learning rose on the sides of the Mont -Parnasse and centred in the room; and here in the winter of the year, -in a society so entirely of his own rank that the high bourgeoisie and -the noblesse knew nothing of its power, his great voice and generous -face filled the circle with their energy. But there was yet no dream -of revolution, still less of violence. France was waiting for great -things, but they were to come of themselves, or on the wave of universal -enthusiasm. The fire, however, was lit, and the group which afterwards -passed from the Montagne to the scaffold of Germinal was already formed. - -To all this, however, which was but the relaxation of an abundant spirit, -must be added days of continual and serious work on the other side of -the river. If his nights were in the Latin Quarter, his days were in the -office of the Rue de la Tixanderie. A minister of the crown[35] does not -intrust his family affairs to such a wastrel as the chance memoirs of -opponents would make of Danton at this period, nor a lawyer who is never -in his chambers, but gadding about politicising, get the conduct of one -of the most important Chancery cases of his day. - -There is one matter in these pre-revolutionary months which is of no very -great importance, but which is well worth noticing, though the confusion -apparent in our one account of it has lessened its value. There can be no -doubt that Barentin, apart from his business relations, was personally -intimate with Danton; and when that careful and moderate man had -succeeded Lamoignon in September 1788, there was some kind of informal -offer made to Danton of what we should call an official secretaryship -to the minister[36]—or rather we have no name for it, for the ministry -in France was not associated with legislation, but only with executive -power, and therefore positions in its gifts had not the political -importance they have with us. - -As to the precise date of the offer, how far it was pressed, or how -seriously it was made, we can have no exact knowledge. But it seems to -me unwise to reject so characteristic an anecdote, and one which fits in -so well with Danton’s known position, merely on the somewhat strained -theory that documentary evidence alone should be admitted in history, and -documentary evidence sifted by the rules of a rigid cross-examination.[37] - -At any rate, Danton refused it. And not only did he refuse it, but there -is no trace of an attempt to use his friend’s influence or to make a -political success at a time when nearly every man’s head was turned by -the chances of a great social change. He felt no need of politics, and it -was not till much later, after quite twelve months of action and speech, -that his oratory found foothold, and he felt the imperious appetites -of a new power. Success in his profession was without question the one -ambition which occupied him in the close of 1788, it was an ambition -closely bound up with that business sense which was a strong element in -the sane and practical mind of the Champenois lawyer. - -It was upon him and his group of friends, in a Paris that every day -grew keener in its discussion and attention, that the long-expected -decree of the 27th of December fell. There were to be elections. Paris, -all pamphleteered to death, but inclining as a whole to the moderate -criticism of the more practical men, was at last called upon to act. - -Many conditions must be made clear before we can understand the effect of -these elections upon the history of the next three years. In the first -place, France was suffering from a great material evil: she was going -bankrupt, her agriculture was hopelessly depressed, her industries -ruined, and thousands and thousands of men out of work were wandering -about the streets of the cities. In the second place, the class which was -going to vote for the Commons was the tax-paying class. And in the third -place, the voting was by two degrees. I name these three conditions as -qualifying a broad and often erroneous impression. I do not mean that the -ideals were not abroad; all the world knows how bright the eyes of the -young men were getting, and we are all familiar with Desmoulins, eager, -passionate, stuttering but voluble, and passing from group to group as -they discussed or dreamed. But it is too common to read the spirit of -’93 into those elections of ’89, and the error is a grievous one. As -well might you interpret the spirit of an eloquent man who is about to -defend a just and practical cause by hearing what he said later in the -day, should his opponents have taken to fists and fought him heavily for -several hours. - -The immediate need was fiscal; the class called upon to meet it were the -middle class; the men they were about to elect were of professional rank. - -The electoral units and all corporations were asked to state their -grievances before the gathering of the Parliament, and it is in -these “cahiers” that the spirit of the time is best discovered. The -abstractions, the phrases, the great general conceptions are found (as -we might have expected, though it comes as a new thing) mainly in the -complaints of the clergy and nobility; the peasant, the bourgeois, and -the artisan have a more material grievance. - -Thus the nobility of Caen in their cahier talk of the “National -Contract,” and the clergy of Forez (after some remarks on the care and -cleansing of ponds) end up with an admirable little essay on individual -liberty, its limits and proper extension.[38] The nobility of Nantes -and of Meulan talk roundly of the “rights of man,”[39] and generally -this order calls for a Constitution—of which word they had in a very -short time supped and dined. With lesser men the demands are rather for -sublunary things, but the complaints that made Beugnot laugh give a good -picture. “To have one’s dogs killed if necessary but not hamstrung, to be -allowed to keep a cat, to be allowed to light a fire without paying dues, -to sell one’s wine when one liked;” and from the bourgeoisie, regular -trial, abolition of lettres de cachet, the old European policy that the -growth of rich corporations should be checked and much of their property -confiscated, the equalisation of taxation—such are the points upon which -(a mere redress) the great bulk of Frenchmen were determined. One might -sum up and say, “They demanded the freedom and common justice obtainable -in the modern State.” But the privileged orders, for all their phrases, -resisted when the time for reform was come, and their friction lit the -flame of the ideal, disastrously for themselves and happily for the world. - -As for the cahier sent from the electoral district of Paris in which -Danton lived, it was destroyed by the Commune when they burnt the Hotel -de Ville in 1871. We know, however,[40] that it demanded “the destruction -of the Bastille,” a symbolic act ever present to the minds of Parisians, -and, for the matter of that, by several cahiers of the provincial -noblesse and clergy. There is no direct documentary evidence that Danton -helped to draw up this cahier, but I cannot believe that a man of such -influence in so small a space and among (comparatively) so few voters[41] -had nothing to do with the framing of this document, especially when we -consider the cry he gave as a boy, swimming in the river just beneath -the walls of the prison.[42] There is, however, nothing to prove it, and -he certainly took no memorable part in an action where all was tranquil -and even tedious. - -The mention, however, of the districts of Paris, and especially of that -which could claim Danton, makes very necessary a view of that focus of -revolutionary energy. It was called the district of the Cordeliers. It -was small, one of the smallest of the sixty into which Paris was divided, -yet it contained the very strongest of the brains and eloquence of its -time, very few nobles, and, for the matter of that, very few of the -artisans and hardly any of the proletariat. Later, when Danton threatened -the reactionaries with the populace, it was not to the district of the -Cordeliers, but to the Faubourg St. Marceau that he appealed; for the -workmen were rare in its ancient, narrow streets, with their tall houses -and little dark courts framing each some relic of the Middle Ages. Here -were found many of the clergy, but above all a swarm of the young lawyers -and students, the class that think high and hard and breed thoughts in -others, a kind of little united clan of what was strongest in the youth -of the University and the professions; and the whole homogeneous group -centred round Danton. - -If you stood in the Cour du Commerce in Danton’s time, and looked north -to where his house made the corner of the narrow entry, you would have -seen a main street only a trifle broader than the court, and running at -right angles. Standing in the mouth of the narrow passage, you would have -seen on the other side of the main street, and a hundred yards up it, a -little fifteenth-century turret, capped with a pointed slate roof and -jutting outward on round supports.[43] This was the extreme angle of an -old convent called the Cordeliers.[44] Here the Franciscans had settled -in St. Louis’s time, five hundred years before, but the walls you would -have seen were not of the thirteenth, but rather of the early fourteenth -century, while the church which flanked the street was of the sixteenth, -and additions had been made of all periods. As you came out of the Cour -du Commerce and went up the street, you would have the convent running -all along the opposite side, from the little turret on the corner to the -church of St. Come in the Rue de la Harpe, save where it was interrupted -by private houses, and where it was broken in one place by a little -lane leading to the hall of the University College, which the convent -supported. Like so many great foundations, this rich place was in full -decay, and the vaulted hall, with its dim light and resonant echoes, was -given over to the meeting of the district, and later to the thunder of -the voice that threw back the armies of Europe. Alone of all the mediæval -buildings of the Cordeliers this hall remains to-day as the Musée -Dupuytren. - -There is yet one further point to be mentioned before we can make a -complete picture of Danton’s position before these elections of 1789. -There can be no doubt that the Masonic lodges had proved a powerful -instrument in the preparation of opinion, and though our information on -their formation in Paris is scanty, we can safely affirm that Danton -belonged to the lodge of the “Nine Sisters,” which included such -members as Sieyès or Bailly on the one hand and Collot D’Herbois on the -other.[45] It would be foolish to over-estimate the influence of these -societies. The subsequent history of their members proves quite clearly -that the bond between them was slight (who can, for instance, reproach -Desmoulins with a secret support of Bailly?), and (what is much more -important) the very character of their composition disproves effectually -any secret or prearranged action. The foolish Bailly, the learned Sieyès, -the admirable, unpractical, high-minded Condorcet, the weak Garat, Collot -D’Herbois the potential Red, all members of one lodge! They can have been -little more than associations whose character of mutual help and whose -opportunities of club-life (that comfort so lacking in Paris) attracted -men. They were authorised, and were one of the very few kinds of refuge -from a society where political discussion had decayed and where combined -action was almost unknown. - -This is all the importance, I think, which should be attached to them. -Where men are free, and where the suffrage is open and common, secret -societies may very justly be dreaded; their action will be at all -times separate from that of society in general, and may be in a hidden -antagonism to the will of the nation. But in a society where reunion, -discussion, and all that is the blood of civic political life has been -exhausted, then, like a special drug which cures, they have an excellent -use. They may, in such societies, just keep alive the habit of political -conversation and expectancy, and they may develop in some at least that -organising spirit without which a political movement degenerates into -anarchy. - -This, then (to recapitulate), is Danton’s position just before the -Parisian elections. He is in the midst of what are to be his group of -young Revolutionary friends on the outskirts of the Latin quarter; his -daily occupation is the conducting in his office on the north bank -and at the Palace in the Cité of those important pleas in the highest -court, which bring him into contact with the ministers, with the great -corporations, and especially with the various organs of government of the -old regime—for it was in cases for and against these that the Conseil -du Roi came into play. His income is sufficient for his needs and for -a slow but methodical payment of the price of his practice. It amounted -(we may presume) to something in the neighbourhood of 25,000 francs, -possibly a little less, but not much, for it was drawn from one of the -most important Chancery cases of his day, and his clientele, to judge by -the names which alone have reached us, was wealthy and of influence. He -was thoroughly well read; he was not expecting nor planning a political -career, as were so many of his friends (for instance, Desmoulins), -but certain characters which he was rapidly developing, or rather -discovering, in himself were preparing that career of necessity. He -was learning in discussion and laughter, first that he was an orator, -and secondly that his energy sufficed for a whole group of men, and -that he could avoid leadership only at the expense of entire seclusion. -In a time of innumerable pamphlets, he never put pen to paper outside -his profession; and in days that were producing the ardent similes of -Camille, and that were just beginning to feel the ravings of Marat, he -wrote nothing but three grave, learned, concise, and dull opinions, which -were admirable in argument, clear in exposition, and tolerable only to -elderly lawyers. - -As for his politics, he was centred wholly on the outward thing. He -seems to have lacked almost entirely the metaphysic. Here was France all -ruined and every day approaching more nearly to disaster; let her be -turned into a place where men should be happy, should have enough to eat -and drink, should be good citizens to the extent of making the nation -homogeneous and strong. Reform should be practical: in part it would -require discussion, not too much of it. In part, however, its lines were -laid down for it. Economics taught certain truths; let them be applied. -He had read in Adam Smith certain indubitable principles of this science; -let them be used. Science had in such and such matters definite remedies -to offer; let them be applied. Such were his over-simple aims. He was of -the Encyclopædists. Had he no beliefs, then, in his politics? Undoubtedly -he had; no man could desire “the good” without feeling it. But, like -all minds of his type, he refused to analyse. His dogmas were all the -more dogmas because he took them so entirely for granted that he refused -even to define them. At a time when all men had their first principles -ready-made in words, his was rather that confused instinct which is, -after all, nearest to the truth. Patriotism, good-fellowship, freedom -for his activities, the satisfaction of the thirst for knowledge—all -these he desired in himself and for the State. And that is why you will -find his great body at the head of mobs and daring criminal things -when it is a question of saving the nation, or later of breaking an -inquisitorial idea. It is this simplicity which makes him daring, and -this concentration on a few obvious points which makes him judicious, -unscrupulous, and successful in the choice of means and of phrases. - -On the 24th of January 1789, the Primaries were convened. It was the -opportunity for movement, in Paris especially, since it was the first -definite action after so much discussion, attention, and fever. The -district of the Cordeliers met in the hall of which so much mention -has been made above. But there does not seem to have been anything -of importance transacted, unless we call this important; I mean the -beginnings of the habit of reunion and of open discussion. For three -months the place seems to have had its doors open to the first comer of -the quarter. The cahier was drawn up here, and the rough foundations -of what was to be the famous permanent survival of the “République des -Cordeliers” were laid. But of Danton’s part in all this we have, as I -have said above, no trace. We can only conjecture and infer. - -It was on April 21 that the elections were finally held. The voters all -met together in the central halls of their districts (churches for the -most part) and elected the electors, who in their turn were to nominate -the deputies for Paris. Of Danton’s rôle in this important action, again -we know nothing. M. Bougeart[46] has taken it for granted that he was at -least “president of the district,” chairman (as we should say) of the -electoral meeting; but he is either in error, or else he is relying on -some verbal evidence which he has not given us. We have no document to -prove it, and we know that three months later Timbergue and Achimbault, -two barristers of the district, were successively presidents, not -Danton.[47] What we do know of importance is that the Cordeliers were -among those districts which did not disperse after the elections, but -maintained themselves as a permanent club. This action by the districts -was of the very first importance in the history of the Revolution. It -created the municipal movement in July, it made Paris an organisation, -gave the town a method and a voice, and more than any other accident it -placed the ladder for Danton’s feet. - -The elections of Paris once completed, the gates of the Revolution are -passed, and the States-General, whose Commons formulated its first -principles, are definitely formed; for Paris completed its voting much -later than the provinces. The Parliament meets at Versailles, and that -town presents for the next six months the centre of official interest. -But since Paris is going to be, by its destiny, the heart of the reform, -and since Danton is the tribune of Paris, we must, for the purposes of -this biography, mention the assembly only in its relation to what passed -in the capital. - -The tone of Paris during the first two months of the Parliament was, as -has been expressed earlier in this chapter, essentially one of ill-ease -and watching. But this anxiety of the town took long to find a formula -and to recognise its own nature. What Paris needed was the leadership; -but to hear the confused murmur of the thousand voices, you would -have thought that all her demands were for a number of more or less -conflicting ideals. And yet there was no appearance of Party. One may -say, by a just paradox, that her very cliques made for solidarity. The -higher bourgeoisie could afford at first to ignore the group of the Latin -Quarter, thinking the young lawyers and students to be merely foolish -demagogues, not even dangerous. The ears of these last were closed to -the confused demands of the populace, and the orators could honestly -believe that ideas rather than hunger were to be the goad of change. By -great good fortune their position was never wholly abandoned, and the -Revolution from first to last mastered Materialism and its attendant -Anarchy. Finally, the poor—the out-of-work, the starving labourers of -the economic crisis—standing apart from both these leading classes, -could convince themselves that the great phrases meant bread, and that a -constitution was allied in some vague way to a lowering of prices. They -were right in that instinct, but, with the picturesque inexactitude of -mobs, they fearfully under-estimated the length of the connecting links. - -The place where the average of these different views could best be found -was the Palais Royal. Here a great popular forum gathered in the gardens -which the Duke of Orleans had thrown open to the people. It was not a bad -thing that the debts of this debauchee and adventurer had led him to let -out the ground-floor of the wide quadrangle, for the cafés and shops that -surrounded it made it a more permanent resort than the squares or gardens -could have been, and there could be a perpetual mob-parliament held from -day to day. Its orators were the Dantonist group; its instigators, I -fear, the unprincipled men who surrounded D’Orleans, its committee-room -and centre (as it were) the Café Foy. Still, by the action of the main -virtue of revolutions, the general sense of the meeting was stronger than -any demagogue; for in such times society is not only turbulent but fluid, -and while it will support a leader who can swim, no mortal force can give -it any direction other than that which it desires. - -In this great daily crowd Danton was a prominent but not a principal -figure; undoubtedly (though we cannot prove it by any record) he had -begun to speak in his district, and we may presume that his voice had -been heard in the Palais Royal before July; for just after the fall of -the Bastille his name is mentioned familiarly. But even had he desired to -identify himself with the place, which is doubtful, his profession would -not have permitted it. He was not briefless, unmarried, and free, like -Desmoulins, but a man of three years’ standing in the highest branch of -his profession; doubtless, however, he was present daily when the crowd -was thickest—I mean on the holidays and during the summer evenings. - -All this pamphleteering, discussion, violence, salonising, oratory, and -anxious criticism, even the mob violence which hunger and bad laws had -inflamed, found a head in the three famous days that followed July 12, -1789. All the world knows the story, and even were it unfamiliar it would -be impossible to treat of it at any length in this book, for Danton’s -name hardly touches it, and our only interest here, in connection with -his life, is to discover if he took part in the street fighting; for -the event itself, one of the most decisive in history, a few words must -suffice. - -Paris, and especially the Palais Royal, had been watching the struggle -at Versailles with gathering anger. There, twelve miles off, every -purpose for which the Parliament had met, and every good thing which -the elections had seemed to ensure, lay in jeopardy. Step after step the -Commons had in fact, though not in their phrases, been beaten, and the -promises of six months before seemed in danger, not through any known or -calculable enemy, but from the sudden appearance of an opposition which -the nation, and especially Paris, had ignored. The King had retreated -from his position of the last December, and the privileged orders were -sympathising with a growing reaction. How far all this was due to the -unconstitutional and unprecedented action of the Commons in insisting -on a General Assembly cannot be discussed here. Suffice it to say that, -in the opinion of the nation, the new departure of the Commons was in -thorough accordance with the spirit, if not with the letter, of the -recent decrees; the King was held to have broken his word, and the -privileged orders to have abandoned their declarations in the face of -facts. The symbol, though a poor one, of the constitutional position -was the personality of Necker. Conceited, foreign, and common-place, -the father of an authoress whom neither Napoleon nor posterity could -tolerate, Genevese and bourgeois to the backbone, this mass of impotence -yet stood, by one of the ironies of history, in the place of an idol. -He, the banker, was the imagined champion for the moment of that other -man from Geneva, who had died of persecution ten years before, the -tender-eyed, wandering, unfortunate Rousseau, between whom and him was -the distance between a financier and an apostle. - -While the king was changing his advisers, and even while the foreign -troops—fatal error—were being massed in wretched insufficiency on the -Champ de Mars (not three miles from the Palais Royal) Necker still -stood like a wooden idol, a kind of fetish safeguard against force. He -just prevented the growing belief in the dissolution from becoming a -certitude, and on account of his attitude Paris waited. These things -being so, the king began his great programme of working out the good of -his people alone. Relying on the three thousand foreigners, a regiment -of home troops, and practically no guns wherewith to hold in check a -tortuous city of close on a million souls, the king on Saturday, July 11, -dismissed Necker. - -Desmoulins first brought the news, running. It was the morrow, Sunday, -and the Palais Royal was crowded. He forgot his stammer and hesitancy, -and shouted to the great holiday crowd in the gardens to strip the -trees for emblems, led them as they marched to the Place Louis Quinze, -saw the French troops defend their fellow-citizens against the mounted -mercenaries, and heard during a night of terror and of civil war the -first shots of Revolution. - -All the next day, Monday, July 13, 1789, Paris organised and prepared. -Thanks to the permanence of the assemblies in certain districts, a -rough machinery was ready, and on the 14th, a Tuesday, two great mobs -determined upon arms. The time is not untainted, for St. Huruge was there -promising and leading, but if D’Orleans was trying to make the most of -the adventure, he no more created the uprising than a miller makes the -tide. One stream of men seized the arsenal at the Invalides on the west -side of the town, the other going east in a smaller band demanded arms of -the governor of the Bastille, a place impossible to take by assault. The -demand was refused. - -A body of men, however, were permitted to enter the courtyard, for which -purpose the drawbridge had been lowered: once in that trap, De Launay -fired upon them and shot them down. There is no evidence, nor ever will -be, as to the motives of that extraordinary act; but to the general -people who were gathering and gathering all about in the narrow streets, -it was an act of deliberate treason, part of that spirit with which our -own time is not unfamiliar, and which has ruined a hundred reforms,—I -mean the sentiment that there is no honour to be kept between government -and insurrection. The misfortune or crime of De Launay struck a clear -note in the crowd; if after that they failed, the blow that was being -struck for the Parliament would fail also. Thus it was that, under a -dull grey sky, the whole of Paris, as it were, ran up together to the -siege of the fortress. Curés were there gathering up their soutanes and -joining the multitude, notably the man who had once been Danton’s parish -priest, the vicar of St. Germains, with his flock at his heels, like the -good Curé of Bazeilles in later times, or the humorous Bishop of Beauvais -six centuries before. Lawyers, students, shopkeepers, merchants, the big -brewer of the quarter, the pedants, the clerks in the offices, soldiers -and their officers, the young nobles even—there was nothing in Paris that -did not catch the fever. The castle fell at last, because its garrison -sympathised with the mob (of itself it was impregnable); the old governor -made a futile attempt to blow up his stronghold and his command; some few -who still obeyed him (probably the twenty Swiss) fired on the mob just -after the white flag had been hoisted on the Bazinière tower, and a great -tide of men mad with a double treason swirled up the fortress. Second on -the wall was a man with whom this book will have to deal again—Hérault de -Séchelles, young, beautiful, and of great family, beloved at the court -and even pampered with special privilege, the friend and companion of -Danton, and destined five years later to stand in the cart with him when -they all went up to the scaffold together on a clear April evening in the -best time of their youth. - -The Cordeliers were in the attack, and presumably Danton also, since -all the world was there. But his only allusion to the scene is a phrase -of his circular to the courts when he took the Ministry of Justice in -1792, and he mentions his district only without including his own name. -One anecdote, and only one, connects him with the days of July. It seems -that in the night of the morrow, the early morning of the 16th, he was -at the head of a patrol in that sudden levy of which mention will be -made in this chapter. He thought it his duty to pass into the court of -the Bastille, probably in order to gather some detached portion of his -command; but he was met by Soulès, whom the informal meeting at the Hotel -de Ville had named governor. Full of new-fangled importance, Soulès -pompously forbad him to enter, and showed his commission. Danton did a -characteristic thing, part and parcel of that intense sectionalism upon -which he based all his action until Paris was at last in possession -of herself: for him power was from below, and the armed district had -a right of passage: he called the informal commission a rag, arrested -Soulès, and shut him up in the guardroom at the Cordeliers; then, with -a rather larger force, he marched him back through the streets and -gave him into the custody of the Hotel de Ville, whose authority for -judgment he admitted. The matter would be of no importance were it not -for the fact that, in the very natural and on the whole just censure -which the informal municipality passed on Danton’s action, Lafayette -showed an especial bitterness.[48] It was the first clash between two -men one of whom was to conquer and drive out the other; and it was a -typical quarrel, for Danton stood in the matter for the independence of -the electoral unit and for the power of Paris over itself: Lafayette -represented the principle of a strong municipality based on moderate -ideas and on a limited suffrage; in other words, the compromise which was -planned for the very purpose of muzzling the capital. - -I have spoken of an armed force and a patrol: it is in this connection -that the meaning of the days of July—for Danton and for the -Revolution—must be considered. They form above all a municipal reform. -Those towns of which I have spoken as being the bond of France harked -back suddenly to their primitive institutions, and were organising -communal government. Paris of course was the leader. Even before the -taking of the Bastille, the districts had in some cases maintained their -electoral colleges as a permanent committee, and these electoral colleges -met at the Hotel de Ville, forming a rough government for the two nights -of the revolt, and finally directing the whole movement. Such a body was -of necessity too large to work. But its plans were rapidly formed. They -named a committee, which was formed of electors with one citizen (not -an elector) added. They invited and obtained the aid of the permanent -officers of what had once been the old dying and corrupt corporation, -and they thus had formed an irregular but sufficient organ of government -for the city. It was not confirmed from above, nor had it, for days, any -authority from the King, but it reposed on a force which was admitted in -the theory of those times to be the source of power, for it was composed -of men elected by the new suffrage. They had been elected for another -purpose, but they were the only popular representatives present at all in -Paris. - -Their weakness, however, lay in this quality of theirs. Reposing -merely upon power from the districts, they could not act with central -authority, nor had they an armed force of their own. They could, indeed, -prevent the success of the rough anarchy which threatened the Hotel -de Ville itself in the early morning of July 14, before the attack on -the Bastille, but they could not prevent the lynching of those against -whom the popular rage had arisen—De Launey, De Méray, De Persan. As for -force, they organised a huge levy of 1200 men from each of the sixty -districts, a force which, with certain additions, rose to 78,000. It was -in this suddenly armed militia that Danton was elected a captain (for -the moment), and in connection with its duties of police on the nights -following the taking of the Bastille that his quarrel with Soulès had -occurred. They named Bailly their first mayor. They gave the command of -the new national guard to Lafayette; on the 16th they ordered, with a -pomp of trumpets in the Place de Grève, the destruction of the Bastille, -in which their new governor was installed. But through all this vigorous -action there is one cardinal fact to be remembered: the whole of their -power was from below, not only in theory but in fact. We may construct a -metaphor to express the future effect of this, and say that, at the very -origin of the Revolution, the body of government in Paris was tainted -by an organic weakness which no structural changes could remove, and to -whose character all subsequent events for three years can be traced. -It was essentially _federal_; feeble at the centre, continually asking -leave, morally a servant and not a master; lacking above all things the -supreme force of conviction, it acted without power because it did not -believe in itself. - -The history, then, of its struggle with the extremists is the history -of a body attempting by compromise and ruse to attain a position whose -theory it openly denies, whose moral right it will not affirm, and whose -very existence is made dependent upon those whom it would coerce against -their will. The municipality tried to be a strong government while it -openly approved of voluntaryism, to be powerful in its acts and weak in -its structure. Ultimately the centre of compromise is captured by ardent -revolutionaries whom it has attempted to check, and _then_ we get a true -despotism in Paris—the terrible commune of the second period of the -Republic and of the Terror. - -But if the character of the new municipal government (a character which -became specially prominent after the legislation of the whole system -later in the year) is the special feature of the movement, its general -motive is of course more important. We have called it the Reform; what -occurred in the next few days was without any question the origin of the -active Revolution, and a little examination of facts will show that the -taking of the Bastille was not merely a dramatic incident, still less the -exaggerated _bagarre_ that certain modern special pleaders would make it, -but, on the contrary, the foundation of everything. The contemporaries -are proved to have been right in their view of this matter, as of so many -others. - -Why was this? Because, first, in taking the Bastille, after having sacked -the Invalides, the people of Paris (for it was not a particular mob, but -a gathering of every possible class) held all the cannon in the city, and -were thoroughly provided with small arms. They were suddenly become the -masters of that insufficient camp in the Champ de Mars on which the King -had relied. In open country and without artillery these seventy thousand -civilians would, of course, have been so many sheep, but in the town and -with a number of old artillerymen (officers and men) to work their guns, -it was another matter. On and after July 14, 1789, Paris had found that -possession of herself which we postulated as her first great appetite in -the Revolution. - -Secondly, by this sudden stroke Paris forced the Court to capitulate. -At Versailles the King went bareheaded to the Assembly, gave permission -for the reunion of the three orders, for a discussion of grievances -before supply, for the title of National Assembly, for the formation of a -constitution before the voting of fiscal measures—in a word, for all that -the Commons had demanded, and for the fulfilment of all the promises from -which he had attempted to recede. - -Thirdly, the victory, or rather the act of Paris, changed and weakened -the opposition. From openly gathering troops, and boasting an approaching -attack on the Parliament, they are reduced to intrigue and to the -difficult business of arming in the dark. Many of the heads of the -reaction (notably the Comte d’Artois) leave France in the “first -emigration,” and the whole action of the uncompromising party is made -weaker, and clearly unnational. - -Fourthly (and perhaps this is the most important point), that municipal -movement, of which mention has been made above, took its rise directly -from the 14th of July. The towns hear of Necker’s dismissal and of the -Parisian rising by the same courier, and in a week or ten days the -story is repeated all over France. Rouen, Lyons, Valence, Montpellier, -Nîmes, Tours, Amiens (to cite but a few of the more prominent examples), -organise a new town government. Sometimes the old hereditary or appointed -body is deposed, more often it is enlarged by the addition of the -electoral college of the city; occasionally it takes upon itself the -task of adding to itself representatives of the three orders. Again, the -towns arm themselves as Paris did; and finally, by what a contemporary -called “spontaneous anarchy,” the whole network of cities has received -the pulse and vibration of Paris; the National Guards are being drilled -in thousands; the rusty, confused, and broken machinery of the _ancien -régime_ is replaced by a simple if rough system of local government. -Moreover, since all this has been done by the people themselves, and -without a command or a centralised effort, since it is natural and not -artificial, it has entered into the body of the Revolution and cannot be -undone. - -You see, then, that the days of July gave Paris the first word, and -made the spirit of sectionalism and local autonomy based upon a highly -democratic theory. All these things are the conditions of Danton’s rise; -they make possible, and even necessary, the society of which he is to be -the guide. After the 14th of July the Cordeliers meet daily; the bell -was rung above the church at nine in the morning, and an assembly of the -district was held.[49] It was not yet in name the famous “club”; but when -we consider the action of the popular societies in Paris, we must always -remember that this, even before it regularly assumed its final name and -functions, was a society organised for debate and action, and that it was -the first to be established. - -From its origin, this famous meeting is sharply marked in its spirit—the -spirit that will later divide it not only from the moderate clubs, -such as the Feuillants, but from the Jacobins themselves. In the first -place, it is Parisian; it attempts no provincial propaganda; it confines -itself to action in Paris, and even to its own immediate neighbourhood. -In the second place, it is purely popular. But (it may be asked) were -not the Jacobins in their later stage a purely popular club? No, not -in the same sense. The Jacobins, as will be seen later in this book, -were an organised body; the public was admitted to their galleries; -but, even in the most feverish time of the Revolution, they are -distinguished by a close bond from the general people. Their membership -is almost exclusively confined to the politicians, and their business is -inquisitorial. They preach certain political dogmas, and make it their -affair to canalise the Revolutionary current; they desire to establish -in France a Republican religion, as it were, and we shall see later in -Robespierre their high priest and dictator. - -The Cordeliers had nothing of all this. If the Royalist writers begin -calling them from the outset the “République des Cordeliers,” it is -because they show the general spirit which Danton surely gave to, -rather than received from, his district. Freedom of opinion, the value -of varied discussion, open doors, and even an intermingling with the -street—such were their methods. The men who sat on the benches would vary -from one hundred to three,[50] according to the interest of the debate -or the value of the occasion. The number inscribed on the registers of -the society were simply the whole voting strength of the district; under -the limited suffrage of the time it would fluctuate round the figure six -hundred; and hence we may observe that those who were so strongly touched -by the contemporary movement as to add meeting and debating to their mere -votes numbered a good half of the electorate. Standing grouped, or moving -in and out of the far end of the hall, would be the chance-comers, the -disfranchised multitude of the district—those even who had no residence -in the quarter, but whom anger, interest, or curiosity might attract. -It was composed of every kind of man—the pedantic but accurate Sieyès; -the fastidious radical and poet D’Eglantine; the coarse, brutal, and -atheistic Hébert; Desmoulins, ardent and admirably polished, linked by -his style to the classics of his own country and of Rome; Legendre, the -master-butcher, no great politician, but an honest friend; and, added to -all these, the lawyers. There was a preponderance of the young men, the -students and barristers in their thirtieth year; but take it all in all, -it was the most representative, the most general of the meetings. - -The society, then, from which Danton rises is marked by these characters: -it tends always to defend the presence in politics of the whole people; -it is unitarian, designing above all things a common ground where -Frenchmen may found the new order in harmony; and finally, it possesses -nothing of the metaphysical spirit abroad at the time. It is all for -action along the lines of common sentiments—the defence of the new -individual liberty, the destruction as soon as may be of whatever relics -of the old machinery might be spared by the fear or inertia of certain -reformers. - -I cannot leave what has already grown to an over-lengthy description -of their political attitude without touching upon a quality of theirs, -which was not indeed a principle, but which was a method of action -necessarily flowing from the ideas they held. The Cordeliers are -essentially “Frondeurs.” They are rebellious and in opposition so long -as the Revolution remains incomplete. They do things deliberately -illegal, but which they justly consider to be in the spirit of the -reform and calculated to aid its rapid development. Why was this? -Because the day after Paris had captured the position, in the very -moment when the city had forced reaction into subterranean channels, -her power was bridled. The King came to Paris on the 17th of July and -confirmed the revolutionary appointments. Bailly is mayor, and Lafayette -is commissioned head of the National Guard. In those two names you -have the forces, or rather the resistances, against which Danton and -the Cordeliers made it their business to fight. Both of them were -amiable, both weak, and both sincere; but they belonged, the one to the -high bourgeoisie, the other to the noblesse; they were both full of -an intense class-prejudice; both thought rather of the restraints to -be imposed than of the great change in the midst of which they lived. -The little movements that Bailly might have mistaken for an enthusiasm -would arise at the sight of his telescope; the undoubted excitability of -Lafayette was aroused by the public mention of his own name. Under these -weaknesses their external sign was pomposity, their political action an -attempt to confine the Revolution to the middle class. Thus, later, the -sixty districts are replaced by the forty-eight sections in order to -jerrymander the Parisian radicals; thus Bailly tries to oppose Parisian -appeals to the Parliament; and thus Lafayette not only attempts to -convert the National Guard into a political army, but makes it impossible -for the poor to join it. - -Against all this the Cordeliers set their face. Such a partial conception -of the State was the enemy of that ideal by which they lived and which -has formed the Republic in France and the Jeffersonian democracy in -America. Only four days after the King had worn his tricolour cockade, -smiling on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, they issue and print -a resolution to use the armed force of their district at its own -discretion; they do not (of course) claim to act further, but they -determine to be themselves the police which shall conduct prisoners to -the tribunals.[51] At the close of 1789, and especially in the succeeding -year, we shall find them in the affair of Marat, of Danton’s election, -of the _Mandat Imperatif_, and of the Châtelet continually acting in the -spirit of local autonomy, and refusing to admit any central authority -save that of the whole people—bowing after every revolt to the Assembly, -but refusing to admit the bourgeois power. - -The end of July was the destruction of the feudality in France. When the -towns had fallen with a shock into the new conditions, the great dust -of villages rose of itself into a storm, and there passed over all the -countrysides that strange panic, “The Great Fear,” whose legend alone of -Revolutionary memories remains among the peasantry to-day. - -The woods were full of terrors; ploughmen started out at night by bands -to meet invisible armies; an unsubstantial enemy threatened the thousands -of little lonely villages that lie undefended on the skirts of forests -or lost on the leagues and leagues of plains. In that mysterious panic -the Jacquerie arose; the cowed and the oppressed, who had forgotten the -generous anger which makes men brave, rose under the lash of fear. They -had heard of the promises of reform, they had seen the cahiers drawn up -that they might become free men, and yet the town close by had risen and -armed because something had gone wrong; the King, whom they loved, was -not allowed to help his people; some one was delaying or destroying their -hopes, and the brigands were coming down the road. Not with committees, -organisation, and battalions, as the intelligence of the towns had just -done, but instinctively and with the anarchy of the torch they destroyed -the skeleton idol of the old regime. Like their fathers of four hundred -years before, they were out to destroy the records of their servitude, -and where the records were defended the country-houses burned. But this -time no vengeance followed: the wild beast was dead. When in the noisy -night of the 4th of August the privileged men scattered away their -rights, then that last largesse of the nobles, the “Orgy,” as Mirabeau -called it, was but a gift of things already taken. After Paris, after -the cities, the peasantry had suddenly stiffened the phrases by an act; -perhaps it was their formless and vague energy that laid the heaviest -of the foundation-stones, for we are told that in twenty years an exile -returning thought that France had been re-peopled with a new kind of men. - -It is not wonderful that, with such a fire just smouldering down, and -with the spirit of renunciation abroad as well, a regular stream of -emigration should set out. But it did not leave the opposition powerless -though it deprived it of chiefs. If we consider the Court, the capital, -and the Assembly in the months of August and September, the next great -step (and the first in connection with which the name of Danton is -directly connected) becomes clear. - -At Versailles all the first part of August is taken up in voting the -famous decree which consecrated the debate of the 4th. The Parliament -abolished feudal dues, declaring all rights in service at an end, and -establishing a period for the national purchase and subsequent abolition -of the rest of the feudal dues. All the second part of August and the -whole of September were occupied in drawing up the declaration of the -rights of man and in decreeing the fundamental articles of the new -Constitution. The National Assembly, then, as a whole, is thoroughly -the organ of France. It is not yet so divided as to arouse definite -party feeling in the capital, nor to prevent on important occasions -a practically unanimous vote. But there is another factor. The Court -(especially the Queen) has a definite party formed; it has its -correspondence with the emigrés, and they with the personalities, if -not with the official organs of foreign governments. It was without any -question the object of this very small and very powerful group to arrest -the Revolution, and if possible to wipe out the last six months. Between -and above these stands the King. Louis (we are too apt to forget it in -our knowledge of what follows) still possessed far more power even than -the National Assembly; not only by the political decrees of the time, -but by that immeasurable force of custom, by the affection which he -personally had inspired in the great bulk of men, he was a powerful king. -What was his attitude? He was patriotic; he greatly sympathised with the -ideas at the root of the reform; he was sensible, and saw the practical -value of casting away what is broken and worn out. On the other hand, he -was not brave (especially in the face of the unknown); new developments -irritated him; he was (by the inevitable result of his training) -determined to preserve in his own hands the bulk of power, and sometimes -he was panic-stricken at a phrase or a debate which seemed to put it in -jeopardy. Finally—a matter of the utmost importance with a character of -such well-balanced mediocrity—the people with whom he hunted, dined, and -conversed were almost all of them members of a powerful, bitter, and -skilful faction, headed by the most determined and able of all—his wife, -for whom he had latterly developed a marked tenderness and even respect. - -This ring of courtiers, who were Louis’s evil fates, had a certain -quality that gave them great power in spite of their small numbers. -It must be remembered that they were of the high cosmopolitan type, -those who, a generation earlier, delighted in the wit of Voltaire, who, -a generation later, smiled at merely hearing the name of Talleyrand. -Perhaps there was never a body better fitted to influence an isolated man -by phrases, continual conversation, and intrigue. - -What is the effect? That the King, always honestly intending the -reform, always hesitates a little too long, with doubts that are often -intellectual in origin and sometimes wise in their nature, but foolish at -the moment. He hesitates to sign the decree of the 4th of August;[52] he -hesitates about this and that expression in the Declaration of rights. -He has a very strong reluctance to forego the absolute veto; all through -September you can hear the machinery creaking, and it gets worse as the -autumn advances. - -Meanwhile in Paris two forces are at work to aid this crisis at -Versailles. First, the popular societies, notably that meeting in the -Palais Royal, which now is almost a Parliament, where every prominent -Parisian name is heard, and whence those curious documents, parodies of -the old-fashioned decrees, emanate,[53] not unfrequently with the power -to cause insurrection. Secondly, the price of food, especially of flour, -is rising rapidly. We have explained in the first chapter how largely the -lack of food in the towns was due to vicious interference with exchange: -when such is the prime cause of economic trouble, the least disturbance -aggravates it to a high degree; thus it was that while the harvest was -being gathered in the north, and in the south had been already stored, -the supply of cereals in the capital was all but exhausted. - -Thus curiously side by side (and partly overlapping) the intense -political interest of the voting class and the growing misery of the -populace ran fatally towards the days of October. At the Cordeliers, -innocent of pedants, practical, alert, debating with open doors, there -met the two revolutionary interests, those of the politicians and of the -poor; and this is why they are heard so loudly in September, and why -Danton and his district become famous just before the march on Versailles. - -It will be remembered that the assembly of electors at the Hotel de -Ville had guided Paris through the great storm of July 13-17; their -powers were vague and unconstitutional, for they had been elected at -first merely to choose Deputies for Paris, nevertheless it was they who -had made Bailly mayor, who had nominated Lafayette, who had formed the -National Guard, and who had been confirmed by the King in their functions -of a provisional municipality. It was acting on this decree which gave -them a right to take political initiative, that on Thursday, July 23, -they had sent a circular to the sixty districts asking each to name two -members. The hundred and twenty so elected were to draw up a plan for a -new municipality; they met, did so, and the result of their labours was -the issue on August 30th of a scheme for a new municipal system, upon -which the primaries in every districts were asked to debate. Somewhat -illogically, however, the complicated document was accompanied by a writ -demanding the immediate election in each district of five members to form -the new corporation. In other words, the primaries were asked to form a -new municipality, to give it full powers, and then to debate academically -upon what they had done. - -It may have been only a blunder, but the Cordeliers took alarm at what -certainly seemed to be a plot on the part of the Moderates. The project -and the writ had reached them on _Sunday_ August 30th; by Thursday, -September 3rd, they had arrived at a decision to refuse the writ. They -argued that it was absurd to ask the districts to debate on a project -_after_ its most essential part had been realised, namely, the election -of deputies. On that election, its methods, the powers of the members, -and so forth, the greater part of the discussions would turn, and by -the time the districts had arrived at such and such conclusions, or had -modified the powers of their deputies in such and such a fashion, those -deputies would already have been sitting for some time as a municipal -council, would be helping to frame or to modify the new municipal system -on their own account. It would have been not only confusion but an -encroachment on the principle by which (nominally) the districts had -been consulted, viz., that the electors themselves in their districts -should thrash out the new system. The Cordeliers named commissioners -who examined the whole matter, and, on Saturday, the 12th, definitely -rejected the writ. Nevertheless, as the other districts had all obeyed -and had elected their five members each, the Cordeliers elected their -five under protest[54] on the following Monday, the 14th, and sent them, -bound by a strict oath, to the Hotel de Ville. - -This little incident merits a very considerable degree of attention, -although it has been somewhat neglected by the historians, and even by -Danton’s biographers. It was the first skirmish in that decisive struggle -between the democratic idea, headed by the Cordeliers, and the limited -suffrage of the first municipality—a struggle which is at the root of -all the action of Paris. It is the first act of Danton in an official -position; in much that the Cordeliers had done he was evidently the -leader, but in this document we learn that he is elected president of -the district, and see his name signed.[55] And finally, there appears -here, for the first time in the Revolution, the _Mandat Imperatif_, the -brutal and decisive weapon of the democrats, the binding by an oath of -all delegates, the mechanical responsibility against which Burke had -pleaded at Bristol, which the American constitution vainly attempted to -exclude in its principal election, and which must in the near future -be the method of our final reforms. It had been raised, and Danton had -raised it; for these five deputies, before being permitted to attend at -the Hotel de Ville, swore to a definite plan of action whose terms were -dictated at the general meeting of the district. - -The struggle as it continues becomes of greater importance, until, within -four months, it faces Danton himself in the Hotel de Ville; but we cannot -describe its further steps until we have mentioned the next action with -which the Cordeliers are associated, and in which their decisive rôle is -largely determined by the Revolutionary championship which this brush -with authority had given them. - -We have described above the various forces that were fatally converging -to form the whirlpool of October—the hesitancy of the King, the desperate -intrigues of the Court, the intense political excitement of the Palais -Royal and of the electors in Paris, the growing misery of the populace. -We have pointed out how the Cordeliers, with their popular audience and -popular sympathies, were at once the only great debating place in Paris -and the only spot where the forces of voters and non-voters could join -hands. Add to this the effect of the protest described above and of the -position such a struggle gave them in the democratic movement, and their -importance in the days of October becomes evident. - -It was at the close of September that all these tendencies came together. -Again, after three months of silence, the reaction found its voice, and -the King’s uncertainty, the Court faction’s plotting, culminated in the -arrival at Versailles of military reinforcements. The body-guards were -doubled, and there marched in the Regiment of Flanders—a body (by the -way) to whose name clings something of comedy, and whose raggedness has -passed into a marching legend. This book is not the place to describe -at any length what followed, save in its connection with Danton and the -Club. On Thursday, October the 1st, a famous dinner was given by the -body-guard to the newly arrived regiment. The Court dealt with excellent -material, and with the wine and the night the admirable feelings of -loyalty arose: the poor King assumed the halo of a leader to these men -whose regimental traditions were knit up with the monarchy; soldiers, -they appreciated his defeat, and, being comrades, they were angry at -his loneliness. They greeted him with a passionate song, destroyed the -three-coloured cockades, and pinned on the white ribbons; for the first -time in a year enthusiasm was with the beleaguered, though it lasted but -a few hours and stretched to but a few hundred of men. To Paris, hearing -of it on the next day, Friday, it was a challenge, discussed, oddly -enough, with some contradictions and confusions. Men talked of Bouillé, -the courtier, and his frontier command at Metz; people were afraid that -he would protect the King in some flight to the provinces; there ran a -vague uneasiness and a fear of anarchy with the King’s disappearance; -above all, in the minds of the politicians a fear of armed reaction, and -in the minds of the starving a terror that the reforms which were so -material to them were in jeopardy. Still, all Saturday the waters only -moved at the surface, and you might have thought that Paris was incapable -of any combined action. - -But if the reaction contained a powerful integrating force in the Court -party, Paris also possessed it in a small meeting and in one supremely -energetic man. On the morning of Sunday, a day when there was leisure -to read, the walls were placarded with the manifesto of the Cordeliers. -It demanded an insurrection, and was signed with Danton’s name. On -Monday morning they rang the tocsin at the belfry of the convent, and -the battalion of the district was drawn up and armed. De Crèvecœur, -their commander, prevented them marching in a body, but a number of the -district determined to merge with the crowd. Meanwhile, the mob gathered -from every quarter, especially the Place de Grève—a true mob this time, -and accompanied, as all the world knows, by a crowd of women, poured up -the Versailles road. They made a hideous night in the great space before -the palace. Lafayette followed tardily with his organised volunteers, -the National Guard; but on the Tuesday the palace was forced, and some -of its defenders killed. The royal family came in their heavy coach down -the twelve miles of falling road into Paris, and, not without some state, -they entered the Tuilleries. The National Assembly followed the King into -the capital. - -Thus the second milestone of the Revolution was passed. Of all the -revolutionary days, these were the most purely anarchic. The action was -that of men hardly possessing ideas, but fixed upon a practical thing—the -presence of the King in Paris. It had for its main object good, and for -its method mad anger. Nevertheless, the instinct of the mob had hit the -mark. Like all sudden actions, it had made issues definite which had -till then been confused. It put an end once and for all to the idea of -crushing the reform at its outset by force; it gave Paris a mastery over -every subsequent action; of the many ways the Court party might have -tried it reduced them to one only, namely, an organised secret diplomacy -with the object of raising Europe against France. - -As for Louis, we may honestly believe that his capture was not entirely -distasteful to him: as he was less acute, so he had certainly more -common-sense than his wife. If he was jealous of his dignity, which -had been grievously offended, yet he was very French, patriotic, and -not unwilling to see himself the object of a violent demand. Everybody -saw—the King must have seen it too—that the whole uprising was monarchic. -There was not any class more monarchic in France than the poor. The King -as their father was an idea bred in them for centuries, and he knew that -they made of him a kind of providence who could give them food; that -they rose not to make him less powerful, but to make a faction impotent. -And there was nothing distasteful to him in being a King of the French, -seated in the midst of his great capital, and on the summit, as it were, -of a new order. October did not threaten to make him less, but more of a -King. It was later, in questions that affected the heart, especially in -matters of religion, that the gulf opened between Louis and his people. - -With the King, then, at the Tuilleries, with the Assembly some three -hundreds yards off down the gardens in the riding-school of the -palace,[56] we enter the long avenue by which Paris obtains the -initiative in every subsequent reform. Let us turn, then, to follow once -more the action of the society and the man who, between them, determine -the direction of Paris for the next three years. - -The quarrel which was sketched earlier in this chapter, the assault of -the district upon the Moderates, continued throughout the autumn and -winter. Four times running Danton is elected President,[57] and it is -under his guidance that the affair proceeds. While the Assembly are -making a new France at the Manège, organising the departments,[58] fixing -the restricted suffrage,[59] creating the communes over all France,[60] -the Cordeliers are making the spirit of a new Paris on the hill over -the river; this spirit will conquer and transform the debaters in the -Parliament. - -On the 22nd of October they follow up their previous action. Already -before the revolt they had come into collision with the municipality: -in this new resolution they protest against a demand of Lafayette for -regular courts-martial in the National Guard. The protest had a meaning, -for Lafayette was raising an armed bourgeois power, but the motive of -the Cordeliers was mainly the desire to harass the Moderates. A week -later the Municipal Council gave its reply to these various encroachments -on the part of the Cordeliers in a decree of the 29th of October: it -condemned the action of the district in three definite points: first, -its habit of passing resolutions like a small municipal body; secondly, -its habit of asking the fifty-nine other districts to pass spontaneous -resolutions on important matters; thirdly (and most important), its -revolutionary action in demanding an oath from its delegates. In this -last point the purely democratic idea on the one hand, and the senatorial -theories of the Moderates on the other, came face to face, and on that -point the issue turned. On the 2nd of November the district replied by a -resolution denying the right of the elected to control the electors, and -especially condemning the interference of the Hotel de Ville with debates -in the districts. On the 12th, ten days later, they came out into the -open with a resolution that was like a declaration of war against Bailly -and Lafayette; they drew up a form of oath which their five deputies -were to swear, and this oath bound the members of the district not only -to obey the district in all its resolutions, but also to admit that they -could be dismissed after being called upon three times to resign by a -majority of the district. It was the full doctrine of delegacy and of the -corporate will. - -Only two of the five members took the oath, the rest resigned and were -promptly replaced by others, and these presented themselves at the Hotel -de Ville on November 16th. Condorcet was President of the municipal body, -and practically everybody there was furious against the Cordeliers. They -demanded a recital of the causes which had led to the dismissal of the -three members, and then they insisted on hearing the terms of the famous -oath that bound the five deputies. Of the two who had consented to take -the oath in the first instance, one (Peyrilhe) muttered excuses, but the -other (Croharé), who seems to have been more of a true Cordelier, was -very proud of the position he held, and would have explained the true -doctrine at great length, had not the meeting cut him short by a vigorous -vote, declaring all such oaths inadmissible, sending away the three -new members, and recalling those who had resigned. On the next day the -municipality broke the law. It turned Croharé out, but by a very small -vote, in which many abstained.[61] Of course such an action was not to -be tolerated, for it would have made the majority of the municipality -able to end all opposition or debate, and the mistake of Condorcet was -Danton’s opportunity. - -Every character he possesses is apparent in the struggle that follows. -He carries it on with something of the diplomacy that later was matched -against all Europe: he secures his allies and isolates his enemies: he -pleads to convince and to obtain official support, not (as do so many of -his contemporaries) in order to follow a line of thought. In a word, he -is _habile_, and practically he succeeds. - -Observe the quality of this action. When the district meets on the 17th -(while the Commune was dismissing Croharé), Danton sees the importance of -keeping its debate in bounds. That gathering, which is so enamoured of -abstract rights, is suddenly bound down by the superior ability of its -chairman: the discussion is made to follow points of legal technicality, -and Danton imposes upon the Cordeliers so strict a discipline for one -day, that two points alone emerge from the speeches, and they are -precisely the two which could be used as arguments. (1.) That the Commune -was _provisional_, and its _raison d’être_ was the formation of a new -municipal system: in such cases (say the Cordeliers) the subjects of the -experiment must remain masters, and it would be absurd to take away the -power of control, that later would have to be readmitted when the new -municipal constitution should be sent to the districts for acceptance -or rejection: in a word, they argued on the _vice de raisonnement_—the -want of logic—in the Commune’s action. (2.) They appealed to the -Assembly—that is, they recognised and submitted to the centre of national -power.[62] The Assembly was in a dilemma. It was in full sympathy with -the Moderates with Bailly and with Lafayette; on the other hand, it -could not, without a great loss of prestige, deny the very principles -upon which its own power rested. Their committee on the subject desired a -complete admission of the Cordeliers’ claim; the Assembly rejected this, -and tried to compromise by saying that both parties should go back to -“the state of things of November 10th”—that is, to the state of things -before the oath and before the whole trouble. The compromise would not -hold. The deputies thus legally reinstated all resigned (except Croharé) -on account of the feeling in their district, and the Cordeliers then, -with full legality, re-elected their popular champions of the _Mandat -Imperatif_. - -The Commune took its defeat ill. They tried to prove that the old members -had not really resigned. They sent a committee to interview them, but the -committee came back with proof that the resignation was voluntary, and -finally, on November 28, the little company of democrats were sworn in to -a very ungracious and unwilling Assembly, and Danton had won. - -My readers must excuse so detailed an account of an event which is empty -of picturesque detail and which is so small a part of that fertile -winter. From the point of view of general history it is the first -appearance of the _Mandat Imperatif_ in action; and from the point of -view of Danton’s rôle in the Revolution it is of the utmost importance, -though it is so insignificant a catalogue of quarrels. It was Danton’s -first victory, and it was decisive. It put a wedge, as it were, into -the gate that he was forcing open by persistent effort; and though his -final position in the administration of Paris is won after many further -failures, it is a direct consequence of this success in 1789. At the same -time it showed that a young, loud-voiced lawyer of the middle class could -have that one necessary quality of skill lying under the coarse exterior; -he could play the game with the subtlety of appreciation which was so -necessary in the terrible year of invasion, the keen aptitude of the mind -which the visionaries were too unpractised, the demagogues too brutal to -attain. That aptitude had appeared in Danton’s pleading, and was to make -him during the war a man necessary to France. - -It was a month or six weeks after these events, on some date in January -which we can only fix by indirect evidence, that Danton was himself -elected to represent the district. The restless society had caused a -further resignation, and five new members came to the Hotel de Ville.[63] -He came unimportant, effaced, known merely as a demagogue, into that -municipal assembly which contained the most dignified, the most learned, -and the most representative of the noblesse and higher bourgeoisie, to -sit under the frowns and endure the silence, and at first the contempt, -of Condorcet, of D’Espagnac, of the academicians Laharpe and Suard, the -astronomer De Cassini, Lavoisier, De Moreton-Chabrillant captain of the -guard, Bailly and Lafayette themselves. And in the very first hours of -his presence, before he had taken the oath, an incident occurred which -clinched, as it were, the disfavour in which he was regarded, and which -for a year put him in the background of a council which he was destined -ultimately to master. I refer to what is known as the incident of Marat. - -Marat was more of a gentleman than Danton; it is also fair to say that -he was nearly mad. No two men could have been more different than the -learned, irritable, visionary physician and the young, healthy country -lawyer who was for a moment his champion. The one has met continually the -ruling class, and has suffered from its insolence and privilege; the -other has known professional friends indeed of the first rank, but has -passed his life with the trading middle class, and has entered perhaps -during all his career in Paris not one salon, nor met perhaps one of the -brilliant women of his time. - -Marat presented from the outset the first problem to be faced by a people -who are testing liberty. He was a journalist and pamphleteer of unbridled -license, one of those who cannot find in themselves that control which, -when it is absent in public writers, can only be supplanted by the -cumbersome, dangerous, and necessary machinery of the Censor. Not for -money, of course, nor for any unworthy motive, but for the excellent end -of attaining freedom, this morbid mind poured out the wildest, the most -sensational, and the most dangerous appeals. - -Now the courts were in process of transition; rapidly as the reform had -marched since the summer, much of the old judicial procedure necessarily -remained, and among the rest a body known as the Châtelet, whose removal -was already planned, but which had to be maintained until the new system -could be put in working order. It was very typical of the old regime. -A body of privileged lawyers, many of them young and ignorant, holding -their places by inheritance or purchase, and charged with what we may -call the police of the capital. They had formerly possessed (and it had -not yet been abolished in detail) the power of arbitrary arrest. They -drew their name from the heavy fortress which had once defended the Pont -au Change when Paris was confined to the island of the Cité; some of -its walls dated at latest from the Norman siege of the tenth century, -and beneath it were cellars which had for centuries been the prisons of -those arrested in Paris by the city guard. It stood gloomy and strong -on the site of the modern place that bears its name, dominating the -close streets of the Boucherie, and possessing in its associations and -its waning power all the qualities that had made the Bastille odious to -the people. It may be imagined how the jurisdiction which it contained -was bound to attract the chief efforts of the reformers; it could not, -however, cease to exercise its functions until there was some more -liberal institution to supply its place, and it came of necessity into -violent collision with that spirit which was determined to break down by -force what the resolutions of the Assembly had abolished in theory, but -had not yet supplanted in fact. - -The principal object of Marat’s tirades was the moderate town council, -and especially Bailly. Moreover, the worthy astronomer was an admirable -butt. He assumed a livery, and put a fine coat-of-arms on his carriage, -and, while he weakly opposed the rising democracy of Paris, he was -very strong in the matter of pomposity. Marat was called to the bar of -the Commune to answer for these attacks upon the mayor on the 28th of -September. A warrant for his arrest was made out by the Châtelet on the -6th of October, but the day was too critical for an action of police -against an individual. On the 8th another warrant was sent out, and Marat -fled to a hiding-place up on Montmartre, from which, like a mad prophet -on a hill-top, he pamphleteered the city at his feet. His quarrels, -therefore (though very different in kind) were contemporaneous with the -important struggle between the Cordeliers and the Municipality which are -detailed above. The two attacks began to merge in December. - -Marat, on the 12th of that month, was hunted out of his retreat, and -brought before a lower court, but so confused were the powers of the -Châtelet in this period of its reform and extinction that the prosecution -was dropped. Emboldened by this failure on the part of his opponents, -he came to live and print his sheet openly in the Rue des Fossés St. -Germains—that is, in the midst of the district of the Cordeliers. What -followed is well known. At a moment when the struggle between the -district and the Hotel de Ville is at its height, just after the scene in -which Danton’s deputation had protested against the mayor’s commission -to the militia officers, while the insulting irony of the term “my lord” -was still ringing in Bailly’s ears, and when Danton himself had been -actually elected for the district, and was present in the Municipality -on the point of taking the oath—when all these causes of quarrel were, -so to speak, met in one date, the Moderates determined to strike. Marat -was pouring out his impossible diatribes from the territory of the -rebellious district, and no opportunity could be more favourable. The -Châtelet issued once more the warrant for his arrest, and this time it -was supported by Lafayette, who promised to lend four thousand of the -National Guard. - -Now note the importance of what follows. Neither side in the struggle of -the autumn had definitely won. The National Assembly had temporised, the -advantage of the Cordeliers in the matter of the disputed elections had -been achieved by a trick, and in the dead-lock between two principles, -the central power of the Municipality and the local autonomy of the -district, neither of the two theories was based upon tradition, neither -even (in the confusion of rapid reforms) could justify itself by a -definite pronouncement of the law. On the one side was the theory of -a highly restricted suffrage, government by a class socially refined -and lying with the nobility rather than with the people; this side was -determined to form an army to support their politics, and it was they -who, when they did act at last, achieved—but much too late—the sharp and -sanguinary reaction of July 1791. On the other side was the desire for -a wide, later for a universal, suffrage; a determination to emphasise -in the development of the Revolutionary theory, equality and the -general will, rather than order and the practical working of new laws; -a political attitude which was to lead the Revolution into the intense -idealism of 1792, and to end by declaring the Republic. And all this -was represented in the demand which, of its nature, is the expression -of extreme democracy—I mean the demand for local autonomy, the idea -that an act of government is most just when it emanates not even from -representatives, but from the lips of the governed themselves. - -Such were the two forces opposed to one another in the affair of -Marat—forces which, if not in all France, were in Paris at least the two -great camps of the Revolution. Already the district had declared its -intention to protect the liberty of the press within its boundaries,[64] -and had been wise enough to specially condemn Marat’s violence; already -had it named a committee of five to see that no arbitrary arrest should -take place in its territory,[65] when Lafayette sent his militia, cavalry -and infantry, on the 22nd of January to help the arrest of Marat. Not -content with the 3000 men thus employed, he clinched the matter with -cannon, placing a couple of pieces at the end of the Rue des Fossés St. -Germains.[66] He was determined to settle things by force, and beat the -extremists with their own weapons. His effort did not find force opposed -to it, as he had hoped; it broke itself in the most unexpected manner -upon the legal ability of Danton. - -The district might have raised, all told, 1500 men, and it possessed two -pieces of artillery; but Danton was far too wise to use them in such -a cause as that of defending Marat. A street fight, and one in which -the Cordeliers would have been infallibly beaten, would have ruined -the future chances of their politics. He armed no one, and did not add -a single man to the small guard which each district kept permanently -drilled, but he assigned them as their guard-room for the week the -ground-floor of Marat’s house. Then he went there himself with his four -companions on the newly elected committee, and awaited developments. - -The great body of the National Guard were massed in their blue and white -at the end of the street, their two pieces sweeping it, and there was -opposed to them nothing but a small crowd and few arguments. Through -their ranks, and accompanied by a small detachment, came the two officers -or policemen of the Châtelet.[67] They presented their writ, and -Plainville, the commander of the little detachment that accompanied them, -asked to be allowed to place sentries at the door. The commissioners -gave them leave with the greatest pleasure in the world, but when the -officers presented their warrant, the opportunity which Danton had been -waiting for with some anxiety presented itself. With a slovenliness that -was part and parcel of the old regime, the Châtelet had not made out a -new warrant, but had issued the old one which had done duty on the 8th of -October. - -Now, since that date the Assembly had passed several important changes in -the criminal law, notably one in the same month October which declared -that “no warrant for arrest can be issued against a householder save in -case of those charges which, if proved, would lead to imprisonment.”[68] -A very obvious principle; but in France of the old regime to seize a man, -hold him, and even to let him go without trial, merely for some purpose -of the police, was permitted, and the Châtelet may have acted upon this -tradition. Add to this the fact that the Assembly had created elective -councils in each district to watch the interest of every inhabitant -arrested in criminal cases,[69] and it is easily apparent that the -Châtelet had committed a great blunder, the value of which a man trained -in the courts and quick to seize an error in procedure immediately -recognised. - -Danton affirmed that the writ was illegal, offered to prove it, and -led the officers of the Châtelet to the hall of the district. There he -had the new procedure read to them, compared it with the date of their -warrant, and so confused the minds of those simple men that they signed -a _procès-verbal_ which declared that, after hearing such reasons, they -doubted how they should act. They came back escorted by Fabre d’Eglantine -through an angry crowd, and were received by the officers of the National -Guard with some heat. They stood firm, however, and refused to pursue the -arrest until they could consult with those who sent them, and finally the -difficulty was removed by Danton’s promising to appeal to the National -Assembly and to abide by its decision. The terms were accepted, the -sentries left Marat’s door, and the troops withdrew. - -All this debate and turmoil had taken up the morning and the -luncheon-hour, the Rue des Fossés St. Germains was evacuated in the early -afternoon, and by four o’clock of that day, 22nd of January 1790, Danton -and his companions were pleading their cause at the bar of the House. -It was the old policy of resorting to the National Assembly as the last -place of appeal, and of using this principal result of the Revolutionary -movement as a weapon against the Parisian Moderates. The Assembly found -itself in the old dilemma, and adopted the old compromise. By its theory -it was democratic; all its phrases and many of its decrees were based -on the “Contrat Social,” but by its personnel and its connections it -was naturally allied to the high professional class, to the Baillys and -the Lafayettes. It instructed Target (the President of the fortnight) -to write to the district; he condemned the attitude of the Cordeliers, -but Parliament “relied upon their patriotism to execute the will of the -Assembly.” The district, true to its policy, at once submitted. They -sent Legendre and Testulat to tell the commander of the forces (who had -re-entered the Rue des Fossés) that they had no longer the right to -prevent the arrest; whereupon he sent in the police and awaited Marat -in the street below. The house was empty, and Marat was on his way to -England, a country with which he was not unfamiliar, and the vices of -whose constitution had already furnished a theme for his too facile pen. - -Such are the details of the story of the famous Friday in the district -of the Cordeliers, events which put Danton’s name into some prominence, -but which also showed him to the most educated of his time, and therefore -to posterity, in something of a false light. He appears as the friend of -Marat, a man for whom he felt no sympathy, to whom he was immeasurably -superior, and whom he had supported only because Marat’s quarrel was a -tactical opportunity against the Moderates. To have been from the outset -admitted by the cultured would have been difficult to him—it would have -needed tact, self-effacement, and silence. For he showed by nature -just those rough gestures and loud, ill-chosen phrases which should be -the sign of a foolish and dangerous man; of what underlay it, of his -learning, his patriotism, and his common-sense he was to give plenty of -proof; but so violent were the prejudices he had raised that only great -length of time has effaced the false impression of his first appearance -on the scene of politics. _We_ can see the statesman clearly, but his -contemporaries never quite pierced the medium that had gathered round -him; here and there a just and noble man, as was Condorcet, would admit -his own misconception, but to the bulk of the gentlemen in power he was -and remained the demagogue. - -Two years of careful action fail to clear him, because, being already one -of those whose superficial qualities repel the close attention necessary -to a just opinion, he had also the misfortune to enter the arena from -the wrong door. Those who were most with him adored him, the great bulk -of his district-voters signed a fervent declaration in his favour, and -later his immediate friends are willing to die with him. But the class -with which at heart he had most in common held aloof; he had succeeded -twice in a pitched battle with them; they apologise for his acquaintance, -vilify him in their letters, and if his name has emerged from all this -error, if he has been given his statue in a time of social order and -reconstruction, it is because this man, who never wrote, who left only -a confused legend of his personality, saved his country when it was at -war with the whole world, and such actions compel history to inquiry and -restitution. - -On the 23rd, the day after the trouble, he was sworn in to the reluctant -Commune, and there follow two long years[70] of patient attempt to gain -the place for which he feels himself fitted, but years (on the whole) -of disappointment, and in which his real position in Paris (I mean the -prominence he held in the thoughts of men) contrasts curiously with the -little part he played. - - * * * * * - -1790 contains so great a portion of the Revolution, and sows the seed -of so much future division and civil war, that it seems ridiculous to -confine oneself to the description of the restricted action of one man -who had not yet even attained power. It will be necessary, however, to -make a survey of this restricted action in order that we may comprehend -the greater rôle of Danton in the two years that follow. - -Danton came, then, with Legendre and the three others into a city Council -very much opposed to him and to the district whose spirit he had formed. -He was not often heard, and there is no doubt that he deliberately tried -to purchase by silence the more just and equable judgment of such men as -he respected, but who knew him only by unfavourable report. For the bulk -of the Assembly he cannot but have felt contempt; they had no instinct -of the revolutionary tide; even when they were attempting to check the -movement that Danton represented, they were inefficient and unworthy -opponents, from whom his eye must have wandered inwards to the great -battles that were preparing. - -In the eight months during which he was a member of the Provisional -Commune, that is, from January to September 1790, his name appears in -the debates but a dozen times.[71] More than half of these are mention -of committees upon which his common-sense and legal training were of -service; in one only, that of February 4, does he speak on a motion, and -that is in support of Barré to admit the public when the oath was taken: -one other (that on the 19th of March concerning the formation of a “grand -jury”) would be interesting were it not that the whole gist of the debate -was but a repetition of the much more significant discussion at the -Cordeliers. Finally, there is one little notice which is half-pathetic -and half-grotesque: he is one of the committee of twenty-four charged -with the duty of “presenting their humble thanks, with the mayor at their -head,” to the King for giving the municipality a marble bust of himself. -But every entry is petty and unimportant: Danton at the Provisional -Municipality of 1790 is deliberately silent—he can do nothing. - -If we turn, however, to a field in which he was more at home, we find -him during that year more than ever the leader of the Cordeliers, which -itself becomes more than ever the leader of Paris. - -There are two important features in the part he plays at the assemblies -of the district during the spring and summer in which he was a silent -member of the Commune. First, the affair of his arrest; secondly, his -campaign against what may be called “the municipal reaction.” - -As to the first, it is a very minor point in the general history of the -Revolution, but it is of considerable influence upon the career of Danton -himself. When the affair of Marat was (or should have been) forgotten, -the Châtelet, with that negligence which we have seen them display in the -business of the warrant for Marat’s arrest, saw fit to launch another -warrant, this time for the arrest of Danton himself. Once more that -unpopular and moribund tribunal put itself on the wrong side of the law, -and once more it chose the most inopportune moment for its action. It was -on the 17th of March,[72] nearly two months after the affair—two months -during which Danton had been hard at work effacing its effects upon his -reputation—that the warrant was issued, and the motive of arrest given in -the parchment was of the least justifiable kind. In the district meeting -of the day, when the police officers had been taken to the hall of the -Cordeliers, and had had the changes in the law read out to them, Danton -had made use of a violent phrase: its actual words were not known; -some said that he had threatened to “call out the Faubourg St. Antoine, -and make the jaws of the guard grow white.” Other witnesses refused to -attribute those words to him, but accused him of saying, “If every one -thought as I do, we should have twenty thousand men at our back;” his -friends admitted that some angry and injudicious speech, such as he was -often guilty of, had escaped him, but they affirmed that he had added, -“God forbid that such a thing should happen; the cause is too good to be -so jeopardised.” - -Whatever he said (and probably he himself could not accurately have -remembered), the place and the time were privileged. It was a test -case, but the logic of such a privilege was evident. Here you have -deliberative assemblies to which are intrusted ultimately the formation -of a government for Paris: what is said in such a constituent meeting, -however ill-advised, must in the nature of things be allowed to pass; -if not, you limit the discussion of the primary, and if you limit that -discussion you vitiate the whole theory upon which the new constitution -was being framed. It must be carefully remembered that we are not dealing -with deliberative bodies long established, possessed of the central -power, and holding privilege by tradition and by their importance in -the State; we are dealing with the elementary deliberative assemblies -in a period which, rightly or wrongly, was transforming the whole State -upon one perfectly definite political theory—namely, that these primary -assemblies were the only root and just source of power. When, therefore, -Parisian opinion rose violently in favour of the president of a district -so attacked, when three hundred voters out of five signed a petition in -Danton’s favour, when he was re-elected president of the district twelve -days after the issue of the warrant, it was because the whole body of the -electors felt a great and justifiable fear of what was left of the old -regime. The Châtelet had acted so, not from a careful appreciation of -public danger—to fend off which temporary powers had been given it—but -because it was blind with old age; because it dated from a time and was -composed of a set of men who hated all deliberative assemblies, and it -was justly thought that if such actions were justified, the whole system -of revolutionary Paris was in danger. - -As though in proof of the false view that the Châtelet took of their -man, on the 19th of March, two days after the warrant was issued, -Danton was urging the replacement of the Châtelet by a Grand Jury; he -had an admiration and a knowledge of the old English system, and it was -against a man attempting so wise a reform that the last relic of the old -jurisprudence was making an attack. - -An appeal was lodged with the National Assembly, and Anthoine read a -long report to the Assembly upon May 18. This report was strongly in -favour of Danton. It was drawn up by a special committee—not partisan in -any way—and after examining all the evidence it came to this conclusion -against the Châtelet. Nevertheless the House, a great body of nearly -a thousand men, to most of whom the name of Danton meant only a loud -Radical voice, hesitated. To adopt the report might have irretrievably -weakened the Châtelet, and the National Assembly was extremely nervous -on the subject of order in Paris. It ended by an adjournment. The -report remained in Danton’s favour; he was not arrested, but the affair -was unfortunate for him, and threw him back later at a very important -occasion, when he might have entered into power peaceably himself and at -a peaceable time. - -But while this business was drawing to its close, during the very months -of April and May which saw his partial vindication, another and a far -more momentous business was occupying the Cordeliers—a matter in which -they directed all their energy towards a legal solution, but in which, -unfortunately for the city, they failed. - -Ever since the days of October—earlier if you will—there had been arising -a strong sentiment, to which I have alluded more than once, and which, -for lack of a better name, may be called the Moderate reaction in Paris. -It is difficult to characterise this complex body of thought in one -adjective, and I cannot lengthen a chapter already too prolonged by a -detailed examination of its origin and development. Suffice it to say -that from the higher bourgeoisie (generally speaking), from those who -were in theory almost Republican, but whose lives were passed in the -artificial surroundings of wealth, and finally from the important group -of the financiers, who of all men most desired practical reform, and -who of all men most hated ideals; from these three, supported by many a -small shopkeeper or bureaucrat, came a demand, growing in vigour, for a -conservative municipal establishment—one that should be limited in its -basis, almost aristocratic in quality, and concerned very much with the -maintenance of law and order and very little with the idea of municipal -self-government. - -It is a character to be noted in the French people, this timidity of the -small proprietor and his reliance upon constituted authority. It is a -matter rarely observed, and yet explaining all Parisian history, that -this sentiment does not mark off a particular body of men, but, curiously -enough, is found in the mind of nearly every Frenchman, existing side by -side with another set of feelings which, on occasion, can make them the -most arrant idealists in the world. - -For the moment this intense desire for order was uppermost in the minds -of those few who were permitted to vote. In the Cordeliers it was the -other character of the Parisian that was emphasised and developed. They -were determined on democracy, like everybody else; but, unlike the rest, -they were not afraid of the dangerous road. They were inspired and led by -a man whose one great fault was a passionate contempt of danger. On this -account, though they are taxpayers and bourgeois, lawyers, physicians, -men of letters and the like, they do all they can to prevent the new -municipal system from coming into play, but they fail. - -Now, consider the Assembly. That great body was justly afraid of Paris; -indeed, the man who was head and shoulders above them all—Mirabeau—was -for leaving Paris altogether. The Assembly, again, had the whole task of -re-making France in its hands, and it could not but will that Paris, in -the midst of which it sat, should be muzzled. Through all the debates of -the Provisional Commune it could easily be seen that Bailly and Lafayette -were winning, and that the Parliament would be even more Moderate than -they. Three points were the centres of the battle: first, the restricted -suffrage which was to be established;[73] secondly, the power which -was to be exercised over the new Commune by the authorities of the -Department; thirdly, the suppression of those sixty democratic clubs, the -districts, and their replacement by forty-eight sections, so framed as -specially to break up the ties of neighbourhood and association, which -the first of the Revolution had developed. It was aimed especially at the -Cordeliers. - -Against the first point the Cordeliers had little to say. Oddly enough, -the idea of universal suffrage, which is so intimate a part of our ideas -on the Revolution, was hardly thought of in early 1790. Against the -second they debated, but did not decree; it was upon the third that they -took most vigorous action. The law which authorised the new municipal -scheme was passed on May the 27th, and, faithful to their policy, the -Cordeliers did not attempt to quarrel with the National Assembly, but -they fought bitterly against the application of the law by Bailly and his -party. The law was signed by the King on June the 27th, and on the same -day the mayor placarded the walls, ordering an immediate installation -of the new system. The 27th was a Saturday. Within a week the new -sections were to be organised, and on the Monday, July 5, the voting was -to begin. The very next day, the 28th, the Cordeliers protested in a -vigorous decree, in which they called on the fifty-nine other districts -to petition the National Assembly to make a special exception of the -town of Paris, to consider the great federation of July 14, which should -be allowed to pass before the elections, and finally to give the city -time to discuss so important a change. All through the week, on the -1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July, they published vigorous appeals. They were -partially successful, but in their main object—the reconstruction of the -aristocratic scheme and the arousing of public spirit against it—they -entirely failed. Bailly is elected mayor on August 2 by an enormous -majority—practically 90 per cent. The old districts disappear, and, like -every other, the famous Cordeliers are merged in the larger section of -the Théâtre Français. It may not sit in permanence; it may not (save on a -special demand of fifty citizens) meet at all; it is merely an electoral -unit, and in future some 14,000 men out of a city of nearly a million are -to govern all. The local club, directing its armed force and appealing to -its fellows, is abolished. Danton then has failed. - -But, as we shall see later, the exception became the rule. No mechanical -device could check the Revolution. The demand for permanent sections is -continuous and successful. From these divisions, intended to be mere -marks upon a map, come the cannon of the 10th of August, and it is the -section of the Théâtre Français, wherein the traditions and the very -name of the Cordeliers were to have been forgotten, that first in Europe -declared and exercised the right of the whole people to govern. - -If I may repeat a common-place that I have used continually in this book, -the tide of the Revolution in Paris was dammed up with a high barrier; -its rise could not be checked, and it was certain to escape at last with -the force and destructive energy of a flood. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY - - -I have taken as a turning-point in the career of Danton the municipal -change which marks the summer of 1790, concluding with that event the -first chapter of his political action, and making it the beginning of a -new phase. Let me explain the reasons that have led me to make such a -division at a moment that is marked by no striking passage of arms, of -policy, or of debate. - -In the first place, a recital of Danton’s life must of necessity follow -the fortunes of the capital. The spirit of the people whose tribune he -was (their growing enthusiasms and later their angers)—that spirit is the -chief thing to guide us in the interpretation of his politics, but the -mechanical transformations of the city government form the framework, as -it were, upon which the stuff of Parisian feeling is woven. The detail -is dry and often neglected; the mere passing of a particular law giving -Paris a particular constitution, a system not unexpected, and apparently -well suited to the first year of the Revolution, may seem an event of -but little moment in the development of the reform; but certain aspects -of the period lend that detail a very considerable importance. In the -rapid transformation which was remoulding French society, the law, -however new, possessed a strength which, at this hour, we can appreciate -only with difficulty. In a settled and traditional society custom is -of such overwhelming weight that a law can act only in accordance with -it; a sudden change in the machinery of government would break down of -itself—nay, in such a society laws can hardly be passed save those that -the development of tradition demands. But in a time of revolution this -postulate of social history fails. When a whole people starts out to -make fresh conditions for itself, every decree becomes an origin; the -forces that in more regular periods mould and control legislative action -are, in a time of feverish reconstruction, increased in power and give -an impetus to new institutions; the energy of society, which in years -of content and order controls by an unseen pressure, is used in years -of revolution to launch, openly and mechanically, the fabric that a new -theory has designed. Thus you may observe how in the framing of the -American constitution every point in a particular debate became of vast -moment to the United States; thus in our time the German Empire has found -its strength in a set of arbitrary decrees, all the creation of a decade; -thus in the Middle Ages the Hildebrandine reform framed in the life of -one man institutions which are vigorous after the lapse of eight hundred -years; and thus in the French Revolution a municipal organisation, new, -theoretic, and mechanical, was strong enough, not indeed to survive so -terrible a storm, but to give to the whole movement a permanent change of -direction. - -This, then, is the transitional character of the summer of 1790, as -regards the particular life of Danton and the particular city of Paris. -What the Cordeliers had fought so hard to obtain as a constitutional -reform had failed. The direct action of the districts upon the -municipality was apparently lost for ever, and the centre of the new -system was in future to be controlled in the expression of ideas and -paralysed in its action. What the Cordeliers had represented in spirit, -though they had not formulated it in decrees—government by the whole -people—was apparently equally lost. The law of December (that which -established the “active and passive citizens”) was working for Paris -as for all France; and though a suffrage which admitted two-thirds of -the male population to the polls could not be called restrictive, yet -the exception of men working for wages under their master’s roof, the -necessity of a year’s residence, and the qualification of tax-paying did -produce a very narrow oligarchy in a town like Paris: the artisans were -excluded, and thousands of those governed fell just beyond the limits -which defined the municipal voter. Danton may receive the provincial -delegates, may make his speeches at the feast in the Bois de Boulogne; -but once the organ of government has been closed to his ideas, the road -towards the democracy lies through illegality and revolt. - -Now there is another and a wider importance in this anniversary of the -fall of the Bastille. It is the point at which we can best halt and -survey the beginning of the heat which turned the Revolution from a -domestic reform of the French nation to a fire capable of changing the -nature of all our civilisation. I do not mean that you will find those -quarrels in the moment; in 1790 there is nothing of the spirit that -overturned the monarchy nor of the visions that inspired the Gironde; you -cannot even fairly say that there are general threats or mutterings of -war, although the Assembly saw fit to disclaim them: it is a year before -the fear of such dangers arises. But there is in this summer something -to be discovered, namely, an explanation of why two periods differing so -profoundly in character meet so suddenly and with such sharp contrast at -one point in the history of the movement; it is from the summer of 1790 -and onwards that the laws are passed, the divisions initiated, which -finally alienate the King, from that lead to his treason, from that rouse -Europe, and from the consequent invasion produce the Terror, the armies, -and the Empire. The mind needs a link between two such different things -as reform and violence, and because that link is not supplied in the -mere declaration of war or in the mere flight to Varennes, men commit the -error of reading the spirit of the Republic into the days of Mirabeau, -or even of seeing temperate politics in the apostolic frenzy of ’93. -Some, more ignorant or less gifted than the general reader, explain it -by postulating in the character of the French nation quaint aberrations -which may be proper to the individual, but which never have nor can exist -in any community of human beings. - -Let me recapitulate and define the problem which, as it seems to me, can -be solved by making a pivot of the anniversary of the States-General. - -There are, then, in the story of the Revolution these two phases, so -distinct that their recognition is the foundation of all just views -upon the period. In the first, the leaders of the nation are bent -upon practical reforms; the monarchy is a machine to hand for their -accomplishment; the sketch of a new France is drawn, the outlines even -begin to be filled by trained and masterly hands. Phrases will be found -abundantly in those thirty months, because phrases are the christening -of ideas, and no nation of Roman training could attempt any work without -clear definitions to guide it. But these phrases, though often abstract -in the extreme, are never violent, and the oratory itself of the National -Assembly is rarely found to pass the limits which separate the art of -persuasion from the mere practice of defiance. - -In the second phase, for which the name of the Convention often stands, -those subterranean fires which the crust of tradition and the stratified -rock of society had formerly repressed break out in irresistible -eruption. The creative work of the revolutionary idea realises itself in -a casting of molten metal rather than in a forging, and the mould it uses -is designed upon a conception of statuary rather than of architecture. -The majestic idol of the Republic, in whose worship the nation has since -discovered all its glories and all its misfortunes, is set up by those -artists of the ideal; but they forget, or perhaps ignore, the terrible -penalties that attach to superhuman attempts, the reactions of an -exclusive idealism. - -What made the second out of the first? What made a France which had -discussed Sieyès listen to St. Just or even to Hébert? The answer to this -question is to be discovered in noting the fatal seeds that were sown in -this summer of 1790, and which in two years bore the fruit of civil war -and invasion. - -In the first place, that summer creates, as we have seen, a discontented -Paris—a capital whose vast majority it refuses to train in the art of -self-government, and whose general voice it refuses to hear. - -In the second place, it is the moment when the discontent in the army -comes to a head. The open threat of military reaction on the side of -a number of the officers, their intense animosity against the decrees -abolishing titles, their growing disgust at the privileges accorded to -the private soldiers—all these come face to face with non-commissioned -officers and privates who are full of the new liberties. These lower -ranks contained the ambitious men whose ability, the honest and loyal -men whose earnestness, were to carry French arms to the successes of the -Revolutionary wars. - -In the third place, it is the consummation of the blunder that attempted -to create an established National Church in France. Before this last -misfortune a hundred other details of these months that were so many -mothers of discord become insignificant. Civil war first muttering in -the South, counter-revolution drilling in Savoy, the clerical petition -of Nîmes, the question of the Alsatian estates, the Parisian journals -postulating extreme democracy, the Jacobins appearing as an organised and -propagandist body, the prophetic cry of Lameth—all these things were -but incidents that would have been forgotten but for the major cause of -tumult, which is to be discovered in the civil constitution of the clergy. - -Of course, the kings would have attacked, but they were divided, and -had not even a common motive. Of course, also, freedom, in whatever -form it came, would have worked in the moribund body of Europe like a -drug, and till its effect was produced would have been thought a poison. -But against the hatred of every oppressor would have been opposed a -disciplined and a united people, sober by instinct, traditionally slow in -the formation of judgments, traditionally tenacious of an opinion when -once it had been acquired. It would have been sufficient glory for the -French people to have broken the insolence of the aggressors, to have had -upon their lists the names of Marceau and of Hoche. - -But with the false step that produced civil war, that made of the ardent -and liberal West a sudden opponent, that in its final effect raised Lyons -and alienated half the southern towns, that lost Toulon, that put the -extreme of fanaticism in the wisest and most loyal minds—such a generous -and easy war was doomed, and the Revolution was destined to a more tragic -and to a nobler history. God, who permitted this proud folly to proceed -from a pedantic aristocracy, foresaw things necessary to mankind. In -the despair of the philosophers there will arise on either side of a -great battle the enthusiasms which, from whencever they blow, are the -fresh winds of the soul. Here are coming the heroes and the epic songs -for which humanity was sick, and the scenes of one generation of men -shall give us in Europe our creeds for centuries. You shall hear the -“Chant du Départ” like a great hymn in the army of the Sambre et Meuse, -and the cheers of men going down on the _Vengeur_; the voice of a young -man calling the grenadiers at Lodi and Arcola; the noise of the guard -swinging up the frozen hill at Austerlitz. Already the forests below the -Pyrenees are full of the Spanish guerillas, and after how many hundred -years the love of the tribe has reappeared again above the conventions -that covered it. There are the three colours standing against the trees -in the North and the South; and the delicate womanly face of Nelson is -looking over the bulwarks of the _Victory_, with the slow white clouds -and the light wind of an October day above him, and before him the -enemy’s sails in the sunlight and the black rocks of the coast. - -It may be well, at the expense of some digression, to say why the laws -affecting the clergy should be treated as being of paramount historical -importance. They ruined the position of the King; they put before a very -large portion of the nation not one, but two ideals; and what regular -formation can grow round two dissimilar nuclei? Finally—a thing that we -can now see clearly, though then the wisest failed to grasp it—they went -against the grain of the nation. - -It is a common accusation that the Revolution committed the capital sin -of being unhistorical. Taine’s work is a long anathema pronounced against -men who dared to deny the dogmas of evolution before those dogmas were -formulated. Such a criticism is erroneous and vain; in the mouths of many -it is hypocritical. The great bulk of what the Revolution did was set -directly with the current of time. For example: The re-unison of Gaul -had been coming of itself for a thousand years—the Revolution achieved -it; the peasant was virtually master of his land—it made him so in law -and fact; Europe had been trained for centuries in the Roman law—it was -precisely the Roman law that triumphed in the great reform, and most of -its results, all of its phraseology, is drawn from the civil code. But -in this one feature of the constitution of the clergy it sinned against -the nature of France. Of necessity the Parliament was formed of educated -men, steeped in the philosophy of the time, and of necessity it worked -under the eyes of a great city population. In other words, the statesmen -who bungled in this matter and the artisans who formed their immediate -surroundings were drawn from the two classes which had most suffered from -the faults of the hierarchy in France. - -Mirabeau, for example, has passed his life in the rank where rich abbés -made excellent blasphemy; the artisan of Paris has passed his life -unprotected and unsolicited by the priests, whose chief duty is the -maintenance of human dignity in the poor. Add to this the Jansenist -legend of which Camus was so forcible a relic, and the Anglo-mania which -drew the best intellects into the worst experiments, and the curious -project is inevitable. - -In these first essays of European democracy there was, as all the world -knows, a passion for election. In vain had Rousseau pointed out the -fundamental fallacy of representation in any scheme of self-government. -The example of America was before them; the vicious temptation of the -obvious misled them; and until the hard lessons of the war had taught -them the truth, representation for its own sake, like a kind of game, -seems to have been an obsession of the upper class in France. They -admitted it into the organisation of the Church. - -Now let us look in its detail at this attempt to make of the Catholic -Church in the eighteenth century a mixture of the administration of -Constantine, of the presbyteries of first centuries, and of the “branch -of the civil service” which has suited so well a civilisation so -different from that of France. - -The great feature of this reform was the attempt to subject the whole -clerical organisation to the State. I do not mean, of course, the -establishment of dogmas by civil discussion, nor the interference with -internal discipline; but the hierarchy was to be elected, from the -parish priest to the bishop; the new dioceses were to correspond to the -new Departments, and, most important of all, their confirmation was not -to be demanded from the Pope, but “letters of communion” were to be sent -to the Head of the Church, giving him notice of the election. - -This scheme passed the House on July 12, 1790, two days before the great -feast of the federation. A time whose intellect was alien to the Church, -a class whose habits were un-Catholic, had attempted a reformation. Why -was the attempt a blunder? Simply because it was unnecessary. There were -certain ideas upon which the reconstruction of France was proceeding; -they have been constantly alluded to in this book; they are what the -French call “the principles of ’89.” Did they necessarily affect the -Church? Yes; but logically carried out they would have affected the -Church in a purely negative way. It was an obvious part of the new era -to deny the _imperium in imperio_. The Revolution would have stultified -itself had it left untouched the disabilities of Protestants and of Jews, -had it continued to support the internal discipline of the Church by the -civil power. It was logical when it said to the religious orders: “You -are private societies; we will not compel your members to remain, neither -will we compel them to leave their convents.” (In the decree of February -13, 1790.) It would have been logical had it said to the Church: “It -may be that you are the life of society; it may be that your effect is -evil; we leave you free to prove your quality, for freedom of action and -competition is our cardinal principle.” But instead of leaving the Church -free they amused themselves by building up a fantastic and mechanical -structure, and then found that they were compelling religion to enter a -prison. Nothing could be conceived more useless or more dangerous. - -On the other hand, if this scheme as a whole was futile, there were some -details that were necessary results of what the clergy themselves had -done, and some which, if not strictly necessary, have at least survived -the Revolution, and are vigorous institutions to-day. It might have been -possible for Rome to seize on these as a basis of compromise, and it is -conceivable, though hardly probable, that the final scheme might have -left the Church a neutral in the coming wars. But if the councils of the -Holy See were ill-advised, the Parliament was still less judicious; its -extreme sensitiveness to interference from abroad was coupled with the -extreme pedantry of a Lanjuinais, and the scheme in its entirety was -forced upon Louis. He, almost the only pious man in a court which had so -neglected religion as to hate the people, wrote in despair to the Pope; -but before the answer came he had signed the law, and in that moment -signed the warrant for his own death and that of thousands of other loyal -and patriotic men. - -While these future divisions were preparing, during the rest of the year -1790 Danton’s position becomes more marked. We find a little less about -him in the official records, for the simple reason that he has ceased to -be a member of an official body, or rather (since the first Commune was -not actually dissolved till September) he remains the less noticeable -from the fact that the policy which he represented has been defeated; -but his personality is making more impression upon Paris and upon his -enemies. We shall find him using for the first time moderation, and for -the first time meeting with systematic calumny. He acquires, though he -is not yet of any especial prominence, the mark of future success, for -he is beginning to be singled out as a special object of attack; and -throughout the summer and autumn he practises more and more that habit of -steering his course which up to the day of his death so marks him from -the extremists. - -The failure of his policy, the check which had been given to the -Cordeliers, and the uselessness of their protests on the 1st, 2nd, and -3rd of July, had a marked effect upon the position of Danton even in his -own district. He had been president when they were issued, and his friend -D’Eglantine had been secretary. One may say that the policy of resistance -was Danton’s, and that but for his leadership it would have been unheard. -Hence, when it has notoriously failed, that great mass of men who (when -there is no party system) follow the event, lost their faith in him. - -Bailly is not only elected by an enormous majority in all Paris[74] on -the 2nd of August, but even Danton’s own district, now become the Section -of the Théâtre Français, abandoned his policy for the moment. In a poll -of 580, 478 votes were given for Bailly. - -In this moment of reverse he might with great ease have thrown himself -upon all the forces that were for the moment irregular. The Federation -of July had brought to Paris a crowd of deputies from the Departments, -and to these provincials the good-humour and the comradeship of this -Champenois had something attractive about it. In a Paris which bewildered -them they found in him something that they could understand. In a meeting -held by a section of them in the Bois de Boulogne it is Danton who is -the leading figure. When the deputies of Marseilles ask for Chenier’s -“Charles IX.,” it is Danton who gets it played for them at the Théâtre -Français in spite of the opposition of the Court; and again it is Danton -who is singled out during an _entr’acte_ for personal attack by the -loyalists, who had come to hiss the play.[75] - -The unrepresented still followed him, and he still inspired a vague fear -in the minds of men like Lafayette. Innocent of any violence, he stood -(to those who saw him from a great distance) for insurrection. He was -remembered as the defender of Marat, and Marat in turn annoyed him by -repeated mention and praise in his ridiculous journal. Note also that the -time was one in which the two camps were separating, though slowly, and -the rôle of a demagogue would have been as tempting to a foolish man on -the Radical, as the rôle of true knight was to so many foolish men on the -Conservative side. Each part was easy to play, and each was futile. - -Danton refused such a temptation. He, almost alone at that moment (with -the exception, in a much higher sphere, of Mirabeau), was capable of -being taught by defeat. He desired a solid foundation for action. Here -were certain existing things: the club of the Cordeliers, which had for a -while failed him; the Friends of the Constitution, which were a growing -power; the limited suffrage of Paris, which he regretted, but which was -the only legal force he could appeal to; the new municipal constitution, -which he had bitterly opposed, but which was an accomplished fact. Now -it is to all these realities that he turns his mind. He will re-capture -his place in the Section, and make of the quarter of the Odéon a new -République des Cordeliers. He will re-establish his position with -Paris. He will attempt to enter, and perhaps later to control, this new -municipality. It was for such an attitude that St. Just reproached him so -bitterly in the act of accusation of April 1794, while at the moment he -was adopting that attitude he was the mark of the most violent diatribe -from the Conservatives. Nothing defines Danton at this moment so clearly -as the fact that he alone of the popular party knew how to be practical -and to make enemies. - -The month of August may be taken as the time when Danton had to be most -careful if he desired to preserve his place and to avoid a fall into -violence and unreason. It was the 2nd of that month (as we have said) -that saw Bailly’s election, the 5th that gave Danton a personal shock, -for on that date he received, for an office which he really coveted and -for which he was a candidate, but 193 votes out of over 3000 present. - -From that moment he devotes all his energy to reconstruction. The first -evidence of his new attitude appears with the early days of September. -Already the old meeting of the Cordeliers had been changed into the club, -and already his influence was gaining ground again in the debates and in -the local battalion of the National Guard, when the news of Nancy came to -Paris. - -A conflict between the National Guard and the people, an example of -that with which Lafayette continually menaced Paris—the conflict of the -armed bourgeoisie and the artisans, or rather of the militia used as a -professional army against the people—this had happened at last. It was -an occasion for raving. Marat raved loudly, and the royalists gave vent -to not a little complacent raving on their side. In the great question -whether the army was to be democratic or not, whether reaction was to -possess its old disciplined arm, it would seem that reaction had won, and -France had seen a little rehearsal of what in ten months was to produce -the 17th of July. - -In such conditions the attitude of the Cordeliers was of real importance. -During all Lafayette’s attempt to centralise the militia of Paris this -battalion had remained independent; its attitude during the days of -October, its defence of Marat in January, had proved this. The crisis -appeared to demand from this revolutionary body a strong protest against -the use of the militia as an army to be aimed against the people. Such a -protest might have been the cause of an outbreak in Paris. Under these -circumstances Danton—by what arguments we cannot tell (for the whole -affair is only known to us by a few lines of Desmoulins)—obtained from -his battalion a carefully-worded pronouncement. “For all the high opinion -we have of the National Guards who took part in the affair of Nancy, we -can express no other sentiment than regret for what has happened.”[76] It -was moderate to the degree of the common-place, but it saved Danton from -the abyss and from the street. - -There followed another check in which he showed once more his power of -self-control. The “Notables”—corresponding something to the aldermen of -our new municipal scheme in England—were to be elected for Paris a little -after the elections for the mayor and for the governor of the Commune. -Each Section was to elect three, and Danton had so far regained his -influence at home as to be elected for the Théâtre Français. - -Unfortunately the new constitution of Paris had been provided with -one of those checks whose main object it is to interfere with direct -representation. The choice of each Section was submitted to the censure -or the approval of all the others. It is by the judgment which they pass -that we can best judge the suspicion in which he was held by the great -bulk of his equals. A regular campaign was led against him. The affair of -Marat was dragged up, especially the warrant for Danton’s arrest which -the Châtelet had issued six months before. That very favourite device in -electioneering, the doubt as to real candidature, was used. The voter, -not over-well informed in a detail of law (especially at a time when -all law was being re-modelled), was told that the warrant made Danton’s -candidature illegal. They said he was sold to Orleans, because he had -haunted the Palais Royal and because he hated Lafayette. The character -of demagogue—the one thing he desired to avoid—was pinned to his coat, -and alone of all the Notables he was rejected by forty-three Sections -(five only voting for him) in the week between the 9th and the 16th of -September.[77] - -In these five were the Postes, Invalides, Luxembourg. It was not the -purely popular quarters that supported Danton, but rather the University -and the lawyers. - -He took his defeat as a signal for still greater reserve, letting his -name take perspective, and refusing by any act or phrase to obscure his -reputation with new issues. The tactics succeeded. When, in October, -a public orator was needed, they remembered him, and he presents the -deputation of the 10th of November. The circumstances were as follows:— - -The ministry which surrounded the King was frankly reactionary. I do not -mean that it was opposed to the constitution of the moment. Perhaps the -majority (and the less important) of its members would have been loath -to bring back anything approaching the old regime. But there were in the -Revolution not only the facts but the tendencies, and in a period when -every day brought its change, the tendencies were watched with an extreme -care. France may have thought, seeing the federation on the Champ de Mars -and the altar where Talleyrand had said mass, that the Revolution was at -an end and the new state of affairs established in peace, but those in -the capital knew better; and the men immediately surrounding the King, -who saw the necessary consequences of his signing the civic constitution, -and the growing breach between himself and the assembly—these men were on -the King’s side. The affair at Nancy, which had aroused so many passions, -was the thing which finally roused Parisian opinion; and at the very -moment when the King is secretly planning the flight to Montmédy—that -flight which six months later failed—Paris is for the first time claiming -to govern the councils of the kingdom. - -It was the Sections that began the movement, those Sections whose action -was to have been so restricted, and which, upon the contrary, were -becoming the permanent organs of expression in the capital. - -The Section Mauconseil on the 22nd of October sent in a petition for -the dismissal of the cabinet and appealed to the National Assembly. The -Section of the National Library followed suit three days later, and -sent its petition not only to the Assembly but to the King. It must -be remembered that the legend of a good king deceived by his advisers -held at the time. Indeed, it survived the flight to Varennes; it partly -survived the 10th of August, and only the research of recent times has -proved clearly the continual intrigue of which the King was the head. - -On the 27th Mauconseil came forward again with a petition to the -mayor, Bailly, to call the general council of the Commune and consider -the complaints. Fourteen other Sections backed this petition. Bailly -hesitated, and while he temporised, all the forty-eight Sections -named commissioners and sent them to an informal gathering at the -Archbishopric.[78] - -Danton was a member of this big committee and was made secretary. He drew -up an address; the mayor was twice summoned to call the general council -of the Commune. Hesitating and afraid, Bailly finally did so, and after -a violent debate the resolution passed. Bailly was sent by the town to -“present the Commune at the bar of the Assembly and demand the recall” of -the Ministers of Justice, War, and the Interior—De Cicé, La Tour du Pin, -and St. Priest. - -Danton was taken out of the informal body to which he had acted as -secretary, and asked to be the orator of the legal Commune. There -followed on the 10th of November a very curious scene. - -Bailly pitifully apologising with his eyes brought in the representative -body of Paris. It was present for the first time in the National -Parliament, and before three years were over Paris was to be the mistress -of the Parliament. At present they were out of place; their demand -frightened them. It needed Danton’s voice to reassure them and to bring -the opposing forces to a battle. - -His voice, big, rough, and deep, perhaps with a slight provincial accent, -helped to strengthen the false idea that the gentlemen of the Parliament -had formed. This Danton, of whom they heard so much, had appeared -suddenly out of his right place—for he had no official position—and the -Right was furious. - -Yet Danton’s harangue was moderate and sensible. There is, indeed, -one passage on the position of Paris in France which is interesting -because it is original, but the bulk of the speech is a string of plain -arguments. This passage is as follows:— - -“That Commune, composed of citizens who belong in a fashion to the -eighty-three Departments—(_The Right_, No! no!)—jealously desiring to -fulfil in the name of all good citizens the duties of a sentinel to the -constitution, is in haste to express a demand which is dear to all the -enemies of tyranny—a demand which would be heard from all the Sections -of the Empire, could they be united with the same promptitude as the -Sections of Paris.”[79] - -For the rest, he is continually insisting upon the right of the -Parliament to govern—the right, above all, of a representative body to -dismiss a ministry. He had in this, as in certain other matters, a very -English point of view, and certainly the arguments he used were able. But -he was interrupted continually, and we get, even in the dry account of -the _Moniteur_, a good picture of what the scene must have been like— - -“A dismissal which the Assembly has the right to demand.” - -The Abbé Maury: “Who ever said that?” [Murmurs and discussion followed. -The Abbé was called to order, when....] - -M. Cazales remarked: “It is our duty to listen, even if they talk -nonsense.” - -Danton began again with: “The Commune of Paris is better able to judge -the conduct of ministers than....” - -The Abbé Maury: “Why?” [He is again called to order.] - -And so it went on. But in a duel of this kind lungs are the weapons, and -Danton had the best lungs in the hall. He had also perhaps the soundest -brain of any; but the Abbé Maury and his friends had chosen more rapid -methods than those of arguments. The short address ended (it did not take -a quarter of an hour to read), and the deputation left the Assembly. This -last debated and refused the decree; yet the Commune had succeeded, for -in a few days the Archbishop of Bordeaux left the Ministry of Justice, -and La Tour du Pin, “who thought that parchment alone made nobility” (a -phrase of Danton’s which had upset the Right), left the Ministry of War. - -The deputation had petitioned on Wednesday, the 10th of November. Four -days later he was elected head of the militia battalion in which he had -served for a year.[80] There is some doubt as to whether he remained -long at this post. Some antagonists talk vaguely of his “leading his -battalion” in ’92, but never as eye-witnesses. On the other hand, there -is a letter in existence talking of Danton’s resignation; but it is -unsigned and undated. Only some one has written in pencil, “Gouvion, 22nd -November.”[81] - -At any rate, the interest of the little incident lies in the fact that it -meant a meeting between Danton and Lafayette, and, as Freron remarks in -his journal, “Cela serait curieux.”[82] Perhaps they did not meet. - -The campaign continually directed against Danton was as active in -this matter as in all others. It gives one, for instance, an insight -into the management and discipline of the guards to learn that -“Coutra, a corporal, went about asking for signatures against Danton’s -nomination.”[83] He had just risen above the successes of his enemies. -November had put him on a sure footing again, and in January he reached -the place he had had so long in view, the administration of Paris. - -It will be remembered that the voting was by two degrees. The electors -nominated an “electoral college,” who elected the Commune and its -officers. Already in October Danton had been put into the electoral -college by twenty-six members chosen by his Section, but not without -violent opposition. Finally, after eight ballots, on the 31st of -January 1791, he became a member of the administration of the town—the -twenty-second on a list of thirty-six elected. He failed, however, in his -attempt to be chosen “Procureur,” and through all the year 1791 he keeps -his place in the administration of Paris merely as a stepping-stone. He -does not speak much in the Council. He used his partial success only for -the purpose of attaining a definite position from which he could exercise -some measure of executive control; this position he finally attains (as -we shall see) in the following December, and it is from it that he is -able to direct the movement of 1792. - -The year 1791 does not form a unit in the story of the Revolution. It is -cut sharply in two by the flight of the King in June. Before that event -things went with a certain quietude. The tendency to reaction and the -tendency to extreme democracy are to be discovered, but there can be no -doubt that a kind of lassitude has taken the public mind. After all, the -benefits of the Revolution are there. The two years of discussion, the -useless acrimony of the preceding autumn, began to weary the voters—there -is a sentiment of joviality abroad. - -After the flight of the King all is changed. To a period of development -there succeeds a period of violent advance, and of retreat yet more -violent; there appears in France the first mention of the word republic, -and all the characters that hung round Lafayette come definitely into -conflict with the mass of the people. The action of the troops on the -Champ de Mars opens the first of those impassable gulfs between the -parties, and from that moment onward there arise the hatreds that are -only satisfied by the death of political opponents. - -In that first period, then, which the death of Mirabeau was to disturb, -the 18th of April to endanger, and the flight of the King to close, -Danton’s rôle, like that of all the democrats, is effaced. Why should it -not be? The violent discussions that followed the affair of Nancy led, -as it were, to a double satisfaction: the loyal party saw that after all -the Radicals were not destroying the State; the Radicals, on the other -hand, had learnt that the loyalists could do nothing distinctly injurious -to the nation without being discovered. At least, they thought they had -learnt this truth. They did not know how for months Mirabeau had been in -the pay of the Court, and how the executive power had concerned itself -with the King rather than with the nation. - -A sign of this appeasement in the violence of the time (a movement, -by the way, which was exactly what Danton desired) is his letter to -La Rochefoucald, the president of the Department, when the successful -election, which I have described above, was known. This letter, one of -the very few which Danton has left, is a singularly able composition. He -alludes to the mistrust which had been felt when his name was mentioned; -he does not deny the insurrectionary character of the quarter of Paris -which he inspired. But he replies: “I will let my actions, now that I -hold public office, prove my attitude, and if I am in a position of -responsibility, it will have a special value in showing that I was right -to continually claim the public control of administrative functions.” -The whole of the long letter[84] is very well put; it is Danton himself -that speaks, and it is hard to doubt that at this moment he also was one -of those who thought they were touching the end of the reform, that goal -which always fled from the men who most sincerely sought it. - -He did not, however, come often to the Council—to less than a quarter of -its sittings, at the most; moreover, the men who composed it still looked -upon him with suspicion; and when, on the 4th of May, the committees were -drawn up, his name was omitted. He asked on the next day to be inscribed -on the committee that contained Sieyès, and his request was granted. - -The activity of Danton during these few months was not even shown at -the Cordeliers; though that club occasionally heard him, it was at the -Jacobins that he principally spoke. - -This famous club, on which the root of the Revolution so largely depends, -was at this period by no means the extreme and Robespierrian thing -with which we usually associate the name. It hardly even called itself -“the Jacobins” yet, but clung rather to its original name of “Friends -of the Constitution.” Its origin dated from the little gathering of -Breton deputies who were in the habit, while the Assembly was still at -Versailles, of meeting together to discuss a common plan of action. When -the Assembly came to Paris, this society, in which by that time a very -large number of deputies had enrolled themselves, took up their place in -the hall of the Dominicans or “Jacobins,” just off the Rue St. Honoré. -(Its site is just to the east of the square of Vendôme to-day.) It was a -union of all those who desired reform, and in the first part of the year -1790 it had been remarkable for giving a common ground where the moderate -and extremist, all who desired reform, could meet. The Duc de Broglie -figures among its presidents. It was the Royalists, the extreme Court -party, that dubbed these “Friends of the Constitution” “Jacobins,” and -it was not till somewhat later that they themselves adopted and gloried -in the nickname. It was composed not only of deputies, but of all the -best-born and best-bred of the Parisian reformers, drawn almost entirely -from the noble or professional classes, and holding dignified sessions, -to which the public were not admitted. - -Almost at the same moment, namely, towards the autumn and winter of -1790, two features appeared in it. First, the Moderates begin to leave -it, and the schism which finally produced the “Feuillants” is formed; -secondly, there come in from all over France demands from the local -popular societies to be affiliated to the great club in Paris. These -demands were granted. There arises a kind of “Jacobin order,” which -penetrates even to the little country towns, everywhere preaches the -same doctrine, everywhere makes it its business to keep a watch against -reaction. These local clubs depended with a kind of superstition upon -the decrees of what, without too violent a metaphor, we may call the -“Mother House” in Paris; it was this organisation that aroused the apathy -of provincial France and trained the new voters in political discussion, -and it was this also that was later captured by Robespierre, who, like a -kind of high priest, directed a disciplined body wherever the affiliated -societies existed. - -Danton first joined the society at the very moment when this double -change was in progress, in September 1790. His energies, which were -employed in the club to arrange the difficulty with the Moderates (if -that were possible), were also used (to quote a well-known phrase) -in “letting France hear Paris.” The Cordeliers had been essentially -Parisian; steeped in that feeling, Danton spoke from the Rue St. Honoré -to the whole nation. - -It is with the end of March that he begins to be heard, in a speech -attacking Collot d’Herbois; for that unpleasant fellow was then a -Moderate. It is apropos of that speech that the “Sabbots Jacobites” give -us the satirical rhyme on Danton, which recalls his face when he spoke, -looking all the uglier for the energy which he put into his words:— - - “Monsieur Danton, - Quittez cet air farouche, - Monsieur Danton, - On vous prendrez pour un démon.”[85] - -On the 3rd of April it was known in Paris that Mirabeau was dead. He -had been killed with the overwork of attempting to save the King from -himself. A masterly intrigue, a double dealing which was hidden for a -generation, had exhausted him, and in the terrible strain of balancing -such opposite interests as those of France, which he adored, and Louis, -whom he served, his two years of struggle suddenly fell upon him and -crushed him. He smiled at the sun and called it God’s cousin, boasted -like a genius, gave a despairing phrase to the monarchy, demanded sleep, -and died. - -Danton had always, from a long way off, understood his brother in silk -and with the sword. On this day he passionately deplored the loss. Like -all Paris, the Jacobins forgot Mirabeau’s treason, and remembered his -services when the news of his sudden death fell upon them. From their -tribune Danton spoke in terms in which he almost alone foretold the -coming reaction, and he was right. The King, hardly restrained from -folly by the compromise of the great statesman, plunged into it when his -support was withdrawn. He had been half Mirabeau’s man, now he was all -Antoinette’s. - -It was the fatal question of religion that precipitated the crisis. Louis -could not honestly receive the Easter communion from a constitutional -priest. On the other hand, he might have received it quietly in his -household. He chose to make it a public ceremony, and to go in state -to St. Cloud for his Easter duties. It was upon April 18th, a day or -two more than a fortnight after Mirabeau’s death, that he would have -set out. As one might have expected, the streets filled at once. The -many battalions of the National Guard who were on the democratic side -helped the people to stop the carriage; in their eyes, as in that of the -populace, the King’s journey to St. Cloud was only part of the scheme to -leave Paris to raise an army against the Assembly.[86] - -On the other hand, those of the National Guard who obeyed Lafayette[87] -could not, by that very fact, move until Lafayette ordered them. Thus the -carriage was held for hours, until at last, in despair, the King went -back to the Tuilleries. - -Meanwhile, what had occurred at the Hotel de Ville? The testimony is -contradictory and the whole story confused, but the truth seems to -have been something of this kind. Lafayette certainly called on the -administration of the Department and asked for martial law. Bailly as -certainly was willing to grant it. Danton was called from his rank and -came to oppose it; but did he end the matter by his speech? Camille -Desmoulins[88] says so, and draws a fine picture of Danton carrying -the administration with him, as he carried the club or the street. But -Desmoulins is often inaccurate, and here his account is improbable. -Danton’s own note of the circumstance (which he thought worthy of being -pinned to his family papers) runs: “I was present at the Department when -MM. the commandant and the mayor demanded martial law.” Nothing more. - -Desmoulins makes another mistake when he attributes to Danton the letter -which was written to the King, and which was sent on the night of the -18th; it reproached him for his action, sharply criticised his rejection -of constitutional priests. It was not Danton, it was Talleyrand (a member -also of the Department) who wrote this letter. - -It is probable that Danton and Talleyrand knew each other. Talleyrand was -a good judge of men, and would have many strings to his bow—we know that -he depended upon Danton’s kindness at a critical moment in 1792—but the -style of the letter is not Danton’s, and the document as we find it in -Schmidt is definitely ascribed to Talleyrand. - -This is all we can gather as to his place in the popular uprising to -prevent the King’s leaving Paris. A placard of some violence issued from -the Cordeliers, saying that he had “forbidden Lafayette to fire on the -people;” but Danton disowned it in a meeting of the Department. - -This much alone is certain, that the 18th of April had finally put -Danton and Lafayette face to face, and that in the common knowledge of -Paris they would be the heads of opposing forces in the next crisis. But -their rôles turned out to be the very opposite of what men would have -predicted. It was Lafayette who shot and blustered, and had his brief -moment of power; it was Danton who made a flank movement and achieved a -final victory. For the next crisis was the flight of the King. - -It would be irrelevant to give the story of this flight in the life of -Danton. Our business is to understand Danton by following the exact -course of his actions during June and July, and by describing exactly the -nature of the movement in which his attitude took the form which we are -investigating. - -Two things command the attention when we study the France of 1791. France -was monarchic and France was afraid. History knows what was to follow; -the men of the time did not. There lay in their minds the centuries of -history that had been; their future was to them out of conception, and -as unreal as our future is to us. You may notice from the very first -moment of the true Revolution a passion for the King. For most he is -a father, but for all a necessary man. They took him back to Paris; -they forced him to declarations of loyalty, and then, with the folly of -desire, accepted as real an emotion which they had actually dictated. -Such was the movement of the 4th of February 1790; such the sentiment -of the Federation in July of that year. And the people understood his -reluctance in taking communion from a nonjuring priest, however much the -upper class might be astonished. What no one understood was that only -Mirabeau stood between the Crown and its vilest temptations; only his -balance of genius, his great and admirable fault of compromise, prevented -Louis from yielding to his least kingly part, and while he lived the -king of the French preferred the nation to his own person. But Mirabeau -was dead. They did well to mourn him, those who had smelt out his treason -and guessed the weakness of the artist in him; they did well to forgive -him; his head misunderstood France, but his broad French shoulders had -supported her. The 18th of April was a direct consequence of his death; -the 21st of June was a fall through a broken bridge: Louis had yielded to -himself. - -Well, France was also afraid. This democracy (as it had come to be), -an experiment based upon a vision, knew how perilous was the path -between the old and the new ideals. She feared the divine sunstroke that -threatens the road to Damascus. In that passage, which was bounded on -either side by an abyss, her feet went slowly, one before the other, and -she looked backward continually. In the twisting tides at night her one -anchor to the old time was the monarchy. Thus when Louis fled the feeling -was of a prop broken. France only cried out for one thing—“Bring the King -back.” Tie up the beam—a makeshift—anything rather than a new foundation. - -Here is the attitude of Danton in this crisis. France is not republican; -his friends in Paris are. He inclines to France. It was Danton more than -any other one man who finally prepared the Republic, yet the Republic was -never with him an idea. The consequences of the Republic were his goal; -as for the systems, systems were not part of his mind. At the close of -this chapter we shall see him overthrowing the Crown; he did it because -he thought it the one act that could save France; but the Crown as an -idea he never hated: he lived in existing things. - -These were the reasons that made him hesitate at this date. A man -understanding Europe, he saw that the governments were not ready to move; -a man understanding his own country, he saw that it would have the King -in his place again; a man, on the other hand, who had met and appreciated -the idealists, he saw that the Republic already existed in the mind; and -a man who understood the character of his fellows better than did any -contemporary, he saw that the men who were bound to lead were inclined to -a declaration against the King. He suffered more than his action should -have warranted, and he goes through a sharp few days of danger on account -of association and of friends in spite of all his caution. - -When Louis was known to have fled, and when Paris, vigilant beyond the -provinces, and deceived by the declaration of April, had undergone its -first wave of passion, the word Republic began to be spoken out loud. The -theorists found themselves for once in accordance with public humour; and -against the keenness, if not the numbers, of those who petitioned for -the deposition of the King on his return, there stood two barriers—the -Assembly and the moderate fortunes of the capital. Danton lived with the -former, thought with the latter, and was all but silent. - -The bust of Louis XIV. before the Hotel de Ville was broken; men climbed -on ladders to chisel off the lilies from the palaces, and there soon -appears a new portent: some one cries out, “Only a Republic can defend -itself at the last.” - -To this somewhat confused cry for a Republic came the very sharp -announcement from no less a person than Condorcet. Condorcet, the -moderate and illumined, was also half a visionary, and there had always -floated in his mind the system of contract by which England had excused -the movement of 1688, but which France took seriously. England had for -him the attraction which it had for all the professionals of that date—an -attraction which lasted till the disasters of 1870, and which you may -yet discover here and there among those who are the heirs of Lamartine. -England had given them Locke, and Condorcet’s reasoning on the King’s -flight[89] reads like a passage from the Bill of Rights. Yet he was a -good and sincere man, and died through simplicity of heart. - -On the 4th of July, ten days or more after the King had been brought back -to Paris,[90] it was Condorcet who made the demand for the Republic; in a -speech at Fauchet’s club he asked for a National Convention to settle the -whole matter. He wrote so in the papers[91] all through July, and even -after the affair of the Champ de Mars he continued his agitation. - -Now how do we know Danton’s attitude? The Cordeliers presented a petition -of June 21st itself and demanded the Republic. It is largely from this -document that the error has arisen. But Danton was not then with the -Cordeliers; his name does not appear. It is at the Jacobins that he is -heard, and the Jacobins took up a distinctly monarchical position. They -all rose in a body on the 22nd and passed a unanimous vote in favour of -the constitution and the King.[92] Danton was present when this vote was -passed, and he had just heard the hissing of the Cordeliers’ petition; -he was silent. Thomas Payne is demanding the Republic in the _Moniteur_; -Sieyès replies for the monarchy;[93], even Robespierre tardily speaks -in favour of ideas and against change of etiquette; Marat shouts for a -dictator;[94] Danton, almost alone, refuses to be certain. On June 23rd -he spoke at the Jacobins in favour of a council to be elected by the -Departments immediately, but he proposed nothing as to its actions; it -was merely his permanent idea of a central, strong power. - -Lafayette amused himself by arresting people who repeated this in the -street, but Lafayette hated Danton blindly. Nothing republican can be -made of a speech which his enemies said was “a loophole for Orleans.” - -Danton attacked Lafayette: he saw persons more clearly than ideas, and -Lafayette was Danton’s nightmare. He was that being which of all on earth -Danton thought most dangerous, the epitome of all the faults which he -attacked to the day of his death; in Louis, in Robespierre, “The weak man -in power.” He drove him out of the Jacobins on the 21st, and later in the -day gave the cry against his enemy in the street, which the fears of the -Assembly so much exaggerated. - -For the events of the twenty-four hours had all added to his natural -opposition to Lafayette, and as we relate them from Danton’s standpoint, -we shall see this much of truth in the idea that he led the movement, -namely, that the three days of the King’s flight and recapture, while -they put Lafayette into a position of great power, made also Danton his -antagonist, the leader of the protest against the general’s methods. It -is the more worthy of remark that in such conditions the word “Republic” -never crossed his lips. - -At eleven o’clock at night on the Monday of the King’s flight, Danton and -Desmoulins were coming home alone from the Jacobins. Each remarked to the -other the emptiness of the streets and the lack of patrols, and at that -moment, when the evasion was little suspected, each was in a vague doubt -that Lafayette had some reason for concentrating the National Guard.[95] -Desmoulins will even have it that he saw him enter the palace, as the two -friends passed the Tuilleries. - -The next morning at the Cordeliers Danton cried out against Lafayette -for a moment, and then at the Jacobins he made the speech that has been -mentioned above. Continually he attacks the man who was preparing a -counter-revolution, but I do not believe he would have attached the least -importance at that moment to a change in the etiquette of government. -Thus, as the Department was sent for by the Assembly in the afternoon, -Danton came later than his colleagues, provided himself with a guard, and -as he crossed the Tuilleries gardens he harangued the people, but against -Lafayette, not against the King. - -Now, to make sure of this feature, the duel between Lafayette and Danton, -and to see that it is the principal thing at the time, turn once more to -the scene at the Jacobins, and compare it with Lafayette’s Memoirs, and -you will find that Danton was the terror of the saviour of two worlds, -and that it was upon Lafayette that Danton had massed his artillery. - -Here is Danton at the Jacobins, sitting by Desmoulin’s side; he goes to -the tribune and speaks upon the disgrace and danger that the Moderates -have brought about. When Lafayette entered during the speech, he turned -upon him suddenly, and launched one of those direct phrases which -made him later the leader of the Convention: “I am going to talk as -though I were at the bar of God’s justice, and I will say before you, -M. Lafayette, what I would say in the presence of Him who reads all -hearts.... How was it that you, who pretend to know nothing of me, tried -to corrupt me to your views of treason?... How was it that you arrested -those who in last February demanded the destruction of Vincennes? You are -present; try to give a clear reason.... How was it that the very same men -were on guard when the King tried to go to St. Cloud on the 18th of April -were on guard last night when the King fled?... I will not mention the -6000 men[96] whom you have picked as a garrison for the King; only answer -clearly these three accusations. For in their light you, who answered -with your head that the King should not fly, are either a traitor or a -fool. For either you have permitted him to fly, or else you undertook a -responsibility which you could not fulfil: in the best case, you are not -capable of commanding the guard.... I will leave the tribune, for I have -said enough.”[97] - -This is clear enough in all conscience to show what was Danton’s -main pre-occupation in the days of June 1791. And if, upon the other -hand, you will turn to Lafayette’s Memoirs, the third volume, the -83rd and following pages, you will find that Danton was Lafayette’s -pre-occupation, and that he makes this moment the occasion to deliver -the most definite and (luckily) the most demonstrably false of his many -accusations of venality. He tells us that he could not reply because it -would have “cost Montmorin his life;” that Montmorin “had the receipt -for the 100,000 francs;” that Danton had been “reimbursed to the extent -of 100,000 francs for a place worth 10,000,” and so forth. We know now -exactly the amount of compensation paid to him and his colleagues at the -court of appeal,[98] and we know that Lafayette, writing a generation -later, animated by a bitter hatred, and remembering that somebody had -paid Danton something, and with his head full of vague rumours of -bribing, has fallen into one of those unpardonable errors common to vain -and vacillating men. But at this juncture the main point that should be -seized is that Danton was taking the opportunity of the King’s evasion -to attack Lafayette with all his might, and that a generation later the -old man chiefly remembered Danton as leading the popular anger which the -commander of the guard thought himself bound to repress. It is this that -will explain why Danton, who so carefully avoided giving the word for the -Republican “false start,” was yet marked out, fled, and returned to lead -the opposition. - -The Cordeliers followed Danton’s lead. They got up a petition,[99] signed -by 30,000 in Paris, demanding that the affair should be laid before -the country, but not demanding the abolition of the monarchy. Memdar, -their president, declared himself a monarchist. But the petition, though -read at the Assembly, was not adopted, and, on the 9th of July, the -Cordeliers presented another. Charles de Lameth (who was president that -fortnight) refused to read it. The Assembly, in other words, was dumb; -it was determined (like its successor a year later) to do nothing—an -attitude which (for all it knew) might be very wise, and those who -were following Danton determined upon a definite policy. On Friday the -15th, at the Jacobins, it was determined to draw up a petition which -begged that the Assembly should _first_ recognise Louis as having -abdicated by his flight, unless the nation voted his reinstatement, and -_secondly_ (in case the nation did not do so), take measures to have him -constitutionally replaced. Now the constitution was monarchist. - -The petition was to be taken to be read at the Champ de Mars on the -altar, and there to obtain signatures. It was drawn up by Danton, -Sergent, Lanthanas, Ducanel, and Brissot, who wrote it out and worded -most of it. The events that follow must be noted with some care, because -on their exact sequence depends our judgment of Lafayette’s action and of -Danton’s politics. - -On Saturday[100] the 16th, about mid-day, a deputation of four from the -Jacobins came to the Champ de Mars. The petition was read by a little -light-haired Englishman on one side, and by a red-haired Frenchman in -a red coat on the other; picturesque but unimportant details. Danton -leapt on to the corner of the altar, and read it again to the thick -of the crowd. The signatures were written in great numbers, and when -the completed document was about to start for the Assembly, when the -deputation that was to take it was already formed, it was suddenly spread -abroad that the Assembly had passed a vote exonerating Louis. - -The Jacobins were appealed to, and replied that under the conditions the -petition which they had drawn up could not be presented. The Cordeliers, -however, lost their tempers, and Robert determined to draw up a new -petition. Now in this second action Danton took no part. It was this new -petition that (signed by Robert, Peyre, Vachard, and Demoy) was drawn up -hastily in the Champ de Mars on Sunday the 17th, to this that the 6000 -signatures were attached, and this which demanded a “Convention to judge -the King.” There followed the proclamation of martial law, the appearance -of Lafayette and Bailly in the Champ de Mars with the red flag, the -conflict between the National Guard and the crowd, and all that is called -the “Massacre of the Champ de Mars.” - -That petition was not signed by Danton.[101] He was not even -present,[102] as we know from his speech on his election to be -“Substitut-Procureur,” and especially from the fact that in the fortnight -of terror, when the red flag stood over the Hotel de Ville, when the -democrats were arrested or in hiding, when the door of the Cordeliers -was shut and nailed, and when the Radical newspapers were suppressed, no -warrant of arrest could be issued, because there existed nothing definite -against him. Lafayette was determined, however, to act in a military -fashion, and on the 4th of August the arrest of Danton was ordered, on -some other plea which he alludes to in his speech of the next January, -but the exact terms of which have not come down to us. - -He had left Paris at once when he saw that Lafayette had practically -absolute power for the moment. He first went to his father-in-law’s, -Charpentier, at Rosny-sur-Bois, and then escaped to Arcis. Before the -warrant was actually made out, Lafayette had sent a man to watch him -at Arcis. He was “giving a dinner. It would need a troop of cavalry to -arrest him. Everybody was on his side.”[103] Marseilles and Bar spoke up -for him. But the attack only grew stronger. On the 31st of July he moved -again to Troyes, to the house of Millaud, of his father’s profession, -and a friend, because he feared a new arrival from Paris who seemed a -spy.[104] He was there when the warrant was sent down to the “procureur” -for the arrest; the official in question was Beugnot, and Beugnot told -Danton jocularly that he would not arrest him. He did not think this -a sufficient guarantee, and as his stepfather, Recordain, was off to -England to buy some machinery for a cotton-mill that he thought of -starting, Danton went to England with him, and remained in this country -for a month, staying in the house of his stepfather’s sons, who were -established in London. It was in the last days of July or the first days -in August[105] that he arrived, and he did not return to Paris until the -appointment of his friend Garran de Coulon as President of the Court of -Appeal. He appears again at the Jacobins on the 12th of September; some -say he was in Paris on the 10th.[106] - -It would be of the utmost interest to know how he passed those thirty or -forty days. Unfortunately there is no direct evidence as to whom he met -or what negotiations he entered into. As to his English acquaintances, -his letters from Priestley and Christie, the relations he had with -Talleyrand, and their common diplomacy for the English alliance—all -these properly belong to Danton in power, the minister directing France -after August 1792, and it is in that place that they will be dealt with. -Of historical events in his voyage we have none, and there is no more -regrettable gap in the very disconnected series of ascertained facts -concerning him. - -On his return, he discovered that the Section of the Théâtre Français had -named him a member of the electoral college which sat at the Archbishop’s -palace. Many members of this Assembly had been arrested, or had fled -during Lafayette’s violent efforts of reaction in August and September. -The new Parliament which had just met did not decree an amnesty (as it -was asked to do on the 5th of September), but it was of course far more -democratic than the old Assembly, and it was understood to be tacitly in -favour of the return of those whom Lafayette had driven out. Following -Danton’s example, they slowly came back; but a curious incident shows how -much of the danger remained. - -On the 13th of September the Parliament, at the desire of the King, -voted the amnesty. While it was actually voting, a constable called -Damien got into the gallery of the hall in which Danton and the electors -were debating, and sent a note to the president asking him to allow the -arrest. The president and the electoral college (who did not like Danton, -by the way, and who would not give him more than forty votes when it came -to electing members for Paris) yet ordered the arrest by Damien, and it -was only when they learnt of the amnesty that, on Danton’s own motion, he -was released. - -It has just been said that Danton failed to be elected: let us point out -the conditions under which the Legislative met, that short Parliament -of one year which made the war, and saw to its dismay the end of the -monarchy. - -The Legislative was not elected in one of those moments of decision which -were the formative points of the Revolution. It came upon a very curious -juncture, and showed in all its first acts a marked indecision. - -The members were chosen under the action of a peculiar combination, or -rather confusion of emotions. The King had fled, had been recaptured. -France, of many possible evils, had chosen what she believed to be the -least when she reinstated him. “The New Pact” was accepted even by those -who had spoken of the Republic in July. Condorcet, who had led the civic -theorists towards the Republic, leads them also now in this movement of -reconciliation. Again, these were the first elections held since the -middle class and the peasantry had been given the suffrage over the heads -of the artisans: it was the most sober part of France that dictated the -policy of the moment. The divisions that the King’s flight had laid -bare, the sharp reaction and terror of the Champ de Mars—all these were -forgotten. - -Thus the Parliament will not have Garran-Coulon for its first president, -and yet on the next day passes the extreme democratic etiquette as to -the reception of the King should he visit the Assembly. Next day it -repeals this, and when the King does visit the Assembly, he is met by an -outburst of loyalty and affection. - -As to parties, the power lay, as it always does in a French Assembly, -with the centre—some three hundred men, unimportant, of no fixed idea, -unless indeed it were to keep the Legislative to the work for which it -had been elected, that is, to keep it moving moderately on the lines laid -down for it by the constitution of 1791. - -The right, well organised, loyal and brave, was Feuillant; that is, it -was monarchic and constitutional, but more monarchic than constitutional. -It was the support of Lafayette, and on the whole the centre would vote -with it on any important occasion. - -But there sat on the left a group less compact, full of personal -ambitions and personal creeds, containing almost all the orators whose -names were to make famous the following year. It was but a group of 130 -men, even if we include all those who signed the register of the Jacobins -when the Assembly met; yet it was destined, ill-disciplined as it was, -part wild and part untrue, to lead all France. Why? Because the King was -to make impossible the action of the Moderates, because his intrigue made -Frenchmen choose between him and France, and in the inevitable war the -men who were determined to realise the Revolution could not but be made -the leaders. - -As has been said above, Danton was not elected. The electoral college, -of which he was a member, chose Moderates for the most part, such as -Pastoret and De Quincy, and the narrow suffrage represented the true -drift of Parisian feeling only in the case of a few—De Séchelles, -Brissot, Condorcet, and a handful of others. But though Danton did not -sit in the Legislative he was free for action in two other directions, -which (as it turned out) were the commanding positions in the great -changes that came with the war. He was free to attain an administrative -position in the municipality of Paris, and he was free to use his power -of oratory at the Jacobins. - -As to the first, it came with his moderate but important success in the -municipal elections at the close of the year. Bailly, frightened out of -place, half-regretting his action of the Champ de Mars, had resigned, and -Pétion, on November 16th, was elected in his place. Only ten thousand -voted, and he obtained 6700 votes. On the same day the Procureur of the -new Commune was to be elected. A Procureur under the new system was a -position of the greatest importance. He was, so to speak, the advocate of -the town, its tribune in the governing body, and with his two substitutes -(who aided and occasionally replaced him) was meant to form a kind -of small committee whose business was to watch the interests and to -define the attitude of the electorate whenever those interests were in -jeopardy or that attitude was opposed to the policy of the elected body. -These three positions were dangerous, but would lead to popularity, and -perhaps to power, if they were directed by a certain kind of ability. It -was precisely such a power, the quality of a tribune, that Danton knew -himself to possess. - -His candidature for the principal position was cordially supported by the -Cordeliers, but the Jacobins were divided, and they hesitated. Manuel was -elected, and Danton obtained only the third place. This vote, however, -was not decisive, and there was a second ballot on December the 2nd. In -this Manuel was definitely elected. - -Cahier de Gerville (the second substitute) was made Minister of the -Interior, and Danton, on December 6th,[107] was elected to his place by -a majority of 500 over Collot d’Herbois. It was from this position that -he prepared the 10th of August, and it was still as substitute that he -remained side by side with the insurrectionary commune, and lending it -something of legal sanction when the King was overthrown. - -Let me, before leaving this point, define exactly the position in which -his new dignity placed him. Three men were charged with the advocacy -of public opinion, the Procureur and his two substitutes. Manuel, who -was elected to the principal position, was energetic, kindly, and -conscientious, but a man of no genius; he was good to Madame De Staël -in the days of September, as is apparent from her rather contemptuous -description of how she appealed to him for safety; he did his very best -(with no power in his hands) to stop the massacres at that same time. He -was fond of work, and a little pompous in his idea of office; he was, -therefore, a man who would only leave his substitutes the less important -work to do, and, from close by, would have been the dominating member -of the three. On the other hand, his lack of decision and of initiative -effaced him in moments of danger or of new departures, and it is thus his -second substitute who seems to lead when seen from a distance, from the -point of view of the people, who only look round when there is a noise. - -The first substitute was Desmousseaux. He had not resigned, and had -therefore not been re-elected. Forming part of the old Commune, and in -office since the winter of 1790, he was a Moderate by preference and long -tradition. - -As for Danton himself, standing third in the group, it was for him a -position of honour and of dignity. That part of him which was so capable -of high office and so desirous of an opportunity to act was well served -by the election. It seemed to put a term to the misconceptions which his -person, his faults, and the course of the Revolution had created. But -the great stream of events moved him at their will. This office wherein -he desired to appear settled at last, to show himself an administrator -rather than a leader of unreasoning men, was precisely suited in case -of danger to call out those other qualities which had made him despised -by many whom he himself respected, and had aroused against him hatred—a -passion which he himself had never allowed to arise from anger. - -If the spirit of 1791 had been kept, and if after so many false promises -the Revolution had been really accomplished, then the official, or, -if you will, the statesman, would have appeared in him. I can see him -in the difficulties which even a settled kingdom would have had to -meet, convincing his contemporaries as he has convinced posterity. He -was the man to impress on others the true attitude of Europe—the only -diplomat among the patriots. His disadvantages were of the kind that -are forgotten in the constant proof of ability; and his learning, which -was exactly of the kind to be used in the new regime (a knowledge of -languages, of law, of surrounding nations, a combination of detail and of -comprehension)—this learning would have made necessary a man so popular -with the people to be ruled, and, in the matter of the heart, so honestly -devoted to his country. Had France, I say, by some miracle been spared -her Passion, and had she been permitted to be happier and to do less for -the world, then as the new regime settled into the lower reaches of quiet -and content, I believe Danton would have remained for us a name, perhaps -less great, but certainly among the first. England has been permitted. -She has been given good fortune, and no fate has asked her to save -civilisation with her blood, and therefore in England we are accustomed -to such careers; men whose origin, whose exterior, and whose faults might -have exiled them, have yet been seen to rise from the municipal to the -imperial office, because they were possessed of supreme abilities, and -because they devoted those abilities to the service of England. They have -died in honour. - -I will not discuss what it was that made the war. There are no causes. -Burke raved like a madman, but then so did Marat. The King was alienated -by the clerical laws, but nothing is an excuse for treason. Pilnitz was -an affront and even a menace, but it was not a declaration of war. There -were peoples behind the kings, as Mayence tragically proved; and if -France fought intolerable evils, she also seemed the iconoclast when she -put out the altar-lamp, which she is lighting again with her own hand. -There are no causes. Only, if you will look and see how Europe has lived, -and how our great things have been done, you will find nothing but armies -upon armies marching past, and our history is an epic whose beginning is -lost, whose books are Roncesvalles and Cortenuova and Waterloo, and whose -end is never reached. The war came, and with it a definite necessity to -choose between France and the Crown. In that crisis Danton is thrown back -upon insurrection. He, who desired men to forget the days of October, -was compelled to the 10th of August because he was aroused. Even the -massacres were attached to his name, and there still trails after him an -easy flow of accusation, only a little less sordid or less terrible. - -To follow his action during the first months of 1772, to hear his -speeches on the war, and to note his policy, we must leave him at his -post in the Commune (where we shall find him again when Paris rises in -the summer), and see how he stands for the Mountain at the Jacobins. - -This club was now definitely the organ of the left. It was after Danton -had been elected, but before he was definitely installed in office,[108] -on the 14th of December, a week after the former and five weeks before -the latter event, that the debate on the war was begun at the Jacobins,—a -debate of the first importance, because it opened the breach between the -Girondins and the Mountain, between the orators who insisted on going -to meet Europe, and even on a war of propaganda, and the reformers who -wished Europe to take the first step, who dreaded war or who thought a -war of aggression immoral. At the head of these last was Robespierre. -But it is not too much to say that in the first months of the year -Danton was more important at the Jacobins than Robespierre. What was his -attitude? It was part of the general policy upon which he had determined: -he compromised. In his first motion on the 14th of December, he attacked -the idea of declaring war. On the 16th he still attacked it, but in other -terms. “I know it must come. If any one were to ask me, ‘Are we to have -war?’ I would reply (not in argument, but as a matter of fact), ‘We shall -hear the bugles,’” But the whole speech is taken up with an argument upon -its dangers, and especially upon “those who desire war in the hope of -reaction, who talk of giving us a constitution like that of England, in -the hope of giving us, later, one like that of Turkey.” - -In March and April, the months when the war was preparing and was -declared, he was silent. And we can understand his silence when we turn -to his speech in the Commune when he was given office. He alludes to the -false character given him; he speaks of the reputation which his past -actions in Paris had given; he says things that indicate a determination -to play the part of a Moderate, and to see whether in his case, as in -that of so many others, there would not be permanence in the compromise -of the last six months. But there rankled in his mind the insults of the -men with whom he sat, Condorcet’s disavowal in his paper of so much as -knowing Danton, and he made a peroration which at the time offended, but -which possesses for us a certain pathos. “Nature gave me a strong frame, -and she put into my face the violence of liberty. I have not sprung from -a family which was weakened by the protection of the old privileges; -my existence has been all my own; I know that I have kept and shown my -vigour, but in my profession and in my private life I have controlled -it. If I was carried away by enthusiasm in the first days of our -regeneration, have I not atoned for it? Have I not been ostracised?... I -have given myself altogether to the people, and now that they are beyond -attack, now that they are in arms and ready to break the league unless -it consents to dissolve,[109] I will die in their cause if I must, ... -for I love them only, and they deserve it. Their courage will make them -eternal.” - -This outburst is the one occasion of his public life in which Danton -spoke of himself, and it has the ring of genuine emotion; for in all -his harangues he preserved, both before and after this, an objective -attitude, if anything too much bent upon the outward circumstances. - -Thus, when the notes came to go between the Austrian and the French -governments, he was silent. He fears that France is unprepared; he -fears that the King is betraying the nation. How much he was a traitor -was not known till a far later period; but when at least it is proved -that something is undermining the French people, that, apart from the -defeats and the lack of preparation, there is treason, then he leaves -his silence. The policy of the Moderate acting in a settled state is no -longer possible to any one; the court and the nation stood one against -the other, and one side or the other must be taken by every man. Then -he put off the conventions which he respected, and which he regretted -to the end; he went back into the street; he headed the insurrection, -destroyed the monarchy; for twelve months he took upon himself all the -responsibility of errors in his own policy, and of crime in that of his -associates. He saved France, but at this expense, that he went out of the -world with a reputation which he knew to be false, that he saw his great -powers vulgarised, and that he could never possess, either in his own -mind or before the world, not even in France, his true name. The whole of -this tragedy is to be found in his trial, and here and there in the few -phrases that escape him in the speeches or with his friends. If you sum -it up, it comes to this paraphrase of a great sentence: _Son nom était -flétri mais la France était libre_. - -It was upon April the 18th that the new Girondin ministry received the -note from Vienna rejecting the French proposals of a month before. The -poor King, who had been protesting his loyalty to the nation in Paris, -had been protesting in Vienna the necessity of sending an army to save -him, and Austria gave this reply. On April 20th the Assembly declared war -with practical unanimity[110] upon “the King of Hungary and of Bohemia.” -But the phrase was useless. You might as well put a match into gunpowder -and say, “It is the sulphur I am after, not the charcoal.” Prussia -joined, and within a year we shall see all Europe at war with France, in -a war that outlawed and destroyed. - -Danton was right. France was hopelessly unready. She had not learnt the -necessary truth that the soldier is a man with a trade. The orators -had mistaken words for things; honest and great as they were, they had -fallen in this matter into the faults common to small and dishonest -verbiage. The rout and panic under De Dillon, his murder by the troops, -the occupation of Quiévrain, came one upon the other. Paris was full of -terror and anger in proportion to the greatness of the things she had -done, which now seemed all destroyed. “We said and did things that should -have convinced the world; we were to be a people unconquerable from our -love of liberty, and we appear a beaten, panic-stricken lot—volunteers -and babblers who cannot stand fire.” The King dismissed the Girondin -ministers, even sent Dumouriez away, heard Roland’s remonstrance, knew -that the Assembly was more and more against him; but he remained calm. -There was a plan of the simplest. There was to be nothing but a few days -of monotonous marching between the allies and Paris. Lafayette with his -army of the centre was on his side. The Assembly decreed a great camp of -20,000 men under Paris, and the disbanding of the guard; the guard was -disbanded, but the King vetoed the decree. Lafayette wrote his letter -menacing the Parliament with his army; the reaction seemed in full -success and the invaders secure, when Danton reappeared. - -On the 18th of June he found the old phrases against Lafayette at the -Jacobins. “It is a great day for France; Lafayette with only one face on -is no longer dangerous.” He did not make, but he permitted the 20th of -June; and as Paris rose, and the immense mob, grotesque, many-coloured, -armed with all manner of sharp things, passed before the Assembly and -into the Tuilleries, it might have been a signal or a warning. The -excited citizen makes a poor soldier, but if Paris moves the whole great -body of France stirs. Such giants take long to be fully awake, and it is -a matter of months to drill men; still it is better to let great enemies -sleep. There was in that foolish, amiable crowd, with its pleasure at -the sight of the King, its comic idea of warning him, something serious -underlying. Danton will be using it in a very short time; for there are -points of attack where mobs are like machine-guns—ridiculous in general -warfare, but very useful indeed in special conditions, and in these -conditions invincible. This something serious was that vague force (you -may call it only an idea) which you will never find in an individual, and -which you will always discover in a mass—the great common man which the -French metaphysicians have called “Le Peuple;” that, drilled, is called -by the least metaphysical an army. - -A week later Lafayette appeared. He demanded the right to use the army, -and July opened with the certainty of civil war. - -July is the month of fevers; the heat has been moving northward, and -all France is caught in it. The grapes fill out, and even in Picardy or -in the Cotentin you feel as though the Midi were giving her spirit to -the north. July made the Revolution and closed it. A month that saw the -Bastille fall and that buried Robespierre is a very national time. - -If you overlook France at this moment, you may see the towns stirring as -they had stirred three years before; it is from them that the opposition -rises—especially from Marseilles. A crowd of young men dragging cannon, -the common-place sons of bourgeois, whom the time had turned into -something as great as peasants or as soldiers, surged up the white -deserts along the Rhone, passing the great sheet of vineyards that slopes -up the watershed of Burgundy. As they came along they sang an excellent -new marching song. When they at last saw Paris, especially the towers -of Notre Dame from where they just show above the city as you come in -from Fontainebleau, and as the roads came in together and the suburbs -thickened they sang it with louder voices. On the evening of the 30th -they came to the gates, and the workmen of the south-eastern quarter -began to sing it and called it the “Marseillaise.” No one can describe -music; but if in a great space of time the actions of the French become -meaningless and the Revolution ceases to be an origin, some one perhaps -will recover this air, as we have recovered a few stray notes of Greek -music, and it will carry men back to the Republic. - -For ten days the insurrection grew. In a secret committee which the -Sections formed, men violent like Fournier, or good soldiers like -Westermann, or local leaders of quarters like Santerre—but all outside -the official body—organised the fighting force, and at their head the -one man who held the strings of the municipality—Danton. The Assembly -had heard Vergniaud’s angry speech, but it had also confirmed the -constitution and the monarchy in the “baiser Lamourette.” Paris had -to work alone, and the King, seeing only Paris before him, filled the -Tuilleries, and stood by with a small garrison to repress the mere -movement of the city—“something that should have been done in ’89.” - -It was on a Paris thus enfevered, doubtful, nursing a secret -insurrectionary plan, but full of men who hesitated and doubted, -having still many who were loyal, that there fell[111] the document -which the King had asked of his friends—but which he must, on seeing -it, have regretted—the manifesto of the commander of the allies. This -extraordinary monument of folly is rarely presented in its entirety. It -is only in such a form that its full monstrosity can be appreciated, and -I have therefore been at pains to translate for my readers the rather -halting French in which Charles William proposed to arrest the movements -of Providence. It ran as follows[112]:— - -“Their Majesties the Emperor and the King of Prussia having given me the -command of the armies assembled on the French frontier, I have thought -it well to tell the inhabitants of that kingdom the motives that have -inspired the measures taken by the two sovereigns and the intentions that -guide them. - -“After having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and the possessions of -the German princes in Alsace and Lorraine, troubled and overset public -order and their legitimate government, exercised against the sacred -person of the King and against his august family violence which is -(moreover) repeated and renewed from day to day, those who have usurped -the reins of the administration have at last filled up the measure by -causing an unjust war to be declared against his Majesty the Emperor, and -by attacking his provinces in the Netherlands. - -“Several possessions of the German Empire have been drawn into this -oppression, and several others have only escaped from a similar danger -by yielding to the imperious threats of the dominant party and its -emissaries. - -“His Prussian Majesty with his Imperial Majesty, by the ties of a strict -and defensive alliance, and himself a preponderant member of the Germanic -body (_sic_), has therefore been unable to excuse himself from going to -the aid of his ally and of his fellow State (_sic_). And it is under both -these heads that he undertakes the defence of that monarch and of Germany. - -“To these great interests another object of equal importance must be -added, and one that is near to the heart of the two sovereigns: it is -that of ending the domestic anarchy of France, of arresting the attacks -which are directed against the altar and the throne, of re-establishing -the legitimate power, of giving back to the King the freedom and safety -of which he is deprived, and of giving him the means to exercise the -lawful authority which is his due. - -“Convinced as they are that the healthy part of the French people abhors -the excesses of a party that enslaves them, and that the majority of -the inhabitants are impatiently awaiting the advent of a relief that -will permit them to declare themselves openly against the odious schemes -of their oppressors, His Majesty the Emperor and His Majesty the King -of Prussia call upon them to return at once to the call of reason and -justice, of order, of peace. It is in view of these things that I, the -undersigned, General Commander-in-Chief of the two armies, declare— - - “(1) That led into the present war by irresistible - circumstances, the two allied courts propose no object to - themselves but the happiness of France, and do not propose to - enrich themselves by annexation. - - “(2) That they have no intention of meddling with the domestic - government of France, but only wish to deliver the King, and - the Queen, and the Royal Family from their captivity, and - procure for his Most Christian Majesty that freedom which is - necessary for him to call such a council as he shall see fit, - without danger and without obstacle, and to enable him to work - for the good of his subjects according to his promises and as - much as may be his concern. - - “(3) That the combined armies will protect all towns, boroughs, - and villages, and the persons and goods of all those that will - submit to the King, and that they will help to re-establish - immediately the order and police of France. - - “(4) That the National Guard are ordered to see to the peace of - the towns and country-sides provisionally, and to the security - of the persons and goods of all Frenchmen provisionally, that - is, until the arrival of the troops of their Royal and Imperial - Majesties, or until further orders, under pain of being - personally responsible; that on the contrary, the National - Guards who may have fought against the troops of the allied - courts, and who are captured in arms, shall be treated as - enemies, and shall be punished as rebels and disturbers of the - public peace. - - “(5) That the generals, officers, non-commissioned officers, - and privates of the French troops of the line are equally - ordered to return to their old allegiance and to submit at once - to the King, their legitimate sovereign. - - “(6) That the members of departmental, district, and town - councils are equally responsible with their heads and property - for all crimes, arson, murders, thefts, and assaults, the - occurrence of which they allow or do not openly, and to the - common knowledge, try to prevent in their jurisdiction; - that they shall equally be bound to keep their functions - provisionally until his Most Christian Majesty, reinstated in - full liberty, has further decreed; or until, in the interval, - other orders shall have been given. - - “(7) That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and villages - who may dare to defend themselves against the troops of their - Imperial and Royal Majesties by firing upon them, whether - in the open or from the windows, doors, or apertures of - their houses, shall be punished at once with all the rigour - of the laws of war, their houses pulled down or burnt. All - those inhabitants, on the contrary, of the towns, boroughs, - and villages who shall hasten to submit to their King by - opening their gates to the troops of their Majesties shall - be placed under the immediate protection of their Majesties; - their persons, their goods, their chattels shall be under the - safeguard of the laws, and measures will be taken for the - general safety of each and all of them. - - “(8) The town of Paris and all its inhabitants without - distinction shall be bound to submit on the spot, and without - any delay, to the King, and to give that Prince full and entire - liberty, and to assure him and all the Royal Family that - inviolability and respect to which the laws of nature and of - nations entitle sovereigns from their subjects. Their Imperial - and Royal Majesties render personally responsible for anything - that may happen, under peril of their heads, and of military - execution without hope of pardon, all members of the National - Assembly as of the Districts, the Municipality, the National - Guards, the Justices of the Peace, and all others whom it may - concern. Their aforesaid Majesties declare, moreover, on their - word and honour as Emperor and King, that if the Palace of the - Tuilleries be insulted or forced, that if the least violence, - the least assault, be perpetrated against their Majesties, the - King, the Queen, and the Royal Family, and if steps be not at - once taken for their safety, preservation, and liberty, they, - their Imperial and Royal Majesties, will take an exemplary and - never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by giving up the town of Paris - to military execution and to total subversion, and the guilty - rebels to the deaths they have deserved. Their Imperial and - Royal Majesties promise, on the contrary, to the inhabitants of - Paris to use their good offices with his Most Christian Majesty - to obtain pardon for their faults and errors, and to take the - most vigorous measures to ensure their persons and goods if - they promptly and exactly obey the above command. - - “Finally, since their Majesties can recognise no laws in France - save those that proceed from the King in full liberty, they - protest in advance against any declarations that may be made in - the name of his Most Christian Majesty, so long as his sacred - person, those of the Queen and of the Royal Family, are not - really safe, for which end their Imperial and Royal Majesties - invite and beg his Most Christian Majesty to point out to what - town in the immediate neighbourhood of his frontiers he may - judge it best to retire with the Queen and the Royal Family, - under good and sure escort that will be sent him for that - purpose, in order that his Most Christian Majesty may be in - all safety to call to him such deputies and counsellors as he - sees fit, call such councils as may please him, see to the - re-establishment of order, and arrange the administration of - his kingdom. - - “Lastly, I engage myself, in my own private name and in my - aforesaid capacity, to cause the troops under my command to - observe everywhere a good and exact discipline, promising to - treat with mildness and moderation all well-meaning subjects - who may show themselves peaceful and submissive, and to use - force with those only who may be guilty of resistance and of - recalcitrance. - - “It is for these reasons that I require and exhort, in the - strongest and most instant fashion, all the inhabitants of this - kingdom not to oppose themselves to the march and operations - of the troops under my command, but rather to give them on all - sides a free entry and all the good-will, aid, and assistance - that circumstances may demand. - - “Given at our headquarters of Coblentz, July 28. - - (Signed) “CHARLES WILLIAM FERDINAND, - Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg.” - -With that weapon the insurrection was certain of all Paris. Mandat, who -had replaced Lafayette at the head of the armed force in the town, was -still loyal to the King; he organised, as far as was possible, the forces -that he could count upon. The other side also prepared, and the movements -had all the appearance of troops entrenching themselves before battle. - -Danton went to Arcis and settled an income on his mother in case of -his death, came back to Paris, and on the night of August the 9th -the Sections named commissioners to act. They met and formed the -“insurrectionary commune.” At eight the next morning they dissolved the -legal commune, kept Danton, and directed the fighting of the morning. - -Meanwhile the King had gathered in the Tuilleries about 6000 men, and -depended very largely upon the thick mass of wooden buildings in the -Carrousel for cover. The Swiss Guard, whom the decree had removed, were -only as far off as Rueil, and were ordered into Paris, over 1500. They -were the nucleus, and with them some 2000 of the National Guard, 1500 -of the old “Constitutional Guards,” and a group of “Gentilshommes.” -Mandat had ordered a battery of the National Guard’s artillery to keep -the Pont Neuf; they revolted and joined the people, and Mandat himself, -the chief of the defence, was killed on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. -Danton, who had not slept, but had lain down in Desmoulin’s flat till -midnight, had been to the Hotel de Ville since two in the morning, and -he took before posterity—in his trial—the responsibility of Mandat’s -death. He did more. He acted during the short night (a night of calm and -great beauty, dark and with stars) as the organiser and chief of the -insurrection. Especially he appoints Santerre to lead the National Guard. -On these rapid determinations the morning broke, and the first hours of -the misty day passed in gathering the forces. - -Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously in the Tuilleries -gardens, and asked Roederer, like a king in comic opera, “when the revolt -would begin.” - -All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people were slow to gather—“le -tocsin ne rend pas”—and it was not till the insurrectionary commune had -done its work that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disciplined, -came into the Carrousel. - -Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to parley with the Swiss -Guard; he asked them in German (which was his native tongue, for he was -an Alsatian) to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard -retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people would also retire. -The Swiss—the only real soldiers in Paris—replied that they were under -orders, and when Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire. - -Antoinette had said, “Nail me to the Palace,” and even Louis, timid and -uncertain, thought that the chances were in his favour. Let only this day -succeed, and the city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive; -that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of August 1st; it was -Louis’s hope now. - -Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the battle might have ended in -favour of the garrison, but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped -the attack, and the Swiss, unable to deploy, fought, almost singly, -a very unequal fight. There were no volleys except the first. Rapid -individual firing from the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd -pressing up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hundreds of -lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the “Grande Galerie” the -Tuilleries were forced, the garrison killed, and only a small detachment -of the Swiss Guard retreated through the gardens, firing alternate -volleys, and saving themselves by an admirable discipline. - -But while the issue was still doubtful, Louis and his family had gone -slowly through the same gardens to the Riding-school, and had taken -refuge with the Assembly. The noise of the fusillade came sharply in -at the windows, and the event was still uncertain when the Parliament -received the King and promised him protection. The president opened for -him a small door at the right of the chair, and the King and Queen and -their children watched the meaningless resolutions through a grating as -they sat in the little dark box that gave them refuge. The debate, I say, -lacked meaning, but the battle grew full of meaning as they heard it. -The shots were less frequent, the noise of the mob—the roar—was suddenly -muffled in the walls of the palace. The crowd had entered it. Then came -the few sharp volleys of the retreating guard right under the windows of -the Manège, and finally the firing ceased, and the Assembly knew that -their oath was of no value, and that the Tuilleries had fallen. Louis -also knew it, eating his grotesque roast chicken in the silent and hidden -place that was the first of his prisons. He saw in the bright light -of the hall many of the faces that were to be the rulers of France, -but for himself, in his silence, he felt all power to be gone. He had -become a Capet—there was truth in the Republican formula. There had been -played—though few have said it, it should be said—a very fine game. The -stakes were high and the Court party dared them. They played to win -all that the Kings had possessed, and for this great stake they risked -a few foolish titles without power. The game was even; it was worth -playing, and they had lost. But the man who had been their puppet and -their figure-head hardly knew what had happened. Perhaps the Queen alone -comprehended, and from that moment found the proud silence and the glance -that has dignified her end. In her the legend of the lilies had found its -last ally, but now the great shield was broken for ever. - -So perished the French monarchy. Its dim origins stretched out and lost -themselves in Rome; it had already learnt to speak and recognised its -own nature when the vaults of the Thermae echoed heavily to the slow -footsteps of the Merovingian kings. Look up that vast valley of dead men -crowned, and you may see the gigantic figure of Charlemagne, his brows -level and his long white beard tangled like an undergrowth, having in -his left hand the globe and in his right the hilt of an unconquerable -sword. There also are the short, strong horsemen of the Robertian house, -half-hidden by their leather shields, and their sons before them growing -in vestment and majesty, and taking on the pomp of the Middle Ages; -Louis VII., all covered with iron; Philip the Conqueror; Louis IX., who -alone is surrounded with light: they stand in a widening interminable -procession, this great crowd of kings; they loose their armour, they -take their ermine on, they are accompanied by their captains and their -marshals; at last, in their attitude and in their magnificence they sum -up in themselves the pride and the achievement of the French nation. But -time has dissipated what it could not tarnish, and the process of a -thousand years has turned these mighty figures into unsubstantial things. -You may see them in the grey end of darkness, like a pageant all standing -still. You look again, but with the growing light and with the wind that -rises before morning they have disappeared. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -THE REPUBLIC - -AUGUST 10, 1792—APRIL 5, 1793 - - -The 10th of August is not, in the history of the Revolution, a -turning-point or a new departure merely; it is rather a cataclysm, the -conditions before and after which are absolutely different. You may -compare it to the rush of the Atlantic, which “in one dreadful day and -night” swept away the old civilisation in the legend. It is like one of -the geological “faults” which form the great inland escarpments, and to -read or to write of it is like standing on the edge of Auvergne. You have -just passed through a volcanic plateau, rising slowly, more and more -desolate: you find yourself looking down thousands of feet on to the -great plain of Limagne. - -There is no better test of what the monarchy was than the comparison of -that which came before with that which succeeded its overthrow. There -is no continuity. On the far side of the insurrection, up to the 9th of -August itself, you have armies (notably that of the centre) contented -with monarchy; you have a strong garrison at the Tuilleries, the -ministers, the departments, the mayor of Paris (even) consulting with the -crown. The King and the Girondins are opposed, but they are balanced; -Paris is angry and expectant, but it has expressed nothing—it is one of -many powers. The moderate men, the Rolands and the rest, are the radical -wing. It is a triumph for the Revolution that the Girondins should be -again in nominal control. Pétion is an idol. The acute friction is -between a government of idealists standing at the head of a group of -professional bourgeois, and a crown supported by a resurrected nobility, -expecting succour and strong enough to hazard a pitched battle. - -Look around you on the 11th of August and see what has happened. -Between the two opponents a third has been intervened—Paris and its -insurrectionary Commune have suddenly arisen. The Girondins are almost -a reactionary party. The Crown and all its scaffolding have suddenly -disappeared. The Assembly seems something small, the ministry has fallen -back, and there appears above it one man only—Danton, called Minister of -Justice, but practically the executive itself. A crowd of names which -had stood for discussion, for the Jacobins, for persistent ineffective -opposition, appear as masters. In a word, France had for the moment a new -and terrible pretender to the vacant throne, a pretender that usurped it -at last—the Commune. - -The nine months with which this chapter will deal formed the Republic; it -is they that are the introduction to the Terror and to the great wars, -and from the imprisonment of the King to the fall of the Girondins the -rapid course of France is set in a narrowing channel directly for the -Mountain. The Commune, the body that conquered in August, is destined -to capture every position, and, as one guarantee after another breaks -down, it will attain, with its extreme doctrines and their concomitant -persecution, to absolute power. - -What was Danton’s attitude during this period? It may be summed up as -follows: Now that the Revolution was finally established, to keep France -safe in the inevitable danger. He put the nation first; he did not -subordinate the theory of the Revolution; he dismissed it. The Revolution -had conquered: it was there; but France, which had made it and which -proposed to extend the principles of self-government to the whole world, -was herself in the greatest peril. When discussion had been the method -of the Revolution, Danton had been an extremist. He was Parisian and -Frondeur in 1790 and 1791; it was precisely in that time that he failed. -The tangible thing, the objective to which all his mind leaned, appeared -with the national danger; then he had something to do, and his way of -doing it, his work in the trade to which he was born, showed him to be -of a totally different kind from the men above whom he showed. I do not -believe one could point to a single act of his in these three-quarters of -a year which was not aimed at the national defence. - -It is a point of special moment in the appreciation of his politics that -Danton was alone in this position. He was the only man who acted as one -of the innumerable peasantry of France would have acted, could fate have -endowed such a peasant with genius and with knowledge. The others to the -left and right were soldiers, poets, or pedants every one. Heroic pedants -and poets who were never afraid, but not one of them could forget his -theories or his vision and take hold of the ropes. Such diplomacy as -there is is Danton’s; it is Danton who attempts compromise, and it is -Danton who persistently recalls the debates from personalities to work. -It is he who warns the Girondins, and it is he who, in the anarchy that -followed defeat, produced the necessary dictatorship of the Committee. -Finally, when the Committee is formed, you glance at the names, the -actions, and the reports, and you see Danton moving as a man who can see -moves among the blind. He had been once “in himself the Cordeliers”—it -had no great effect, for there was nothing to do but propose rights; now, -after the insurrection, he became “in himself the executive,” and later -“in himself the Committee.” So much is he the first man in France during -these few months of his activity, that only by following his actions can -you find the unity of this confused and anarchic period. - -It falls into four very distinct divisions, both from the point of view -of general history and from that of Danton’s own life. The first includes -the six weeks intervening between the 10th of August and the meeting of -the Convention; it is a time almost without authority; it moves round the -terrible centre of the massacres. During this brief time the executive, -barely existent, without courts or arms, had him in the Ministry of -Justice as their one power—a power unfortunately checked by the anarchy -in Paris. - -The second division stretches from the meeting of the Convention to -the death of the King. It covers exactly four months, from the 20th of -September 1792 to the 21st of January 1793. It is the time in which the -danger of invasion seems lifted, and in which Danton in the Convention is -working publicly to reconcile the two parties, and secretly to prevent, -if possible, the spread of the coalition against France. - -The third opens with the universal war that follows the death of Louis, -and continues to a date which you may fix at the rising of the 10th of -March, or at the defeat of Neerwinden on the 19th. Danton is absent -with the army during the greater part of these six weeks; he returns -at their close, and when things were at their worst, to create the two -great instruments which he destined to govern France—the Tribunal and the -Committee. - -Finally, for two months, from the establishment of these to the expulsion -of the Girondins on the 2nd of June, he is being gradually driven from -the attempt at conciliation to the necessities of the insurrection. He -is organising and directing the new Government of the Public Safety, -and in launching that new body, in imposing that necessary dictator, we -shall see him sacrificing one by one every minor point in his policy, -till at last his most persistent attempt—I mean his attempt to save -the Girondins—fails in its turn. Having so secured an irresistible -government, and having created the armies, the chief moment of his life -was past. It remained to him to retire, to criticise the excesses of his -own creation, and to be killed by it. - - * * * * * - -Immediately after the insurrection, a week after he had taken the oath -and made the short vigorous speech to the Assembly,[113] Danton sent out -his first and almost his only act as Minister of Justice, the circular of -the 18th of August,[114] which was posted to all the tribunals in France. -It is peculiar rather than important; it is the attempt to convince -the magistracy and all the courts of the justice and necessity of the -insurrection, and at the same time to leave upon record a declaration of -his own intentions now that he had reached power. In the first attempt -he necessarily fails. The old judicature, appointed by the Crown and by -the moderate ministers, largely re-elected by the people, wealthy for the -most part, conservative by origin and tradition, would in any case have -rejected such leadership; but the matter is unimportant; this passive -body, upon which the reaction had counted not a little, and which De Cicé -had planned to use against the Revolution, was destined to disappear -at the first demand of the new popular powers. France for weeks was -practically without courts of law. - -Those passages, on the other hand, in which Danton makes his own apology -are full of interest. They contain in a few sentences the outline of all -his domestic policy, and we find in them Danton’s memories, his fears of -what his past reputation might do to hurt him. - -“I came in through the breach of the Tuilleries, and you can only find -in me the same man who was president of the Cordeliers.... The only -object of my thoughts has been political and individual liberty, ... the -maintenance of the laws, ... the strict union of all the Departments, ... -the splendour of the State, and the equality, not of fortune, for that is -impossible, but of rights and of well-being.” - -If we except the puerilities of the new great seal, the Hercules with -eighty-four stars (to represent the union of the Departments), replaced -by the conventional Liberty and fasces, there is practically nothing -more from Danton as Minister of Justice. But as the one active man in -the Cabinet he is the pivot of the whole time. Those qualities in him -which had so disgusted the men of letters were the exterior of a spirit -imperatively demanded in Paris at the time. His heavy, rapid walk, -the coarseness and harshness of his voice, his brutality in command, -exercised a physical pressure upon the old man Roland, the mathematician -Monge, and the virtuous journalists who accompanied them. I know of but -one character in that set which could have prevented Danton’s ascendancy, -and have met his ugly strength by a force as determined and more refined. -Roland’s wife might have done it, but though she was the soul of the -ministry, she was hardly a minister, and being a woman, she was confined -to secondary and indirect methods. Her hatred of Danton increased to -bitterness as she saw him succeed, but she could not intervene, and -France was saved from the beauty and the ideals which might have been the -syrens of her shipwreck. - -The three weeks following the 10th of August were filled with the news of -the invasion. The King of Prussia had hesitated to march. France, full of -herself, never understood that such a thing was possible. The kings were -on the march, the great and simple ideas, so long in opposition, had met -in battle. All France thought that 1792 was already 1793. Perhaps there -were only two men in the country who saw the immaturity, the complexity, -and the chances of the situation—I mean Danton and Dumouriez: Dumouriez, -because he was by nature a schemer who had seen and was to see the -matter from close at hand; Danton, because, from the first moment of his -entrance into the ministry, he had gathered up the threads of negotiation -into his hand. - -The King of Prussia had hesitated, so had Brunswick. It was the success -of the insurrection that decided them. They made the error that the -foreigner always makes, the error that led the most enlightened Frenchmen -to exaggerate the liberal forces in England, the error of seeing -ourselves in others. They imagined that “the sane body of the nation,” -the Frenchmen that thought like Prussians, would rise in defence of the -monarchy and in aid of the invasion. They had no conception of how small -in number, how hesitating, and how vile were the anti-national party. - -On Sunday the 19th the frontier was crossed; on the Thursday Longwy -capitulated, and a German garrison held the rocky plateau that overlooks -the plain of Luxembourg. A week later, Thursday the 30th, Verdun was -surrounded. - -From the hills above the town, the same hills which make of Verdun the -fifth great entrenched camp of modern France, the Prussian batteries -bombarded with a plunging fire. There may have been food and ammunition -for two or three more days, but fire had broken out in several quarters, -and the town council was imploring Beaurepaire to surrender. Brunswick -proposed a truce and terms of capitulation. On the Saturday, the 1st of -September, after a violent discussion, the terms were rejected, but -Beaurepaire knew that nothing could save the town, and in the night he -shot himself. On the next day, Sunday the second, Verdun yielded and the -road to Paris lay open. - -Meanwhile, in the capital itself, a vortex was opening, and the poor -remnants of public authority and of public order were being drawn down -into it. The 10th of August had been a victory into which there entered -three very dangerous elements. First, it was not final; it had been won -against a small local garrison under the menace of an invasion, and this -invasion was proving itself irresistible. Secondly, it had left behind -it terrors accentuated by success; I mean whatever fears of vengeance or -of the destruction of Paris existed before the insurrection were doubled -when so much greater cause had been given for the “execution” that -Brunswick had threatened. Finally, the success of the insurrection had of -itself destroyed the last shadow of executive power, for all such power, -weak and perishing though it was, had centred in the King. - -But besides these clear conditions which the 10th of August had produced, -there was something deeper and more dangerous—the fear which fed upon -itself and became panic, and which ran supported by anger growing into -madness. There was no news but made it worse, no sight in the streets and -no rumour but increased the intolerable pressure. Trade almost ceased, -and the whole course of exchange, which is the blood of a great city, -seemed to have run to the heart. Over the front of the Hotel de Ville -hung that enormous black flag with the letters “Danger” staring from it -in white, and in the heavy winds another blew out straight and rattled -from the towers of Notre Dame. Every action savoured of nightmare, and -suffered from a spirit grotesque, exaggerated, and horrible. The very -day after the fight a great net had been cast over Paris and drawn in -full of royalists. The gates had been shut suddenly, and every suspect -arrested by order of the Commune. The prisons were full of members of the -great conspiracy, for in civil war the vanquished appear as traitors. -Then there arose a violent demand for the trial and punishment of those -who had called in the foreigner, and a demand as violent, touching on -miracle, for innumerable volunteers. In every project there ran this -spirit of madness mixed with inspiration. - -If Paris lost its head, so did the Assembly and the Moderates, but in -another fashion. Paris was pale with the intensity of anger, Roland -from a sudden paralysis. The fear of Paris was an angry panic; with the -Girondins it was the sudden sickness that takes some men at the sight -of blood. Paris had clamoured for an excess when it demanded the trial -of the Swiss, who had done nothing beyond their mercenary duty; but the -executive met it by an excess of weakness when it produced its court of -ridiculous and just pedants, afraid to condemn, afraid to decide. Already -the people had learned the secret payments of the old civil list,[115] -the salaries paid to the emigrants, the subsidised press. Golier’s report -had appeared but a day before the invasion. - -The news of Longwy was already known. Verdun stood in peril, when the -acquittal of Montmorin on Friday the 31st seemed to be the deciding -weakness of the government that pushed the populace to their extreme of -violence. - -He had been governor of Fontainebleau, openly and patently a conspirator -on the side of the Tuilleries; he was not acquitted of this. It was -admitted that he had “planned civil war;” he was released by that -heroic but fatal fault of the Girondins, the fault that later sent them -to the guillotine, and that now inspired their tribunal—they would -not bend an inch to compromise with necessity; rather than do so they -would deliberately aggravate the worst conditions by inclining against -the passions of the moment. They seemed to say, “You clamour for mere -reprisals; we will show, on the contrary, that we are just, and we will -even irritate you with mercy.” Yet they knew that Montmorin deserved -death. - -After that decision, and when Osselin the judge took with great courage -the prisoner’s arm in his own and led him away, a voice in the court -cried out, “You acquit him now, and in a fortnight his friends will march -into Paris.” The massacres were certain from that moment; the thing -had been said which made the small band of murderers start out, which -made Paris look on immovable, and which kept the National Guard silent, -refusing to stop the carnage. “We will go to the frontier, but we will -not leave enemies behind us. If the law will not execute them, the people -will.” The damnable spirit which runs in colonies and wild places had -invaded civilised Europe, and the lynching was determined. - -When the Assembly had yielded to the Commune, when it was certain that -the insurrectionary Commune would have its own way, and when it was known -that Longwy had fallen, that Verdun was surrounded, there took place -one of those scenes that stand out like pictures in the mind, and that -interpret the characters of history for us better than any accumulation -of detail. - -In the garden of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at its end, and away -from the house, and under the low foliage, the six ministers were met in -an informal gathering—rapid, half-silent, a council not predetermined, -suited to the time; a few hurried words, whose description has come -down to us by no minute, but by the accident of Fabre’s presence. Fabre -d’Eglantine, the uncertain poet, Danton’s protégé, and dangerous, -ill-balanced friend,[116] stood watching at a little distance. - -Roland spoke for all his friends. He was very pale and broken-down; -he leaned his head against a tree—“We must leave Paris.” Danton spoke -louder, “Where do you mean to go?” “We must go to Blois. We must take -with us the King and the treasure.” So said Servan; so said Clavière. -Kersaint, whom Danton had known at the old Commune in 1791, and who -was something of Danton’s kind, added his word: “I have just come from -Sedan, and I know there is nothing else to be done. Brunswick will be -here in Paris within the fortnight as surely as the wedge enters when -you strike.” Danton stopped six waverers by a phrase, a phrase of just -such a character, exaggerated, violent, as his good sense made use of -so often in the tribune. “My mother is seventy years old, and I have -brought her to Paris; I brought my children yesterday. If the Prussians -are to come in, I hope it may be into a Paris burnt down with torches.” -Then he turned round to Roland in person and threw out a fatal sentence, -necessary, perhaps, but one of many that dug the great gulf between him -and the Girondins. “Take care, Roland, and do not talk too much about -flight; the people might hear you.”[117] - -I know of no anecdote that tells more about Danton, or explains with -greater clearness his attitude during the crisis that brought on the -massacres. For these over-vigorous words, full of excess, were uttered -by a man whose character was all for material results—results obtained, -as a rule, by compromise. This same Danton, who talked of “torches” and -“Paris en cendres,” was the only man in France who had the self-control -to negotiate for the retreat of the Prussians after Valmy. His “mother of -seventy years” had indeed been brought to Paris, but from Arcis, which -every one knew to be right in the track of the invasion. What we have to -discover in this speech, as in every phrase he uttered, is the motive; -for with any other of the great Revolutionaries words were the whole of -the idea, and sometimes more than the idea, but with Danton alone words -were the means to a tangible end. - -He desired to prevent that fatal breach with Paris which he had foreseen -to be a risk from the beginning, and which Mirabeau in his time had -thought so near as to be necessary. He was determined to keep this -shadow—the national executive—in reach of the one thing that was alive -and vigorous and defending the nation. It is of the greatest importance -in appreciating his attitude to know that he dreaded the Commune. Later, -no one of the deputies of Paris in the Convention saw as he saw the -necessity of amalgamation with the Departments. Marat he thoroughly -despised. Most of the men of the Commune had sat in one room with -him; Panis and Sergent had even desks under him. He knew them, and he -contemned them all. He did not know to what crimes they were about to -commit themselves, or perhaps he would have interfered, but he knew they -were worthless. - -Behind them, however, he saw Paris, and in Paris he ardently believed, -in its position and in its necessity. He was entirely right. Once let -the ministers leave the city, and civil war would begin—a civil war -waged within ten days’ march of the enemy, and between what forces? An -imbecile, a man like one of our moderns, who thinks in maps and numbers, -would have said, “Between eighty-three departments and one.” But Danton -knew better. He had that appreciation which is common to all the masters; -he knew the meaning of potential and of the word ‘quality.’ It would have -been a fight between the members and the brain, and the brain would have -died fighting, leaving a body dead because the brain had died. - -Thus while the Assembly and the Commune fight their sharp battle of -the last days of August, while the Parliament commands new municipal -elections, breaks the municipality, then flatters it, then yields and -permits it to be practically reinforced under the form of a fresh vote -from the Sections,[118] Danton acts as though both Parliament and Commune -had dropped from the world. There are two speeches of his, one of the -28th of August, one of the 2nd of September, and between them they mark -his attitude and form also the origins of that full year of action and -rhetoric which define him in history. - -In the first, he proposes and carries the measure which has been made an -excuse for laying upon his shoulders the responsibility of the massacres. -The speech was made for a very different purpose. He authorised the -domiciliary visits, but his object was to obtain arms. One thought only -occupied him: to counteract the intense individualism of the Moderates, -to force despotic measures through a Parliament that hated them, and to -force these measures because without them the situation was lost. He -got his arms, and just afterwards his mass of volunteers, but the other -measure which he had introduced to pacify the Commune, the domiciliary -visits, have marked more deeply in the memories of the time, because in -the troubled days that followed these visits seemed to be a beginning. - -It was Sunday morning, the 2nd of September. Verdun (though no one knew -it yet in Paris) had just fallen; Beaurepaire was dead. The “Comité de -Surveillance” of the Commune had admitted Marat illegally,[119] and -for a sinister reason. For three days the prisons had been marked, and -those whom the Comité wished to save had been withdrawn; and though -the movement was spontaneous, though the most of the Sections spoke -before Marat,[120] yet there was an executive and a directory, and that -madman was its chief. The moment that the massacres were beginning at -the Carmes, Danton was making the last effort to turn the anger of the -moment into an enthusiasm for the Champ de Mars and for the volunteers. -If ever there was an attempt to influence by rhetoric a popular emotion -which could not be checked, and to direct energy from a destructive to -a fruitful object, it is to be found in this his most famous speech—the -speech that even the children know to-day in France, the closing words -of which are engraved upon his pedestal. For the only time in his life -he turned and leant upon the mere power of words: there is something in -their extraordinary force which savours of despair, and they rise at the -close to an untranslatable phrase in which you hear rhythm for the first -and last time in his appeals: “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours -de l’audace—et la France est sauvée.”[121] - -He did not wholly fail. When he had rung the great bell of the Hotel -de Ville and had gone to the Champ de Mars, he looked over a great and -growing crowd of young men running to the enlistment. But for four -days—days in which he doggedly turned his back to the Commune which -called him—the killing went on in the prisons. He and his volunteers, -his silence, were most like this: a man in a mutiny on ship-board, in a -storm at night, keeping the helm, saving what could be saved and careless -whether the morning should make him seem a traitor on the one hand or -a mutineer upon the other. For the tragedy of those five days—the days -of Sedan—always seems to be passing in a thick night. We read records of -action at this or that hour in the daylight, but we cannot believe the -sun shone. Maillard, tall and pale in his close black serge and belt, is -a figure for candles on the Abbaye table and for torches in the cloisters -and the vaults. There never was a horror more germane to darkness. - -But why did Danton not save the prisoners? I know that question is -usually answered by saying that he was indifferent. So much (it seems -to me) survives of a legend. For history no longer pretends that he -organised or directed the crime. Indeed, history finds it daily more -difficult, as the details accumulate, to fix it upon any one man. But -the fact that he persistently defended the extremists in the following -month, that he made himself (for the purposes of reunion) an advocate for -many men who were blameworthy, and tried to reconcile the pure minds of -the Girondins with such terrible memories—in a word, the fact that for -months he sacrificed himself in the Convention, that he demanded union, -has condemned him to every suspicion. _Que mon nom soit flétri et que la -France soit libre._ - -He might, indeed, have spoken. Popular, the one vigorous and healthy -personality in the face of Paris, he might have bent his energy to the -single aim of preventing an outbreak. I will not deny that in his mind, -over which we have seen passionate anger falling suddenly in October -1789 and in June 1792, there may have arisen some such feeling as that -which restrained the vast mass of the Parisians from interfering with -the little band of murderers—a feeling of violent hatred, a memory of -the manifesto and a disgust which made the partisans of Brunswick seem -like vermin. There is something of that deplorable temper in the anecdote -which Madame Roland gives of him, striding through the rooms on the -second day and saying that the prisoners “could save themselves.” But -this anecdote is not history; it is an accusation, and one made by a -partisan and an enemy.[122] There is another and better reason for his -action, which must, I think, have made the greater part of his motive. To -have spoken would have been to play a very heavy stake. If he spoke and -failed to prevent the rising, he ceased to be Danton. His influence fell, -he became a Moderate, and himself, the one man left to direct affairs, -entered the confused ranks of opposition—un-Parisian, rejected of either -party, while France beneath him fell into mere anarchy. - -It would have been gambling with all that he most desired: the English -neutrality, the union of the coming Parliament, the rapid organisation -of the armies, all this staked to win something that was not precious to -him at all—the lives of a mass of men the bulk of whom had demanded the -success of the invasion. - -Why did he not act? Because nobody could act. Remember the phrase which -he delivered while Louis was being executed four months later: “Nulle -puissance humaine.”[123] We are so accustomed to an aristocratic and -orderly society that a title of office implies power. The Home Secretary -or some other man “does this,” but the man who really does it—does it -with his hands—is the policeman or the soldier. Now these did not exist -at the moment in Paris. It explains a hundred things in the Revolution -to remember that every successive step reduced society to powder, to -a mere number of men. Rousseau had said that this compact, this thing -based on voluntary union, was not made for the cities. Paris gave us -in September an awful proof. Roland, a man whom Marat had put upon his -list and whom Danton had saved, talked on the Monday of the “just anger -of the people.” Yet Roland was a just man, and brave in matters that -affected himself alone, and the massacres chiefly concerned him. He was -Minister of the Interior, that is, responsible for order, but there was -nothing with which to work. On the Tuesday he sent to Santerre and said, -“Call out the National Guard.” Santerre answered that he could not gather -them. He was right. Again, Pétion was an honest man, a Moderate, the -mayor of Paris; all he could do was to sit at a useless committee of the -Sections and talk of the “National Defence;” that utter disintegration -which the theories of the Revolution had produced—that purely voluntary -condition of the soldier, the official, the police (a mere anarchy)—was -irresistible when there was spontaneity of action; it was useless where -the conditions demanded organisation and initiative. It withstood the -cannonade at Valmy, it stormed the height of Jemappes, but it fled in -rout when the spring had melted enthusiasm. So here police, the function -that most requires discipline, was lacking in the State. And the whole -situation is summed up in the sharp picture we have of Manuel pushing -his way though the crowd with “two policemen” who had “volunteered,” and -trying in vain to stop the lynching at the Carmes. It was to this anarchy -that Danton, after six months of struggle, succeeded in giving government -during 1793. - -Danton himself, after four months of vain effort to reconcile his -enemies, put the whole matter in the last phrase of his defence: “No -human power” could have stopped the massacres;[124] all that could -be done was to work, from that moment forward, against the extreme -theories of a voluntary state, and towards the establishment of a strong -government.[125] - -When, on the Thursday, September 6, the wave receded, and when on the -morrow Pétion was able to interfere, the people and the Assembly looked -round them and saw that a thing had happened which was to hurt the future -of the Revolution more than all the armies. It was like the breaking of -day after that moral night, a daybreak in which the wind goes down and -you see the wreckage. - -Paris was very silent; the accusations had not yet begun; the Assembly -was dying. The electoral council of Paris had met during the very days -of the massacre, and had proceeded to choose the members who were to -represent the capital in the Convention that was about to meet. It also -voted in silence, and sat in the mingled panic and remorse that oppressed -the whole city. The names came out in the balloting. On the 5th (the -murderers were still growling in the streets) Robespierre was elected in -a small meeting of 525; on the 6th Danton was elected second, but with a -much larger attendance and with a much greater majority—638 votes out of -an attendance of 700, a curious result. Danton’s name forced itself upon -them, was acclaimed beyond any other; yet his attitude of conciliation, -his attempt to have all Paris represented, was set aside. The man and his -reputation succeeded, his policy failed. They elected also Marat, Panis, -Sergent—those who had directed the crime. Danton and Manuel alone of all -the twenty-four had any touch of the Moderate about them. The long list -ends with the name of Egalité, elected by a majority of one.[126] - -There came, therefore, into the Convention an apparently united body of -men from Paris—the Mountain. Up on the benches of the extreme left, in -the grey, dark theatre of the Tuilleries, there were to sit, in a compact -group, these extremists; and across the floor the Departments, the pure -Republicans of the south, who despised the city and them, who feared them -terribly, and who hated with the force of a religion, were to single them -out as tyrants. And in this Mountain, this body of Reds, Danton was to -find himself imbedded, bound up, falsified. He had determined to prevent -such parties. He had tried hard to make Paris elect not only Robespierre -but Pétion also as a mark of unity: he had failed. - -When the country members came up to the capital, September had grown -to be an awful legend. The number of those killed was multiplied ten -times,[127] twenty times—number lost meaning. Paris seemed a city of -blood. Guides volunteered story after story. “Here, in the Abbaye, the -blood had risen so high”—they made a mark in the wall; “there, under -that tree, the massacres were planned by such and such a one”—any name -suited, sometimes it was Robespierre, sometimes Danton. The deputies came -from their little towns and from the fields, over seven hundred—pilgrims -from places where the pure enthusiasms of 1790 still lingered, where -even 1792 had brought no passion. They came, many of them for the first -time, bewildered in the enormous city; its noise confused them, its -crowds, its anger—“Yes; that was where the massacres were committed a -fortnight ago—we can believe it.” The Convention from its first day -seemed a battlefield—Paris defiant in the Mountain, and the Departments -silent with an angry fear in the plain and on the benches of the right. -And when the newcomers asked to be shown the group of deputies for Paris, -as men would ask to be shown lurking enemies or wild beasts, they would -have their gaze directed to that high place on the left where sat the -names that had terrified and fascinated them in the prints of their -country-sides. - -There were no windows; the skylight, high above that deep well of a -room, sent an insufficient light downwards upon the foreheads, making -the features sharp and yet lending them a false gloom. That man with -the small squat body and the frog’s face was Marat; you could just see -his great vain mouth in the dim light. Those small, keen features, well -barbered and set up, the high forehead, the pointed bones of the cheek -and chin, stood for Robespierre. The light fell chiefly on the white of -his careful wig; his thin smile was in shadow. And who was that huge -figure, made larger by the darkness and carrying a head like Mirabeau? -They saw it moving when the others were fixed. He would speak to his -neighbours with heavy, sweeping gestures. They grew accustomed to the -half-light, and they could distinguish his face—the strong jaw, the -powerful movement of the lips, torn and misshapen though they were; the -rough, pitted skin, the small, direct, and deep-set eyes. Who was he? He -seemed to them the very incarnation of all the bloodshed and unreason -which they hated in Paris, a master of anarchy. It was Danton. - -Against that impression all policy and wisdom broke. He demanded unity; -he checked the growing attack on the rich; he said things that were like -France speaking. But the voice was harsh and loud; they heard it in their -minds at the head of mobs; they fled from him to the Girondins; they -forced him back upon the Mountain, and he had to do his work alone in -spite of those orators whom he would have befriended and whose genius he -loved—in spite of those madmen who surrounded him, and who later killed -him and the Republic with one axe. - -It was on the 25th of September, a Thursday, that the Convention met -in the Tuilleries; on the Friday, in the same place, with doors shut -and with the galleries empty, they declared the Republic, and moved -off to the Manège, where their predecessors had sat. In those two days -the violent quarrel between Paris and France was hushed for a moment. -Danton, in the lull, said all he could to define his own position and -to prevent that quarrel from ever reaching a head. He went out to meet -the Moderates. He declared, with the common sense of the peasant, that -property must first be declared inviolable; and it is curious that the -Convention, the majority that misunderstood him and broke with him, was -yet less moderate than he; it passed the resolution, but in the form, -“property is under the safeguard of the nation.” In order to calm opinion -he resigned the Ministry of Justice on the spot;[128] he did everything -to make his position clear and true, and to save the unity of the -Parliament. - -But the attack came from the others. Within a week Lasource had proposed -a guard for the Convention, “drawn from the departments;” and in the face -of this proposition, that was almost civil war, Danton found himself -able to speak once more for unity. The Girondins had elected one of -themselves for president, and had chosen from among their own members the -secretaries of the Assembly; they had wittingly ostracised the left, and -they desired to make it dumb. Danton still attempted union. “I myself -come from the Departments, from a place to which I always turn my eyes. -But Paris is made of the Departments, and we are not here as members of -this place or that, but as members for France.” He continually presented -the idea of France united; the Girondins as continually rejected it. He -knew that they thought him a shield for Marat; he rejected Marat openly -from the tribune. But all this intense and personal action had but an -effect upon individuals. Two especially it moved—Vergniaud, the young -orator, sincere and brave beyond all his colleagues, and more far-seeing -than any of the dreamers around him; Condorcet, to whom a year before -Danton had seemed so repulsive, but whose calm and just mind had arrived -at the truth; who had said, “Danton has that rare faculty of neither -hating nor envying genius in others;” who had voted and spoken for his -appointment as Minister of Justice, and who, up to the catastrophe of the -following June, continued to understand and to support him. - -But, for the mass of the Girondins, he remained an outcast. He used words -that one could not use before Roland’s wife, and the great group that -surrounded her (men over-full of utopias, but heroic, men whom Danton -himself regretted bitterly) made him an outcast. He replied often with -passion, and once with insult, but as we shall see he did not abandon -them entirely till the insurrection destroyed them in ’93. - -Meanwhile, while they voted the Republic in Paris, under Argonne -a battle among the most curious in history was making a momentary -security—that is, a momentary union of good feeling throughout France, -and even in Paris itself. The Prussian army had been checked on the -little rise of Valmy. As you stand upon the field in that same season -of the year to-day, in the mist of the early morning, as the volunteers -and the battered remnants of the line stood then; as you look from -that standpoint at the open road, at the great plain of Champagne, so -well suited to maintain an army; as you see to the east the long wall -of the Argonne, and remember that Dumouriez had been outflanked in -his Thermopylæ, a confusion seizes the mind. Why on earth was Valmy -so important a victory? It is a common-place to say that Valmy was a -cannonade, but what was a cannonade in 1792? If indeed to-day a line -of guns were drawn up and served, as I have seen them served in the -manœuvres within sight of these same hills, and if a force should be -discovered capable of withstanding the shrapnel of twelve batteries -of artillery, sure of their range, turning the mark into a ploughed -field—then that force would merit peculiar names, for it would be -immortal. But in the eighteenth century guns were not the arbiters of -battles. Infantry could charge the batteries then. France, which was -crushed yesterday and will succeed to-morrow solely through artillery, -had not a hundred years ago to dread the random solid shot of smooth -bores; what she had to dread was the bayonet charge of that superb -infantry which the great Frederick had trained, and on which the -monstrous scaffolding of Prussia still reposes. All we can say of Valmy -is this, that men quite ignorant of warfare, badly held together, managed -to stand firm under an ill-directed, at times a desultory and distant -cannon fire. - -Valmy was not a victory. The results of Valmy have changed the world, but -no one could have seen it then. Goethe, in the course of a long life, -discovered it, and put it beautifully into his own mouth over one of the -bivouac fires: “We entered on a new world then;” but there were better -prophets than Goethe, and not one perceived it. For days the Prussian -army hesitated. Dumouriez did not dare to meet them. A pitched battle in -the last days of September might have changed all history. - -Why then did the King of Prussia retreat? No force compelled, but two -arguments convinced him. The peasantry, and Danton, the man who through -the whole year is, as it were, a peasant trained and illumined. The -resistance of the peasantry had taught the King that to reach Paris it -required not a war of the dynasties, such as had filled the eighteenth -century—wars in which armies passed like visiting caravans; the invasion -of France would need a crusade. He was no crusader. He had undertaken the -war with only half a heart, and at this slight check he hesitated. The -second argument came from Danton. He bargained like a peasant secretly -for the purchasable and obvious good, while the Parliament was talking as -might talk a conqueror who was something of a poet and well read in the -classics. When there was a talk of negotiations just after the battle, it -launched the great words, “That the Republic does not discuss till its -territory is evacuated.” That was on Tuesday; the Republic was young to -discuss anything—it was four days old. On Wednesday night, Westermann, -Danton’s man of the 10th of August, and his companion at the scaffold, -started off secretly to diplomatise. That foolish man D’Eglantine -followed him, but his folly was swallowed up in the wisdom of Danton, who -sent him, a secretary and a mouthpiece, to do that which, had he done -it himself, would have produced some violent and ill-considered vote. -Between them this clique settled the matter, and the invaders passed -back through the Argonne heavily, in wet roads and through drenched -woods, with Kellermann following, impatient, above the valleys, but -bound by Danton’s policy not to harass the retreat; till at last, more -than a month after Valmy,[129] he fired the salute from Longwy, and the -territory was free. - -Did Danton know, as he was pursuing these plans, why Dumouriez helped -him? Did he understand thoroughly that vain, talented, and unprincipled -soldier? I think it certain. It is among those things which cannot be -proved; one does not base such convictions upon documents, but rather -on the general appreciation of character. Thus Danton undoubtedly -helped and used Talleyrand at another time in England, and Talleyrand -was patently false. But Talleyrand was, as patently, the cleverest -diplomatist he could find. Dumouriez wished the King of Prussia to be -left unmolested for a number of very mixed reasons, in which patriotism -played a small part; Danton wished it for the sake of France, and for -that only; but if Dumouriez at the head of an army was to hand, so much -the better. Danton supported Dumouriez, his policy, even his retreats -up to the disaster of March. To say “he sympathised with a traitor” -is one of those follies which men can only make when they forget that -contemporaries cannot have known what we know. With all his time-serving -and his separate plans, no one dreamt that in six months the general -would join the Austrians; it was a sudden blow even to those who sat in -his tent. - -October was a month of reconciliation. When the man broad awake succeeds, -the dreamer is ready to build a new dream on that result. The Gironde was -almost silent, the Mountain was afraid. In the short visit that Dumouriez -paid, between a victory and a victory, to Paris, Danton appears for a -moment a partner in the mental ease, the brilliant expression, and the -Republican faith of the Girondins. He might perhaps have ended there, -and with his great arms and shoulders have held apart the men whose -mutual hatred killed the Republic. In his success—and every one bore him -gratitude after Valmy—that which he most desired almost happened, and -the alliance between the opposing Girondist and the Mountain was half -realised. - -Michelet gives us two pictures[130] which, like the revelation of -lightning, show us that rapid drama standing still. In the first it -is Madame Roland, in the second Marat, who makes the tragedy. In the -first Dumouriez and Danton sat in the same box at the theatre, and -Vergniaud was coming in with the soul of the Girondins. The door opened -and promised this spectacle: Danton and the general and the orator of -the pure Republicans, and the woman most identified with the Right. -It would have been such a picture for all the people there as Danton -would have prayed or paid for. The door was ajar, and, as she came -near, Madame Roland saw Danton sitting in the box; she put out her hand -from Vergniaud’s arm and shut the door. There is in her memoirs a kind -of apology,“des femmes de mauvaise tournure.” Utter nonsense; it was -Roland’s box, and his wife was expected. Danton and Dumouriez were not -of the gutter. No, it was the narrow feminine hatred, so closely allied -to her intense devotion, that made Madame Roland thrust Danton at arm’s -length. The same spirit that made her vilify the Left like a fury made -her the calm saint of the Girondins. For she lived entirely in the Idea. - -The second scene is a reception. I will not repeat Michelet’s -description; its spirit is contained in an admirable phrase: “France -civilised appealed therein against France political.” Danton was -surrounded with those whom he would have taught, as he taught all who -ever knew him closely, to respect or to love him. Marat heard that he -was there—Marat, whom he had repudiated in public a few days before. He -heard that Danton was there, surrounded by the soldiers, and the women, -and the orators. He called at the door, and shouted in the hall, “I want -to see Danton,” and at the sound of his voice everybody grew troubled, -and Danton was left alone. On the 29th of October Danton attempted openly -to break with Marat: “I declare to you and to France,” he said in the -Convention, “that I have tried Marat’s temperament, and I am no friend of -his.” But the attempt came too late. - -The discussions broke out again in November. On the 10th, the victory of -Jemappes was heard in Paris. This book, dealing only with a man, cannot -detail those famous charges; it was a victory won by men singing the -new songs; it is the inspiration of “La victoire en chantant.” But the -security it gave only went further to destroy what was left of union. -Danton found himself more and more alone. He who had been named on a -committee with Thomas Paine, with Condorcet, with Pétion, on the very day -after his election to the presidency of the Jacobins,[131] who had in -his own temporary success seemed to realise his policy of union, found -himself after a month once more pushed back towards the Mountain. The -growing sense of security had destroyed the chances of union. He remained -silent. One would say that the time passed him by untouched, because -the one thing he cared for had failed, and because the inevitable civil -dissensions of the next spring covered his mind with clouds. France was -irretrievably divided. The arraignment of the King, the discovery of -the secret papers, all the movement of November leaves him, as it were, -stranded, waiting his mission to Belgium. - -There belongs to this period only one considerable speech. It is the -only thing in all his public acts in which you can discover beauty. You -may find in this speech the pity and the tenderness which his intimates -loved, the memory which they for sixty years defended, but which no -document or letter remains to perpetuate. - -Cambon, careless of anything but his exchequer, had thought the new era -come. That cold and inflexible head determined, seeing the steep fall -towards bankruptcy that France was making, to save a hundred millions, -but to save it at an expense. He proposed to separate the State from what -was left of the Church, to break the vow of 1790. In almost the last -speech before he went off to the armies, Danton opposed him and gave this -passage—a passage better fitted to the defence of an older and stronger -thing than the wretched constitutional priesthood:— - -“... It is treason against the nation to take away its dreams. For my -part, I admit I have known but one God. The God of all the world and of -justice. The man in the fields adds to this conception that of a man who -works, whom he makes sacred because his youth, his manhood, and his old -age owe to the priest then: little moments of happiness. When a man is -poor and wretched, his soul grows tender, and he clings especially to -whatever seems majestic: leave him his illusions—teach him if you will -... but do not let the poor fear that they may lose the one thing that -binds them to earth, since wealth cannot bind them.” - -Before he left on the mission to the armies there occurred a scene which -has always been, since Michelet described it, the most striking passage -of his relations with the Girondins. He, the man who saw safety for -France only in diplomacy, had, for the sake of unity, held his tongue -when the Girondins passed the decree of the 19th November, which was to -sustain a revolutionary crusade against Europe. I say that November is -full of Danton’s attempt to maintain the unity of the Parliament. After -all these efforts he was worsted, because the Girondins were possessed by -a dream which admitted of no compromise and of no realities. - -The scene of his last attempt was this:—He made a rendezvous with their -party. They were to meet secretly at night and away from Paris in a -house in the woods of Sceaux at the very end of November. The whole life -of this man was a tragedy, and we see in this sad journey that kind of -dramatic presentiment of his death and of theirs, the “foreknowledge” -with which the tragedies of the world are filled. - -He went through the desolate bare woods of November, under the hurrying -sky, that recalls to our minds in France to-day the charges of Jemappes. -The night was as wild as the time, and as dark as his forebodings, when -he came on to the little group of men in the candlelight, and argued -with them, and against them, and alone. Michelet gives to Danton’s mind -a sentiment of coercion. He shows us Danton dragged by necessity. But I -can see no necessity except the supreme desire to unite the parties and -make the government real. They would not receive his alliance, and he -went away from that meeting at midnight, pushed back upon Paris, thrown -into the comradeship of violence. Guadet rejected him with an especial -fervour. Danton as he left turned upon him with this phrase: “Guadet, -Guadet, you cannot understand and you do not know how to forgive; you are -headstrong, and it will be your doom.” The next day he started on his -mission to the army. - -During the arraignment and during the trial of the King the opinions that -divided the Left and the Right fought it out in his absence.[132] He was -not there to attempt such a movement as his character demanded. No one -in all the Assembly dared hold out a hand as he would have done and see -whether after all Vergniaud might not perhaps be right on the one hand, -and the Mountain perhaps be patriots on the other. - -There was in this debate upon one man’s life an element to which Danton’s -nature was well suited. There had to be kept in view for the French -nation the effect upon Europe which would follow from the determination -as to the death or life of the King, and Danton’s great voice has so -strongly and so rightly affected the historians of the period that he -thrusts his personality forward into their narrative, and in at least one -notable place Danton appears, in history, and in one of the greatest -pages of history, by no right, and figures upon scenes which do not -possess the advantage of his voice. He has been made to defend Louis’s -life, to plead for a respite, and then by a violent change to vote for -his death. - -Let me now explain how this error passed into the mind of Michelet and of -other men. Danton returned from Belgium on the night of the 14th January. -On that same day a certain Dannon, apparently an honest man,[133] -rose late in the evening and demanded respite for Louis. When Gallois -reprinted the _Moniteur_, he saw this obscure name coupled with a politic -demand; he read it again, and said, “This Dannon must be a misprint for -Danton.” He corrected it so. On this chance venture there fell the eye -of Michelet, the eye that from a glance or a word could bring back the -colours and the movements of living men. In him also the tragedy of -Danton powerfully worked; he moulded a figure from these few words in the -_Moniteur_, and made of them an admirable anti-climax. Here was Danton -(Dannon) hot from the armies, knowing in what peril France stood, having -seen with his own eyes how momentary had been the effects of Jemappes. -He comes from his travelling coach to the Assembly, and with the mud of -the road yet upon him, gives his expression as an ally to the Girondins -and to the Moderates. Then some rebuff, some unrecorded insult throws -him back again as he had been so often thrown back into the arms of the -Extremists. On the next day, the 15th of January, we are asked to watch -him sitting by the side of his dying wife, sullen and despairing. On the -16th he comes back furious, and votes for the death of the King. - -There are those for whom detail in history is pedantic, yet here upon -three letters and their order hangs the interpretation not only of an -individual character but of a policy whose effects we are still feeling. -Michelet’s great picture is false from beginning to end. Danton had -returned on the 14th, and came jaded with his journey to the bedside -of her who had been his young wife of five years, who was now near to -childbirth and to death. He had his own drama as well as that of the -historian’s, and our own dramas are acted upon a stage where the results -are real. All that night of the 14th and all the 15th he was watching in -his flat of the Passage du Commerce a fate which was coming upon him, and -certainly for whose thirty-six hours the Revolution was a little thing -to him. He came back wearily to his position and to his duties on the -16th; he remembered there was such a thing as the Revolution—that Louis -was after all on trial, and descended from his home into the hall of the -Parliament to give the short angry sentence in which we seem to read less -moderation and less of diplomacy than was his by nature. The scene in the -home had made him not only bitter but weak, for there is surely weakness -in saying, “I am not a statesman,” in borrowing, that is, the vulgar -acrimony of Marat, or in talking of “the tyrant,” and in repeating the -phrases of the Mountain. - -But in the days that followed Michelet finds a good excuse. Certainly one -would say, if one knew nothing about him except his action of January -1793, that Danton was the Mountain and nothing else. This error would be -supported by the unreasoning vehemence, the almost brutal anger, into -which he allows himself to fall. - -They asked whether the King could be condemned to death by a mere -majority, and whether that majority was decisive. Danton threw back at -them: “You decided the Republic by a mere majority, you changed the whole -history of the nation by a mere majority, and now you think the life of -one man too great for a mere majority; you say such a vote could not be -decisive enough to make blood flow. When I was on the frontier the blood -flowed decisively enough.” - -So naturally was he at that moment the Danton of unreason, so much had -his character yielded to its persistent temptation of violent words, that -there could be heard a voice once calling out to him as he rushed to the -tribune without leave from the Speaker, “You are not a king yet, Danton.” -And yet this was the man who had saved France from any folly of defiance -after Valmy, who was determined upon saving her in the future by keeping -upon the helm a quiet and unswerving hand. Vergniaud’s great simile, -“That France might become, if she did not take care, like the statues of -Egypt; they astonish by their greatness, and yet are enigmas to all who -see them, because the living spirit that made them has died,” passed him -by without effect. He was one of those who voted in the fatal majority, -and he threw down as gage of battle the head of a king.[134] - - * * * * * - -The word had become reality, and Louis had stood at mid-day trying to be -heard beyond the ring of soldiers, had cried out that he was innocent, -and had died in the noon of that cold January day. This act was destined -to produce the one thing that Danton had most ardently desired to -avoid—it put an end once and for all to the neutrality of England. - -Another people, then in their infancy, now old, whom Louis had been -persuaded to help against his will, received the death of Louis like -a kind of blow in the face. The people of the United States in their -simplicity had imagined the French king to be their saviour; they did -not know Louis’s phrase, “I was dragged into that unhappy affair of -America; advantage was taken of my youth.” They regarded his crown with -a certain superstition, as they still regard what is left of baubles -in Europe; and when the axe fell upon him, France lost not only the -calculating hypocrisy of Pitt, but the genuine sympathy of the American -people. - -In the days that followed (they were only ten) between the 21st of -January and the end of the month, it is still plain that the shock which -most affected Danton’s vigorous and independent judgment was that return -after seven weeks to the wife whom he had passionately loved, and whom -this ugly Orpheus felt slipping from his arms back into the shades. After -her death, as we shall see, he did not reel so heavily, but in that -fortnight of January, which was of such supreme importance, he permitted -misfortune to rouse mere passion in his mind; and he who might have led -the Moderates, who might have played with the life of Louis like a card, -chose to remember his rebuff in the winter and threw his trump away. - -Many have tried to explain Vergniaud’s vote. Is it not probable that he -was drawn by the example of a man whom he did not understand, and whose -opinion attracted an orator not unappreciative of energy? Vergniaud has -always before history a doubting and a hesitating face, and it seems more -than possible that the wrath of Danton carried him and many others into -the vote for death. - -Ever since the 10th of August had thrust him into unexpected power, -Danton had held in one way or another the threads of a certain diplomacy. -It was as follows:—To rely upon all the elements in Europe which admired -or were indifferent to the Revolution, and to combine them in a kind of -resistant body; to use, as it were, their inertia against those who were -setting out as crusaders against France. On this account the foolish war -of propaganda was most distasteful to him. On this account England’s -neutrality haunted his mind. He knew that in this country there existed -a body strong in its influence though not in its numbers, a body which -would have supported the French. Priestley had written to him before his -exile. Talleyrand was working for him at the moment, and opposing as an -informal Dantonist the Girondin acerbity of Chauvelin.[135] Danton was -even willing to use Dumouriez, mainly because Dumouriez was about to -compromise with England. To this policy of observation, a policy which -took advantage of England as the lover of individual liberty and of -England as the merchant, the death of the King put a sudden stop. It was -Danton that killed his own intrigue. - -Before he left on his second mission to the armies on the 31st January -1793, he shows that new face in which he attempts to retrieve, as far as -possible, the errors of which he had been largely the author. In a speech -which shows once again all his old power of party political action, -he demands the annexation of Belgium. He has seen that general war is -inevitable, and harking back again to that unique French conception -of which he was the heir, the _raison d’état_, he determines to save -the State, and to do it by an action which opposed every theory of the -Revolution. He asked “everything of their reason, nothing of their -enthusiasm,” and he demanded the annexation of Belgium with France. It -was pure opportunism—the determination to get hold of a revenue by force -of arms; and the next day, after having painfully come back to his old -policy of the real and objective, burdened by a past error, and having -broken with all that he valued in French opinion, he went off again -to the army. While his chaise was yet rolling on the flat roads of -Flanders, Chauvelin returned with Pitt’s scrawl in his hand, and France -was at war with the whole world. - -This next voyage to Belgium occupied but a very short time. He did not -get there until the 3rd February, and he started to come back on the -15th. But the moment, which is necessarily a silent one in his biography, -would be one of capital importance to us had he remained in Paris to -speak, and to leave us by his speeches some clue as to the revolution -through which his mind had passed. - -Consider these contrasting pictures: Danton, up to the death of the -King, seems uniquely occupied in pursuing the threads of a very careful -diplomacy, and in welding as far as possible the opposing factions of -the Parliament. Of course, his general theories in politics remain -unaltered, but something has happened which makes him, on returning from -Belgium for the second time, pursue this different policy: the immediate -construction of a strong central government, and the providing of it -with exceptional and terrible machinery. He works this as absolutely the -unique policy. He seems to have forgotten all questions of diplomacy, -nearly to have despaired of settling the quarrel between Paris and -the Girondins. In fine, Danton, when first in power, had been a man -so representative of France as to have many different objects, and to -attempt their co-ordination. We see him the brief fortnight of Louis’s -execution violent, angry, unreasoning; we see him again in less than a -month transformed into a man with a single object, pursued and succeeded -in with the tenacity common to minds much narrower than his own. - -I know that events will largely account for the change. The Girondins had -repelled him; diplomacy had no further object when once the universal war -was declared; the grave perils, and later the disasters of the French -armies, which he had seen with his own eyes, called imperatively for -a dictatorship. Nevertheless events will not of themselves account for -the very great transformation in all that he says and does. I believe -that we must look to another cause—one of those causes which historians -neglect, but which in the lives of individuals are of far more importance -than their political surroundings. By nature he had great tendencies to -indolence as well as to violence. He was capable of temporising to a -dangerous extent, and this, I think, was largely the cause of his action -in the autumn. But such natures are also of the kind which disaster spurs -to action. As we have seen, the return in January to his household, -ruined by an impending fate, made him the violent and bitter speaker who -spoiled his own plans by his own speeches. But returning from Belgium in -February, not a menace but a definite disaster awoke in him a much more -useful energy. - -Coming from fields in which he had seen the whole force of the early -battles breaking up in confusion and retreat, he had suddenly to meet the -news of his wife’s death. He bought a light carriage for himself in order -to travel with greater speed, and arrived at the city in time, they say, -to have her coffin taken out of the grave and opened, so that he might -look once more upon her face. The home was entirely empty. The two little -children, one of whom was in arms, the other of whom was just beginning -to talk, had been taken away to their grandmother’s. The seals were on -the furniture and on the doors. One servant only remained. The house had -been without a fire for a week when he entered. It was an opportunity -and a command for another origin in his political life. Coming and going -from these rooms, he found them intolerable; he took refuge in direct -and determined action, calling to his aid all that vast reserve of -energy which he was accustomed to expend at the cost of so much future -exhaustion. - -Here was the first thing to be done—to construct at once that strong and -simple government which he had talked of so long. The report which he and -the other commissioners had prepared on the state of the army[136] was -one deliberately intended to make such a government voted. The Commune of -Paris immediately after the preparation of the report made its vigorous -appeal for a further levy, and on the 8th of March Danton made the first -of those speeches which riveted the armour all round France.[137] - -In the first phrase of this speech he strikes the note upon which -depended so much of his power. He reads his own character into that of -the nation. “We have often discovered before now that this is the temper -of the French people—namely, that it needs dangers to discover all its -energy.” Then he strikes the other note, the appeal to Paris which had -marked so much of his career. “Paris, which has been given so ill a fame” -(a stroke at the Girondins), “I say is called once more to give France -the impulse which last year produced all our triumphs. We promised the -army in Belgium 30,000 men on the 1st of February. None have reached -them. And I demand that commissioners be named to raise a force in the -forty-eight Sections of Paris.” - -If there was some talk at that moment of making him Minister of War after -Beurnonville’s resignation, it was because no one but Danton himself -understood how much his energy could do. He rejected the proposal, but -he had the desire to replace the ministers themselves by a power more -formidable and more direct. - -In these days one disaster after another came to help his scheme. More -than one of his enemies had suspected in a vague fashion that he was -framing a new power,[138] but they could not imagine in Danton anything -higher than ambition, and they lent him the ridiculous project of -forcing a new ministry upon the Assembly. What he was really preparing, -and what he produced on the 10th of March, was the weapon which history -has called the Revolutionary Tribunal. - -It was the moment when the mutterings against the Girondins seemed about -to take the form of an insurrection, when their printing presses were -broken, and when, in the vague panic that always followed any popular -movement since September, men feared a renewal of the massacres. The -proposal is put forward with ability of argument rather than with -passion; but, in the teeth of the majority and a ministry to which such -methods were detestable, in the teeth, that is, of the Girondin idealism -which was ruining the country, he affirmed the necessity of his scheme, -and he passed it.[139] He had given the Revolutionary Government its -first great weapon, a weapon that was later to be turned against himself; -his second move was to put it into vigorous hands. - -This next proposition, which, combined with the establishment of the -Revolutionary Tribunal, was to change the history of France, did not -proceed from Danton alone, but it was based upon Danton’s suggestion; -it sprang largely from the vivid impression he had given of the peril -in which France lay and of the necessity of forming something central -and strong, of providing a hand which could use the dictatorship of -the Terror. The Committee of Public Safety, in a word, could not have -been declared but for the interpretation which Danton had given to the -disasters of March. - -The crowning defeat of Neerwinden, which at the time must almost have -seemed the death of the Republic, gave the first impulse. The old -Committee of General Defence was renewed. But though this committee was -far too large and far too feeble, we owe it to Danton that it contained -a vigorous minority from the Left. The final blow that replaced it by an -institution round which the rest of this book will turn was the treason -of Dumouriez. - -Let us consider what the situation was at this moment. The Republic had -lost every man upon whose ability she could rely in the leadership of -armies. Of all the school of generals who had grown up under the old -regime, Lafayette alone in his weak way had loved freedom, and Dumouriez -alone had remained on the side of the French. Spain, England, the German -Powers—nine allies—were threatening the territory of the Republic and the -very existence of the new regime; the civil war, which was soon to take -such gigantic proportions, had already made its successful beginning at -Machecoul. Between the Convention and immediate disaster there lay only -the personality of Dumouriez. When the news of his desertion, following -on the news of his defeat, reached Paris, the Girondins were hopelessly -discredited, and the line of their political retreat, the pursuit of -their enemies, ran in a direction that Danton’s speeches had prepared. - -For several days he had himself been the object of the most violent -attacks, especially for his friendship with Dumouriez and on the question -of the Belgian accounts. For he had just returned from a third mission -to the army, and had been close to the general. On the 1st of April -practically the whole sitting was devoted to an attack upon him and to -his defence. Had you been sitting in the house that night, you would -have said that a violent demagogue, surrounded by a little group of yet -more violent friends, was resisting with some difficulty the attacks -of an honest and loyal majority. But this demagogue was so far-seeing, -was so much the greatest of all those in the hall, that when three days -afterwards the Parliament was brought face to face with the reality, -Danton’s method becomes the only solution. They hear of Dumouriez’ -treason, and on the night of the 4th of April, Isnard, himself a -Girondin, proposed the creation of the Committee. Danton supported him at -midnight with a definite speech such as no Girondin would have dared to -make. He said practically, “This Committee is precisely what we want, a -hand to grasp the weapon of the Revolutionary Tribunal.” - -It was Isnard that formulated the idea, but it was Danton that baptised -it “A Dictator.” It was at midnight that he spoke, and he closed his -short speech just on the turn of the morning of the 5th of April. That -very day a year later the Dictator seized him, and his own Tribunal put -him to death. - -On the 5th of April, the next day, in the evening, we begin to get those -large measures and rapid which came with the new organ of power. And -Danton speaks with a kind of joy, and demands at once such measures as -only a dictatorship can produce—calling all the people to the defence, -fixing a maximum upon the price of bread, even the first mention of a -levée _en masse_. The air is full of such a spirit as you get in an army, -the certitude that with discipline and unity and authority all things -can be done. On the following day, the 6th, the Committee was chosen, -and on the 7th the names were read out, which showed that the power had -finally passed from the Girondins to those whom they had rejected at the -moment when France was forgiving everything for the sake of Jemappes. The -Convention, in need of men of action, had been forced to abandon its own -leaders and to turn to Danton. - -The names that they heard read out were Barrère, Delmas, Bréard, Debry, -Morvaux, Cambon, Treilhard, Lacroix, and Danton. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -THE TERROR - - -From the 6th April 1793, from the act which was described at the end of -the last chapter, we have something new in the course of the Revolution. -We have at last an Institution. - -It is in the nature of the French people (for reasons which might to -some extent be determined, but whose discussion has no place in this -book) that their history should present itself in a peculiarly dramatic -fashion. Their adventures, their illusions, their violence, their -despair, their achievements, seem upon a hundred occasions to centre -round particular men or certain conspicuous actions, in such a fashion -that those men and these actions fit themselves into a story, the plot -and interest of which absorb the reader. But if we attempt to connect -the whole into a series, even if we attempt to give the causes or the -meaning of a few years’ events, the dramatic aspect fails. This quality, -which has fascinated so many, has also mistaught us and confused us, and, -in the desire to “throw the limelight” upon the centre of action, one -historian after another has left in obscurity that impersonal blind force -which directs the whole. - -This force in France is the Institution. Understand the character and -methods of her central power, and you find yourself possessed of this -great key to the understanding of her history, namely, that events follow -each other in the order that the Institution requires, and the nation -moves along the lines which the Institution determines. The Institution -provides a standpoint from which all falls into perspective, even the -details of personality no longer remain in confusion. You find, in a -little while, that you are dealing with an organism more simple and of -far greater vitality than any man, as truly a living, and much more truly -a permanent, force than a monarch or a great minister can be. - -The consideration of half-a-dozen examples will make this clear. What -is all that marvellously dramatic action between Pepin le Bref and the -coronation of Hugh but confusion? It ceases to be so when we follow with -Fustel de Coulanges the transformation of the Imperial system. You can -make nothing of the tenth and eleventh centuries, for all their personal -interest, until you have grasped Feudalism, and it is a common-place that -the six hundred years that follow are but the development of the Capetian -method. It is not in Louis the XI., or in Mazarin, or in Louis XIV. that -we find the Force—it is in the French monarchy. Look about you at the -present day, ask yourself what has recreated the prosperity of modern -France, and you will certainly not be able to find a special man. It is -the System that has done the work. - -Now it is the note of all the Revolution, as we have followed it up to -this point, that the Institution was lacking. France without it was -France without herself: she dissolved. The cause of this lack was as -follows: The monarchy, round which everything had centred, was dying, and -the social theories of the time—the great Philosophy on which France was -fed—neglected and despised the Institution, relying as it did upon the -vague force of general opinion. It was the chief—I had almost said the -only—fault of the Jeffersonians in America and the idealist Republicans -in France, that they could see neither the necessity of formulæ nor the -just power of systems. Nevertheless it was the instinct which remained -in the French mind, the “sub-conscious” sense of what the Institution -was to France, that made half the violence of the time. I do not mean -that the speeches recognised this character openly—on the contrary, the -enmities and the divisions seem to turn entirely upon personal hatreds; -but I mean that the underlying fear, unexpressed but real, was that -such and such a proposition would create a permanent tendency, and that -Girondin or Jacobin success meant the deflection of the torrent into one -or the other of two divergent channels. Here in England, living under an -order which is well established and old, we wonder at the intensity of -passion which some abstract resolution could arouse in the Convention. -We should wonder no longer were we to comprehend that in the extreme -rapidity with which all France was being remoulded, a few words agreed -upon, a mere principle, might add a quality to all the future history of -the nation. - -Two men in the Revolutionary period rose higher than the flood, Mirabeau -and Danton. Each was able to perceive what the permanent character of -the nation was, and each gave all his efforts to the uniting or welding -round some stable centre the new order to which both were attached. In -a word, each understood what the Institution was to France, and desired -to lend it force and endurance. With Mirabeau it was the monarchy. Would -he have saved, recreated, and restored that declining power which had -once been the framework of the nation? We cannot tell. Had he lived, ’92 -would have shown us; only we know that if the monarchy had seemed to -him at last beyond repair, he would have proposed at once some similar -power to replace it. Now Danton had survived; doubtful in 1791, “more -monarchist than you, M. de Lafayette,” he was determined in 1792 that the -crown and France were separate for ever. He overthrew the palace, but -from that very moment all his policy was directed to the construction of -a governing power. It is here that he and the Girondins, for all his -personal attempts at unity, were hopelessly divided. The Girondins were -bent upon that local autonomy and that extreme individual liberty in -which the central power disappears. With the growing danger, with his own -experience of Belgium, Danton, during the early part of 1793, becomes -set upon the idea of government and of nothing else. He gave it a weapon -before it existed, for he made the Revolutionary Tribunal, and though -Isnard first proposed it, it is known that Danton led the movement which -ended in the establishment of the Committee. - -All government since that time in France has been its heir. It was -the Committee that forged the centralised system, that showed how the -administration might radiate from Paris, that gave precedent for the -conscription and for all determined action. That dictatorship so plainly -saved the country in its worst peril that under many different names the -French people have often recalled it, and rarely without success. - -All the remaining year with which this chapter must deal is the story -of the Committee. The Committee explains and gives us the clue to -every action. Its changes, the men who dominated it, the reasons it -had for violence or for clemency, its main object of throwing back the -invasions—these are the central part of 1793 and 1794. - -Had we an accurate account of what passed in that secret council, almost -every event could be referred to it. But such an account is lacking. -Barrère, always inconsistent, wrote a rigmarole in his old age which has -anecdotes of interest, but which is almost valueless for our purpose. -Here and there we have a disconnected anecdote or a lame confession, -but the doors of the room are as closed to us as they were to the -contemporaries who stood in the outer hall and received the official -nothings of Barrère, or later of St. Just. Nevertheless what we can -reconstruct of its spirit and action, imperfect as our effort may be, -does more to explain the time than any descriptions of the orators or of -the crowd. - - * * * * * - -The action of this new executive, as it touches Danton, changes rapidly -during the year. In the first Committee of nine Danton is everything. -He made it and he directs it. Towards the close, however, of its short -existence, he is beginning to feel the pressure of the Jacobins, and of -Robespierre and of St. Just, the victory of the Mountain. This loss of -power on his part ends with the dissolution of the old Committee, and -when the new one is formed—with the 10th of July—another period begins. -The members are increased to twelve; then enter the Robespierrians. -Danton, for motives which we shall discuss later, resigns, and there are -two doubtful summer months when he still maintains, from without, the -power of the Committee, but first begins to check so far as is possible -the tyranny upon which it has embarked. He retires in a kind of despair -to Arcis, and with his return a new phase is entered. The Committee -is striking furiously; the Terror has taken root; and by an action of -generosity, or perhaps of wisdom, Danton sets himself against his own -creation. These few months—the winter of 1793-1794—give us that side of -Danton which at the time was least explicable, but which best defines -him for posterity. He puts his whole weight as an orator, and, through -the genius of his friends, he puts the journals also against the Terror. -Knowing (as he must have known) how strong was the engine he had made, -he yet withstands it, and attempts by a purely personal force, without -an organisation and without executive power, to reduce the action of -the Committee. So great was he that for some weeks his success hung -in the balance. France, we must presume, was with him. Paris doubted, -but might have been won. When the violent and unscrupulous Hébertists -were executed he seemed to have succeeded, and the Terror appeared to -be closed. But the Committee had a deeper policy; in the same week that -saw the fall of Hébert, Danton was himself suddenly arrested with his -friends. How far Robespierre permitted and how far directed the action -will never be fully known. The Committee struck the one great force -opposed to it, and the Dantonists were executed on the anniversary of its -creation. - - * * * * * - -The first part of the story of the Committee in its relation to Danton is -the period between April the 6th and July the 10th 1793. It is the period -of the fall of the Girondins; and to make clear the importance of the new -power I shall adopt this method:— - -To give first in their order the events that led to the attack on the -Parliament and the expulsion of the twenty-two; to show in what confusion -the whole story lies, and how difficult (or impossible) it is to follow -the motives of the deputies, or to say why they acted as they did. Then -to give, as a parallel account, the position and action of the Committee, -and to show how fully (in my opinion) its motive determines the history -of the time; to look at the insurrection of June 2 from the room where -the nine members debated in secret, and to point out how, from that -standpoint (which was Danton’s own), the confusion falls into order. - -First, then, what was the exterior history of the movement that destroyed -the Gironde? It will be remembered that when the Convention first met -in September, the great majority of its numbers inclined to a certain -spirit. That spirit was best represented by a small group of men, -idealists and orators—and of these a number, the most powerful perhaps, -had come from the vineyards of the peaceable southern river. The warmth, -the calm, the fruitfulness of the Valley of the Gironde, appeared in -Vergniaud’s accents. To this devoted band of men, whose whole career was -justice and virtue, no one has dared to be contemptuous, and history on -every side has left them heroes. They were own brothers to the immortal -group that framed the American Constitution, the true heirs of Rousseau, -and worthy to defend and at last to give their lives for the Republican -idea. They hated the shedding of blood; they tested every action by the -purest standard of their creed; and from the first speeches in which -they demanded the war, to the day when they sang the Marseillaise on the -scaffold, they did not swerve an inch from the path which they had set -before themselves. - -What led such men into conflict with Paris, and perhaps with France? This -fault: that the pure theory which they justly maintained to be the one -right government could not meet Europe in arms. What a few millions lost -on the littoral of the American continent could do, without frontiers and -without memories, that France could not do with civil war raging, and -with the world invading her frontiers. A modification was imperative, -a compromise with necessary evil. The men who felt reality knew that -well. Danton had forced on a dictatorship, and gave it the method of -the Terror. But the Girondins, though they had been compelled to give -up so much, yet refused to follow the necessary path. They refused the -conscription; a volunteer army was the only one tolerable to free men. -They refused diplomacy; it involved a secret method, and was of its -nature based on compromise. They refused the requisitions to the armies, -the forced taxes, the hegemony of Paris, the preponderance of talent or -genius in the committees—in a word, they refused to sanction anything, -however necessary, in that crisis, which they would not have sanctioned -in a time of order and of a pure republic. - -The result of this sublime obstinacy was the ruin of France and of -themselves. The Royalists saw it, and called themselves “Girondins;” the -great name became a label for every reaction, and in every new disaster -Paris saw with increasing clearness the restraining hand of the Gironde. -For it was Paris and its Commune that took the leadership in the attempt -to depose or expel the men who led the Parliament. Already before the -Committee had been formed, the Commune on April the 2nd had begun to -correspond with the municipalities of France—the fatal step that had so -often preceded insurrection. To Paris as a centre, to Paris radical, and -especially to Paris violent and unreasoning, the Girondins had grown -detestable. Paris for a thousand years had stood for unity—the Girondins -were autonomist and federal. Paris was passionate—the Girondins as calm -as light. To all this enmity the Gironde answered by no force, but only -by an assertion of their inviolable right. All April and May is consumed -in the tale of great disasters without, and of the acute battle between -the Right and the deputation from Paris within. - -It is when we turn to this struggle within the Convention that the -confusion arises which can only be made clear by considering the -Committee. Especially is this the case with regard to Danton’s action. -Thus, on the 10th of April, he opposes the prosecution of those who sent -a petition from the Halle aux Blés for the resignation of Roland; on the -13th there is the famous speech in favour of diplomatic action as opposed -to the violence of the Mountain. Yet the day before he also opposed in -a formal and well-reasoned speech the arrest and trial of Marat. When -that madman, with whom his name had been so often linked, came back in -triumph from his acquittal, Danton took a yet more inexplicable attitude. -While all the Mountain were shouting for joy, and while Paris welcomed -the verdict as the first wound of the Gironde (which, indeed, it was), -Danton merely said, “Paris, we see, so loves the Convention as to applaud -the acquittal of one of its members”—a very transparent speech. On the -1st of May Danton is the only man to speak with sobriety and good sense -against the petition of the Faubourg St. Antoine, which attacked the -rights of property; yet on the 10th he turns against Isnard, that is, -against the Gironde and the Moderates, and causes the proposal of what -was practically a popular referendum on the constitution to be rejected. -We see, therefore, even when we look at the action of Danton alone, the -apparent confusion that was indicated above. Were we to turn to almost -any other of the Committee the same would be apparent. Barrère, the chief -spokesman, seems to take now one side, now the other. At one moment he -attacks the Girondins purposely; at another the petitions from Paris; at -every point, in the action of every prominent speaker outside the two -opposing groups, there appears this inextricable tangle. - -With the 10th of May the battle between Paris and the Gironde entered -into its last phase. It was upon this date that the Convention began to -sit permanently in the little theatre of the Tuilleries, where they had -first met. The news that met them was the death of Dampierre and the -taking of Thouars by the Vendeans. Every rumour of disaster (and the -rumours were being confirmed with fatal rapidity) was like oil spilt -from the lamp of the Gironde. Their own followers were shaken, the great -mass of the Convention who put their trust in these pure doctrines grew -afraid and doubtful. Within a week (on the 17th) the Commune took a -further step; they made their own law, and put Boulanger at the head -of the armed force of the town—a force that was not theirs to govern. -Later they gave Henriot the place. The Convention answered by electing -Isnard their president; and Guadet, the headstrong, proposed to break the -Commune, and to call the “suppliants” to Bourges. By this proposal a -kind of Parliament in reserve would have existed to take up the work if -the Parliament in Paris should be mutilated. Had the motion passed, the -civil war, which was muttering in Lyons and had broken into open flame in -Vendée, would have embraced all France. - -But at this juncture Danton’s Committee comes in again with its curiously -mixed action. By the mouth of Barrère it pleads against the motion, and -proposes instead the appointment of twelve members, as Girondin as they -pleased, to judge the Commune, to “inquire.” The commission was named, -and acted on thorough principle and with haste, and without judgment, as -any one might have foretold; for such was the Girondin weakness. Against -the army that the Commune was gathering, all it could propose was to -double the sergeant’s guard at the Tuilleries, while it exasperated its -enemy by ordering the arrest of Hébert. - -Hébert was the one man in the Revolution of whom the truth has certainly -been told by enemies. There was something of the pickpocket in Hébert, -but not of the pickpocket only. He was also a blasphemer, an atheist, -a man delighting in the foulest words, and in the most cowardly or -ferocious of actions. His prominence was due to two things. First, he -was the pamphleteer of the time, the “Père Duchesne.” France had not -yet discovered the danger of a free press. Secondly, in the Parisian -exasperation against “the Moderates,” the most extreme and the least -rational became of necessity a kind of symbol, an accentuated type, and -was thrust forward as a defiance. It is not too much to say that the -Girondins themselves, by their lack of all measure, pushed Hébert to the -front. - -Such measures as those which “the twelve” had decreed were but fuel for -the insurrectionary flame. Once more Danton appears, this time against -the Gironde. To the demand for a large guard drawn from the Departments -he said, “You are decreeing that you are afraid!” Whereupon a voice from -the right cried with some humour, “I am.” Danton had his way, the guard -was not formed, and on the following day (the 25th of May) Isnard’s -imprudence brought on the catastrophe. - -It was in the matter of the petition for the release of Hébert. Isnard -rose in the chair, lifted his hand, and pronounced in his hollow voice -the words that have enriched history at the expense of his country: “If -such a thing should happen as an attempt upon the representatives of the -nation, I say to you, in the name of all France, that very soon men would -search upon the banks of the Seine for proofs that Paris had once been -there.” Danton intervened, but he could do nothing. The glove had been -thrown down. He asked for the withdrawal of those words; the Girondin -majority reaffirmed them. Two days later he obtained the freedom of -Hébert; but though for a moment he was promised the dissolution of the -“Commission of the Twelve,” his effort failed, for they were immediately -reinstated. In the night between the 30th and the 31st of May the -Sections named a new and insurrectionary Commune; for one day the danger -was warded off, and you may see Danton, still so difficult to understand, -urging the Committee, while Barrère is proposing the conciliatory message -to France, a document which blamed neither the Girondins nor Paris, and -the twelve were dissolved. But the final blow was not to be avoided. -On the 2nd of June the news of the counter-revolution in Lyons reached -Paris. The Convention was surrounded; Henriot, at the head of the city -militia, guarded its approaches, lined the corridors. Even in that -moment, when Isnard proposed to retire, and made his superb apology, the -Gironde, as a whole, stood firm. The inflexible Jansenist, Lanjuinais, -proposed, with heroic folly, “a decree dissolving the authorities of -Paris,” at a moment when these very authorities were holding the doors -with fixed bayonets; but in spite of Barrère’s demand for Henriot’s -condemnation, in spite of Danton’s demand for “a signal punishment,” the -Convention yielded, voted the arrest not only of the twenty-two, whom -the Commune had demanded, but of twenty-nine, and Vergniaud, Barbaroux, -Guadet; Le Brun, and Clavière (who were nominally ministers); Roland (who -had fled, and whose wife was imprisoned by the Commune)—in fine, the -whole body of those great orators who had made the Republic—were thrust -out of the Assembly, some to be held in the honourable confinement of -their own houses, some to fly and raise civil war in the Departments. -The Commune offered hostages in equal number, but they were refused; and -before the day was over the Parliament was mutilated, and the obstacle to -the dictatorship and to the Terror had been swept away. - -Such is a rapid summary of the fall of the Girondins—a story of -contradictions and of inextricable cross-purposes, in which for two -months men seem (especially the men of the new Committee) to change -sides, to hesitate, and to falter, in which the majority passes over to -the Jacobins with a startling rapidity, and in which (apparently) the -only two fixed points are the immovable figures of the Gironde and their -opponents of the Commune. - -I know that this confusion has commonly led writers to adopt an equal -confusion in their explanation of the insurrection and of its motives. To -disentangle such a skein it was apparently necessary to make Robespierre -a prophet, Isnard for once a coward, Barrère a skilful diplomatist, -Danton a vacillator. Such a method appears to me false. If, to explain -a difficult passage in history, we make men behave in a way which -contradicts all their lives, we must (it seems to me) be in error. These -special theories are mechanical, and do not satisfy the mind. - -The question is this: Somewhere a power existed; why was not that power -in evidence either on one side or on the other? And why do we not see it -acting? I believe the answer is as follows:— - -The power was in the Committee. The Committee believed it necessary to be -rid of the Girondins. But the Committee was part of the Convention—the -existence and the authority of the Convention was necessary to it. It -saw on the one hand a set of Parliamentary leaders who would not permit -it to act with vigour, on the other it noted the angry spirit of Paris. -The Committee permitted that spirit to act, but gave it its measure and -its direction unknown to itself, desiring to eliminate the Moderates, -but anxious to avoid their proscription, exile, or death. With this clue -the maze seems to me resolved. It was the Committee that expelled the -Gironde, using Paris for its arm. - -Now to prove this certain steps are necessary. In the first place, why -can we say that the Committee was the centre of power? Because it alone -had access to a complete knowledge of France, it alone debated in secret, -and it alone existed for the express purpose of dictatorship. When once -the generals, the deputies in mission, and the police became familiar -with the new organ, they referred to the Committee as naturally as the -corresponding men to-day would refer to a cabinet or to a monarch. If -the reader will glance at any portion of the document which is printed -as Appendix XI. of this book, and to which I shall continually refer in -this passage, he will at once perceive that the men who drew it up had -in their hands every lever of public machinery. I would not maintain -that this power sprang at once into existence on the 6th of April, -but the two months that produced such a report was ample time to have -developed a corresponding grasp upon the armies, upon the diplomacy, and -upon the internal resources of Revolutionary France. Where else will -you find such a document in all the offices of the time? Compared with -it the decisions of the ministry are vague abstractions, the reports -of the Commune puerilities or ravings. Revolutionary France, until the -formation of the Committee, may be compared to a marsh in which the water -tends to flow to no one centre; the information, the revenue, the public -forces stood incoherent and stagnant. The creation of this secret body -may be compared to a pit dug in its centre, to which the waters would -immediately flow. It may be objected that they had not the control of -finance. No; but they had Cambon. In an assembly of men new to government -this very difficult province fell of itself into the hands of a man whose -genius all admitted, and whose probity no one of his enemies would deny. -Long before the insurrection took place, any man with information, with -authority, or with a special duty to perform, had learnt to regard the -Committee as his chief, for the simple reason that no other centre of -authority existed. Add to this the incalculable force of secrecy, the -power by which the most glaring failures of our cabinets can be hidden -by merely saying, “We know what all the rest ignore,” and it will appear -reasonable to say that by June the Committee could almost, had it wished, -have summoned an army to Paris. The Committee then held the power. - -In the second place, we must establish, as far as is possible, the aims -of the Committee and their method of guiding the insurrection. As was -said earlier in this chapter, those aims and methods can only be arrived -at by inference; the very nature of a body that deliberates in secret -makes this method of inquiry necessary. There is no direct evidence, -unless the contradictory anecdotes of a much later period can be given -that name. Now we can infer with some accuracy what went on in their -deliberations. There should be noted at the outset the document to which -I have already referred, and which, if I am not mistaken, is printed -for the first time in this book. It was the first of those general -Rapports which were delivered by Barrère to the Convention for the next -sixteen months, and which so profoundly affected the course of the -Revolution. It sums up the result of two months of astonishing labour; -everything—all the weakness of France—has been noted with the accuracy -of a topographical survey. It gives the equipment, the provisioning, -the local difficulties of each army, the detailed condition of the -fleet (a most deplorable picture), the result of what is evidently -an elaborate spy-system in the department of foreign intrigue, and -everywhere the indictment is obvious—“whatever has governed France -hitherto has hopelessly failed.” There are, indeed, polite references to -the ineptitude of the old regime, but side by side with these there is a -direct attack on the Girondin Ministers of War, and on the diplomatic, -or rather non-diplomatic, methods which had been pursued abroad; indeed, -many parts of this report would not be out of place had they appeared -in a Compte Rendu drawn up by the victorious insurrection, instead of -preceding, as they did, the fall of the Gironde. - -Again, there is the date of its appearance. It was not by a coincidence -that Barrère was given it to read on the 29th of May. Note this sequence. -Isnard made his fatal speech on Saturday the 25th. Monday the 27th was -the date of Danton’s attempt to dissolve “the twelve;” and his failure -followed on Tuesday the 28th, when, by the blindness or firmness of the -Gironde, they were reinstated. It is on Wednesday the 29th that Barrère -rises at the end of a long and stormy discussion, and, late in the -afternoon, presents his report. The vague phrases on the importance of -unity which it contains have made some imagine that it was an attempt at -conciliation, rapidly devised and thrown out at that critical moment. -That opinion is surely erroneous. It is long (some 17,000 words) and -carefully prepared; it must have taken some time to draw up, and it has -all the appearance of a weapon framed at leisure and held in reserve; -it comes at that moment with some such force as this, saying from the -Committee, from Danton, to the Gironde—“You have refused to do what -France absolutely needed. You have rejected my attempts to save you, the -avenues which I opened for your escape; you were given the commission of -twelve; you have fatally abused the gift. Will you be convinced at the -last moment by this picture of the terrible straits to which you have -brought the nation?” - -Finally, we can draw a fairly conclusive set of proofs from our knowledge -of the men in the Committee and of the public action they took. Of -all the nine, Danton was the one commanding personality. Cambon was -a specialist, and but for him and Lindet, honest but not an orator, -there were Danton and his men only. Barrère, it may be urged, was not -a Dantonist; but he was pliant to a degree; his pliancy is notorious, -and has ignorantly been given a still worse name. Moreover, Barrère was -closeted with Danton day after day; they undertook the same department in -the Committee (that of foreign affairs), and they follow exactly the same -course in the tribune. In the Department of War was Delacroix, Danton’s -friend and right hand. Of the report itself, all the last part, and -possibly some paragraphs in the middle, were drawn up by Danton. Later we -shall see that his preponderance was notorious and a danger to him. - -Well, Danton and the Committee being so nearly identical, can we make a -description of the motive that urged him? I think we can. Desmoulin’s -“Histoire des Brissottins” was certainly not of Danton’s inspiration. -Camille wrote that deadly pamphlet under the eye of Robespierre. But -Fabre d’Eglantine at the Jacobins, on May the 1st, calling on the -Girondins “to go, and return when all is settled,” is almost using -Danton’s own phrase—“Qu’ils s’en aillent, et qu’ils revennent profiter -de notre victoire.” All that he and Barrère say, from then to the day of -June the 2nd, seems to fall under this formula. He permits the attack of -the Commune, while he does everything to moderate its force. He speaks -continually for the defence, but he and his Committee refuse to act, and -if ever he has spoken a little too strongly, has given the Girondins -a little too much power, he retreats somewhat towards the Commune. He -resembles a man who is opening a sluice in a dyke of the fen country: -behind him is the sea; he admits and plays with its power, but unless his -calculation is just it may rush in and overwhelm him. He permitted Paris -to strike, and he created a tyranny; both the mob of the capital and the -dictatorship were destined to break from his hands. - -These are, as I read them, the causes of the fall of the Girondins. I -have dealt with them at this length because the passage from the 31st of -May to the 2nd of June 1793 is not only one of the most fiercely debated, -but also one of the most important in the history of the Revolution. I -have not given it too much space, for upon the understanding of what led -to and what permitted the insurrection depends, without any question, our -final judgment on Danton’s position. - -Here, then, the Committee, even in its infancy, furnishes the clue to -a difficult passage in the Revolution. It is becoming more and more -necessary as research progresses to refer the mysteries of the period -to that central body; and, as it seems to me, we have in its first -general report the first explanation of that most complex movement, the -insurrection of the 2nd of June. - -The Gironde having disappeared, there was left before Danton a task of -extreme difficulty. He was about to attempt the management of men whom -he deliberately permitted to engage in battle. It is of the very first -importance in our study of his career to appreciate the conditions of -this task. Consider for a moment what he has done. He has by arguments, -by threats, and finally by the use of the mob, made the Revolutionary -Government a reality. It is in this last ally that we find the cause -of his future failure. Hitherto he has been battling with particular -men, preventing a small group of politicians from obstructing the -Revolutionary measures, cajoling on the other hand the extreme members -of the Convention by calculated outbursts of sympathy. Such a task no -one would find impossible, did he possess at once a clear object and the -genius to approach it. But after the 2nd of June it was another matter. -He had let loose the storm, and with the pride of a man who felt his -strength inwards and outwards (for scheming and for haranguing), he had -determined deliberately to ride it. It was a miscalculation. Something -resembling a natural force, something like an earthquake or a lava -stream, opposed itself to his mere individual will; and Danton, who among -the politicians had been like a man among boys, became in the presence of -these new forces like a lonely traveller struggling at evening against -a growing tempest in the mountains. From this moment we shall see him -using in vain against the passions of 1793 the ability, the ruse, the -eloquence, the energy which had so long succeeded among the statesmen. -They will be swept down like driftwood upon the current of popular -madness which he himself has let loose. The Committee will be formed of -new members, the Terror will grow from day to day, the Revolution will -begin to take on that character of fanaticism which was directly opposed -to Danton’s plan, and he will retire disappointed and beaten. He will -return frankly out of sympathy with the excesses, and in expiation of -that fault of sanity he will die. - -The months in which he fights this losing battle are the hot months -of 1793. I will not deny that during this summer his name is more -conspicuous than at any period of his life. I will admit that if we deal -with history as a spectacle, the climax of 1793 should be distinguished -by his voice and presence. But it is this fascination of the picturesque -which has made his life inexplicable, and a biographer dares not leave -it so. Although June, July, and August are full of his speeches, his -warning, and even his energy, yet I say that he was day after day losing -his hold and slipping. He is conspicuous because in the face of such -disaster he redoubled his energy; but even that redoubled energy is -dwarfed in the face of the spirit that animated the Terror. - -First with regard to June: it was still a period of hope, and he still -thought himself the master. He had added to the Committee, not thinking -them dangerous, but as a kind of sop, five members of the Mountain. Among -them were two who were to prove the ruin of his whole system—Couthon and -St. Just. Perhaps to temper their action, perhaps merely because he was a -friend, he included Hérault de Séchelles. The names were typical of what -was to happen in 1794, when, by the power of St. Just, Hérault was to be -thrust out of the Committee and sent to die with Danton himself. - -Unconscious of what this addition would lead to, unconscious also of what -echoes the 2nd of June might arouse in the provinces, Danton pursued -his path as though the insurrection had been but one event of many. The -minister Le Brun was brought by his guards day after day to aid in the -discussions, and taken back to the custody of his own house. One might -have thought that the “moral insurrection” of which Robespierre had -talked had led only to a “moral suppression” of the Girondins. Moreover, -the whole of these days of June are full of Danton’s yet remaining -supremacy. He goes on with his two principal methods, namely, a strong -secret government and moderation in the application of its tyranny, as -though the situation was his to mould at his will. Thus, on the 8th, he -says with regard to the decree against foreigners: “I will show you such -and such an alien established in France who is much more of a patriot -than many Frenchmen. I say to you, therefore, that while the principle -of watching foreigners is good, you should send this proposal to the -Committee and let it be discussed there.” Again, two days later, he -refuses to admit the violent attitude of the Mountain towards Bordeaux. -He even praises that city at a time when it was practically in rebellion, -to defend its proscribed members. Within the same week he continues to -talk of La Vendée as the only centre of insurrection. He continues to -be the Danton of old, although the Girondins are raising the standard -of civil war on every side, and he maintains that continuous effort and -compromise which had saved so much in the autumn of 1792, and which could -do so little now. - -Within the Committee they framed the Constitution of 1793—that great -monument of democracy, which never took its place in history, nor ever -affected the lives of men. It stands like an idol of great beauty which -travellers find in a desert place; its religion has disappeared from -the earth; no ruins surround it; in the day when it was put up the -men who raised it were driven from what should have been the centre -of their adoration. That Danton was still in power when the result -was debated in the Parliament during the third week of the month is -evident from two things: first, that the Constitution, with its broad -guarantees of individual liberty and of local autonomy, with its liberal -spirit, so nearly approaching the great dream of Condorcet, so opposed -to the narrow fanaticism of the Jacobins, was definitely intended to -appease the growing passions of civil war. Two-thirds of France, of the -country-sides at least, was arming because Paris had dared to touch -the representatives of the nation. The Constitution was thrown like a -hostage; the men who saw the necessity for a dictatorship said virtually, -“The violence that offends you is only for a moment. Here is what we -desire with the return of peace.” And the document so responded to the -heart of France that it succeeded. - -The second proof that Danton had still hold of the reins is to be found -in this: that the advice which he gives during the discussions on the -Constitution is not that of violence, nor of flattery, but of moderate -common-sense; and of such advice which the Convention accepts the best -example is to be found in the speech on the power of making war. It was a -difficult thing to convince the Assembly, in those days of abstractions, -that the nation, as a whole, could not exercise such a right without -hopeless confusion. Yet Danton had his way. This month of June, then, -which was so full of terrible internal danger, during which Buzot had -raised a Girondin army sixty miles from Paris, during which Normandy was -in full revolt, during which Lyons had attacked the Republic, and during -which the counter-Revolution seemed on the point of breaking out—this -month was still Danton’s own. He was secure in his public position, for -the very conquerors of the 2nd of June, the violent extremists, could not -prevent him from exercising his diplomacy abroad and his pacificatory -compromise in domestic affairs. - -He was also secure in that which mattered so much more to him—I mean in -his home. His mind had sufficiently steadied after the shock that had -maddened him in February for him to follow the advice which his dead wife -had left him. On the 17th of June he re-married. The woman was not suited -to Danton. She did not love him, nor probably did he love her. There were -two young children, whom, in the winter, his first wife, finding herself -to be dying, felt she was leaving orphans. The eldest was only three -years old. This good woman, Catholic and devout, knowing her husband, and -the sheer necessity for a home which his character had shown, determined -on a religious education for her sons, and determined on a Catholic woman -to be about her husband. She urged him to marry her younger friend, -Mdlle. Gély. An incident, which is doubtful, but which, on the whole, -I accept, does not seem to me to prove the violence of an uncontrolled -affection, but, on the contrary, to show a kind of indifference, as -though Danton said to himself, “The thing must be done, and had better be -done so as to offend the family as little as possible.” I mean the story -of his marriage before a non-juring priest. At any rate, that marriage -shows an element of determination and security. He was still master of -his fortunes and of himself. - -But he had called up a spirit too strong for him. July was to prove it. - -June, which had seen the rise of the Girondin insurrection, had also seen -its partial appeasement and suppression. It was, as we have said, the -Constitution, hurriedly improvised for this purpose, that had been the -main cause of such a success, but there remained for July, more dangerous -than ever, the foreign invasion and the three outstanding strongholds of -the civil war—Lyons, Toulon, and La Vendée. It was against them and their -growing success, against the rebels and the invaders, that the Terror was -serviceable, and it was on account of their continual progress that the -Terror assumed such fearful proportions. - -I said earlier in this chapter that Danton inaugurating and strengthening -the dictatorship of the Revolutionary Government was like a man -deliberately opening a sluice behind which was the whole sea. There -was an element of uncertainty upon the chances of which he had staked -the success of his effort, and, with the reverses, he soon discovered -that the forces which he had let loose were going beyond him. It may be -that he thought the results of the 2nd of June would be more immediate -than they were. As a fact, it took many months to recover the position -which the supineness of the Girondins had lost. In those months the -Revolutionary Government crystallised, as it were, became permanent, and -fell into the hands of the extremists. - -On the very day that the Norman insurrection was crushed at Vernon, a -Norman girl stabbed Marat. It is not within the scope of this book to -deal at any great length with the fate of the man whom Danton had called -“l’individu.” That most striking and picturesque episode concerns us -only in this matter, that it was a powerful impetus to the system of -the Terror, and such an one as Danton, with all his judgment, could not -possibly have foreseen. Moreover, on the very day that Marat was killed, -the allied forces entered Warsaw, and there can be no doubt that the -success of this infamy gave them a freer hand morally, at least upon the -French frontier. Mayence fell, and its fall cost the life of Josephine’s -first husband. The Allies had crossed the Rhine. Five days later, on the -28th of July, Valenciennes fell. At the same moment the Spaniards were -pouring in east and west of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese had crossed -the Alps. From a little press in Newcastle (the family of the printer -yet remain to tell the tale), Pitt was drawing the thousands of forged -assignats to ruin the Republic. Five foreign armies were occupying the -territory of France, and late in the following month the Spanish and -English fleets were admitted to the harbour and arsenal of Toulon. Let -it then be granted that, with the possible exception of the Roman power -after Cannæ, no power in history was ever so near destruction as was -Revolutionary France in that summer. - -Let us see how the misfortunes of the country reacted upon the -position of Danton. Already, with early July, he felt himself pressed -and constrained by the growing power of the Jacobin doctrine and of -its high priest. His system of conciliation, his attempts (in large -part successful) to coax rather than to defeat the insurrection, were -violently criticised in the debate of the 4th. The anger against the -Girondins, which the death of Marat was to increase to so violent a -degree, produced the report of St. Just upon the 8th of July, which, -though history has called it moderate, yet mentions the accusation of -Vergniaud and of Gaudet, and to this Danton was forced reluctantly to put -his name. Two days afterwards the old Committee to which he had belonged -was dissolved and a new one was elected. - -It would be an error to regard this as a mere resignation on the part of -Danton; it would be equally an error to regard it as a violent censure -on the part of the Convention. It is certain that he chose to withdraw -because the fatal necessity of things was giving power to men of whom -he had no opinion. Thus Robespierre joined the Committee on the 27th of -July—Robespierre, of whom Danton could say in private, “The man has not -wits enough to cook an egg.” Yet this was the man who was so worshipped -by the crowd, that, once within the Committee, he was destined to become -the master of France. It may be remarked in passing that something fatal -seemed to attach to the date on which a man entered and began to lead -the Committee. On the day that Danton entered in ’93, on that day was he -guillotined in ’94. On the day that Robespierre entered in ’93, on that -day in ’94 he fell. - -Danton remained, for a little longer than a month, more and more separate -from the management of affairs, more and more out of sympathy with the -men who were conducting the government. Nevertheless, he stands almost -as an adviser and certainly with pure disinterestedness throughout the -month of August. He was alone. Desmoulins was more with Robespierre -than with him at that moment. Westermann, his great friend and ally on -the 10th of August 1792, was under censure for his defeat in Vendée. -But standing thus untrammelled, Danton for the moment appears with an -especial brilliancy. Indeed there is no act of his public life so clear, -so typical of his method, or so successful as his great speech on the -1st of August. It was as though, divorced from the pre-occupations -of political intrigue and free from the responsibility of executive -power, he was able for the first time in his whole life to speak his -mind fully and clearly. The speech is a précis, as it were, of all his -pronouncements on the necessity for a dictatorship and the methods it -should employ. It turns round this sentence, “I demand that the Committee -of Public Safety should be erected into a Provisional Government.” He -said openly that while he asked for absolute powers for the Committee, -he refused ever to join it again. He pointed out to them the necessity -of uniting all power in the hands of one body, of making a unique -command for a nation at war. To men who had been lost for so long in the -discussion of constitutional checks and guarantees, he talked of the -necessities as a general would to his staff. If you will read this speech -through, you will find it to be the clearest exposition in existence -of the causes and of the methods of the action of France in all her -dangers from that day to our own. This speech, which is the climax of his -career, and which stands at the fountain-head of so much in the modern -nation, was followed throughout the month by many a piece of practical -and detailed advice. He talks always quietly, and always with a specific -object in view, on the educational proposals, on the great conscription -(14th of August), on the enforcement of an absolute military discipline -(15th of August), and so forth. But while he is still in this position, -of which the brilliancy and success have deceived some into thinking that -it was the centre of his career, two things were at work which were to -lead to the strange crisis in which he lost his life. First, the Terror -was beginning to be used for purposes other than those of the National -Defence. Secondly, there was coming upon him lethargy and illness. He -seems to have remained for a whole month, from the middle of September -till the middle of October, without debating. There had come a sudden -necessity for repose into his life, and until it was satisfied he gave an -impression of weakness and of breaking down. - -This was emphasised by a kind of despair, as he saw the diplomatic -methods abandoned in dealing with foreign nations and the personal -aims of the mystics, the private vengeance of the bloodthirsty, or the -ravings of the rank madmen capturing the absolute system which he had -designed and forged at the expense of his titanic powers. It was during -this period that Garat saw him, and has left us the picture of his great -body bowed by illness, and his small deep eyes filled with tears, as he -spoke of the fate that was following the Girondins, and of how he could -not save them. It was then also that, walking slowly with Desmoulins at -sunset by the Seine, he said with a shudder that had never taken him -before, “The river is running blood.” - -With October the Terror weighed on all France by the decree of the month -before. The suspects were arrested right and left, and the country had -entered into one of those periods which blacken history and leave gaps -which many men dare not bridge by reading. He broke down and fled for -quiet to his native place. From thence the Great Mother, of whom in all -the Revolution he had been the truest son, sent him back to fulfil the -mercy and the sanity of Nature as he had up till then fulfilled her -energies. - -This book is the life of a man, and a man is his mind. Danton, who has -left no memoirs, no letters even—of whose life we know so little outside -the field of politics—can only be interpreted, like any other man, by -the mind. We must seek the origin, though we have but a phrase or two -to guide us. What was that meditation at Arcis out of which proceeded -the forlorn hope of the “Vieux Cordelier” and of the “Committee of -Indulgence”? - -He was ill already; the great energies which had been poured out -recklessly in a torrent had suddenly run dry. Garat saw him weak, -uncertain, refusing to leave his study, troubled in the eyes. The reins -were out of his hands; all that he thought, or rather knew, to be fatal -to the Republic was succeeding, and every just conception, all balance, -was in danger. This, though it was not the cause of his weariness, -coincided with it, and made his sadness take on something of despair. -There had always been in his spirit a recurrent desire for the fields -and rivers; it is common to all those whom Nature has blessed with her -supreme gift of energy. He had at this moment a hunger for his native -place, for the Champagne after the harvest, and for the autumn mists upon -the Aube. It was in this attitude, weary, despairing, ill, and needing -the country as a parched man needs water, that he asked and obtained -permission to leave the Convention. It was upon the 12th of October, just -as the worst phase of the Terror was beginning, that he left the violence -and noise of the city and turned his face eastward to the cool valley of -the Marne. - -Starting from this point, his weariness and his longing for home, we -can trace the movement of his mind during the six weeks of his repose. -He recovered health with the rapidity that so often characterises men -of his stamp; he found about him the peaceable affection, the cessation -of argument and of self-defence which his soul had not known since the -first days of 1789. His old mother was with him, and his children also, -the memories of his own childhood. The place refreshed him like sleep; -he became again the active and merry companion of four years before, -sitting long at his meals, laughing with his friends. The window of the -ground-floor room opened on to the Grande Place, and there are still -stories of him in Arcis making that window a kind of little rendezvous -for men passing and repassing whom he knew, his chatting and his -questions, his interests on every point except that political turmoil -in which the giant had worn himself out. The garden was a great care -of his, and he was concerned for the farm in which he had invested the -reimbursement of his pre-revolutionary office. He delighted to meet -his father’s old friends, the mayor, the functionaries of the place. -This man, whom we find so typical of his fellow-countrymen, is never -more French than in his home. The little provincial town, the _amour -du clocher_, the prospect of retirement in the province where one was -born—the whole scene is one that repeats itself upon every side to-day in -the class from which Danton sprang. - -Moreover, as quiet took back its old place in his soul, he saw, no -longer troubled, but with calmness and certainty, the course that lay -before the Republic. The necessity of restraint, which had irritated and -pursued him in his days of fever in Paris, was growing into a settled -and deliberate policy; he began to study the position of France like a -map; no noise nor calumny was present to confuse him, and his method of -action on his return developed itself with the clearness that had marked -his first attitude in the elections of Paris. How rapidly his mind was -working even his friends could not tell. One of them thought to bring him -good news, and told him of the death of the Girondins. Danton was in his -garden talking of local affairs, and when this was told him, the vague -reputation which he bore, the “terrible Danton,” and the fear he had -inspired, led them to expect some praise. He turned as though he had been -stabbed, and cried sharply, “Say nothing. Do you call that good news? It -is a terrible misfortune.... It menaces us all.” And no one understood -what was passing in his mind. It was the note that Garat had heard, and -later Desmoulins: “I did my best to save them; I wish to God I could have -saved them!” - -Whatever other news reached Arcis in those terrible months served only -to confirm him more strongly in his new attitude. Had he been tinged in -the slightest degree with the mysticism that was common to so many in -that time he would have felt a mission. But he was a Champenois, the very -opposite of a mystic, and he only saw a task, a thing to be planned and -executed by the reason. Perhaps if he had had more of the exaltation of -the men he was about to oppose he might have succeeded. - -It was upon the 21st of November that he returned to Paris. His -health had come back, his full vigour, and with the first days of his -reappearance in politics the demand for which the whole nation was -waiting is heard. And what had not the fanatics done during the weeks -of his silence! Lyons, the Queen, the Girondins, Roland’s wife—the very -terms of politics had run mad, and he returned to wrestle with furies. - -Let me describe the confusion of parties through which Danton had to wade -in his progress towards the re-establishment of liberty and of order. As -for the Convention itself, nominally the master, it was practically of -no power. It chose to follow now one now another tendency or man; to be -influenced by fear at this moment, by policy at that, and continually -by the Revolutionary formulæ. In a word, it was led. Like every large -assembly, it lacked initiative. Above it and struggling for power were -these: First, the committees, that of Public Safety, and its servant, -that of General Security—the Government and the police. It was Danton, -as we know, who desired to make the committees supreme, who had raised -them as the institution, the central government. But by this time they -were a despotism beyond the reach of the checks which Danton had always -desired. To save so mighty an engine from the dangers of ambition, he -had resigned in July. His sacrifice or lethargy did not suffice. The -Committee which had once been Danton was now the Triumvirate—Robespierre, -Couthon, St. Just. It pursued their personal objects, it maintained -by the Terror their personal creed. Still Danton did not desire to -destroy it as a system. He wished to modify its methods and to change -its personnel, to let it merge gradually into the peaceable and orderly -government for which the Revolution and the Republic had been made. By -a strange necessity, the workers, the men who were most like Danton -in spirit, the practical organisers on the Committee, such as Carnot, -Prieur, and Lindet, could not help defending it in every particular. -They knew the necessity of staying at their post, and they feared, with -some justice, that if the Robespierrian faction was eliminated their -work might be suddenly checked. It was because they were practical and -short-sighted that they were opposed to the practical but far-sighted -policy of Danton. They feared that with the cessation of the Terror the -armies would lack recruits, the commissariat provisions, the treasury its -taxes. - -Against the Committee was the Commune. Hébert at its worst; Clootz at -its most ideal; Pache at its most honest. This singular body represented -a spirit very close indeed to anarchy. It preached atheism as a kind -of dogma; it was intolerant of everything; it was as mad as Clootz, as -filthy as Hébert. It possessed a curious mixture of two rages—the rage -for the unity and defence of France, the rage for the autonomy of Paris. -In the apathy that had taken the voters this small and insane group held -command of the city. But the Committees were not what the Girondins had -been. You could not bully or proscribe Carnot, St. Just, Cambon, Jean -Bon. With the fatal pressure of the stronger wrestler the Committee was -pressing the Commune down. The Terror remained in either case. But with -the Committee supreme it was a Terror of system striking to maintain a -tyranny, a pure despotism working for definite ends. Had the Commune -succeeded, it would have meant the Terror run mad, the guillotine killing -for the sake of killing—and for ever. - -The third party in the struggle was Robespierre. He also desired the -Terror, but he intended to use it, as he did every power in France, -towards a definite end—a certain perfect state, of which he had received -a revelation, and of which he was the prophet. Of his aims and character -I shall treat when I come to his action after the fall of Danton. It -suffices to point out here that of the three forces at work Robespierre -alone had personality to aid him. He had a guard, a group of defenders. -They were inside, and led the Committee itself; they were the mystics -in a moment of strong exaltation, and unreal as was the dream of their -chief, the Robespierrians were bound to succeed unless the force of the -real, the “cold water” that came with Danton’s return, should destroy -their hopes. Therefore, as a fact, though no one, though Danton himself, -did not see it, it was between him and Robespierre that the battle would -ultimately be fought out. - -For what was Danton’s plan? He put into his new task the ability, the -ruse, the suppleness that he had only lost for a moment in the summer. -First, Hébert and the “enragés” must go—they were the vilest form of -the spirit that he perceived to be destroying the Republic. Then the -Committee must be very gradually weakened. In that task he hoped, vainly -enough, to make Robespierre his ally. And finally, the end of all his -scheme was the cessation of the Terror. He had created a dictatorship -for a specific purpose; that purpose was attained. Wattignies had been -won, Lyons captured; soon La Vendée was to be destroyed, and even Toulon -to fall. It was intolerable that a system abnormal and extreme, designed -to save the State, should be continued for the profit of a few theorists -or of a few madmen. How much had not his engine already done?—this -machine which, to the horror of its creator, had found a life of its own! -It had killed the Queen after a shocking trial; it had alienated what was -left of European sympathy; it had struck the Girondins, and Danton was -haunted by the inspired voice of Vergniaud singing the “Marseillaise” -upon the scaffold; it had run to massacre in the provinces. He feared -(and later his fears proved true at Nantes) that September might be -repeated with the added horror of legal forms. The Terror finally had -reopened the question that of all others might most easily destroy the -State. A handful of men had pretended to uproot Catholicism for ever, -and what Danton cursed as the “Masque Anti-Religieuse” had defiled Notre -Dame. This flood he was determined to turn back into the channels of -reason; he was going, without government or police or system, merely -by his voice and his ability, to realise the Revolution, to end the -dictatorship, and to begin the era of prosperity and of content. - -The first steps taken were successful. On the very night of his return, -Robespierre was perorating at the Jacobins against atheism and on the -great idea of God, but within twelve hours, on the morrow, Danton’s -voice gave the new note. It was in the discussion upon the pension to be -paid to the priests whom the last decree had thrust out of their regular -office and of its salary. Danton spoke with the greatest decision on this -plain matter, and the Convention heard with delight the fresh phrases -to which it had so long been a stranger. He says virtually, “If you do -not pay this sum you are persecutors.” There are in this speech such -sentences as these: “You must appreciate this, that politics can only -achieve when they are accompanied by some reason.... I insist upon your -sparing the blood of men; and I beg the Convention to be, above all, just -to all men except those who are the declared and open enemies of the -Republic.” Four days later he went a little further, and the Convention -still followed him. On the question which he had most at heart he spoke -plainly. Richard complained of Tours. He said that the municipality of -that town were arresting “suspects” right and left, and had even attacked -himself. Danton said in a speech of ten lines: “It is high time the -Convention should learn the art of government. Send these complaints to -the Committee. It is chosen, or at least supposed to be chosen, from the -élite of the Convention.” Later in the same day he spoke on a ridiculous -procession such as the violence of the time had made fashionable. It was -a deputation of Hébertists bringing from a Parisian church the ornaments -of the altar. Already, it will be remembered, the Commune had ordered the -churches in Paris to be closed, and the attempt to enforce such scenes -were being copied in all the large towns of France. He said: “Let there -be no more of these mascarades in the Convention.... If people here and -there wish to prove their abjuration of Catholicism, we are not here -to prevent them ... neither are we here to defend them.... The Terror -is still necessary, the Revolutionary Government is still necessary, -but the people does not demand this indiscriminate action. We have no -business save with the conspirators and with those who are treating with -the enemy.” There was a protest from Fayan, who cried, “You have talked -of clemency!” for all the world as though such talk was blasphemy. But -Danton was getting back his old position and was leading the Convention. -His success seemed certain. On the 3rd of December (14th Frimaire) he -was violently attacked at the Jacobins, but he managed to hold his own. -Robespierre defended him in a speech which has been interpreted as a -piece of able treachery, but which may with equal justice be regarded as -an attempt to hold himself between the opposing parties; and within a -fortnight after his return Danton, who had in him a directness of purpose -and a rapidity of action that prefigured Napoleon, had gained every -strategic point in his attack. - -Events helped him, or rather he had foreseen them. The Vendeans, moving -more like a mob than an army, were caught at Le Mans on the 13th of -December. On the 7th of December the genius of Bonaparte had driven the -English and Spanish from Toulon. On the 26th the news came to the army -of which Hoche had just been given the command, and, as though the name -Bonaparte brought a fate with it, the lines of Wissembourg were carried, -Landau was relieved, the Austrians passed the Rhine. - -All these victories were the allies of the party of indulgence. The men -who said, “The Terror has no _raison d’être_ save that of the national -defence,” found themselves expressing what all France felt. After such -successes it only remained to add, “The nation is safe; the Terror may -end.” Already Danton had called up a reserve, so to speak, in the shape -of the genius of Desmoulins. The first issue of “Vieux Cordelier” had -appeared, and the journal was read by all Paris. - -That club, in which we saw the origin of Danton’s fame, was now the -Hébertists, and nothing more. The pamphlets which Camille issued under -the leadership of Danton were given a name that might recall its position -and its politics of the old days. And indeed the two men most concerned -in the new policy of clemency had been, from their house in the Cour du -Commerce, the heart of the “République des Cordeliers.” There are not -in the history of the Revolution, in all the passages of its eloquence -and genius, any words that strike us to-day as do the words of these six -pamphlets which spread over the winter of the year II. It is a proof of -Danton’s clear vision, of his strong influence, that a distant posterity, -far removed from the passions of 1793, should find its own expression in -the appeals which his friend wrote, and which form the Testament of the -Indulgents. - -The first two numbers were an attack upon the Hébertists alone. -Robespierre, from his position in the Committee of Public Safety, from -the spur of his own ambition, was willing to agree. He himself corrected -the proofs. But on the 15th of December appeared the famous Numero III., -which ran through Paris like a herald’s message, which did for reaction -something of what the great speeches had done for liberty in clubs during -the early days of the Revolution. Few men cared to vote, but every man -read the “Vieux Cordelier.” To those who had never so much as heard of -Tacitus the pen of Tacitus carried conviction. A crowd of women passed -before the Parliament crying for the brothers and husbands who filled the -prisons; the “Committee of Clemency” was within an ace of being formed; -and, coinciding with the victories and with Danton’s reappearance, the -demand of Desmoulins was dragging after it, not France only (for France -was already convinced), but even the capital. It was then that the -Committee, who alone were the government, grew afraid. Robespierre still -hesitated. He could only succeed through the committees; but Desmoulins -was his friend; there was an appeal to “the old college friend” in the -“Vieux Cordelier” that touched his heart and his vanity; they had sat -together on the benches of the Louis le Grand, and Robespierre seems to -have made an honest attempt to aid him then. A fourth number had appeared -on the 20th, a fifth (written on Christmas Day) appeared on January 8th. - -The Jacobins denounced Camille, and Robespierre, the eyes of whose mind -looked as closely and were as short-sighted as the eyes of his body, grew -afraid. The men determined on rigour had warned him in the Committee; -now when he tried to defend Camille he saw the Jacobins raging: what he -did not see was France. Perhaps, had his sight been longer, he would -not have been dragged six months later to the guillotine. He attempted -a compromise and said: “We will not expel Camille, but we will burn -his journal, punishing his act but not himself.” Camille answered with -Rousseau, “_Brûler n’est pas repondre_.” He would not be defended. - -The battle was closely joined. Desmoulins was pushing forward his attack -with the audacious infantry of pamphlets; Danton, from the Convention, -was giving from time to time the heavy blows of the artillery; the -advance was continuous; when there was felt a check that proved the -prelude to disaster and that showed, behind the opposing lines, the force -of the Committees. In the middle of January, just after Desmoulins’s -defence at the Jacobins, Fabre D’Eglantine, the friend and old secretary -of Danton, was arrested. It was in vain that Danton put into his defence -all the new energy which he had discovered in himself. It was in vain -even that he called for “the right of the deputy to defend himself at the -bar of the house.” Like all organised governments, the Committee could -give reasons of State for this silent action. Danton was overborne, and -the Convention for the first time since his return deserted him. - -He had yet seven weeks to live. Desmoulins still attacked, but Danton -knew that the action was lost. He knew the strength of that powerful -council whose first efforts he himself had moulded, and when he saw -it arise in support of continuing the Terror, when he saw it and -Robespierre allied, he lost hope. The policy of the Committee grew more -and more definite. One member of it, (Hérault de Séchelles) was Danton’s -friend: they expelled him. Silently, but with all their strength, they -disengaged the government from either side. The Committee and Robespierre -determined to strike at once, when the occasion should arise, both those -in the Commune who desired to turn the Terror to their own ends and those -of the Convention—the Dantonists, who desired to end it altogether. - -Danton still speaks in the tribune, but the attack is no longer there. -He defends modestly and well the practical propositions that appear -before the Parliament on education, on the abolition of slavery, on the -provisions for the giving of bail under the new judiciary system, and -so forth. But there is in his attitude something of expectancy. He is -waiting for a sudden attack that must come and that he cannot prevent. -He holds himself ready, but the Committee is working in the dark, and he -does not know on which side to guard himself. A last personal interview -with Robespierre failed, and there was nothing left to do but to wait and -see whether they feared him so much as to dare his arrest. It was with -Ventose, that is, with the first days of March, that the blow fell. - -The Hébertists, chafing under three months of growing insults—insults -which their old ally the Committee refused to avenge—broke out into -open revolt. Carrier was back from his truly Hébertist slaughtering at -Nantes, and it was felt at the Cordeliers that the public execration -would destroy them unless they rose. In the autumn they would have had -the Committees on their side, but the strong action of the Indulgents had -broken the alliance. They determined on insurrection. The Commune this -time was, once and for all, to conquer the government. The decision was -taken at the Cordeliers on the 4th of March—within ten days they were -arrested. The Committee pushed them through the form of a trial. Less -than three weeks after the first talk of revolt, Hébert, Clootz, and the -rest were guillotined. - -There were many among the Dantonists who thought this the triumph of -their policy. “The violent, the enragés are dead. It is we who did it.” -But Danton was wiser than his followers. He knew that the Committee were -waiting for such an opportunity, and that a blow to the right would -follow that blow to the left. Both oppositions were doomed. Only one -chance remained to him—they might not dare. - -On the occasion of the arrest of the Hébertists he made a noble speech on -the great lines of conciliation and unity, which had been his constant -policy—a speech which was all for Paris, in spite of the faction. - -But that week they determined on his arrest and that of his friends. -Panis heard of it, and sent at once to warn him. He found him in the -night of the last day of March 1794 sitting in his study with his young -nephew, moody and silent. His wife was asleep in the next room. On the -flat above him Camille and Lucille were watching late. The house was -silent. Panis entered and told him what the Committee had resolved. -“Well, what then?” said Danton. “You must resist.” “That means the -shedding of blood, and I am sick of it. I would rather be guillotined -than guillotine.” “Then,” said Panis, “you must fly, and at once.” But -Danton shook his head still moodily. “One does not take one’s country -with one on the soles of one’s boots.” But he muttered again to himself, -“They will not dare—they will not dare.” Panis left him, and he sat down -again to wait, for he knew in his heart that the terrible machine which -he himself had made, and which he had fought so heroically, could dare -what it chose. They left him silent in the dark room. From time to time -he stirred the logs of the fire; the sudden flame threw a light on the -ugly strength of his face: he bent over the warmth motionless, and with -the memories of seven years in his heart. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE DEATH OF DANTON - - -In the night the armed police came round to the Passage du Commerce; one -part of the patrol grounded their muskets and halted at the exits of the -street, the other entered the house. - -Desmoulins heard the butts falling together on the flagstones, and the -little clink of metal which announces soldiery; he turned to his wife and -said, “They have come to arrest me.” And she held to him till she fainted -and was carried away. Danton, in his study alone, met the arrest without -words. There is hardly a step in the tragedy that follows which is not -marked by his comment, always just, sometimes violent; but the actual -falling of the blow led to no word. Words were weapons with him, and he -was not one to strike before he had put up his guard. - -They were taken to the Luxembourg, very close by, a little up the -hill. We have the story of how Danton came with his ample, firm -presence into the hall of the prison, and met, almost the first of -his fellow-prisoners, Thomas Paine. The author of “The Rights of Man” -stepped up to him, doubtless to address him in bad French.[140] Danton -forestalled him in the English of which he was a fair master. - -“Mr. Paine,” he said, “you have had the happiness of pleading in your -country a cause which I shall no longer plead in mine.” He remembered -Paine’s sane and moderate view on the occasion of the king’s trial, and -he envied one whose private freedom had remained untrammelled with the -bonds of office; who had never been forced to a 2nd of June, nor had to -keep to an intimate conversation his fears for the Girondins. Then he -added that if they sent him to the scaffold he would go gaily. And he -did. There was the Frenchman contrasted with his English friend. - -Beaulieu, who heard him, tells us that he also turned to the prisoners -about him and said, “Gentlemen, I had hoped to have you out of this, and -here I am myself; I can see no issue.” - -So the prisoners came in, anxiously watched by reactionaries, to whom, -as to many of our modern scribblers, one leader of the Revolution is as -good as another—Lacroix, Westermann (the strong soldier with his huge -frame overtopping even Danton’s), and Desmoulins. As they passed to their -separate cells, for it was determined to prevent their communication, -a little spirit of the old evil[141] used the powerful venom of -aristocracy, the unanswerable repartee of rank, and looking Lacroix up -and down, said, “I could make a fine coachman of that fellow.” He and his -like would have ruined France for the sake of turning those words into -action. - -Till the dawn of the 11th Germinal broke, they were kept in their -separate rooms. But the place was not built for a prison. Lacroix and -Danton in neighbouring rooms could talk by raising their voices, and -we have of their conversation this fragment. Lacroix said, “Had I ever -dreamt of this I could have forestalled it.” And Danton’s reply, with -just that point of fatalism which had forbidden him to be ambitious, -answered, “I knew it;” he had known it all that night. - -There was a force stronger than love—private and public fear. It -is a folly to ridicule, or even to misunderstand that fear. The -possessions, the families of many, the newly-acquired dignity of all, -above everything, the new nation had been jeopardised how many times -by a popular idol turned untrue. The songs of 1790 were all for Louis, -many praised Bailly; what a place once had Lafayette! Who had a word to -say against Dumouriez eighteen months before? The victories had just -begun—barely enough to make men hesitate about the Terror. The “Vieux -Cordelier” had led, not followed opinion, as it was just that the great -centre of energy should lead and not follow the time. And, men would -say, how do we know why he has been arrested, or at whose voice? How can -we tell where the sure compass of right, our Robespierre, stands in the -matter? and so forth. Nothing then was done; but Paris very nearly moved. - -There were thus two gathering forces; one vague and large, one small but -ordered, and on the result of their shock hung the life of Danton—may one -say (knowing the future) the life of the Republic? - -Now the struggle with Europe had taught the Committee a principal lesson. -Perhaps one should add that the exuberant fighting power of the nation -and of the age had forced the Committee to a certain method, apparent -in the armies, in the measures, in the speeches: it was the method -of detecting at once the weakest spot in the opposing line, and of -abandoning everything for the purpose of concentrating all its strength -and charging home. So their descendants to-day in their new army practise -the marvellous massing of artillery which you may watch at autumn in the -manœuvres. - -What was the opposing line? A vague ill-ordered crowd—Paris; the -undisciplined Convention, lacking leaders, ignorant of party rule. Where -was its weakness? In the want of initiative, in the fact that, till -some one spoke, no one could be sure of the strength of the corporate -feeling. Also, on account of the public doubt, during that time men were -grains of dust; but the dust was like powder, and speech was always the -spark which permitted the affinities of that powder to meet in fierce -unity and power. A sudden blow had to be struck and the fire stamped out -before it had gathered power; this is how the check was given. - - * * * * * - -In the morning of the 12th Germinal the Convention met, and each man -looked at his neighbour, and then, as though afraid, let his eyes wander -to see if others thought as he did. At last one man dared to speak. It -was Legendre the butcher;[142] he vacillated later before a mixture of -deceit in others and of doubt in himself, but it should be remembered to -his honour that he nearly saved the Revolution by an honest word. “Let -Danton be heard at the bar of the Convention,” was his frank demand; -common-sense enough, but it fatally opened his guard, and gave an -opportunity to the thrusts most dangerous in the year II.—an accusation -of desiring privilege, and an accusation of weakening that government -which was visibly saving the state on the frontiers. - -Tallien was President that day, and he gave the reply to Robespierre. Now -Robespierre was no good fencer. The supreme feint, the final disarming of -opinion, was left to an abler man. He had gone home from the Committee -to Duplay’s house in the early morning; a monomaniac hardly needing -sleep, he reappeared at the early meeting of the Convention. But, poor -debater as he was, he could take advantage of so easy an opportunity. -In a speech which was twice applauded, he asserted that Legendre had -demanded a privilege. He struck the note which above all others dominated -those minds. “Are we here to defend principles or men? Give the right -of speech to Danton, and you give rein to an extraordinary talent, -you confuse the issue with a hundred memories, you permit the bias of -friendship. Let the man defend himself by proofs and witnesses, not by -eloquence and sentiment.” Yet he did not add—perhaps he hardly knew—that -the memories and friendship would but have balanced a direct enmity, and -that witnesses and proofs would be denied. Again he used that argument -of government—had not they saved France? were they not the head of the -police? did not they know in the past what they were doing? He assured -them that a little waiting would produce conviction in them also. It did -not, but time was gained; already half the Convention doubted. - -Legendre, bewildered, faltered a reply; he admitted error, and begged -Robespierre not to misunderstand. He could have answered for Danton as -for himself, but the tribunal was of course to be trusted. It was almost -an apology. - -On that changing, doubtful opinion came with the force of a steel mould -the hard, high voice of St. Just. - -St. Just spoke rarely. There has been mention in an earlier part of this -book of the speech against the Girondins. There will be mention again of -a vigorous and a nearly successful attempt to save Robespierre. That he -should have been given the task of defending the Committee’s action that -day is a singular proof of the grip which they had of the circumstances. -Barrère could never have convinced an unsympathetic public opinion. -Robespierre could meet a rising enthusiasm with nothing but dry and -accurate phrases. But St. Just had the flame of his youth and of his -energy, and his soul lived in his mouth. - -The report, even as we read it, has eloquence. Coming from him then, -with his extreme beauty, his upright and determined bearing, it turned -the scale. The note of the argument was as ably chosen as could be; -moreover it represented without question the attitude of his own mind: -it was this. “The last of the factions has to be destroyed; only one -obstacle stands between you and the appreciation of the Republic.[143] -Time and again we have acted suddenly, but time and again we have acted -well and on sufficient reasons—so it is now. If you save Danton you save -a personality—something you have known and admired; you pay respect to -individual talent, but you ruin the attempt in which you have so nearly -succeeded. For the sake of a man you will sacrifice all the new liberty -which you are giving to the whole world.” There follows a passionate -apostrophe in which he speaks to Danton as though he stood before him, -as striking as the parallel passage in the fourth Catiline Oration.[144] -Had Danton been present he would have been a man against a boy: a loud -and strong voice, not violent in utterance, but powerful in phrase and -in delivery, a character impressing itself by sheer force of self upon -vacillating opinion. Had Danton spoken in reply, his hearers would have -said with that moral conviction which is stronger than proof, “This man -is the chief lover of France.” - -But such is rhetoric, its falsity and its success—the gaps of silence -grew to a convincing power. The accusations met with no reply; they -remained the echo of a living voice; the answers to them could be framed -only in the silent minds of the audience. The living voice won. - -And there was, as we have said, intense conviction to aid St. Just. He -was a man who would forget and would exaggerate with all the faults -of passion, but he believed the facts he gave. Not so Robespierre. -Robespierre had furnished the notes of St. Just’s report,[145] and -Robespierre must have known that he had twisted all to one end. -Robespierre was a man who was virtuous and true only to his ideal, not -to his fellow-men. Robespierre had not deceived himself as he wrote, but -he had deceived St. Just, and therefore the young “Archangel of Death” -spoke with the added strength of faith, than which nothing leaps more -readily from the lips to the ears. Can we doubt it? There is a phrase -which convinces. When he ends by telling them what it is they save by -sacrificing one idol, when he describes the Republic, he uses the phrase -common to all apostolates, the superb “les mots que nous avons dits ne -seront jamais perdus sur la terre”—the things which they had said would -never be lost on earth. - -It ended. No one voted; the demand of the Committee passed without a -murmur. The Convention was never again its own mistress; it had silenced -and condemned itself.[146] - -Meanwhile at the Luxembourg the magistrate Dénizot was making the -preparations for the trial. Each prisoner was asked the formal question -of his guilt, and each replied in a single negative, but Danton added -that he would die a Republican, and to the question of their defence -replied that he would plead his own cause. Then, at half-past eleven they -were transferred to the Conciergerie. - -From that moment his position becomes the attitude of the man fighting, -as we have known it in the crisis of August 1792 and of the calling up of -the armies. Ready as he had always been to see the real rather than the -imaginary conditions, he recognised death with one chance only of escape. -He knew far better than did poor Desmoulins the power of a State’s -machinery; he felt its grasp and doubted of any issue. The people, for -Desmoulins, were the delegators of power; for Danton the people were -those who should, but who did not rule. To live again and enter the arena -and save the life of the Republic the people must hear his voice, or -else the fact of government would be more strong than all the rights and -written justice in the world. - -He was like a man whose enemy stands before him, and who sees at his own -side, passive and bewildered, a strong but foolish ally. His ally was the -people, his enemy was Death. - -Therefore we have of his words and actions for the next four days two -kinds: those addressed to death and those to his ally. Where he desires -to touch the spirit of the crowd—in what was for their ears—we have the -just, practical, and eloquent man apologising for over-vehemence, saying -what should strike hardest home—an orator, but an orator who certainly -uses legitimate weapons. - -But there is another side. In much that he said in prison, in all that -he said on his way to the scaffold, he is simply speaking to Death and -defying him. The inmost thing in a man, the stock of the race, appears -without restraint; he becomes the Gaul. That most un-northern habit of -defiance, especially of defiance to the inevitable and to the strongest, -the custom of his race and their salvation, grows on his lips. - -He insults Death, he jests; his language, never chaste or self-conscious, -takes on the laughter of the Rabelaisian, and (true Rabelaisian again) he -wraps up in half-a-dozen words the whole of a situation. - -Thus we see him leaning against the window of his prison and calling -to Westermann in the next cell, “Oh! if I could leave my legs to -Couthon[147] and my virility to Robespierre, things might still go on.” -And again when Lacroix said, “I will cut my own hair at the neck, so that -Sanson the executioner shall not meddle with it,” Danton replied, “Yet -will Sanson intermeddle with the vertebræ of your neck.” So he meets -death with a broad torrent of words; and that a civilisation accustomed -rather to reticence should know what this meant in him, my readers must -note his powerful asides to Desmoulins and to Hérault, coinciding with -the fearful pun in which he tried to raise the drooping courage of -D’Eglantine. - -Also in his prison this direct growth of the soil of France “talked often -of the fields and of rivers.” Shakespeare should have given us the death -scenes of so much energy, defiance, coarseness, affection, and great -courage. - -In the Conciergerie they spent the rest of the day waiting for the trial, -and this time Danton was next to Westermann, to whom and to Desmoulins he -said, “We must say nothing save before the Committees or at the trial.” -It was his plan to move the people by a public defence, but his enemies -in power had formed a counter-plan, and, as we shall see, forestalled -him. - -Desmoulins, “the flower that grew on Danton,” was still bewildered. -So he remained to the end; at the foot of the scaffold he could not -understand. “If I could only have written a No. VII. I would have turned -the tables.”[148] “It is a duel of Commodus; they have the lance and I -have not even a reed.” To that man, his equal in years,[149] but a boy -compared with him in spirit, Danton had always shown, and now continued -to show, a peculiar affection. He treated him like a younger brother, -and never made him suffer those violent truths with which all France and -most of his friends were familiar in his mouth. So now, and in the trial, -and on the way to the scaffold, his one attempt was to calm the bitter -violence and outburst of Camille. - -There are two phrases of Danton’s which have been noted on this first -day passed at the Conciergerie, and which cannot be omitted, though in -form they have not his diction, yet in spirit they might be his; they -are recollections presumably of something of greater length called to -Westermann. - -The first: “On such a day[150] I demanded the institution of the -Revolutionary tribunal. I ask pardon of God and of man.” - -The second: “I am leaving everything at sixes and sevens; one had better -be a poor fisherman than meddle with the art of governing men.” There -you have the real Danton—a reminiscence of some strong and passionate -utterance put into this undantonesque and proverbial form. A real -sentiment of his—all of him; careless of life, intense upon the interests -of life, above all upon the future of the Revolution and of France, -knowing the helpless inferiority of the men he left behind. And in the -close of the phrase it is also he; it is the spirit of great weariness -which had twice touched him, as sleep an athlete after a day of games. -It was soon to take the form of a noble sentence: “Nous avons assez -servi—allons dormir.” - -On the 13th (April 2, 1794), about ten in the morning, they were led -before the tribunal. - -The trial began. - -It must not be imagined that the Dantonists alone came before the -tribunal to answer for their particular policy. There had originated -under Robespierre (and later when he alone was the master it was to be -terribly abused) the practice of confusing the issues. Three groups at -least were tried together, and the Moderates sat between two thieves—for -D’Eglantine on a charge of embezzlement alone, Guzman, the Freys as -common thieves and spies to the Republic, were associated on the same -bench. Fourteen in all, they sat in the following order:—Chabot, -Bazire, Fabre, Lacroix, Danton, Delaunay, Hérault, Desmoulins, Guzman, -Diederichsen, Phillippeaux, D’Espagnac, and the two Freys. D’Eglantine -occupied “the armchair,” and it will be seen that the _five_—the -Moderates—were carefully scattered. - -The policy was a deliberate one; it was undertaken with the object of -prejudicing public opinion against the accused. Nor was it permitted to -each group to be separate in accusation and in its method of defence. -They were carefully linked to each other by men accused of two out of the -three crimes. - -Herman was president of the tribunal, and sat facing the prisoners; -on either side of him were Masson-Denizot, Foucault and Bravé, the -assistant-judges. They say that Voullaud and Vadier, of the lower -committee, appeared behind the bench to watch the enemies whom they had -caught in the net. Seven jurors were in the box to the judges’ left, -by name Renaudin (whom Desmoulins challenged in vain), Desboisseaux, -Trinchard, Dix-Aout, Lumière, Ganney, Souberbielle,[151] and to these -we must add Topino-Lebrun, whose notes form by far the most vivid -fragment by which we may reconstruct the scene. The jury of course was -packed.[152] It was part of the theory of the Revolutionary Government -that no chance element should mar its absolute dictatorship. It was -practically a court of judges, absolute, and without division of powers. - -At a table between the President and the prisoners sat Fouquier-Tinville, -the public prosecutor; and finally, on the judges’ right was the open -part of the court and the door to the witnesses’ room. - -Here was a new trial with a great and definite chance of acquittal, a -scene the like of which had not been seen for a year, nor would be seen -again in that room. The men on the prisoners’ bench had been the masters, -one of them the creator, of the court which tried them; they were -evidently greater and more powerful than their judges, and had behind -them an immense though informal weight of popularity. They were public -men of the first rank; their judges and the public prosecutor were known -to be merely the creatures of a small committee. More than this, it was -common talk that the Convention might yet change its mind, and even among -the jury it was certain that discussion would arise. - -By the evidence of a curious relic we know that the Committee actually -feared a decree or a coup-de-main which would have destroyed their power. -This note remains in the archives, a memorandum of a decision arrived at -in the Committee on the early morning of the 13th or late in the night of -the 12th. - -“_Henriot to be written to, to tell him to issue an order that the -President and the Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal are not -to be arrested._” - -Then in another hand: - -“_Get four members to sign this._” - -Finally, the memorandum is endorsed in yet another hand: - -“_13th Germinal.—A policeman took this the same day._”[153] - -It will thus be seen that the Committee was by no means sure of its -ground. It had indeed procured through St. Just the decree preventing -Danton from pleading at the bar of the Convention and permitting his -trial, but it would require the most careful manœuvring upon their part -to carry through such an affair. As we shall see, they just—and only -just—succeeded. - -The whole of the first day (the 13th Germinal, 2nd of April 1794) was -passed in the formal questions and in the reading of accusations. -Camille, on being asked his age and dwelling, made the blasphemous and -striking answer which satisfied the dramatic sense, but was not a true -reply to the main question. - -Danton gave the reply so often quoted: “I am Danton, not unknown among -the revolutionaries. I shall be living nowhere soon, but you will find my -name in Walhalla.” The other answers, save that of Hérault, attempted no -phrases. - -Yet Guzman would have made more point of his assertion if he had chosen -that moment to say, “I am Guzman, a grandee of Spain, who came to France -to taste liberty, but was arrested for theft;” while the two Freys -missed an historic occasion in not replying, “We are Julius and Emanuel -Frey, sometime nobles of the Empire under the title of Von Schönfeld, now -plain Jews employed by the Emperor as spies.” - -The public prosecutor read the indictment. First at great length Amar’s -report on the India Company. The details of the accusations which cost -Fabre his life need not be entered into here. Suffice it to say that -it was an indictment for corruption, for having suppressed or altered -for money the decree of the Convention in the autumn before, and being -accomplice in the extra gains which this had made possible—one of those -wretched businesses with which Panama and South Africa have deluged -modern France and England. It is an example of the methods of the -tribunal that Fouquier managed to drag in Desmoulins’s name because he -had once said, “People complain of not being able to make money now, yet -I make it easily enough.” - -The second group, the Freys, Guzman, the unfrocked priest D’Espagnac, and -Diederichsen the Dane, were accused of being foreigners working against -the success of the French armies, and at the same time lining their -pockets. In the case of three of them the accusation was probably true. -It was the more readily believed from the foreign origins of the accused, -for France was full of spies, while the name of a certain contumacious -Baron de Bartz made this list sound the more probable. - -Finally, the small group at which they were really aiming (whose members -they had already mixed up with the thieves) was indicted on nothing -more particular than the report of St. Just—virtually, that is, on -Robespierre’s notes. Danton had served the King, had drawn the people -into the place where they were massacred in July 1791, did not do his -duty on the 10th of August, and so forth—a vapid useless summary of -impossible things in which no one but perhaps St. Just and a group of -fanatics believed. With that the day ended, and they were taken back to -prison. - -On the next day, the 14th Germinal (3rd of April 1794), Westermann, who, -though already arrested, had only been voted upon in Parliament the -day before, appeared on the prisoners’ bench, and sat at the end after -Emanuel Frey. He was the last and not the least noble of the Dantonists, -with his great stature, his clumsy intellect, and his loyal Teutonic -blood. - -“Who are you?” they said. “I am Westermann. Show me to the people. I was -a soldier at sixteen, and have been a councillor of Strasbourg. I have -seven wounds in front, and I was never stabbed in the back till now.” - -This was the man who had led the 10th of August, and who had dared, in -his bluff nature, to parley with the Swiss who spoke his language. - -It was after some little time passed in the interrogation of the -prisoners who had been arrested for fraud, especially of D’Espagnac, that -the judge turned to Danton. - -In the debate and cross-questioning that followed we must depend mainly -upon the notes of Lebrun,[154] for they are more living, although they -are more disconnected, than the official report. We discover in them the -passionate series of outbursts, but a series which one must believe to -have had a definite purpose. There was neither hope of convincing the -tribunal nor of presenting a legal argument with effect. What Danton -was trying to do in this court, which was not occupied with a trial, -but merely in a process of condemnation, was to use it as a rostrum -from which he could address the people, the general public, upon whose -insurrection he depended. He perhaps depended also on the jury, for, -carefully chosen as they were, they yet might be moved by a man who -had never failed to convince by his extraordinary power of language. -He carries himself exactly as though he were technically what he is in -fact—a prisoner before an informal group of executioners, who appeals for -justice to the crowd. - -He pointed at Cambon, who had sat by him on the Committee, and said, -“Come now, Cambon, do you think we are conspirators? Look, he is -laughing; he believes no such thing.” Then he turned, laughing himself, -to the jury and said, “Write down in your notes that he laughed.” - -Again, he uses phrases like these: “We are here for a form, but if we are -to have full liberty to speak, and if the French people is what it should -be, it will be my business later to ask their pardon for my accusers.” To -which Camille answered, “Oh, we shall be allowed to speak, and that is -all we want,” and the group of Indulgents laughed heartily. - -It was just after this that he began that great harangue in answer to -the questions of the judge, an effort whose tone reaches to this day. -It is, perhaps, the most striking example of a personal appeal that can -be discovered. The opportunities for such are rare, for in the vast -majority of historical cases where a man has pleaded for his life, it has -either been before a well-organised court, or before a small number of -determined enemies, or by the lips of one who was paid for his work and -who ignored the art of political oratory. The unique conditions of the -French Revolution made such a scene possible, perhaps for the only time -in history. - -The day, early as was the season, was warm, the windows of the court, -that looked upon the Seine, were open, and through the wide doors pressed -the head of a great crowd. This crowd stretched out along the corridor, -along the quays, across the Pont Neuf, and even to the other side of the -river. Every sentence that told was repeated from mouth to mouth, and the -murmurs of the crowd proved how closely the great tribune was followed. -In the attitude which had commanded the attention of his opponents when -he presented the first deputation from Paris three years before, and that -had made him so striking a figure during the stormy months of 1793, he -launched the phrases that were destined for Paris and not for his judges. -His loud voice (the thing appears incredible, but it is true) vibrating -through the hall and lifted to the tones that had made him the orator of -the open spaces, rang out and was heard beyond the river. - -“You say that I have been paid, but I tell you that men made as I am -cannot be paid. And I put against your accusation—of which you cannot -furnish a proof nor the hint of a proof, nor the shadow nor the beginning -of a witness—the whole of my revolutionary career. It was I who from the -Jacobins kept Mirabeau at Paris. I have served long enough, and my life -is a burden to me, but I will defend myself by telling you what I have -done. It was I who made the pikes rise suddenly on the 20th of June and -prevented the King’s voyage to St. Cloud. The day after the massacre of -the Champ de Mars a warrant was out for my arrest. Men were sent to kill -me at Arcis, but my people came and defended me. I had to fly to London, -and I came back, as you all know, the moment Garran was elected. Do you -not remember me at the Jacobins, and how I asked for the Republic? It was -I who knew that the court was eager for war. It was I, among others, who -denounced the policy of the war.” - -Here a sentence was heard: “What did you do against the Brissotins?” - -Now Danton had, as we know, done all in his power to save the men -who hated him, but whom he admired. It was no time for him to defend -himself by an explanation of this in the ears of the people who had never -understood, as he had, the height of the men who followed Vergnaud; but -he said what was quite true: “I told them that they were going to the -scaffold. When I was a minister I said it to Brissot before the whole -cabinet.” - -He might have added that he had said to Guadet in the November woods on -the night before he left for the army, “You are headstrong, and it will -be your doom.”[155] - -Then he went back again to the list of his services. “It was I who -prepared the 10th of August. You say I went to Arcis. I admit it, and I -am proud of it. I went there to pass three days, to say good-bye to my -mother, and to arrange my affairs, because I was shortly to be in peril. -I hardly slept that night. It was I that had Mandat killed, because he -had given the order to fire on the people.... You are reproaching me -with the friendship of Fabre D’Eglantine. He is still my friend, and I -still say that he is a good citizen as he sits here with me. You have -told me that my defence has been too violent, you have recalled to me the -revolutionary names, and you have told me that Marat when he appeared -before the tribunal might have served as my model. Well, with regard to -those names who were once my friends, I will tell you this: Marat had -a character on fire and unstable; Robespierre I have known as a man, -above all, tenacious; but I—I have served in my own fashion, and I would -embrace my worst enemy for the sake of the country, and I will give her -my body if she needs the sacrifice.” - -This short and violent speech, which I have attempted to reproduce -from the short, disjointed, ill-spelt notes of Lebrun, hit the mark. -The crowd, the unstable crowd, which he contemned as he passed to the -guillotine, moved like water under a strong wind; and his second object -also was reached, for the tribunal grew afraid. These phrases would soon -be repeated in the Convention, and no means had been taken to silence -that terrible voice. The President of the court said to him that it was -the part of an accused man to defend himself with proofs and not with -rhetoric. He parried that also with remarkable skill, saying in a much -quieter tone which all his friends (they were now growing in number) -immediately noted: “That a man should be violent is wrong in him I know, -unless it is for the public good, and such a violence has often been -mine. If I exceeded now, it was because I found myself accused with such -intolerable injustice.” He raised his voice somewhat again with the -words, “But as for you, St. Just, you will have to answer to posterity,” -and then was silent. - -When the unhappy man who had taken upon his shoulders the vile duty of -the political work that day, when Herman was himself upon his trial, -he said, “Remember that this affair was out of the ordinary, and was -a political trial,” when a voice rose from the court, “There are no -political trials under a Republic.” He would have done well, obscure as -he is before history, to have saved his own soul by refusing a task which -he knew to involve injustice from beginning to end. - -It was at the close of that day that three short notes passed between -Herman and the public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville. Herman wrote, “In -half an hour I shall stop Danton’s defence. You must spin out some of -the rest in detail.” Tinville answered, “I have something more to say -to Danton about Belgium;” and Herman replied, “Do not bring it in with -regard to any of the others.” This little proof of villany, which has -survived by so curious an accident (it is in the Archives to-day),[156] -closed the proceedings of that hearing. - -The next day, the 15th of Germinal (4th April), Danton himself said -little. It was given over mainly to the examination of Desmoulins; and as -with Danton it had been rumours or opinions, so with Desmoulins only the -vague sense of things he had written were brought in to serve as evidence -in this tragic farce. - -Fouquier, the distant cousin of Camille, to whom he owed the post in -which he was earning his bread by crime,[157] tried to put something -of complaint against the nation and of hatred to the Republic into his -reading of the Old Cordelier. Even in his thin unpleasant voice there -was only heard the noble phrase of Tacitus, and—it is a singular example -of what the tribunal had become—they dared not continue the quotation -because every word roused the people in the court. But Camille, so great -with the pen, had nothing of the majesty or the strength of Danton. -His defence was a weak, disconnected excuse, and, like all men who are -insufficient to themselves, he was inconsistent. - -Hérault made on that same day a far finer reply. Noble by birth, holding -by his traditions and memories to that society which he himself had -helped to destroy, and of which Talleyrand has said, “Those who have -not known it have not lived;” accustomed from his very first youth to -prominence in his profession and to the favour of the court, he remained -to the last full of contempt for so much squalor, and he veiled his eyes -with pride. - -“I understand nothing of this topsy-turvydom. I was a diplomat, and I -made the neutrality of Switzerland, so saving 60,000 men to the Republic. -As for the priest you talk about, who was guillotined in my absence at -Troyes, I knew him well. He was a Canon, if I remember, and by no means -a reactionary. You are probably joking about it. It is true he had not -taken the oath, but he was a good man; he helped me, and I am not ashamed -of my friendship. I will tell you something more. On the 14th of July two -men were killed, one on either side of me.” He might have added, “I was -the second man to scale the Towers.” - -It was not until the day’s proceedings had been drawn out for a -considerable time that a sentence was spoken, the full import of which -was not understood at the time, but which was, as a fact, the first step -in those four months of irresponsibility and crime which are associated -with the name of Robespierre, and which hang like a weight around the -neck of the French nation. Lacroix had just said with a touch of legal -phraseology, “I must insist that the witnesses whom I have demanded -should be subpœnaed, and if there is any difficulty about this, I -formally demand that the Convention shall be consulted in the matter;” -when the public prosecutor answered, “It is high time that this part -of the trial, which has become a mere struggle, and which is a public -scandal, should cease. I am about to write to the Convention to hear what -it has to say, and its advice shall be exactly followed.” - -Both the public prosecutor and the judge signed the letter. The first -draft which Fouquier had drawn up was thought too strong, and it appears -that Herman revised it.[158] “Citoyens Représentants,—There has been a -storm in the hall since this day’s proceedings began. The accused are -calling for witnesses who are among your deputies.... They are appealing -to the people, saying that they will be refused. In spite of the firmness -of the president and of all the tribunal, they continue to protest that -they will not be silent until their witnesses are heard, unless by your -passing a special decree.” [This was false, and was the only part of -the letter calculated to impress the Parliament.] “We wish to hear your -orders as to what we shall do in the face of this demand; the procedure -gives us no way by which we can refuse them.” - -But note the way in which the letter was presented to a Parliament in -which there yet remained so much sympathy for the accused, and the way in -which it was received. St. Just appeared in the tribune with the letter -in his hands, and, instead of reading it, held it up before them and made -this speech:— - -“The public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal has sent to tell -you that the prisoners are in full revolt, and have interrupted the -hearing, saying they will not allow it to continue until the Convention -has taken measures. You have barely escaped from the greatest danger -which has yet menaced our new liberty, and this revolt in the very seat -of justice, of men panic-stricken by the law, shows what is in their -minds. Their despair and their fury are a plain proof of the hypocrisy -which they showed in keeping a good face before you. Innocent men do not -revolt. Dillon, who ordered his army to march on Paris, has told us that -Desmoulins’s wife received money to help the plot. Our thanks are due to -you for having put us in the difficult and dangerous post that we occupy. -Your Committees will answer you by the most careful watching,” and so -forth. When the Convention had had laid before them every argument and -every flattery which could falsify their point of view, he proposed the -decree that any prisoner who should attempt to interrupt the course of -justice by threats or revolt should be outlawed. - -As they were about to vote, Billaud Varennes added his word, “I beg the -Convention to listen to a letter which the Committees have received -from the police concerning the conspirators, and their connection with -the prisoners.” The letter is not genuine. Even if it were, it depends -entirely upon the word of one obscure and untrustworthy man (Laflotte), -but it did the work. The Committees, as we know, were names to conjure -with. Their secret debates, their evident success, the fact that their -members had been chosen for the very purpose of guarding the interests -of the Republic, all fatally told against the prisoners. The decree -passed without a vote. Robespierre asked that the letter might be read -in full court, and his demand was granted. It was from that letter, -from this obscure and uncertain origin, that there dated the legend of -the “conspiracy in the prisons” which was to cost the lives of so many -hundreds. - -It was at the very close of this day, the 4th of April, that the decree -of the Convention was brought back to the tribunal. Amar brought it and -gave it to Fouquier, saying, “Here is what you wanted.” Fouquier smiled -and said, “We were in great need of it.” It was read in the tribunal. -When Camille heard the name of his wife mentioned in connection with St. -Just’s demand he cried out, “Will they kill her too?” and David, who was -sitting behind the judges, said, “We hold them at last.”[159] - -The fourth day, the 16th Germinal (5th April), the court met at half-past -eight in the morning, instead of at the ordinary hour of ten. Almost -at once, before the accused had time to begin their tactics of the day -before, the decree was read. The judge, relying on the law which had -already been in operation against others, and which gave the jury the -right to say after three days whether they were satisfied, turned to -them, and they asked leave to deliberate. - -Before the prisoners had passed into the prison Desmoulins had found -time to tear the defence which he had written into small pieces, and -to throw them at the feet of the judge. Danton cried out, and checked -himself in the middle of his sentence. All save poor Camille had kept -their self-control. He, however, clung to the dock, determined on making -some appeal to the people, or to the judges, or to posterity. Danton, -who calmed him a few hours later at the foot of the scaffold, could do -nothing with him then, and it was in the midst of a terrible violence -that the fifteen disappeared. - -The prisoners were taken back to the Conciergerie, but in their absence -occurred a scene which is among the most instructive of the close of the -Revolution. One of the jury could not bring himself to declare the guilt -of men whom he knew to be innocent. Another said to him, “This is not a -trial; it is a sacrifice. Danton and Robespierre cannot exist together; -which do you think most necessary to the Republic?” The unhappy man, -full of the infatuation of the time, stammered out, “Why, Robespierre -is necessary, of course, but——” “It is enough; in saying that you have -passed judgment.” And it came about in this way that the unanimous -verdict condemned the Indulgents. Lhuillier alone was acquitted. - -Of what passed in the prison we only know from the lips of an enemy,[160] -but I can see Danton talking still courageously of a thousand things; -sitting in his chair of green damask and drinking his bottle of Burgundy -opposite the silver and the traps of D’Eglantine.[161] They were not -taken back to hear their sentence; it was read to them, as a matter of -form, in the Conciergerie itself. Ducray read it to them one by one as -they were brought into his office. Danton refused to hear it in patience; -he hated the technicality and the form, and he knew that he was condemned -long ago. He committed himself to a last burst of passion before -summoning his strength to meet the ordeal of the streets, and followed -his anger by the insults which for days he had levelled at death. Then -for a few hours they kept a silence not undignified, save only Camille, -unfitted for such trials, and moaning to himself in a corner of the room, -whom Danton continually tried to console, a task in which at the very -end of their sad journey he succeeded. It was part of his broad mind to -understand even a writer and an artist, he who had never written and had -only done. - -It was between half-past four and five o’clock in the evening of the same -day, the 5th of April 1794, that the prisoners reappeared. Two carts -were waiting for them at the great gate in the court of the Palais—the -gate which is the inner entrance to the Conciergerie to-day.[162] About -the carts were a numerous escort mounted and with drawn swords, but the -victims took their seats as they chose, and of the fifteen the Dantonists -remained together. Hérault, Camille, Lacroix, Westermann, Fabre, Danton -went up the last into the second cart, and the procession moved out of -the courtyard and turned to the left under the shadow of the Palais, -and then to the left again round the Tour de l’Horloge, and so on to -the quay. They passed the window of the tribunal, the window from which -Danton’s loud voice had been heard across the river; they went creaking -slowly past the old Mairie, past the rooms that had been Roland’s -lodgings, till they came to the corner of the Pont Neuf; and as the carts -turned from the trees of the Place Dauphine on to the open bridge, they -left the shade and passed into the full blaze of the westering sun within -an hour of its setting. - -Early as was the season, the air was warm and pleasant, the leaves and -the buds were out on the few trees, the sky was unclouded. All that fatal -spring was summerlike, and this day was the calmest and most beautiful -that it had known. The light, already tinged with evening, came flooding -the houses of the north bank till their glass shone in the eyes. There -it caught the Café de l’École where Danton had sat a young lawyer seven -years before, and had seen the beauty of his first wife in her father’s -house; to the right the corner of the old Hotel de Ville caught the glow, -to the left the Louvre flamed with a hundred windows. - -Where the light poured up the river and came reflected from the Seine -on to the bridge, it marked out the terrible column that was moving -ponderously forward to death. A great crowd, foolish, unstable, varied, -of whom some sang, some ran to catch a near sight of the “Indulgents,” -some pitied, and a few understood and despaired of the Republic—all these -surging and jostling as a crowd will that is forced to a slow pace and -confined by the narrowness of an old thoroughfare, stretched from one end -of the bridge to the other, and you would have seen them in the sunlight, -brilliant in the colours that men wore in those days, while here and -there a red cap of liberty marked the line of heads. - -But in the centre of this crowd and showing above it, could be seen the -group of men who were about to die. The carts hidden by the people, -the horses’ heads just showing above the mob, surrounded by the sharp -gleams that only come from swords, there rose distinguished the figures -of the Dantonists. There stood Hérault de Séchelles upright, his face -contemptuous, his colour high, “as though he had just risen from a -feast.” There on the far side of the cart sat Fabre D’Eglantine, bound, -ill, collapsed, his head resting on his chest, muttering and complaining. -There on the left side, opposite Fabre, is Camille, bound but still -frenzied, calling loudly to the people, raving, “Peuple, pauvre Peuple!” -He still kept in his poet’s head the dream of the People! They had been -deceived, but they were just, they would save him. He wrestled with -his ropes and tore his shirt open at the bosom, clenching his bound -hands—clutched in his fingers through all the struggle shone the bright -hair of Lucille. Danton stood up immense and quiet between them. One of -those broad shoulders touched D’Eglantine, the other Desmoulins; their -souls leant upon his body. And such comfort as there was or control in -the central group came out like warmth from the chief of these friends. - -He had been their leader and their strength for five years; they were -round him now like younger brothers orphaned. The weakness of one, the -vices of another, came leaning for support on the great rock of his form. -For these were not the Girondins, the admirable stoics, of whom each was -a sufficient strength to his own soul: they were the Dantonists, who had -been moulded and framed by the strength and genius of one man. He did not -fail them a moment in the journey, and he died last to give them courage. - -As they passed on and left the river, they lost the light again and -plunged into shadow; the cool air was about them in the deep narrow -streets. They could see the light far above them only, as they turned -into the gulf of the Rue St. Honoré, down which the lives of men poured -like a stream to be lost and wasted in the Place de la Revolution. Up its -steep sides echoed and re-echoed the noise of the mob like waves. They -could see as they rolled slowly along the people at the windows, the men -sitting in the cafés or standing up to watch them go by. One especially -Danton saw suddenly and for a moment. He was standing with a drawing-book -in his hand and sketching rapidly with short interrupted glances. It was -David, an enemy. - -Then there appeared upon their left another sight; it was the only one -in that long hour which drove Danton out of his control: it was the -house of Duplay. There, hidden somewhere behind the close shutters, -was Robespierre. They all turned to it loudly, and the sentence was -pronounced which some say God has executed—that it should disappear and -not be known again, and be hidden by high walls and destroyed. - -The house was silent, shut, blockaded. It was like a thing which is -besieged and which turns its least sentient outer part to its enemies. It -was beleaguered by the silent and unseen forces which we feel pressing -everywhere upon the living. For it contained the man who had sent that -cartload of his friends to death. Their fault had been to preach the -permanent sentiments of mankind, to talk of mercy, and to recall in -1794 the great emotions of the early Revolution—the desire for the -Republic where every kind of man could sit and laugh at the same table, -the Republic of the Commensales. They were the true heirs of the spirit -of the Federations, and it was for this that they were condemned. Even -at this last moment there radiated from them the warmth of heart that -proceeds from a group of friends and lovers till it blesses the whole of -a nation with an equal affection. Theirs had been the instinct of and the -faith in the happy life of the world. It was for this that the Puritan -had struck them down; and yet it is the one spirit that runs through any -enduring reform, the only spirit that can lead us at last to the Republic. - -In a remote room, where the noise of the wheels could not reach him, -sat the man who, by some fatal natural lack or some sin of ambition -unrepented, had become the Inquisitor—the mad, narrow enemy of mercy and -of all good things. - -For a moment he and his error had the power to condemn, repeating a -tragedy of which the world is never weary—the mean thing was killing the -great. - -Nevertheless, if you will consider the men in the tumbril, you will find -them not to be pitied except for two things, that they were loved by -women whom they could not see, and that they were dying in the best and -latest time of their powerful youth. All these young men were loved, and -in other things they should be counted fortunate. They had with their -own persons already transformed the world. Here the writer knew that his -talent, the words he had so carefully chosen and with such delight in his -power, had not been wasted upon praise or fortune, but had achieved the -very object. There the orator knew and could remember how his great voice -had called up the armies and thrown back the kings. - -But if the scene was a tragedy, it was a tragedy of the real that -refused to follow the unities. All nature was at work, crowded into the -Revolutionary time, and the element that Shakespeare knew came in of -itself—the eternal comedy that seems to us, according to our mood, the -irony, the madness, or the cruelty of things, was fatally present to make -the day complete; and the grotesque, like a discordant note, contrasted -with and emphasised the terrible. - -Fabre, who had best known how omnipresent is this complexity—Fabre, -who had said, “Between the giving and taking of snuff there is a -comedy”—furnished the example now. Danton hearing so much weakness and -so many groans from the sick man said, “What is your complaint?” He -answered, “I have written a play called ‘The Maltese Orange,’ and I -fear the police have taken it, and that some one will steal it and get -the fame.” Poor Fabre! It is lost, and no one has the ridicule of his -little folly. Danton answered him with a phrase to turn the blood: “Tais -toi! Dans une semaine tu feras assez de vers,” and imposed silence. Nor -did this satisfy Fate; there were other points in the framework of the -incongruous which she loves to throw round terror. A play was running -in the opera called the “10th of August;” in this the Dantonists were -represented on the stage. When the Dantonists were hardly buried it -was played again that very night, and actors made up for Hérault and -the rest passed before a public that ignored or had forgotten what the -afternoon had seen. More than this, there was already set in type a verse -which the street-hawkers cried and sold that very night. For the sake of -its coincidence I will take the liberty of translating it into rhymed -heroics:— - - “When Danton, Desmoulins, and D’Eglantine - Were ferried over to the world unseen, - Charon, that equitable citizen, - Handed their change to these distinguished men. - ‘Pray keep the change,’ they cried; ‘we pay the fare - For Couthon, and St. Just, and Robespierre.’”[163] - -Danton spared only Camille, and as he did not stop appealing to the -people, told him gently to cease. “Leave the rabble there,” he said, -“leave them alone.” But for himself he kept on throwing angry jests at -death. “May I sing?” he said to the executioner. Sanson thought he might, -for all he knew. Then Danton said to him, “I have made some verses, and I -will sing them.” He sang loudly a verse of the fall of Robespierre, and -then laughed as though he had been at the old café with his friends. - -There was a man (Arnault of the Academy) who lived afterwards to a great -age, and who happened to be crossing the Rue St. Honoré as the carts -went past. In a Paris that had all its business to do, many such men -came and went, almost forgetting that politics existed even then. But -this batch of prisoners haunted him. He had seen Danton standing singing -with laughter, he hurried on to the Rue de la Monnaie, had his say with -Michael, who was awaiting him, and then, full of the scene, ran back -across the Tuilleries gardens, and pressing his face to the railings -looked over the great Place de la Révolution. The convoy had arrived, the -carts stood at the foot of the guillotine, and his memory of the scene is -the basis of its history. - -It was close on six, and the sun was nearly set behind the trees of the -Étoile; it reddened the great plaster statue of Liberty which stood in -the middle of the Place, where the obelisk is now, and to which Madame -Roland delivered her last phrase. It sent a level beam upon the vast -crowd that filled the square, and cast long shadows, sending behind the -guillotine a dark lane over the people. The day had remained serene and -beautiful to the last, the sky was stainless, and the west shone like a -forge. Against it, one by one, appeared the figures of the condemned. -Hérault de Séchelles, straight and generous in his bearing, first showed -against the light, standing on the high scaffold conspicuous. He looked -at the Garde Meuble, and from one of its high windows a woman’s hand -found it possible to wave a farewell. Lacroix next, equally alone; -Camille, grown easy and self-controlled, was the third. One by one they -came up the few steps, stood clearly for a moment in the fierce light, -black or framed in scarlet, and went down. - -Danton was the last. He had stood unmoved at the foot of the steps as -his friends died. Trying to embrace Hérault before he went up, roughly -rebuking the executioner who tore them asunder, waiting his turn without -passion, he heard the repeated fall of the knife in the silence of the -crowd. His great figure, more majestic than in the days of his triumph, -came against the sunset. The man who watched it from the Tuilleries gate -grew half afraid, and tells us that he understood for a moment what kind -of things Dante himself had seen. By an accident he had to wait some -seconds longer than the rest; the executioner heard him muttering, “I -shall never see her again ... no weakness,” but his only movement was to -gaze over the crowd. They say that a face met his, and that a sacramental -hand was raised in absolution.[164] - -He stood thus conspicuous for a moment over the people whom he had -so often swayed. In that attitude he remains for history. When death -suddenly strikes a friend, the picture which we carry of him in our minds -is that of vigorous life. His last laughter, his last tones of health, -his rapid step, or his animated gesture reproduce his image for ever. So -it is with Danton; there is no mask of Danton dead, nor can you complete -his story with the sense of repose. We cannot see his face in the calm -either of triumph or of sleep—the brows grown level, the lips satisfied, -the eyelids closed. He will stand through whatever centuries the story of -the Revolution may be told as he stood on the scaffold looking westward -and transfigured by the red sun, still courageous, still powerful in -his words, and still instinct with that peculiar energy, self-forming, -self-governing, and whole. He has in his final moment the bearing of the -tribune, the glance that had mastered the danger in Belgium, the force -that had nailed Roland to his post in September, and that had commanded -the first Committee. The Republic that he desired, and that will come, -was proved in his carriage, and passed from him into the crowd. - -When Sanson put a hand upon his shoulder the ghost of Mirabeau stood -by his side and inspired him with the pride that had brightened the -death-chamber of three years before. He said, “Show my head to the -people; it is well worth the while.” Then they did what they had to do, -and without any kind of fear, his great soul went down the turning in the -road. - -They showed his head to the people, and the sun set. There rose at once -the confused noise of a thousand voices that rejoiced, or questioned, or -despaired, and in the gathering darkness the Parisians returned through -the narrow streets eastward to their homes. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -ROBESPIERRE - - -I desire in this additional chapter to show what place Danton filled in -the Revolution by describing the madness and the reaction that followed -his loss; and the extent to which his influence, in spite of these, was -permanent. - -When Danton disappeared, one man remained the master of the terrible -machine which he had created. It remains to show what were the fortunes -of his work when death had come to complete the results of his abdication. - -The genius of the dead man had foreseen a necessity, had met it with an -institution, and that institution had proved his wisdom by its immense -success. France was one within, and was beginning on her frontiers the -war whose success was not to end until it had rebuilt all Europe. This -unprecedented power dominated a country long used to centralisation, and -was strengthened by the accidents of the time, by the even play of the -government over a surface where all local obstacles had broken down, by -the tacit acquiescence of every patriotic man (for it was the thing that -saved the nation), by the very abuse of punitive measures. This power was -destined to change from a machine to a toy. - -They say the children of that time had little models of the guillotine to -play with. The statement is picturesque and presumably false, but it will -serve well for a simile. A man unused to action, dreaming of a perfect -state which was but a reflection of his own intensely concentrated mind, -acquired the control of the guillotine. Unfortunately the model was of -full size. - -The punishment of death had hitherto been inflicted, for the most part, -with a clear and definite, though often with an immoral, object. In the -hands of Robespierre it was used to defend a theory and a whim. The men -of the time loved their country ardently, and believed with the firmness -of a large and generous faith in those principles upon which all our -civilisation is at present based. France and the Republic were, in their -minds, one thing, and a thing which they spared no means to make survive -the most terrible struggle into which any nation has ever dared to enter. -They killed that they might be obeyed in a time which verged on anarchy, -and they desired to be obeyed because, but for obedience to government, -France and all her liberties would have perished. Such a motive for -punishment is just, and its execution is honest. - -By the side of this and beyond it were the excesses, those excesses in -protest against which Danton himself had died. Execrable as were these, -infamous as will ever remain their most conspicuous actors, Hébert and -Carrier, they were prompted by a motive which is of the commonest and the -most easily understood in human affairs. They were actions of revenge. -Danton had said once and sincerely, “I can find no use for hate.” It was -the key to his successful effort, by far the most creative in a time -when all was energy, that no part of his strength was lost in personal -attack, hardly any in personal defence. This could no more be said of -his contemporaries than it can be said of the bulk of men in any nation, -even in times of order and of peace. And everywhere, in Nantes, in Lyons, -in the Vendée, in the accusation of Marie Antoinette, from the very -beginning of the Terror, this hate had surged and broken. The Girondins -were put to death on a charge full of the spirit of revenge; and as the -autumn grew into winter, in the very crisis of that oppression by which -the nation had been saved, the accusations became trivial, the process -of justice more and more of a personal act, depending in the provinces -on the temper of an emissary, in Paris upon the summary judgment of the -Committee and the Tribunal. - -But all this had so far been comprehensible. With the advent of -Robespierre to full power we have to deal with a phase of history which -will hardly be understood in happier times. Danton, who saw straight, who -understood, and who, when the victories began, found leisure to pity, is -a type whose extremes are the romance, whose moderation is the groundwork -of history. We have to deal in him with an enthusiast who is also a -statesman, in whom the mind has sufficient power to know itself even in -its violence, and to return deliberately within its usual boundaries -after never so fantastic an excursion. With Hébert again we know the -type. Those are not rare in whom passions purely personal dominate all -abstract conceptions, and whose natures desire the horrible in literature -during times of peace, and satisfy their desire by action during their -moments of power. - -But with Robespierre an absolutely different feature is presented: the -man who could laugh and the man who could hate, the right and the left -wing have disappeared, and there is left standing alone a personality -which had gradually become the idol of the city. He could neither laugh -nor hate; the love of country itself, which illuminates so much in the -Revolution, and which explains so many follies in the smaller men, even -that was practically absent in the mind of Robespierre. His character -would have fitted well with the absence of the human senses, and should -some further document discover to historians that he lacked the sense of -taste, that he was colour-blind, or that he could not distinguish the -notes of music, these details would do much to complete the imperfect -and troubling picture. For in the sphere that is above, but co-ordinate -with, physical life, all those avenues by which our fellow-beings touch -us more nearly than ideas were closed to him. - -It is possible that he may take, centuries hence, the appearance of -majesty. He had the reserve, the dignity, the intense idealism, the -perfect belief in himself, the certitude that others were in sympathy—all -the characteristics, in fine, which distinguish the Absolutists and the -great Reformers. In his iron code of theory we seem to hear the ghost of -a Calvin, in his reiterated morals and his perpetual application of them -there is the occasional sharp reminiscence of a Hildebrand. The famous -death cry, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in -exile,” is not so far distant from “... _de mourir pour le peuple et d’en -être abhorré_.” - -We are accustomed to clothe such figures with a solemn drapery, and to -lend them, at great distances of time, a certain terrible grandeur. -Robespierre is too near us, he is too well known, and his reforms failed -too utterly, for this to be now the case with him. Yet it may well happen -that some one else treading in the same path, and succeeding, will see -fit to build a legend round his name. - -What then was the ideal which he pursued—this “one idea,” which stood so -perpetually before him as to exclude the sight of all human things, of -sufferings, of memories, of patriotism itself? It was the civic ideal of -Rousseau, in so far as he conformed to it, and nothing more. - -The ideas of the great reformers must of their nature be -simple—unworkably simple. But Robespierre’s idea was less than simple—it -was thin. Now and again in the history of upheavals a type has been -defined with special formulæ, which in its original shape could never -have survived the conditions of active existence, but which was real -enough to receive accretions, and robust enough to bear moulding until -at length it became the living nucleus of a new society, changed, -transformed in a thousand details, yet in its main lines the ideal of the -founder. With all the great reforms of the world some such type has been -present; the Puritan, the knight of chivalry, were at first but a faint -figure realised in a few phrases. - -Rousseau himself had created such a type, and it has survived; for what -permanent fortunes a century is insufficient to show. The Republican -citizen of Jean-Jacques stood in the generation which succeeded him the -centre of a new society; in a thousand shapes he really lived. Thomas -Jefferson, William Cobbett, were living men to whom this ideal stood for -model; not in its details, but in its main lines. Such noble men are to -be met to-day on every side. - -But Robespierre saw reflected in his mind a figure at once more detailed -and less human, and one too sharply defined to be capable of any moulding -or of any transference into the real world. For him this ideal citizen -was nevertheless the one good thing, the one sound basis of a State. This -ideal citizen existed (did men only know it) in each individual; all men -could be made to approach the type; only a very few were opposed to its -success, and it was a sacred duty to break their criminal effort. The -figure stood ever before him, it dominated his every thought, it was the -sacred thing before which his essentially mystical mind was perpetually -at worship. But he could see nothing beyond or on either side of it; -concrete impressions faded on the unhealthy retina of his mind. For there -was a mirror held up before his eyes, and the figure on which he dwelt -was himself. - -Thus intensely concentrated upon a certain individual type, it was in his -nature to forget the reactions of a community. He saw in society a few -evils prominent, authority without warrant, arbitrary rule (that hateful -thing), servility in the oppressed (the main impediment to any reform). -He was blind to the interplay, the organic quality in a State, which our -own time so ridiculously exaggerates, but which the eighteenth century as -a whole neglected. Rousseau had put admirably the metaphor of contract as -explaining the bond of society. Robespierre, interpreting him, conceived -of contract as the simple and all-sufficient machinery of a State. The -error gave his attempt a mechanical and an inhuman appearance over and -above its rigidity of dogma. Rousseau, like all the great writers, gave -continual glimpses of the insufficiency of language; he let his audience -see in a hundred phrases, in a recurrence of qualifications, that his -words were no more than the words of others, hints at realities, at the -best metaphors brought as near as possible to be the true reflection of -ideas. Robespierre read him, and has remained among the words entangled -and satisfied. Rousseau was perpetually insisting upon a point of view, -calling out, “Come and see.” He had discovered a position from which (as -he thought) the bewildering complexity of human affairs appeared in a -just and simple perspective. But Rousseau never asserts that such a view -will have the same colouring to all men; on the contrary, at his best he -denies it. He trusts to the main aspect of his theory for a main result -in the State, to an agreement among men of good-will for the harmonising -of conflicting details. Robespierre, as the high-priest of that gospel, -had come and had seen, but the perfect citizen and the perfect state of -his vision must be realised in every tittle as he had observed them. -Once again a great message was destined to be sterilised and almost lost -through the functionary of its creed. - -Such was the man who had slowly supplanted Danton. A mind whose type of -aberration is common to all nations had supplanted the typical Frenchman -who had organised the defence of France, and in the place of one whom -his enemies perpetually reproach with an excess of vigour and manhood, a -theorist of hardly any but intellectual emotions was master. - -What gave him his great ascendancy, his practically absolute power? -It was due, in the first place, to the popularity whose growth was -the feature of the later Revolution. That popularity was real in the -number of his followers and in the sincerity of their profession. It -must be remembered that hitherto he had stood on the side of leniency -in public action, while in words he had expressed always accurately, -sometimes nobly, the ideals upon which the nation was bent. He had, from -a constitutional incapacity for real work, been only in the background -of those crises which had left behind them an increasing crowd of -malcontents. Not he, but Danton, had made the 10th of August. No one had -connected his name with the massacres of September. The necessity of -government was not _his_ interpretation of the defeats in Belgium; the -creation of that government was another’s; its latent benefits reflect -no merit upon him now; its immediate rigours exposed him to no special -vengeance at the time. Not he, but Marat, is the obvious demagogue whom -the visionary Girondin girl marks out as the enemy. To Carnot would turn -the hatred of those whom the great conscription oppressed. The Christian -foundation of France had others than Robespierre to curse for the Masque -of Reason and for the suppression of public worship. He had stood behind -Desmoulins when the reaction of Nivose and Frimaire was at work; he had -approved and was thought the author of that trial and execution in which -Hébert had suffered the sentence already pronounced upon him by the best -of France. In fact, he had stood in nothing as the extremist or as the -tyrant till the day when he permitted the arrest of Danton. He had been -rather the voice of a strong public opinion than the arm which, when it -acts at the orders of unreason, becomes hated by its own furious master. -Thus upon the negative side there was nothing to prevent his sudden -attainment of power. - -In the second place, his name had been the most present and the most -familiar from the earliest days of the Revolution. He had sat in the -Assembly of the Commons five years before, a notable though hardly a -noted figure, with some stories surrounding him, with quite a reputation -in his provincial centre; he had been, since first the Jacobin Club -became the mouthpiece of the pure Republicans, the conspicuous leader of -the Society. The force of continuity and tradition counts for little in -the history of this whirlwind, but such as it is it explains to a great -degree the ascendancy of Robespierre. He alone was never absent, he -alone remained to chant a ceaseless chorus to the action of the drama. -His name was familiar to excess; but it was hardly an epoch at which -men grew weary of hearing a politician called “the just.” Besides this -familiarity with his name, certain virtues—and those the most cherished -of the time—were in fact or by reputation his. None could accuse him of -venality; his sincerity was obvious—indeed, it was the necessary fruit of -his narrow mind. The ambition from which we cannot divorce his name was -apparent to but few of his contemporaries, and was not fully seized even -by his enemies till he had started on that short career of absolute power -which has stamped itself for ever upon the fortunes of his country. Thus -habit, the strongest of forces, was his ally. - -In the third place, circumstances quite as much as his own action had -left him (as far as one can follow the mysteries of the Committee) sole -director of an exceptional executive. On account of the illusions and -necessities of the people such a position was not immediately recognised -as tyrannical. The machine was theirs, working for them and made by -them; all the better if an idol of theirs held the levers; he would -make the most trusty of servants. Robespierre was not master in theory. -Even committees were not the masters in theory. Theory was everything -to France in the year II., and in theory the Convention was master. -Nay, even the Convention was only master because—in theory again—the -sovereign, the nation, was behind it. The majority of the Convention, -and it alone, is the technical authority. Robespierre’s name was not -to be discovered at the foot of those lists of the condemned which his -monstrous policy constructed, and at the end of his four months he fell -because the theoretical master, the Convention, acted as it chose, and no -sufficient force dared to deny its right. - -He starts then upon the closing act of the play, the one figure whom all -regard, and into whose hands the police, the committees, the juries, and -(by their own disorder) the majority of the Convention itself have fallen. - -The new reign began on the 6th of April, exactly a year to a day since -the Committee of Public Safety had been established. It was Germinal, the -month of seeds that grow under ground, the most significant and the most -terrible of the new names. M. Zola has chosen it for the title of his -greatest work; it was the other day on the dying lips of a poor wretch in -Spain whose madness also turned upon social injustice. - -The following of Robespierre did not hesitate to show at once its -tendencies and even its dogmas—for it held a religion. That same day, -the 6th of April—17th Germinal of the year II.—Couthon came from -the Committee with a proposition for the Parliament to discuss the -establishment of a national worship of God. A new note had been heard in -the clamour; soon in the clear silence of suspense it is to be the only -sound, saving the dull accompaniment of the two guillotines. This or that -occasional freak of theory or dramatised ribaldry the Terror had already -known; unlimited power defended by inexorable severity had developed many -strange decrees, dissociated from the general life and dying as they -rose—absurdities whose chief purpose would seem to be the interest they -have afforded to foreigners. But in these there had been no system. The -Mass was being said on all sides when the churches were supposed to be -closed. Even as the Feast of Reason was being held at Notre Dame, vespers -were chanted at St. Germains. One thing alone had been the purpose and -had given the motive force to nine months of agony endured—the salvation -of Revolutionary France. But when Couthon spoke it was not France, nor -common rights and liberties which were proposed as the object of the -defence—it was Robespierrian Rousseau. In two months we shall have the -worship of the Supreme Being, in three the reaction; in less than four -the high-priest of this impossible system is to fall; yet his dream and -his power will be almost enough in their fall to drag down the Republic. - -Five days more saw “the rest of the factions” sacrificed to this new -personal terror. Gobel, who had always been afraid, and whose conscience -had been turned like a weathercock away from the nearest pike; the wives -of Desmoulins and of Hébert (for women, as the Terror increased, were -suspected, sometimes rightly, of being the best at plotting); Chaumette, -who had helped Hébert to put up his theatricals in Notre Dame—they -were all tried, and in this trial it is again not the Revolution, but -Robespierre pure and simple whom we hear arguing and condemning through -the mouths of the court. - -One of the accused “has wished to efface the idea of the divinity.” -Another has “interfered with the worship of his fellow-citizens” (this -was said to Chaumette, who must have thought it even at that moment -something of a platitude). To a third the reproach is made of “changing -the mode of worship without authority.” We are on the highroad to those -last six weeks in which trial of any kind and definite accusation itself -was absent. The details of one man’s opinion are become the numberless -dogmas of a creed, and of a creed that kills unmercifully. And yet even -as he asserted his creed its mechanical impotence appeared in violent -contrast with the humanity that the Puritan was persecuting. For Lucille -lighted her face radiantly when she was condemned, and said, “I shall see -him in a few hours.” - -Three days more—the 17th of April—and the machinery was further -centralised. St. Just demanded that the political prisoners should be -taken from every part of France to be judged in Paris. The popular -commissions—mere gatherings to denounce without proofs and without -forms—were actively used all over the Republic. In Paris the commission -was to be the feeler for the central machine. And such was the incapacity -of the Dreamer, “who had not wits enough to cook an egg,” that this new -feature in the machinery was not even organised: it was a government -of mere rigid absolutism resting on bases that were rapidly becoming -mere anarchy. But even as the system, such as it was, developed, as the -central power grew more rigid, and the thing to be governed more decayed, -Danton, who had been killed that it might exist, pursued it. It was due -to his work that the wrestling on the frontier was showing a definite -issue. The advance had begun. - -With his death the diplomacy of France had ceased. The phrase of -Robespierre’s, which he had so successfully combated, had reappeared -in vigour: the “nation would not treat with her enemies.” But the -organisation of her armies, the levies, the rigid discipline, the -arms were telling. That aspect of the national energy had grown more -healthy as the central brain grew more diseased and vain. Robespierre -was threatening Carnot vaguely in the Committee, but Carnot was at work -and was saving France. St. Just himself, when he is upon the frontier, -appears in a capacity worthy of admiration, for he has there to deal with -a thing in action. His energy is as fierce as ever, but its object is -victory over a national enemy, and not the triumph of a jejune idea. He -had better have remained with the soldiers. - -In Paris the Commune had been seized. The enemy whom all had feared, -whom even Danton had to the last conciliated, was fearlessly grasped. -The mayor was broken simply, and replaced by a servant of the rulers; -the Sections protested with the last of their vitality, but the Club -denounced them, and they disappeared—even an attempt at martyrdom is to -give the idol yet more gilt. Then the news of Turcoing came to Paris. -It was little more than a happy rumour, a battle whose importance -seems greater to us now than it did to contemporaries. But Pichegru, -the peasant, had prepared a good road for Jourdan, and Fleurus was the -direct result of Turcoing. Barrère long after called these victories “the -Furies,” which swept upon and destroyed the fanatic in power. - -With every point of good news the Terror was less necessary, yet -Robespierre’s action grew as the national danger disappeared. Even Lord -Howe’s great victory of the 1st of June did little to check the sentiment -of relief. The _Vengeur_ went down and left a force of many ships to the -French navy for ever. The food reached port, and the eyes of Frenchmen -were not directed to the sea, whose command they knew themselves to -have gained and lost before then with but little resulting change; they -turned, as they have always and will ever turn, to the frontier of the -north-east, the wrestling-ring upon whose fair level was to be decided -the fate of all their sacrifice and of all their ideals, and Paris every -day grew more hopeful of the result, Robespierre more blind to everything -except his vision. On the 8th of June—the 20th Prairial—he capped the -edifice of his national religion with the Feast of the Supreme Being; on -the 10th he forged the last piece of the machinery which was to make that -religion the moral order of the new era by force. - -In the connection of these dates we see the whole man and the time. -Three weeks pass from the first definite victory against the allies to -the law of the 22nd Prairial. That short time widened the breach between -the armies and the government till it became an impassable gulf. The -fruit of that schism was to appear much later, but already its elements -were clear. Of the two parts of Danton’s work one had become national, -healthy, representative; the other, which had been designed for similar -action, had finally become a thing of personalities and of theories. The -armies were in full success, the Terror was menaced, and was doomed. - -In this feast of the Almighty, Robespierre was insanely himself. He wore -his bright-blue coat, perhaps to typify the bright sky which we have all -worshipped for so many thousand years. In his little white hand, that -never had been nor could be put to a man’s work, he held the typical -offerings of fruit and corn. His head was bent forward a little, and he -looked at the ground. The men who stood up boldly in the attitudes of -Mirabeau and of the Tribunes were dead or in the armies. - -Remove the scene by hundreds of years, and tell it of a primitive people -in some mountain valley, it assumes a simplicity and a grandeur as -legend. Their old traditions (let us say) have been lost or stolen from -them. They are casting about for a lawgiver and for a starting-point. A -pure idealist is found, draconian in his method, but ascetic and sincere -in his life, laying down as necessary for the state a clear and simple -morality, basing all ethics on the recognition and the worship of God. If -we make that picture we have some idea of what passed through the mind -of the little clique which still surrounded Robespierre, some conception -of the picture which still half-fascinated the crowd. For Robespierre -himself it was intensely true; he lived æons and myriads of leagues away -in time and space from humanity, intent upon his dream. - -But in sight of the mummery stood Notre Dame. Not a man there but had -been baptized in the Christian faith; a history more complex and more -eventful than that of perhaps any other nation was the inheritance and -the future of that crowd. And even as the game was being played, the real -France on the Sambre and in the plains of Valenciennes was carrying out -the oldest of struggles in defence of the first of rights. The scene has -been laughed at and despised sufficiently by aliens within and without -the French nation; let it suffice for this book to insist upon its -unreality, and to assert that its principal actor was genuine because he -lived in the unreal. - -The law of the 22nd of Prairial followed this feast. It was the -establishment of a pure despotism, arbitrary, absolute, personal. Already -the trials were centralised in Paris since the demand of St. Just had -been made. The Commune had been captured, the popular commissions used, -even the Presidency of the Convention had become the appanage of one -man and his associates. This new law proposed the final step. After it -was passed the trials were to be conducted without proofs, and without -witness or pleading, for they were to be nothing more than a formal -process. The Committee once satisfied of guilt, the tribunal was merely -to condemn. To be upon the lists was virtually to be dead. It was the -end of civil government, the declaration of a state of siege. And that -at the moment when the armies sent every day better and better news. The -Convention debated with Robespierre in the chair; it hesitated and it -nearly condemned the proposal. There was a conflict in the minds of some -between the admiration—almost the adoration—of a man; in the minds of -others, between fear and the necessity apparent to all of relaxing the -machinery which only the national danger had called into being. - -Robespierre came down from the chair and spoke. The even, certain -voice which carried away his admirers, which terrified his opponents, -succeeded, and the law was passed. Those who find it easy to judge -the time, who think it may all be explained by the baseness or the -pusillanimity of the Parliament, should note the appeal which he made to -the _Moderates_ even then—an appeal which had always been successful, -which, when his death drew near, he made at last (and for the first time) -in vain. - -For the Moderates, the Plain, the “Marsh,” saw in him a kind of saviour, -the just man, the slayer of the Mountain, the master who would be -terrible only for a little time, and would soon restore peace when he had -established a dogma of moral order. Were Moderates ever slow to give full -power for the sake of order? - -The next day some one saw that the new law touched the Parliament itself. -Self-defence, the most sacred, perhaps the only, right of a prince, -occurred to them, and they protested. They passed a resolution that no -member could be taken before the Revolutionary Tribunal without their -consent. The following day Robespierre again appears, again appeals to -the “Marsh.” The men of order saw at once that no danger applied to them, -that the disorderly fellows up on the benches of the Left alone were in -danger. The resolution was repealed. On that day, the 24th of Prairial of -the year II.—12th of June 1794—the whole of France was at his feet, save -the armies. - -The France which had made the Revolution, and which Danton had loved, -defended, and saved, was in the Ardennes and before Ypres. There were -two main bodies. One, on the left, in the plains by the frontier towns, -was opposed to a united force of English and Austrians; the other, on -the right, in the woods and deep ravines of the Ardennes, was opposed -to a strong series of Austrian posts. These armies were not separated, -but the enemy held the angle between them. Away on the extreme right -Jourdan held the Moselle valley. Pichegru had come back to the army -of the left, which in his absence had won Turcoing, and at whose head -Soudham, Moreau, and Macdonald had fought and succeeded. On the right St. -Just was throwing into the attack upon the Sambre all the energy which -had saved, before this, the army of Alsace. Five times the attempt had -been made to pierce the Austrian lines, and five times it had failed. -Coburg lay on both sides of the river; Charleroy, on the right bank, was -his strong place. The Deputies on mission, St. Just and Lebas, the same -whom we shall see standing by Robespierre at the end, were present at -the last decisive check before Charleroy itself. With the Sambre thus -held, the southern army was immobilised; the successes of the army of the -north seemed almost valueless, for Coburg held the angle between the two. -Nevertheless, Turcoing bore great fruit, for it convinced the Austrians -that reinforcements were needed to meet the French advance in the north. -The allies were like a man fighting with a sword in each hand against -two opponents. Wounded in the right hand, he must cross rapidly with the -sword in his left, and so expose his left side. Thus Coburg left the -Sambre a little more exposed in order to provide temporary reinforcements -against the army that had just won Turcoing. St. Just and Carnot were -enemies; the young Robespierrian was planned to replace the organiser -whom Danton had recognised; nevertheless, they agreed at this supreme -moment upon the necessary action. St. Just from the army, Carnot from the -Ministry of War at Paris, called up Jourdan from the Moselle with over -forty thousand men. - -They are wrong who imagine that Napoleon invented the attack by -concentration on the weakest point; so far as the large lines of a -campaign go he inherited it from the early Republican generals. Leaving -strong places unoccupied, careless of holding (for example) this position -on the Moselle, the hurried march northward was determined on, and a -supreme effort against the Austrian lines. - -By this junction was formed that “Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse” which -to this day gives a theme for one of the noblest marching-songs of the -French soldiery. Under Jourdan were men whose names alone have something -of the quality of bugle-calls. Ney, and Kleber, and Marceau were -leading them. There ran through this new army a kind of prescience, the -foreknowledge of victory, an unaccustomed feeling of expansion and of -hope. Soult speaks of it as his awakening; and there is a fine phrase in -the memoir of a contemporary which gives us some echo of its enthusiasm: -“We always seemed to be marching into the dawn;” they felt in every rank -that the balance was turning, and that France was to be saved. - -A sixth attempt was for a sixth time foiled. The seventh succeeded. The -Austrian line was broken and Charleroy surrounded; in a week it fell. The -capitulation was hardly achieved when the army of Coburg appeared to the -north-east upon the heights that command the left bank of the river, a -plateau called that of Fleurus. - -It was upon the 25th of June that the armies met and fought with blazing -hay about them and ripe harvest that had caught fire. Kleber recovered -the left wing, as Cromwell at Naseby, after it had given way. Marceau -obstinately held the right in front of Fleurus, as Davoust did at -Austerlitz ten years later. And towards evening the watchers in the -balloon above the French ranks saw in regular and stiff retreat the -last army of the old world. By the end of Messidor the English were in -Holland, the Austrians upon the Rhine, the whole of Belgium was in the -hands of the Republic. - -The sun which set upon the death of Danton had risen again. - -So in Robespierre’s own country his fall was prepared by circumstances. -At Arras, his birthplace, one could almost hear the guns of Fleurus; -he and his thin soul belonged to those plains of the north where the -Norman and the Burgundian, and the Provençal and the Gascon, born in more -generous places, were driving the enemy before them. - -St. Just came back from the front. He at least had seen on what -Revolutionary France was really bent, and in what she was vigorous. With -the superb courage that belonged to his energy and his youth he had led -the charges. Living with the soldiers, he had seen more closely, and with -more accuracy than is common in visionaries, the needs of an army. Why -did he come back to continue the insane drama whose seven weeks of action -count more with the enemies of France than all her centuries? - -Because the armies and their victories, though affording proof of what -the nation was and of what it required, could afford that proof only to a -just and even mind. The soldiers themselves did not express a political -opinion; their whole mind was bent upon the breaking of the line, the -attempt in which they had succeeded. Of Paris, Revolutionary in the -last few months, they knew little. They judged it as our contemporaries -do—on hearsay; and it seemed to them that there stood in the capital a -powerful Committee full of patriots, who had by an intense, an almost -furious energy, saved them—the soldiers. Men who risk their lives every -day and see death constantly are not likely to be horror-stricken at an -excess of rigour in government. In their eyes a number of men had fallen, -places had changed, the central power was surrounded by a tumult, but -_they_ had been clothed and fed almost by a miracle—their battles had -been made possible. The year since the great conscription had drawn them -from their homes had been for them a struggle of continual promise, -ending in a great achievement. Already the soldier was half-professional; -the eager volunteer of 1792, full of his politics, had given place to a -type which the wanton policy of the old regime was forging to its own -destruction. For it was forging the veterans who cared more and more for -the Revolutionary thing, and less and less for the discussions and the -theories, till at last they produced the Empire. - -St. Just therefore could not warn Robespierre. St. Just himself had -learnt no lesson. His ideal was still in his eyes the salvation of -France, and even of the world; the victory of Fleurus only made it the -more possible to carry his ideal out in action. He had seen the emigrants -who were taken in that battle spared for the first time by the French -soldiery, but he did not recognise the tremendous import of this, nor -appreciate what our own time has thoroughly learnt, that it is the -success or the failure of the national defence which rules the temper of -a nation. - -When the news of Fleurus became known in Paris the law of Prairial had -been in action for nearly three weeks. By the time the victory and its -meaning had fully sunk into the mind of the capital half the short period -of Robespierre had expired. How much was due to fear upon his part, how -much to mere blindness, we cannot tell, but the very moment when the -necessity for the Terror patently disappeared was the moment chosen by -him for the aggravation of his system. - -He attacked the Mountain. - -It will be remembered that the Convention had feared for itself when it -gave the full power into his hands. On the 11th of June Bourdon from the -Oise had carried a motion which would have defended the deputies, but -which Robespierre had caused to be cancelled upon the following day. - -With an attack, however, appearing as a reality instead of remaining as a -threat, even the “Marsh” grew afraid. He put into his speech an excellent -maxim, that “not success of armies abroad or on the frontier are the -greatness of a nation, but the virtue of its private citizens within” -(21st Messidor)—a truth appearing perhaps at the very worst moment, for -it translated itself at once in the minds of his audience into “the -victories mean nothing to me; the guillotine is for the defence not of -the nation but of my dogmas.” And his faith went on sacrificing its -innumerable victims. - -Another and a final element was added to the forces against him. The -Committee began to refuse his leadership. It must be remembered that -Robespierre was not absolute master in the sense in which (for example) -an English general would be master of an Indian province after the -suppression of a mutiny. Circumstances, immense popularity, above all -the kind of men who composed the great Committee, are the explanation -of his power. His power was a fact, but a fact based on no theoretical -right, and therefore possessed of no elements of endurance. Even the -Committee was in the eyes of all the governed, and of some of its -own members, only the servant of the national welfare. Two men upon -it were Robespierrians—Couthon and St. Just; one was a turncoat by -nature—Barrère; two more were men of the Hébertian type, most unreliable -for an idealist to deal with—Billaud and Collot. Finally there remains -Carnot, the worker, and four others—the two Prieurs, Lindet and St. André. - -Robespierre could be virtually a master, but a master only on the -tolerance of superior though latent force. He could inspire terror by the -common knowledge that the machinery was in his hands, that its terrible -punishment was practically his to inflict at pleasure. But something put -it into his hand, and something could take it away. It cannot be too -often repeated, if we wish to understand the Revolution, that from the -fall of Lafayette to the 13th of October 1795 there was no disciplined -armed force at the service of the Government, there was nobody better -armed or better drilled than the man in the street—not even gunners, the -first necessity of modern masters, for the very artillery was amateur; -above all, there was no armed body whose members obeyed without question, -who were, as a good army must be, a rigid instrument of government framed -upon a device which multiplies a hundredfold the strength of each man in -the public service. The “strong men” of history, whom our reactionaries -delight to honour, have always had such an instrument at their -disposition, but when there is no one to fire at a command, your strong -man is like any other, save that he is a little weaker for shouting. - -What then was the ultimate master which permitted Robespierre to rule? It -was composed of several forces, and in its division is to be found the -secret of its inertia. - -Firstly, the Convention, mutilated as it was, was granted by all to be -the nearest representative of the nation. What the majority voted was -done. It exercised a very great moral influence, and if it had shown that -influence so slightly, it was because its organisation was contemptible—a -mass of individuals, with no traditions of action or of grouping, a crowd -in which the fear of each that another might be his enemy caused the -sum of its individual cries to be anything but the integrate expression -of its corporate will. Well, this crowd had had one formidable enemy. -The _right_ of the Convention had been combated by the _force_ of the -well-organised Commune. The Commune used to be a mirror of at least half -of Paris; it had lost this character. It was nothing now but a group of -Robespierrians, and the Convention was the stronger for the change. - -Secondly, there was the material force—the populace of Paris. They had -not risen hitherto save for one or two motives—the establishment of the -national defence, the prevention of a political reaction; and they had -been more turbulent and more dangerous where the first than where the -second was their cause for action. - -Thirdly, the regular initiative was in the hands of a majority of the -Committee of Public Safety. - -The moment therefore that the majority of the Committee refused to -follow Robespierre’s lead, he would have had to ascend the tribune of -the Convention, and in one of those speeches which carried to some such -genuine conviction, but to many others such still more genuine fear, he -would have had to obtain a majority for the reconstruction of the great -Committee. - -Now a deliberative Assembly which is not strictly organised upon -party lines, which has no aristocratic quality and no great (because -traditional) corporate pride, is very strongly influenced by what we call -“Public Opinion.” It hears reports from the whole nation, is composed of -every kind of man, regards itself moreover as in duty bound to listen to -the voices outside, meets in its lobbies and during its recesses every -species of expression. - -Such a jury is therefore the very worst before which a popular idol -could present itself when some strong adverse action had just shown his -reputation to be falling. Outvoted in Committee, condemned in Parliament, -the man who had but just now been supreme would have to turn to whatever -he could find of physical force to support him. - -But that physical force in the case of Robespierre was only the populace -of Paris, and a populace moreover whose one organising centre—the -Commune—had been weakened by himself. Once suppose him forced to depend -upon a rising of the people, and the weakness of his position is -apparent; even were he still the politician of the majority, it would -be a long step from approving of his policy to risking one’s life in a -civil tumult, conscious that one was attacking every form of constituted -authority, and presumably the opinion of the whole nation, for no -principle, from no necessity, but to save a man. As we shall see, the -rising to defend him comprised but a small knot of men, and totally -failed. - -The man who had not the wits to cook an egg prepared his own ruin. -Carnot, whose one idea was to work and save the frontier, he openly -menaced. Robespierre meditated the inconceivable folly of replacing -Carnot’s science by the blind activity of St. Just. In alienating Carnot -and losing that possible ally, Robespierre lost five of his colleagues -on the Committee. The end of Messidor saw him in a kind of voluntary -isolation, letting the fatal machine work on, while he stood off from the -levers. - -He seems to have just felt two doubts disturbing the serenity of his -fanatical complacency. First, whether after all he was going down to -posterity as he saw himself to be—the maker of a new France, “the -terror of oppressors and the refuge of the oppressed.” (One day his -eyes filled when the noise of the tumbrils reached him, and he said, “I -shall be remembered only as a slayer of men.” So wrapped up in himself, -he had not yet heard an echo of what all men were saying.) Secondly, -he wondered whether his perfect state was so near as he had thought. -The killing went on, and he got no nearer. The “anti-patriots,” the -“anti-revolutionaries,” the “anti-Robespierres” (though he did not think -of them so) passed perpetually eastward and westward daily from the -prisons to the two guillotines. - -By the irony of whatever rules and laughs at men, events caused the -first mutterings to rise among the Extremists. The Terror was too -mild, and above all the men with hearts of beasts—the remainder of the -Hébertists—hated a policy which included, however fantastically, the -ideal and the worship of God. They hated his half-alliance with whatever -was Christian in the Convention, and his perpetual appeals to the -Moderates. - -The Lower Committee had a partially independent life. It was known to be -the policy of Robespierre to submit this body, as he had submitted all -the other organs of government, to the great Committee of Public Safety. -Hence it was in this Lower Committee of General Security—menaced as a -function and as individuals, thoroughly in touch, by its position, with -the police—that the conspiracy arose. The majority of its members joined -it, and from the Higher Committee Billaud and Collot adhered. On the 7th -of Thermidor (25th of July 1794) the storm burst. Barrère read his report -to the Convention, and it was an open menace to Robespierre. - -The origins of that report merit a certain discussion. We have seen that -from the first the reports, directed by the Committee, were usually -written by Barrère, and were read to the Convention by him. On the other -hand, we can discover usually in the style, and always in the opinions of -the reports, the action of whoever led in the councils of the Committee. -Thus, in the document of this nature of which so much mention is made in -chapter vi., the spirit, and evidently many of the actual phrases, are -the work of Danton. - -Who drew up Barrère’s report, whether (possibly) it was his own work, -when he saw opinion shifting away from Robespierre, or whether, as is -more probable, it was inspired by Billaud and Collot, and permitted -by the five neutrals, we cannot tell. The main fact is this, that the -Committee had at least permitted to be made in its name a public -declaration hostile to the man who, through the Committee, had ruled -France. - -The report repudiated in detail the policy of the past seven weeks; it -insisted on the importance of the victories, on the iniquity of further -lists of victims. For the first time in four months the Convention acted -freely; it ordered the report to be printed and to be sent to all the -Communes of France. - -On the next day Robespierre came for the last time into his accustomed -place. He gave his last speech to the Parliament. He was to appear once -more, but never again as the orator and the leader. Reading, as was -his wont, not declaiming, in the slow even voice that had compelled -such attention, such enthusiasm, and such fear, he made the last of his -declarations. This speech, if no other, should be read to understand -the man. Here a theory stated with power and with precision; there a -description of those without whose condemnation the theory could not be -realised. A noble ideal based upon the scaffold; a dogma and a detailed -persecution side by side. He read it slowly from end to end, proving -to himself, and, as he thought, to his audience, the perfection of -his ideal, and the necessity of the terrible road towards it. But his -audience heard nothing of the ideal; they heard only the description of -themselves. - -Men of all kinds, the mere demagogues, were in that summary, the personal -enemies, the financiers. It seems that on the manuscript from which he -read even Cambon’s name was written. But in this extreme crisis, when he -was denouncing the first men in order to save his own position, he was -no longer Robespierre. It made no difference to his fate, yet we judge -him with more accuracy when we know that he omitted the name of Cambon, -and that he did not pronounce that of Carnot, whom he had threatened in -private. It was an attempt at compromise. - -The Convention heard him and his threat. Of his theories they had heard -enough for years. Yet such was the power of his slow clear utterance, -of the reverence which his following commanded, and of the idea which -he expressed so well, and in which all at heart believed, that they -voted the printing and the dissemination of the speech. Cambon and -Billaud-Varennes rose to demand the repeal of the vote. The great -unwieldy assembly, or rather its great unwieldy neutral faction, -hesitated, conferred, and yielded to the demand. Then Robespierre was -doomed. - -As he was reading, as the distribution of the speech and then its repeal -were being voted, there hung above his head and that of the Parliament -the flags taken in the new victories from the English and Austrians -at Turcoing, at Landrecies, at Quesnoy, at Condé, at Valenciennes, at -Fleurus, and it was they that turned the scale. - -When the evening came the Club met, the little society of the Jacobins, -which was still the most independent and the most vital force in Paris. -It had dared to elect a president for its debates whose whole policy was -antagonistic to Robespierre; yet now it heard him and remembered its old -idol. He re-read, in the same tone, but in a more familiar surrounding -and with ampler diction, the speech of the morning, and his hearers -grew wild with enthusiasm. They hissed and they turned out Billaud and -Collot, who had dared to be present; they cried out to Robespierre that -they would follow him always towards the perfect Republic; and David, an -excellent artist and a bad man, cried to him from the back, “I will drink -the hemlock with you!” but he was afraid even to acknowledge his master -when Robespierre came to die. - -The Jacobins that night were ready to rise for Robespierre. As so -many minorities have been in that city of convictions and of intense -enthusiasms, they were ready to impose themselves and their creed upon -the capital and upon France; but they did not know to what a handful -they had been reduced in the last seven weeks. All night the conspiracy -against Robespierre worked hard. Boissy D’Anglas, the leader of the -“Marsh,” was brought over. To him and his followers Robespierre was -pointed out as the tyrant; to what was left of the Mountain he was -denounced as the moderate and the compromiser. But, above all, he was, to -the great bulk of the Convention, the enemy who had destroyed all civil -order in pursuit of his mad theories, and who had even held the victories -of no account. - -The Parliament met the next morning, on the 9th of Thermidor (27th of -July). It was a year to a day since Robespierre had joined the great -Committee; but it was for the condemnation of Robespierre that they -met. The great hall waited for a coming tumult. First into the tribune -went St. Just, with his beautiful face and strong bearing, determined -in oratory as in the battles to strike at once and lead a charge. He -was eloquent, for he was trying to save his friend; he boldly attempted -argument, a compromise, anything; called it “saving the Republic.” “Let -us end his domination if you will, but let the government still be that -of the Revolution, and let us draw up such rules as shall save us from -arbitrary power without destroying the motive force of the national -demand.” The sentiment was precisely that of the Convention, but the -speaker was known to be merely the young bodyguard of their enemy. - -Tallien called out from the right, “Pull back the curtain,” and, though -the fellow was an actor, he had struck the right note. St. Just could -never defend Robespierre; it would have been a cloak for continuing the -Terror. The Convention applauded, and from applause turned to crying down -St. Just in a public roar of fear and hatred. - -Then twice Robespierre tried to speak; the hubbub silenced him. During -a lull in the storm they voted the arrest of Henriot. It meant the -transference of such pitiful armed force as he commanded from the hand of -a friend to that of an enemy. Robespierre made a last effort to rescind -that order. He was not heard. - -Tallien was given the tribune by the Speaker (Collot was Speaker that -day, and Collot had been turned out by the Jacobins the night before). -Tallien spoke theatrically, as he always did, but to the point. -Robespierre, he said, had plotted to destroy the assembly for his -purposes; he quoted the speech of the day before. While Barrère, the -turncoat, stood looking this way and that, not knowing how things would -turn. Once more Robespierre attempted a reply; he only raised a storm -that drowned his voice. - -When he saw that full speech was denied him, he turned from the place -where he stood towards the “Marsh,” the Moderates, and said, “I appeal to -you who are just and who are not conspiring with these assassins;” but -the “Marsh” was lost to him—they also cried him down. - -A little silence followed. They saw Robespierre attempting for a fifth -time to speak, but the agony of the night and the fearful struggle of the -morning had overcome him at last: his voice could not be heard though he -tried to articulate. Garnier of the Aube called to him across the floor -of the hall, “The blood of Danton chokes you.” It was the truest thing -said in that wild meeting. - -Before the silence was broken, Louchet, an unknown man, rose and -proposed the arrest, saying openly what all thought: “No one will deny -that Robespierre has played the master; let us vote his arrest.” Then -Robespierre found his voice. He went up four steps above his usual seat, -to a place where, high up and from the left, from the summit of what -had been the Mountain in the old days, he could see the whole of that -multitudinous assembly, with whose aid he had hoped to regenerate France -and to save mankind. Beneath him as a host, like the dim pictures of -Martin’s Milton, rank on rank, he saw so many heads that it must have -seemed to him a nation. He remembered all his dreams of a perfect state, -of men living in equality, with no one oppressed and no one oppressing, -of a government based upon the clear will of all, and upon the civic -virtues which he had preached, till there should rise the perfect -Republic, an exemplar for all the nations. He saw that he was doomed, -and with him all his dreams. Perhaps, also, he saw the armed despotism -which he had twice prophesied coming in his place. To the last he did not -understand his folly, and he replied to the demand of Louchet, “Vote for -my death.” - -Le Bas, who had been with St. Just in the Ardennes, who had helped to -make the great army of Sambre-et-Meuse, and Robespierre the younger, -another honest man, came and did what David failed to do—they said they -would die with him, and took his hands in theirs. The Committee passed to -the vote, and the three were taken away with St. Just and with Couthon. -The scene that follows is the end of the Revolution in Paris. - -Twice at least in the course of the preceding five years Paris had risen -against the law and had removed an obstacle or a man for the sake of the -Revolution. The random Municipality of 1789 (which for all its disorder -was the parent of the puissant modern system of Communes) is an example -in point; the 2nd of June is another. Ultimately the people of Paris were -the only force on which government rested, and it was to them that the -final appeal was made. - -The Commune possessed the initiative in this matter—it was the sole -centre of Paris in theory; and now that the clubs were all in decay -(save the Jacobins), now that the great orators were exiled or dead, and -that the Sections themselves did not meet, the Commune was also the only -centre in fact. But the Commune, it will be remembered, had become a -Robespierrian thing. It determined to rise against the Convention. - -The Convention had ordered the arrest of Henriot, who was commander of -the armed force (such as it was) of the town. It sent his successor, -Hesmart to do the work. But the head of a number of pikes and guns would -not submit to a man who represented only the law, and instead of Hesmart -arresting Henriot, it was Henriot who arrested Hesmart. - -Meanwhile the other officers of the Commune displayed the same energy, -the same rapidity of execution and design which under better leaders -and for a better cause had hitherto succeeded. Lescot-Payot (the -Robespierrian mayor who had been put into the place of Pache on the -21st of Floréal), and Payan the national agent, were at the head of -the movement. They sent orders to the prisons to refuse the arrested -deputies, they gave Henriot the formal order to employ his full force and -act. They raised the Jacobins. They formed a committee of nine who were -to take over the government; they ordered the arrest of their principal -enemies in the Convention, and most important of all, they convened the -Sections. - -They had only a night to work in—the 9th Thermidor to the 10th—and -_their_ work had the energy of a fever; but the greatest factor of -all was lacking—the fever did not spread. The inertia of the people, -even their disapproval, was evident as they proceeded; the majority of -such Sections as did meet stood aloof from or condemned the cause of -Robespierre. - -While it was still just light, between eight and nine in the evening, -Robespierre, whom the keepers of the Luxemburg prison had refused, was -brought to the Mairie, and there one after the other all the arrested -deputies came, profiting by the official routine; for the Mairie was the -“right place” officially for prisoners when a difficulty arose as to -imprisonment within Paris. But official routine had a strange bedfellow -that night, for while the officials took the prisoners there, the small -band of rebels, who knew of no place more friendly, brought there also -those whom they had delivered by force. Robespierre was again with -the strongest of his friends—his brother, St. Just, Couthon; he was -surrounded by an organised and legal body, the Commune, which had risen -in his defence; they passed to the Hotel de Ville, and outside, on the -Place de Grève, there gathered between ten o’clock and eleven a fairly -large group of the National Guard. But there was no order among them, nor -any accurate knowledge among their officers as to what was to be done. -From the windows of the room where Robespierre and his companions sat, -there could be dimly seen a moving crowd of mingled citizens and guards, -discussing rather than preparing for action. - -Robespierre refused to put himself at the head of the movement; at least -it is only thus that we can explain the delay and the confusion. He was -to the last the strange mixture of lawyer and pedant and idealist. He -would not act without the legal right, for his pedantry forbade it, nor -move with an armed minority, because, judged by his theories, it would -have been a crime. Perhaps at the very last he decided to move: there -exists a document authorising a march on the Convention, and at its base -the first three letters of his name—the signature unfinished, interrupted. - -Meanwhile the Convention had found a new energy and a power of corporate -action to which it had been long a stranger—each man there was defending -his life. Legendre, with a small force, went and closed the Jacobins. -Barras was given the command of such armed men as could be gathered; the -two committees sent emissaries who appealed with success to the Sections. -The Convention was the law which had always meant so much to the people; -it was the authority of the constitution. Its majority, obeyed when it -was in lethargy, could not but be successful when it awoke. All Paris -defended it. - -At midnight one of the sudden thunder-showers which are common in the -Seine valley at that season cleared what was left of the crowd before -the Hotel de Ville. They had discussed both sides, and they had not -decided—hardly an army for rebellion; they had doubted what business they -had there, and with the rain they went home. Yet it was not till two -hours after, in the early morning, that the little band of the Convention -came into the square. They found it almost empty, with here and there a -small group standing on the wet cobble-stones, sleepy but curious. - -Bourdon and a few policemen went into the Hotel de Ville and found no -defenders. They went up to the room where the conspirators sat. - -Robespierre was on the ground with his jaw broken by a pistol-shot. - -At half-past seven in the evening of that day (the 10th Thermidor) -twenty-two of the Robespierrians were taken in three carts to the -guillotine. Robespierre himself, half-unconscious from his wound, stood -propped against the side of the cart, his head bandaged, his arms bound, -his chin upon his breast. Ropes also bound his body to the sides of the -tumbril. He passed the house where Duplay had sheltered him, and where -he had hidden himself, so as not to hear the noise of the executioners’ -carts. Now beneath him the heavy wheels were making the same sound on the -ruts of the Rue St. Honoré. At a cross-street the cart stopped to let -pass the funeral of Madame Aigué, who had killed herself the day before -from fear of Robespierre. - -As they neared the Place of the Revolution, where Louis and Danton had -suffered, probably at the turning of the Rue St. Honoré, where the -guillotine came in sight and where Danton had sung his song, a woman came -forward from the crowd—doubtless some one whom his tyranny had directly -bereaved—and struck Robespierre a blow. For sixteen hours he had not -spoken nor made a sign, but when he felt through this blow the popular -hatred, he made a gesture of contempt and of despair; he shrugged his -shoulders, but kept his innumerable thoughts within the bandages. “_De -mourir pour le peuple et d’en être abhorré_.” - - * * * * * - -Then—so the greatest of French historians tell us—France marched down a -broad road to the tomb where she has left two millions of men. - -But the armies of the great twenty years cannot be stated in the terms -of one man’s ambition, nor summed up in any of the simple formulæ which -a just hatred of Cæsarism has framed to explain them. At the root of -every battle of the Empire was the organisation and the enthusiasm of -1793. The tactics of Austerlitz and of Jena were learned in Flanders; the -enthusiasm of the Guard itself came in clear descent from the exaltation -of the Sambre-et-Meuse. - -In this book we have attempted to judge the first man of a great crisis -in relation to his time; it is still more essential that, when we -consider the after-effects of his action, a whole nation under arms -should stand in the right historical framework, its gigantic effort part -and parcel of a supreme necessity. - -We can understand, we can speak rationally, and therefore truly, of -Danton, when we show him above all loving and defending France and the -Revolutionary Thing: that same appreciation will make us follow clearly -the continuous development of his action. It is hardly too much to say -that, until Tilsit, the French had to advance or be crushed—nation, -creed, and men. - -The men and the armies must be for us the men and the armies that gave -a new vigour to Europe; the details of their action should not be the -matter of our judgment, but their relation to the whole community—its -needs, its defence, its faith. - -As the time grows greater between that period and our own, a just -proportion imposes itself. The flame which, close at hand, burnt in -a formless furnace is beginning to assume a certain shape. From a -standpoint so distant that no living memory bridges the gulf, we can -measure the light, the heat, and even the fuel of that flame. - -As to its final meaning in our society, every day makes that clearer; -and, to change the metaphor, this much becomes more and more apparent, -that through whatever crises the Western civilisation is to pass, and -whatever form its edifice will finally take, when the noise of the -building is over, the corner-stone, with its immense strength and its -precision of line, was planned by the philosophy and was hewn by the -force of the Revolution. Civilisations die, and ours was dying before -that wind swept across Europe. - -It would have been a poor excuse for leaving unremoved the rubble, the -dust, and the putrescence of the old world to have pleaded that the decay -was the action of centuries, and that old things alone were worthy of -reverence. Old things alone are worthy of reverence, but old things which -have grown old upon just and sure foundations, to which time has added -ornament and the satisfaction of harmonious colour, without destroying -the main lines, and without sapping the strength by which they live. - -The new foundations alone stand at the present day. They are crude, they -satisfy nothing in us permanently, they are very far from affording -that sentiment of content which is the first requisite of a happy -civilisation. But time will do in this case, as it has always done in -every other, the work of harmony and of completion. The final society -will not be without its innumerable complexity of detail, its humour, -and its inner life. Certainly it will not long remain a stranger to the -unseen; but it will be built upon 1793. - -Meanwhile the light grows on the origins. The personal bitterness which -the struggle produced has passed. It is a pious memory in this or that -family in France to give itself still the name of a Revolutionary -faction; but the hatred that has produced confusion in honest critics, -and that has furnished such ample material for false history, that hatred -is disappearing in France. The vendettas have ceased, and the grosser of -the calumnies are no longer heard. The history of the Revolution began -to be possible when Louis Blanc sat down to curse the upheaval that had -killed his father, and ended by producing the work which more than any -other exalted the extreme Revolutionary ideal. - -The story of that time is now like a photographic negative, which a man -fixes, washing away the white cloud from the clean detail of the film. -Point after point, then more rapidly whole spaces, stand out precise and -true. And the certitude which he feels that the underlying picture is an -accurate reminiscence of Nature comes to us also when we make out and -fix some passage in the Revolution, cleared of its mass of hearsay, of -vituperation, of ignorance, and of mere sound. - -We are beginning to see a great picture, consonant in its details, and -consecutive in its action. The necessity of reform; the light of the -ideal striking men’s minds after a long sleep, the hills first and -afterwards the plains; privilege and all the interests of the few alarmed -and militant; the menace of attack and the preparation of defence; the -opposition of extremes on either side of the frontier, growing at an -increasing speed, till at last, each opposite principle mutually exciting -the other, as armatories their magnets, from a little current of opinion -rose a force that none could resist. The governments of the whole world -were for the destruction of the French people, and the French people were -for the rooting out of everything, good and evil, which was attached, -however faintly, to the old regime. - -The rhetoricians passed in the smoke of the fire, unsubstantial, full of -words that could lead and inspire, but empty of acts that could govern -the storm. From their passing, which is as vague as a vision, we hear -faintly the “Marseillaise” of the Girondins. - -The men of action and of the crisis passed. They burnt in the heat -they themselves had kindled, but in that furnace the nation was run, -and forged, and made. Then came the armies: France grown cold from the -casting-pit, but bent upon action, and able to do. - -Wherever France went by, the Revolutionary Thing remained the legacy of -her conviction and of her power. It remains with a kind of iron laughter -for those who judge the idea as a passing madness. The philosophers have -decided upon a new philosophy; the lawyers have clearly proved that -there has been no change; the rhetoric has been thoroughly laughed down, -enthusiasm has grown ridiculous, and the men of action are cursed. But -in the wake of the French march citizens are found who own the soil and -are judged by an equal code of laws; nationalities have been welded, -patriotism has risen at the call of the new patriotic creed; Germany, -Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Italy have known themselves as something more -than the delimitations of sovereigns. Nor was there any abomination of -the old decay, its tortures, its ignominies, its privileges, its licensed -insults, or its slaveries, but she utterly stamped them out. In Germany, -in Austria, in Italy, they disappeared. Only in one dark corner they -remained—the great Northern field, where France herself grew powerless -from cold, and from whence an unknown rule and the advance of relentless -things menaces Europe now. - -But with the mention of that frozen place there comes a thought older -than all our theories—the mourning for the dead. Danton helped to make -us, and was killed: his effort has succeeded, but the tragedy remains. -The army at whose source he stood, the captain who inherited his action, -were worn out in forging a new world. And I will end this book by that -last duty of mourning, as we who hold to immortality yet break our hearts -for the dead. - -There is a legend among the peasants in Russia of a certain sombre, -mounted figure, unreal, only an outline and a cloud, that passed away to -Asia, to the east and to the north. They saw him move along their snows -through the long mysterious twilights of the northern autumn in silence, -with the head bent and the reins in the left hand loose, following some -enduring purpose, reaching towards an ancient solitude and repose. They -say it was Napoleon. After him there trailed for days the shadows of the -soldiery, vague mists bearing faintly the forms of companies of men. It -was as though the cannon-smoke of Waterloo, borne on the light west wind -of that June day, had received the spirits of twenty years of combat, -and had drifted farther and farther during the fall of the year over the -endless plains. - -But there was no voice and no order. The terrible tramp of the Guard -and the sound that Heine loved, the dance of the French drums, was -extinguished; there was no echo of their songs, for the army was of -ghosts and was defeated. They passed in the silence which we can never -pierce, and somewhere remote from men they sleep in bivouac round the -most splendid of human swords. - - - - -APPENDIX - - - - -I - -NOTE ON THE CORDELIERS - - -The spot once occupied by the Cordeliers is among the most interesting -in Paris, and it is of some importance to sketch its history and to -reconstruct its appearance at greater length than was possible in the -text. - -All the land from St. Germains des Près up northwards along the hillside -had belonged to that abbey since its foundation, when the first dynasty -of Frankish kings had endowed the foundation with a great estate carved -out of what had once been the Roman fiscal lands on the south bank. Round -the abbey itself a few houses had gathered, forming the “Faubourg” (or -suburb) of “St. Germains”; but the greater part of the estate was open -field and meadow. When Philip Augustus built his great wall round Paris -it cut through the estate, leaving the Church and Abbey of St. Germains -outside the city, but enclosing a small part of the fields within its -boundary. - -You may trace the line of the wall at this day by noting the street “Rue -de Monsieur le Prince,” once called “Rue des Fossés Monsieur le Prince,” -and running on the line of the outer ditch. The wall ran not twenty yards -east of the modern street and exactly parallel to it. A portion of it -may yet be seen in that neighbourhood, a great hollow round built into -the wall of one of the houses, a cobbler’s shop in the Cour du Commerce; -it is one (the last, I believe) of the half-towers which flanked Philip -Augustus’s wall. - -In the beginning of the thirteenth century, very shortly after the -death of St. Francis, the first preachers of the new Order which he -had founded came to Paris. It was the moment when the University was -climbing up the hill, building its colleges, having possessed its -charter for some years, and already a strong, organised, wealthy, -and therefore conservative body. This order of preachers, wandering, -intensely new, and founded by a mystic whose place in Christendom was -not yet finally determined, were bound to come into collision with the -spirit of the place. It must be remembered that the thirteenth century -was not transitional, but, on the contrary, a time of settled order. -For a century it had known the Roman law; it had everywhere the Gothic -architecture; it had systemised and made legal the rough accidents of -feudal custom; it was wealthy, proud, and successful. On it there falls -one of those creations which are only possible in a time of energy, and -yet which almost invariably quarrel with the period that has produced -them. An Order devoted to simplicity, making of holy poverty the -foundation of the inner life, specially created for the poor (whom the -growing differentiation of society was beginning to debase), the early -Franciscans were essentially revolutionary, because they built on the -great foundations of all active and permanent reform—I mean the appetite -for primitive conditions, and the determination to break through the net -of complexity which the long growths of time weave about a conservative -society. - -The rich Abbey of St. Germains gave them asylum. It was proud to possess -dependants, it was great enough to afford benevolent experiments, and it -took pleasure in offending the University, which was an upstart in its -eyes, and was beginning to show as a powerful rival in the affairs of the -south side of Paris. The Franciscans, therefore—whom the populace already -called the “Cordeliers” from the girdle of rope about their habit—were -permitted to settle in that little corner of their estate which had been -cut off by the building of the town wall, and they occupied a triangle of -which the wall formed the south-western, a lane (afterwards called “Rue -des Cordeliers”) the northern, and an irregular line bounding one of the -University estates the south-eastern side. - -This was in 1230. St. Louis was still a boy of fifteen. The little -foundation was, for the University, nothing but an unwelcome neighbour -whom it could not oust, and for the Abbey of St. Germains nothing but a -guest. Their provisional tenure did not permit them a peal of bells nor a -public cemetery. - -St. Louis, however, grew into a manhood which, for all its piety, had -a wonderful grasp of the society around it. The saint who was never -clerical, and the Capetian who in all things was rather for the spirit -than the letter, became their principal support. The Papacy, having once -(though reluctantly) recognised the Franciscan movement in the interview -between Innocent III. and its founder, continued in the succeeding -generation to protect it. From a distance, where the quarrels of the -University affected it little, the Holy See decided more than one dispute -in favour of the new-comers, and the Franciscans of Paris flourished -exceedingly. By 1240 the full privileges of an independent foundation -were granted. They have their public service, their cemetery, and their -bells. St. Louis helps them to build a new chapel by giving them, in -1267, part of the great fine which he levied on Enguerrand de Coucy. They -succeed at last in obtaining the recognition of the University; they are -permitted to teach; they number among their lecturers Duns Scotus and St. -Bonaventure; and they become one of the most famous of the colleges. - -During the Middle Ages (apart from certain minor structures and a few -private houses which had been permitted to rise on their land, and which -were technically known as the “dépendances”), three principal groups of -buildings marked the foundations. First, the monastery itself, a somewhat -irregular mass, running (as a whole) north and south, and separated from -the Rue des Cordeliers by a little court or garden. Secondly, running -from the northern end of this convent, and forming, as it were, a letter -L with the main building, was the chapel, lying, of course, east and -west, and forming the southern side of the Rue des Cordeliers, upon -which was the principal porch. Thirdly, running also east and west, but -separated from the other buildings by a short space, was the hall. - -This famous monument, the only part of the college that has been -preserved, stood well back from the street, and in the middle of the -convent grounds. It was on the eastern side of the monastery, and hence -in the ground plan balanced (so to speak) the church, which lay to the -west of that main building; this was so designed that its western end -faced about the middle of the college. - -I have called it a hall because its use exactly corresponded to that of -our college halls in the English universities. I mean, it was at once a -refectory and lecture-room. It was approached by a little lane running up -through the grounds under the side of the convent, later hemmed in with -houses. - -Here not only were the voices of the great scholars heard and the -subtleties of the fourteenth century, but also Etienne Marcel called the -States General of 1357. From hence that Danton of the mediæval invasion -sent out his messengers to the Feudality. Here the District gathered for -the elections of 1789; here the Club met in 1791 and urged the debate -that finally produced the Republic of the next year. It was here also -that the three watchwords of the Republic were devised; here Hérbert -veiled the Declaration; and here the last few words of 1794 were spoken. -Here the century, which owes more perhaps to that site than to any place -in France, has collected a museum of surgery, where you may see anomalies -preserved in spirits, skeletons hung on wires, and other objects, -interesting rather than sublime. - -As for the college and its estate, they continued for some three -hundred years—that is, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth -centuries—to increase in importance. It is a matter of common knowledge -how soon the pure ideals of St. Francis had to compromise with the world. -This Order, like all others, became wealthy, rooted, and traditional. The -Cordeliers, as Paris grew, found themselves possessed of a most valuable -plot, whose ground-value continually increased. They reserved the garden -to the west, but for the rest—and especially around the buildings and -along the lanes—houses were built. When the wall of Philip Augustus -was first embedded by the growth of the city, and afterwards in part -destroyed, the Cordeliers bought an extension to their estate, so that -it stretched a little beyond the new street of “the Fossés,” which had -been built on the site of the ditch. In 1580 their old thirteenth-century -chapel (which must have been one of the best bits of early Gothic in -Paris) was burnt down, and a larger one in the style of the time was -put up by the piety of Henry IV. Throughout the seventeenth century the -house seems to have suffered from a decay which continued throughout -the succeeding hundred years, and culminated in the disasters of the -Revolutionary period. They permitted the alienation of a strip to the -west of their grounds, through which the municipality drove in 1673 -the new street which, in compliment to the Order, they called “Rue de -l’Observance,” after the name of their rule. - -With this exception no important change occurred to change the aspect of -the quarter until the Revolutionary period with which we have to deal. - - * * * * * - -We are, after this general description, in a position to recognise the -site of the Cordeliers in modern Paris. As you go down the Boulevard St. -Germains, just before you reach the Boulevard St. Michel (going east), -you see a street leading off at a slight angle to the right. It is the -Rue de l’École de Médecine, the college after which it is named facing -both on this street and on the Boulevard. This street is merely the Rue -des Cordeliers broadened and modernised. As you go a few yards up this -street, you see on your left the great court of the college, and if you -stand at its gate and look at the opposite side of the street, at the new -buildings which are now the lecture-rooms and theatres of the Faculty, -you are looking at the site of the old church, which has disappeared -during this century. The street has been broadened by taking down the -southern side, so that the church would actually have overlapped the -modern street. Continuing, you pass on your right the open yard leading -up to what was the hall of the Cordeliers, and is now the museum of -surgery (the Musée Dupuytren), and a few yards farther brings you into -the Boulevard St. Michel. Following this very broad avenue for twenty -yards at the most, you may note a new street, the “Rue Racine,” turning -off to the right. This did not exist in Danton’s time, but it lies -_nearly_ on the line that separated the Cordeliers from the Collège -d’Harcourt (at present the Lycée St. Louis). As a fact, the line was a -trifle to the south of the Rue Racine, and of course more irregular. -The Rue Racine in its turn leads you into that old street the “Rue de -Monsieur le Prince.” If you turn again to the right and go down this some -hundred yards, you are still following the boundary of the Cordeliers, -till you reach the “Rue Antoine Dubois.” This is identical with the -old “Rue de l’Observance,” spoken of above, and a few steps down this -short street leads you to the starting-point in the “Rue de l’École de -Médecine.” Such a modern itinerary would describe as nearly as is now -possible the circumference of the college and estate of the Cordeliers. -The quadrilateral comprised by these four streets, the Rue de l’École de -Médecine, the Rue Racine, the Rue M. de le Prince, and the Rue Antoine -Dubois, is the site of the famous convent and its grounds. - -To reproduce the quarter in 1788 we have to imagine the following -changes:—The Rue de l’École de Médecine, very narrow, flanked for the -greater part of its southern side with the church and old wall of the -convent. It leads into a little narrow street called the “Rue de la -Harpe,” which went right up the hill, and would correspond to a strip -taken in the exact centre of the present Boulevard St. Michel. The -first few buildings here, notably the Church of St. Come, were still -on the Cordeliers’ estate. Just above them, however, began the grounds -and buildings of the “College d’Harcourt.” As we have observed, the -Rue Racine did not exist, nor anything corresponding to it. To follow -the boundaries of the estate you would have had to let yourself in by -a side-door, and then you might have followed a long, irregular wall -which separated their land from the College d’Harcourt. This wall, after -passing through a great garden, came out on the Rue Monsieur le Prince, -and the rest of one’s circuit would be much what it is to-day. - -Finally, to see the building as Danton saw it, you must imagine a -half-deserted place, rich, but somewhat unfrequented, like certain old -legal Inns that once stood in London, old walls appearing here and there -from between houses of a century’s date; a mass of irregular buildings, -of garden and of private house hopelessly intermingled; while up a narrow -and dark passage stood the Hall, which was still the best preserved part -of the college, and with which alone his name is associated. - - - - -II - -NOTE ON CERTAIN SITES MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK - - -It may be of interest to those who desire to study with some -particularity the personal history of Danton to know where are to be -found in modern Paris the places with which we have found him personally -connected in this book. - -His first offices were in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles. This street has -disappeared in the improvements which included the prolongation of the -Rue de Rivoli. This office in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles occupied -almost exactly the same spot, which can be recognised to-day in the -following manner. As you go along the northern side of the Rue de Rivoli -going east, you come to a point 500 yards or so from the Louvre, from -whence you begin to see the Tour St. Jacques just peering round the -southern side of the street. The shops which are then upon your left -hand and the pavement upon which you stand correspond to the position of -the old mansard house in which Danton served his apprenticeship. It was -here that he had his first offices; it was from this that he bought the -business of Monsieur M. de Paisy in the Rue de la Tissanderie. - -Concerning the position of these offices in the Rue de la Tissanderie, -which he moved into, I have been able to learn nothing. There is a -curious little record in the police archives of Paris—Danton complaining -that he could not work on account of the noise that a saddle-maker made -in the exercise of his trade in the same house. In this little document, -which is quoted by Monsieur Clarétie in his “Life of Camille Desmoulins,” -the house is mentioned as being “just opposite the Rue des Deux Portes”; -but as an inference to be drawn from the same record is that he left -immediately after for some other lodging in the same street, this does -not help us much. - -I have said in the text that Danton lived, during the six years which -were those of his active political life, in a house of the Passage du -Commerce. I have also mentioned in the text the fact that Dr. Robinet -mentions a short residence in the Rue des Fossés Saint Germains. I have -given, moreover, in the same passage my reasons for following M. Aulard -in rejecting this first address. It seems proved that, after he left -the Rue de la Tissanderie, he moved with his wife to the corner house -of the Passage du Commerce. This was his home during the whole of the -Revolution, and it is worth while to describe its position and character -with some care. - -In the first place, it has disappeared; the construction of the Boulevard -St. Germains destroyed all that end of the Cour du Commerce. If you -are going along the Boulevard St. Germains from the west towards the -University, you pass on the right the statue of Danton. It is erected on -an open triangle of ground, formed by the junction of the Boulevard and -of the Rue de l’École de Médecine. The apex of this triangle, not twenty -yards from the statue, marks the site of the old house in which Danton -and Desmoulins lived, and in which they were arrested before their trial. - -The old quarter was a network of narrow streets, and where the Boulevard -St. Germain now stands, an intricate block of houses, with courtyards and -passages, not unlike the similar intricate masses which you will find in -the City of London, formed the northern side of the Rue des Cordeliers -(that is to say, the modern Rue de l’École de Médecine). A narrow alley, -known as the Cour de Commerce, joined this Rue des Cordeliers by a still -narrower passage. Danton’s house was the corner house, as is proved by -the mention in the inventory that some rooms looked upon this passage and -some upon the Rue des Cordeliers. - -Of course he did not occupy the whole of it, but, in the Parisian custom, -which had already obtained for more than a century, he took a flat, and -two rooms (used as a lumber and as a servant’s bedroom) were added from -the entresole below. This flat was just such an apartment as a similar -bourgeois householder would have in Paris to-day: a dining-room, two -bedrooms, a study, a little library, a drawing-room, a kitchen, and -offices, built round the staircase and courtyard or well of the house. - -I have been unable to find any mention of the rental which was paid, but -a guess at something like £150 a year in that quarter at that time for -such a flat would, I think, not be extravagant. The corresponding flat -above, Desmoulins took after his romantic marriage in December 1790, -but he did not begin to occupy the house until the early part of 1791. -It was here that his little Horace was born; it was here that his wife -and Danton’s passed the terrible night of the 10th of August, and it -was here, in the great bedroom overlooking the Rue des Cordeliers, that -Danton’s wife died in February 1793. - -As to the furniture of the little apartment, it may be described as -follows:—The drawing-room was not very large, but there had been spent -upon it the most considerable sum in the furnishing of the house. It -figures for very nearly a third in the valuation, which may be read in -Appendix VII. The white furniture, which was the mark of the eighteenth -century, was its principal note; it is also worth observing that the -household was sufficiently cramped for room to use the cupboards in the -drawing-room as wardrobes. The principal bedroom was well furnished, but, -as you will find to be the case in such houses in Paris, the study, the -dining-room, and the spare room to the side of the study were very bare. -It is also remarkable that the lumber-room held nothing but two trunks -and an old double bedstead. It was the household of a man who made every -effort to maintain his position before his wife’s friends, but who was -not wealthy, and who had evidently arranged the scale of his expenditure -considerably below the probable receipts which an office such as his -would have brought in. I should much doubt whether as much as £500 a year -would go out on such an establishment, though he was certainly receiving -£1000. We know the reason of this; he had to pay off by every means in -his power the debt which he had incurred in buying the practice. While -he lived in this house, and until the office was suppressed in 1790, he -continued to keep his business rooms in the Rue de la Tissanderie. It may -be worthy of mention that he kept two servants, and that his apartment -was on the first, whilst that of Desmoulins was on the second floor of -the house. - -As to the Cordeliers, on which the preceding note is written, the hall in -which their meetings were first held still exists (as we have said in the -text) under the title of Musée Dupuytren. The Church of the Cordeliers, -into which they afterwards moved, has disappeared, but the last locale -of the club (when the Municipality had turned them out of the church in -1791) still remains, and is to be discovered at No. 105 Rue Thionville. -Danton’s father-in-law had been master of a café on the Quai de l’École. -This house still remains. If I am not mistaken, it was altered slightly -during the restorations of the Second Empire. It is the house which now -stands at the south-western corner of the Place de l’École, and which -faces the quai on one side and the square on the other. The street and -quay outside M. Charpentier’s café was, however, somewhat oblique to -the modern street, and ran less east than west, more south-east than -north-west, than it does to-day. - -The quay has been raised and the old fountain in the Place de l’École -destroyed. Otherwise the quarter is much the same. The café became famous -later for its draught players, a reputation that still continues. - - - - -III - -NOTE ON THE SUPPOSED VENALITY OF DANTON - - -I will not go in this note into any of the general considerations which -have led the greater part of modern historians to reject the legend of -Danton’s venality. These general considerations are by far the strongest -arguments upon which we can rely in this matter, but I trust that the -character which I have attempted to draw in the text of the book will -furnish them in sufficiency. - -Neither do I desire to insist in this note upon the unquestionable value -of the two principal modern authorities in England and in France (Mr. -Morse Stephens and M. Aulard), who both of them regard the question as -finally settled in Danton’s favour. I have insisted sufficiently upon -this in the text. What I shall attempt to do is to quote the contemporary -accusations, to determine how much reliance can be placed upon them, to -show their character, and to describe in what way and to what extent they -are explained by documents which have since come to light. - - * * * * * - -First of all, a list of those contemporaries who took his venality for -certain. It is very formidable. - -Mirabeau (letter to Lamarck, Thursday, 10th March 1791).—... “Montmorin -has told me ... of particular schemes ... for instance, that Beaumetz and -... D’Andrée dined yesterday alone and got Danton’s confidence ... and -then proposed to demolish Vincennes in order to make themselves popular. -Danton got 30,000 livres yesterday, and I have the proof that Danton -inspired the last number of Desmoulins’ paper.... If it is possible I -intend to risk 6000 livres, but at any rate they will be more innocently -distributed than the 30,000 livres of Danton.” Here is a categorical -statement in which a man says what the court had often said (and Mirabeau -was then an agent of the court), “I have managed Danton at such and such -a price,” and the passage gives us indirectly the name of Montmorin. The -date should be noted. - -Bertrand de Molleville, a far less practical and a far less careful -man than Mirabeau, also a singularly untrustworthy authority, has the -following:—Memoirs Particuliers, i. 354.—“By the hands of this man -Durand, under the ministry of De Montmorin, Danton received more than -50,000 francs to propose certain motions of the Jacobins. He was fairly -faithful in keeping this contract, but stipulated that he should be left -free as to the means he employed.” ... Again ... “In the first debates -upon the king’s trial the infamous Danton, whose services had been so -dearly paid _out of the Civil List_, was one of those who displayed the -greatest violence. I was the more alarmed as this scoundrel was at the -moment (Autumn 1792) a most powerful and dangerous man in the Assembly. -The ardent zeal which I felt for the safety of the king, and which would -have made me think all means legitimate, suggested this means against -Danton to neutralise the rage of the monster; and though the method I -took required a lie, I did not hesitate to employ it without the least -scruple. I wrote to him on the 11th December:—‘I must not leave you -ignorant, Sir, of the fact that I have found in the papers of the late -Monsieur Montmorin notes of the dates of the sums which have been paid -out of the secret service money, including a receipt in your handwriting. -Hitherto I have made no use of this document, but I warn you that I have -enclosed them in a letter which I am writing to the President of the -Convention, and I will have them printed and placarded on the corners -of the streets if you do not conduct yourself well in the trial of the -king.’ As a fact, Montmorin had shown me these papers a year before, -though he had not given them to me. But Danton knew they existed, and -knew how intimate had been my relations with Montmorin. He did not reply -to the letter, but I saw in the published prints that he had got himself -named deputy in a mission to the army of the North. He only returned at -the end of the king’s trial, and contented himself with voting for death -without giving any opinion.” (Particular Memoirs, ii. 288-291.) I would -have the reader to specially mark this extract, to which I shall return -at the end of my note, as it can be easily proved by internal evidence to -be a falsehood. It is, indeed, of more value to any one who desires to -write a life of Bertrand himself, than it is to one who is writing the -life of Danton. - -Thirdly, Lafayette says (Memoirs, iii. 83-85): “Danton, whose receipt -for 100,000 francs was in the hands of Montmorin, asked for Lafayette’s -head; that was running a great risk, but he depended on the discretion of -Lafayette and on his keeping a secret. For Lafayette to have spoken would -have been to have signed the death-warrant of Montmorin, who had paid -Danton in order to moderate his anarchic fury.” And again (iv. 328-330), -he says of Danton: “He was a vulgar tribune and incapable of turning -the masses from evil by persuasion or by respect, but he knew how to -flatter their passions, &c. &c.... I knew him from the first week of the -Revolution in the district of Cordeliers, whither I had been attracted. -After the 6th October he took money from Montmorin, whom he caused in -consequence to be assassinated on the 2nd September. In connection with -this secret he said to me once, ‘General, I know you do not know me, I am -more of a Monarchist than you.’... I have learnt since from the person -to whom Madame Elizabeth told it that he had received, about the 10th -August, a considerable sum to give the movement a direction in the king’s -favour, and, indeed, he got the royal family sent to the Temple. He said -to a friend of the king, ‘It is I who will save him or kill him.’” - -Fourthly, there is Brissot (iv. 193-194). “Among the stipendiaries of -Orleans was ... Danton. I have seen the receipt for 500,000 francs which -were paid him by Montmorin. He was sold to the court in order to thrust -the Revolution into the excesses which would make it odious to the great -bulk of Frenchmen.” - -Fifthly, Madame Roland (who has so much to say against a character -so profoundly antipathetic to her) has this special passage on his -corruption (Dauban’s edition, 1864, pp. 254-255): “He went to Belgium to -augment his wealth, and dared to admit a fortune of 1,400,000 francs, to -assume luxury,” &c. &c. - -Sixthly (if it is worth quoting), among the papers that Robespierre -left, in the notes that formed the basis of St. Just’s report, are the -words—“Danton owed an obligation to Mirabeau; it was Mirabeau who got him -repaid the price of his practice. It has even been said that he was paid -twice. I heard him admit to Fabre certain thefts of shoes belonging to -the army.” - -Such are the contemporary accusations. There are the following points to -be noted with regard to them. No one says that he himself paid money; -the sums of money are very various. They are paid, according to some, -on a few definite occasions; according to others, upon all occasions. -Finally, every accusation that has any definite basis at all pivots round -the name of Montmorin. “Montmorin held the receipt,” “Montmorin told me,” -and so forth. Now, if we remember that Montmorin held the receipt for a -legitimate and open reimbursement (see Appendix VI.), and then compare -the accusations with what we know of the men and of the time, if we then -proceed to check these merely general conclusions by matters of absolute -knowledge drawn from the valuations upon Danton’s estate at various -moments of his life, we shall agree with the more modern authorities who -have worked with the documents before them, that Danton is innocent of -actions to the charge of which his uncertain temper and his lack of solid -social surroundings laid him open. - -In the first place, let us consider the words of the accusations which -appear above, and which include all those of any importance. - -That of Mirabeau is what you would expect from such a man; it is quiet, -contemptuous, treating of Danton as something on the very last level -of the time. But if we take the specific accusation and separate it -from all general points of view, we find this much: that Montmorin has -been talking to him with regard to what “those fellows” were doing. “In -connection with this,” says Mirabeau, “Danton got 30,000 yesterday” to -work such and such a political move. The grave feature in the quotation -is the way in which Mirabeau, who understood men and who had a good grasp -of Paris, treats Danton’s venality as being something well known, gives -a particular example of it, and passes at once to other things. But the -specific accusation is hearsay from Montmorin, and, as I have said, it is -always Montmorin’s name which crops up when this gossip is on foot. - -I would, therefore, sum up the value of Mirabeau’s accusation somewhat -as follows:—If we could prove that Danton was a spendthrift, and that -large sums of money passed through his hands for his personal pleasures, -then Mirabeau’s chance remark, while it would be worthless in a court -of law, ought to have some small weight before history. Mirabeau was (on -a higher plane) a _bon viveur_ such as Danton was reputed to be, and the -circles in which the men moved touched each other especially in the point -of their good living; but if we can find that Danton did not, as a fact, -spend nor invest great sums of money, then the accusation is simply a -common error based upon a remark of Montmorin’s, suited to the current -impression of Danton’s character, but disproved by the known facts of -Danton’s life. - -Bertrand de Molleville’s accusation is of particular value to any one who -is concerned, as I am, in attempting to get to the truth in this matter. -It is the only one which is perfectly categorical and detailed. In -proportion as it is categorical and detailed it is untrue. If you wish to -know whether a man has committed a certain crime, and you hear a number -of witnesses against him, one of whom only gives careful evidence with -dates, details, and so forth, and if you can then prove that this witness -has lied upon all the points which supported his principal accusation, -you are in a fair way to winning your case. - -De Molleville begins by making the sum 500,000 francs. It seems enormous. -It is a sum which no man could receive and spend in a few days’ debauch -without attracting the attention of the whole city, which no man could -invest without leaving some obvious accession of property, and he puts -the receipt of this sum as coming under Montmorin’s ministry—that is, at -a time when public order was secured, when the course of the registries, -the transmission of property and so forth, were in the fullest light. - -He gives the name of the man who handed him the sum, and calls him -Durand. On this point it is impossible to say yes or no, but we can -say with absolute certitude that the incident of the letter upon which -Bertrand de Molleville makes the whole matter turn, is an untruth added -to an untruth. In the first place, he makes Danton “violent in his -demands against the king.” This accusation is absolutely false. - -When the trial of the king was mooted, Danton did speak (notably on -the 6th of September), with some decision in favour of the king’s -being brought to trial upon particular points. He expressed himself in -that speech with very great energy upon this particular feature of the -trial, that the king merited condemnation because he had obviously and -openly betrayed the nation,—a thing which nobody doubted, which nobody -denied, and which Louis himself and his advisers would simply have met -by saying (at a later epoch of course), “We called in the foreigner as a -necessary police in the time of anarchy; we desired to save France by its -betrayal.” So far, however, from Danton being a leader of the attack on -Louis or of the demand for his trial, that attack and that demand were -as spontaneous as anything the Convention ever did; and Danton followed -rather than led, as a glance at the _Moniteur_ can prove. - -In the much more important debates wherein the life of Louis was first -implicitly and then explicitly at stake, Danton was absent, and in the -days of November there is no question at all but that Danton’s one -preoccupation was to reconcile the Mountain with the Girondins. - -De Molleville goes on to give his letter a date—such things are done -on purpose, as a rule, in order to give a special character of legal -evidence to one’s accusations. He says that he wrote the letter on the -11th of December, that Danton on receiving the letter was frightened, and -without replying to it got himself put upon the mission to the army of -the North. - -Now Danton left for the army of the North on the 1st of December, and if -the letter was written at all (which I doubt), it was written at a time -when Danton, being absent, could not possibly have acted as De Molleville -said he did. He could not have “asked” to go on a mission (he did not -ask, but was sent), and have started on the 1st in consequence of a -letter written on the 11th. - -Finally, De Molleville says he came back to vote on the punishment of the -king, but had been coerced by the letter into merely voting for death -without giving his opinion. This again is a lie. If there is anything -remarkable to the historian in the vote Danton gave on the 16th January -1793, and in the speech which he made before his vote, it is that he, -by nature so wary, should have discovered in this crisis a violent -manifestation of opinion and motive. I have amply shown in the text that -we could only reconcile those abnormal days in Danton’s life by some -extreme shock to the emotions. Some represent him as suffering a violent -rebuff from his political opponents; some consider the scene of misery -and impending death which he found in his home on returning from his long -journey. He demanded a simple majority vote; he spoke violently against -the appeal to the people; and when he voted for the death of the king -he turned to the Right and said, “I am not a statesman; I am not one of -those who are ignorant of the duty of not compromising with tyrants, and -who do not know that kings can only be struck on the head, who do not -know that we can expect nothing from the kings of Europe save by force -and by arms. I vote for the death of the tyrant.” - -If these are the words, and if that is the action of a man terrorised by -a letter into a silent and furtive vote, then evidence has no meaning. - -De Molleville, I think, can in this, as in nearly all his historical -evidence (with the exception of that which turns upon the personal habits -of the king, where he has the details of a valet), be dismissed. - -With Lafayette, again, we have that half-truth and half-lie which runs -through all his accusations. “The receipt for 100,000 francs was in the -hands of Montmorin.” This was true. The sum was not quite 100,000, it was -61,000 (Appendix VI.); but the receipt did exist, and to any one who did -not know that all the men occupying positions on the Council had been -reimbursed, it might look like a receipt for a bribe, or might be twisted -into meaning such. It is impossible for us to discover whether Lafayette -meant to tell an untruth, as we can prove De Molleville did; he may in -this matter have been perfectly loyal, for there was a note found among -his papers after his death (Memoirs, iii. 84-85), saying that “a position -on the Councils was only worth 10,000, and had been reimbursed at 100,000 -as a bribe.” We now know from the discovery of so many receipts that from -60,000 to 80,000 was the regular price of reimbursements, but Lafayette -might easily have been ignorant of this, and have jumped to a false -conclusion. - -As to his mention of Madame Elizabeth’s having told the man who told him -that Danton had been paid before the 10th August, the old man’s memory is -certainly turning to the remark which many witnesses heard from the lips -of that saintly woman just before the attack on the Tuilleries, when she -said with simplicity (she knew nothing at all of the characters of the -Revolution save what she might hear from the courtiers), “Well, we can -count on Danton; he has been paid.” That is not evidence. If Danton was -paid to make the 10th of August turn in favour of the monarchy, and if, -as Lafayette hints, he had attempted to make it so turn, he certainly -took the most extraordinary way of defending his employers. One might as -well say that Lord Chatham’s principal object in the taking of Quebec -was the defence of the French power in Canada. For the 10th of August -was openly and directly an attack upon the ancient crown of France, to -overthrow it and to substitute in its place a new regime, and Danton -worked at it as indefatigably as a general before a battle would work. - -The remark, “General, I am more monarchist than you,” reads to me like -truth; it is exactly what Danton would have said. He despised Lafayette -as much as any one man can despise another. He believed right up to the -moment of the war that the existing fact of the monarchy was worth all -the theories in the world as a nucleus for the new regime, and he saw -the emptiness of Lafayette’s vanity. He may quite probably have met -it upon some occasion as direct as that which Lafayette has given us, -and Lafayette, in the abundance of his folly, may quite easily have -misunderstood the meaning of his criticism. - -Brissot is an admirable example of how the false rumours arose. He says: -“I have myself seen the receipts which Montmorin held from Danton.” - -Now, as we have seen, that receipt (to any one who did not know the -details of the transaction) might quite honestly appear a damning piece -of evidence, and it is without question the document round which the -great mass of accusations have been built. - -As to Madame Roland, I cannot imagine what flight of feminine inaccuracy -made her put down a fortune of £60,000 to her enemy’s name. If a witness -in any other circumstances than revolution should tell one that a young -lawyer and politician had secretly and suddenly become possessed of this -sum, he would be reputed mad. In such a time, however, anything seems -possible to an enemy, and we must rely upon the simple fact that Danton -can be definitely proved neither to have spent, invested, nor left a -tenth of such a sum. It seems to me that this accusation of Madame -Roland’s is on a par with that other extreme remark that she had known -“the Dantons living on 16s. a week, which they borrowed regularly from -their father-in-law,” and this “at the opening of the Revolution,” a time -when we know him positively to have been defending cases involving half -a million pounds in the issue of the trial, and when we know him to have -had for clients some of the richest men in France. - -Now, the papers that prove Danton’s financial position are quite simple. -He was cut off suddenly; they were all seized, and they all remain. -Unless he spent huge sums in debauch (sums like those of Orleans), or -unless he buried the money, he cannot have received much more than -what openly appears. He entered his married life with a debt of £2500 -secured on his office. He enjoyed a good practice for four years; he was -reimbursed to somewhat less than the value of his office, and on his -death the sum sequestrated by the State, and later refunded to his sons, -tallies with this small fortune. - - - - -IV - -NOTE ON DANTON’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER - - -The arguments for and against Danton’s responsibility in this matter must -necessarily be of a more general order than those which can be advanced -for and against his character in regard to money matters. There are but -one or two really definite facts upon either side, and, as the purport -of these notes is to deal with actualities, I will treat of these known -facts only. - -In the first place, it must be clearly understood that Danton did not -shrink from, and was not unsympathetic with, the extreme measures of -the Revolution. His position with regard to them is perfectly clear -in history, and is simply this—his violence was persuaded that an -exceptional time required, almost as a method of government, the most -exceptional terrors. - -But, on the other hand, Danton was a man to whom not only a useless -massacre but a useless anything was detestable. Death in itself, the -infliction of death on others, even the death to which he himself was -led, never seemed to him a matter of vast moment. It is a common fault -in courageous men to have this disregard for the life of others and of -oneself, but I deny that you will ever discover Danton causing the death -of a single human being unless it is in the furtherance of his policy. - -In the second place, consider what is actually known to have proceeded -from his mouth. (1) Quite early in the Revolution (in June 1791) he -demanded the head of Lafayette, and he probably meant it; (2) he boasted -of, or confessed to, being the author of Mandat’s death; (3) in the -course of speeches which led up to the establishment of the Revolutionary -tribunal he speaks in favour of the extreme penalties and of the terror -that they would inspire, always as a means to an end, and as a means -to be employed without hesitation. Let me quote but one sentence from -the speech of the 10th March 1793 to illustrate what I mean:—“I feel to -what a degree it is necessary to take judicial measures by which we may -punish the counter-revolutionaries. This tribunal should be erected in -order to replace for them the supreme tribunal of popular vengeance. It -is very difficult to define a political crime, but if a man of the common -people for his sort of misdeed gets punished at once, is it not necessary -that extreme laws, something out of the common running of our social -machinery, should be passed to terrify rebels and to strike the guilty? -In this matter the safety of the people demands from you extreme methods -and the measures of terror.” - -Finally, we know that Danton was, on the whole, the guide of that earlier -part of the Terror between May and August 1793, in which (as he thought) -the system was doing necessary work without which the nation could not -have been saved. - -Now, let us set against these what we definitely know of Danton’s -character which would lead us to a conclusion that he would not have -countenanced massacre. - -No one questions the fact that the leading motive in Danton’s mind was -the establishment of a strong government around or in the place of a -weak monarchy. He was a true descendant of the lawyers of the Code. -The massacres of September took place at a moment when he was using -the whole of his personal energy in trying as well as may be to supply -that Government. He guides the ministry in Paris; he dominates Roland -as a man might dominate a woman. It was of supreme importance to such a -scheme that the thin ice between government and anarchy in the days that -preceded Valmy should not be broken. The massacre of September broke it; -there was a week of anarchy in Paris. There is the first great argument -against Danton’s complicity with the massacres. - -It must, however, be remembered that a theory exists, by no means -untenable, which would make Danton argue something in this fashion: -“Once let the popular fury have full rein against what it regards as the -internal enemy, and I shall have the disappearance of that disturbing -factor of royalist reaction in Paris, while on the part of the mob I -shall have the lassitude and shame that follow excess; they are not -difficult to govern.” It is only a personal opinion, but it seems to me -that in a mind of Danton’s type, downright and practical to excess, such -a far-reaching and subtle idea as the last would hardly occur, and that -the massacres must have produced on him an especial annoyance, because -they were the breakdown of a system the support of which occupied his -every effort. - -Secondly, Danton’s allusions to the massacres of September were always of -a more definite and more reasonable nature than those of his colleagues. -The attitude which he adopts with regard to them after their occurrence -is this: “There was no public force, none of that disciplined government -which I postulate as the first necessity of the Revolution; nothing on -earth could prevent them, and they occurred in spite of every governing -power.” So much for generalities. - -Now let us turn to one or two points which have been made the basis of a -definite accusation against Danton in this matter. - -Firstly: that he knew that the massacres were coming, and withdrew from -prison more than one of his friends on the eve of the uprising. This I -take to be true, or rather I am certain of it; but one would have to -be very ignorant of the time not to know that all Paris expected the -massacres, and that those who were at all in touch with the Commune knew -two or three days before that anything illegal might be done. To have -worked to prevent them, in which Danton might have employed his energy, -would, as I have said in the text, have been to risk that which he most -desired, and to risk it for the sake of saving the prisoners. Certainly -he did not desire to save them as passionately as he desired to remain at -the helm and build up a government; he preferred to keep his influence -over the city. That accusation is just. - -Secondly, it is affirmed with justice that Danton, from the peculiar -position of the ministry which he occupied, filled the prisons, -which were afterwards gutted. It is true that on Danton, as Minister -of Justice, and above all as a general power in the Cabinet, the -responsibility of arresting the prisoners rests; but was this action -taken with a knowledge of what the consequences would be nearly a month -later? Certainly not. It would show a complete ignorance of what happened -in the last fortnight of August to say that an action taken just after -the 10th was taken with a view to something that would occur on the 2nd -of September. The state of public feeling in those four weeks went -through a most violent crisis, and one might say that the intensity of -the feeling against the Royalists and the foreigners was not only a -hundred-fold greater when Verdun was actually falling than it had been -just after the success against the Tuilleries, but different in quality -as well. - -Thirdly, there is one detailed accusation—the circular which Marat -sent out to the Departments. If it can be proved that this circular -was approved of, that its distribution was aided by Danton, then we -shall have a definite piece of evidence which cannot be overridden. Now -let me describe what that circular was, and see how far we must blame -circumstances, how far the carelessness, and how far the deliberate act -of the minister. All the accounts are much the same. Madame Roland says, -“Sent out above the signature of the Minister of Justice.” Bertrand de -Molleville is also perfectly definite (Memoirs, ix. 310)—“Sent by the -minister Danton.” - -The examination of the documents seventy years later has given more -accurate results to history than the memoirs of contemporaries, whether -they are truthful and enthusiastic like Madame Roland, or frankly -dishonest like Bertrand de Molleville. Bougeart was at the pains of -looking up the original documents at the archives of the police. -What appears in this document (Bougeart, pp. 121-122) is a series -of signatures, Panis, Sergent, Marat, &c., that is, the Committee -of Surveillance appointed by the Commune. There is no trace of any -ministerial signature, and even the stamp which was used in the office -by the clerks for everything that passed officially through the Ministry -of Justice is not attached to the sheet. What did happen was this. -The circulars were sent out in envelopes which bore the official mark -of the Ministry. It is as though some act of a body in London, let us -say, should be distributed to the provinces in the blue envelopes of -Her Majesty’s Service. That is all, either for or against Danton, that -remains of the incident of the circular. - -Now it is certain that Danton had not at that time openly broken with -Marat. Moreover, Danton had not actually quarrelled with the Commune, -though he certainly treated it with contempt. But Danton had no -conceivable object in helping Marat to distribute the circulars unless -he himself was openly on Marat’s side. A man of his character would -either have signed, or else, had he known that the circulars were going -out, he would have forbidden their distribution; he would have taken some -definite line. Why? Because the distribution of the circular was bound to -condemn him to a very definite position—here is a man who has stood aloof -from a very violent conspiracy, a conspiracy whose authors came out at -last in the open day and gloried in what they had done. They wrote the -most violent of all their manifestoes, containing such phrases as “the -ferocious prisoners have been put to death by the people;” “it was an act -of justice indispensable to our Committee,” and so forth. It would be -quite impossible to send out unwittingly such a circular as that without -knowing that one was compromising oneself and definitely entering the -most extreme party of the Parisians. It is inconceivable, therefore, that -he would have lent official envelopes for the purpose, and have said, -“So far I will help you, but I will not help you more than that.” You -might as well suppose an English official in India, of the stronger kind, -saying, “I will allow you, an unofficial personage, to send out the order -for an illegal execution from this office, but I will not put my name to -it.” - -Again, how comes it that this document alone, of all those sent from -the Minister of Justice at the time, goes out in the official envelope, -but bears in itself no mark whatsoever of the Ministry of Justice? -How was it that the officials in the country towns, among the mass of -papers that they received from the Ministry in Paris, should receive -this single one without any stamp or signature, and should then discover -that it had proceeded from a body which had nothing on earth to do with -the Ministry of Justice? There are but two replies possible to this -question—either that the envelopes were taken from the Ministry by one -of the clerks (several of whom we know to have been intimately linked -with the Commune), or that Danton timidly lent envelopes but refused -to do anything further. Of these two replies, the second appears to me -absolutely at variance not only with Danton’s own character but also with -the general routine of a great office. I cannot conceive the Cabinet -Minister offering, in the very gravest conditions, a few blue envelopes, -when a whole political party desire from him a definite pronouncement on -one side or the other. - -Finally, it may be asked, could these envelopes go out without his -knowledge? To that I answer that such a thing might be done from any -government office to-day. It was, moreover, a time of revolution; the -whole complicated organism had been shaken and partly transformed; there -was confusion in every department of the building, and even under these -conditions Danton was doing far more work than depended upon his office. -I think, therefore, that it is eminently possible that the circulars -should have been sent out by one of the clerks without his knowledge; and -the fact that no signature was used, and that the documents did not even -pass through one of the many hands whose duty it was to affix the formal -stamp, still further corroborates the view that the circulation of the -appeal was surreptitious. - -As to the accusations such as that of Lafayette (Memoirs, iv. 139, 140), -“He commanded the massacre of September and paid the murderers, who went -all covered with blood to get their money from Roland,” I attach no -importance to them at all. Even the phrase in which Danton is supposed -to have saluted the return of the murderers from Versailles is very -doubtful. It does not occur in any contemporary account; it is not in the -_Moniteur_; it is not in the “Révolutions de Paris;” Madame Roland does -not quote it, even on hearsay; it is not one of Peltier’s inventions, and -I have some difficulty in tracing it to its origin. - -I think, then, that the general position of Danton during the days of -September may be summed up as follows. He did not regard the lives of the -prisoners as being of the first importance; he did not use what would -have been to his certain knowledge a useless energy in protesting; he -did not (as he might conceivably have done) form a special and vigorous -tribunal to replace that which was on the point of acquitting L. de -Montmorin. By all those, therefore, who would regard public order and a -security for life as being more important than the success of a political -idea, or the integrity and defence of a nation, he can be accused of -a criminal negligence in the matter of the massacres of September. He -certainly cannot be accused of having designed them; he cannot be accused -on any definite proof of having approved them, and he cannot be accused -of having failed to share in the regret and misery which that terrible -blunder caused. If we may judge the attitude of his mind by comparing it -with that of contemporaries, rather than by comparing it with our own -attitude in a time of security and order, we may say that the massacres -taught him a more definite lesson than they taught to Roland, for they -caused him to pursue a policy of conciliation and to strengthen the -government; that, on the other hand, he did less to stop them than Manuel -did; and that in a comparison with men whom we know to have been honest, -such as Roland himself, or by a contrast with men whom we know to have -been evil, such as Hébert, or whom we know to have been frenzied, such as -Marat—judged in the midst of all this, Danton will appear responsible to -history for having been guilty of indifference at a moment when he might -have saved his reputation by protesting, though perhaps his protest would -not have saved a single life. - - * * * * * - -The object of the remainder of this Appendix is to provide for the reader -certain documents that illustrate the statements and the line of argument -in the text. Of these documents but few have been translated, because -only a few appeal to any one but a special student of the Revolution, or -are necessary to the understanding of this book. - -By far the most important of the documents here printed is the last, -Barrère’s report of the 29th of May 1793. Hitherto unpublished, it -furnishes (to my mind) the most complete explanation of the somewhat -complicated manœuvres pursued by the Committee, manœuvres which permitted -the revolution of May 31st and June 2nd. - -To each document a short preface has been attached for the purpose of -explaining its origin and of mentioning the authorities (if any) in which -it can be found. - - - - -V - -SHORT MEMOIR BY A. R. C. DE ST. ALBIN - - -This memoir was published for the first time as an article in the -_Critique Française_ of the 15th of March 1864. It was so published by -the author himself, and, though appearing seventy years after Danton’s -death, is not without importance. De St. Albin, who is better known by -his first name of Rousselin, had some personal acquaintance with Danton -(though he was but a boy at the time) and he lived to a great age. He -had, moreover, an acquaintance with the family after the Revolutionary -period. These circumstances make his testimony decisive on all -non-controversial points and valuable on many others. - -The criticisms to be made against his account are obvious. It is too -florid; it errs also in giving an amiable and somewhat mediocre character -to the statesman himself and to all his relatives and surroundings. We -have in it but a poor expression of the energy that was Danton’s chief -character, and which the writer’s own mind cannot reflect. It was, -moreover, written so very long after the events which it describes that -in more than one place an error of date or number has been committed; -especially in the incident of Barentin at the close of the memoir, with -which M. Aulard finds so much fault, and in the amount of his wife’s -dowry, which was not 40,000 but only 20,000 livres. On the other hand, it -is fresh, full of personal recollections, written by a trustworthy man, -and gives many interesting details on the earlier and less known part of -Danton’s life. - -“La famille de Danton n’a point à se prévaloir d’une antique noblesse. -Le nom de Danton est commun dans la contrée d’Arcis-sur-Aube, il est -apparu avec un certain bruit, en 1740, dans les querelles du jansénisme. -Parmi les pièces de théâtre destinées à populariser ces discussions -théologiques, il en est une intitulée _La Banqueroute des marchands de -miracles_, qui est signée du P. Danton. On a supposé, non sans raison, -qui cet ecclésiastique était un grand-oncle du conventionnel. - -“Georges-Jacques Danton naquit à Arcis-sur-Aube le 26 octobre 1759. Il -était fils de Jacques Danton, procureur au bailliage d’Arcis, qui avait -épousé, en 1754, Jeanne-Madeleine Camut. Le père mourut le 24 février -1762, âgé d’environ quarante ans, laissant sa femme enceinte et quatre -enfants en bas âge, deux filles et deux garçons, Georges-Jacques Danton -resta sous la tutelle de sa mère, femme douée de toutes les qualités qui -commandent l’estime. C’est par la sensibilité et la douceur du caractère -que la mère de Danton élevait et gouvernait sa jeune famille. Georges, -celui de ses enfants dont l’extérieur indiquait le plus de force et de -volonté, était le plus docile envers elle. Se jeune indépendance était -bien vite soumise quand sa mère parlait à son cœur. La tendresse obtenait -ce que la crainte aurait vainement tenté d’arracher. Madame veuve Danton -eut un heureux auxiliaire pour le soutien de sa maison dans son père, -entrepreneur des ponts et chaussées de la province de Champagne. Celui-ci -donna les premières leçons à son petit-fils: il voyait avec joie ses -mâles dispositions. - -“Il est intéressant de noter quel fut le milieu dans lequel Danton -passa ainsi ses premières années, et nous avons trouvé, dans un auteur -contemporain, le passage suivant qui nous semble curieux: - -“‘La ville d’Arcis-sur-Aube est composée d’hommes indépendants; l’air y -est vif, les hommes sont robustes; la rivière de l’Aube, qui traverse -le pays, est navigable en tout temps, le commerce maritime occupe les -natifs; quand les marins ne sont pas occupés à l’eau, ils font des bas; -ils sont laborieux, industrieux. Arcis n’est comparable à aucune partie -de la Champagne; les lois y sont observées comme si elles n’existaient -pas, par le seul sentiment de l’ordre; les seigneurs de l’ancien régime -avaient toujours rencontré des opposants dans des hommes chez qui l’amour -de la liberté est inné.’ - -“L’enfance de Danton n’eut rien de remarquable; il fut élevé, suivant -l’usage du pays, à peu près comme un enfant de la nature. - -“Il avait été nourri par une vache, ce qui est usité en Champagne, quand -les mères ne sont pas assez fortes pour allaiter leurs enfants. La vache -nourrice de Danton fut un jour aperçue par un taureau échappé, qui se -précipita sur elle et donna au pauvre enfant un coup de corne qui lui -arracha la lèvre. C’est à cette cicatrice que tenait la difformité de sa -lèvre supérieure. - -“En grandissant, Danton, comme tous les êtres doués d’une force -extraordinaire, éprouvait le besoin de l’exercer. Il voulut un jour faire -preuve de vigueur, prendre sa revanche et lutter contre un taureau. Il -était difficile qu’il sortit vainqueur de la lutte. Un coup de corne lui -écrasa le nez. - -“Ces accidents auraient dû le rendre prudent, mais il n’y a guère de -prudence là où il y a grande surabondance de vie. Un jour le robuste -enfant croit pouvoir faire marcher devant lui les porcs de la ferme qui -obstruaient l’entrée de la maison. Il les attaque à coups de fouet; mais -son pied glisse, il tombe, et les porcs devenus furieux, se ruent sur lui -et lui font une terrible blessure, assez semblable à celle dont Boileau -fut victime dans son enfance, au dire d’Helvétius, qui attribuait à cette -blessure la disette de sentiment qu’il prétendait remarquer dans les -ouvrages du poète. Quel que soit le mérite de cette appréciation, elle -ne serait pas applicable à Danton. Sa virilité avait été compromise, non -perdue, et il conserva toute son énergie et toute sa hardiesse. Rien ne -l’arrêtait: chaque jour il donnait de nouvelles preuves de témérité. -A peine fut-il rétabli de ce malheureux accident, qu’entraîné par sa -passion pour la natation, il faillit se noyer et fut atteint d’une -fièvre maligne, à laquelle vint se joindre une petite vérole très grave, -accompagnée du pourpre. Tout semblait ainsi se réunir pour le défigurer. - -“Pour faire contracter à son enfant quelques habitudes de discipline, -la mère de Danton le remit d’abord à la surveillance d’une maîtresse -d’école; celle-ci n’avait pas le temps ou la volonté d’user avec lui -d’indulgence. Danton trouva quelque différence dans la comparaison de -ce nouveau régime avec les tendresses de sa mère et de son aïeul: non -moins sévère que la demoiselle Lambercier de J.-J. Rousseau, la maîtresse -d’école croyait ne pouvoir se passer de verges pour diriger les enfants, -et Danton lui avait paru avoir les premiers droits à ses corrections. -Tous ses contemporains se souvenaient de l’avoir vu faire trop souvent -l’école buissonnière et employer les heures de classe à barboter dans -l’Aube. Il préférait la liberté de vivre à l’ennui de répéter les -caractères de l’alphabet. Il avait cependant d’heureuses aptitudes et -apprenait rapidement; mais toute habitude réglée était antipathique à sa -nature. - -“A huit ans, il fut débarrassé de la rigoureuse maîtresse, et -_transvasé_, comme il le dit lui-même, dans une institution supérieure. -Le chef de cette institution croyait savoir assez de latin pour en -enseigner les éléments. Quand les premiers principes de la grammaire ne -sont pas montrés avec une habile méthode aux jeunes intelligences, elle -leur offre peu d’attrait. - -“Danton en avait peu-être un peu moins pour _Lhomond_ que pour le jeu -de cartes. A peine le devoir terminé, en hâte il courait avec quelques -camarades dans un coin pour faire sa partie. Des billes ou des gâteaux -étaient le bénéfice du gagnant. Souvent vainqueur, il partageait toujours -avec le vaincu. Quand il se trouvait seul, il lisait ou allait se -promener ans les bois ou dans les champs. - -“Pour modifier cette humeur un peu sauvage, les parents de Danton crurent -devoir le mettre dans une maison religieuse. - -“Quoiqu’il ne fût point destiné à l’état ecclésiastique, on le plaça -d’abord au petit séminaire de _Troyes_; mais la monotonie de cette -maison lui devint bientôt pénible. Pendant tout le temps qu’il y resta, -il observa la règle, mais il ne pouvait souffrir que sa récréation fût -subitement interrompue par un coup de cloche. _Cette cloche_, disait-il, -_si je suis encore forcé de l’entendre longtemps, finira par sonner mon -enterrement_. - -“Un reproche mal fondé et reçu publiquement du supérieur décida Danton à -solliciter sa sortie du séminaire. - -“Le fait suivant peut être raconté comme trait de caractère: La pension, -dans cette maison, était modique. Les élèves n’avaient de vin qu’en -le payant séparément à la fin de chaque année. Tous les dimanches on -distribuait des cartes, qui étaient une espèce de billet au porteur. -En présentant cette carte au distributeur, on recevait une mesure de -vin appelée _roquille_. Danton était généreux, et un de ses grands -plaisirs alors était de régaler ses camarades en leur passant des cartes -de _roquilles_, surtout à ceux qu’il savait n’avoir pas la bourse -bien garnie. Sa générosité alla si loin, que, lorsqu’on fit le compté -général et la proclamation publique de tous ceux qui avaient bu du vin, -il se trouva être celui qui avait fait une plus grande consommation de -_roquilles_. La veille du départ pour les vacances, le supérieur du -petit séminaire adressa ces paroles à Danton: _Mon ami, vous pouvez -vous flatter d’être le plus grand buveur de la communauté_. A ces -mots, tous les rires d’éclater sur lui; il ne répondit pas, mais il se -promit bien de ne plus boire de roquilles au petit séminaire. Malgré -une véritable bonté, Danton était peu endurant, et on l’avait surnommé -_l’anti-supérieur_, et même _le républicain_. - -“A peine revenu à Arcis-sur-Aube, il déclara à sa mère qu’il ne -rentrerait plus au petit séminaire: “Il y a là, dit-il, des habitudes -qui ne me vont pas, et que je ne pourrai jamais comprendre.” L’année -suivante, on le mit dans une pension laïque. Ses études n’y perdirent -rien, car il eut depuis des succès qu’il n’avait pas obtenus auparavant. -Il fit ainsi sa seconde, et y remporta la presque totalité des prix.... - -“Nous arrivons au mois de juin 1775. On apprend que le sacre de Louis -XVI. va s’accomplir à Reims. Danton avait déjà plus d’une fois entendu -les imprécations dont toute la France couvrait la mémoire de Louis XV. -A l’âge de seize ans il en savait assez pour abhorrer l’emploi des -lettres de cachet, qui étaient si prodiguées sous ce règne scandaleux. Le -professeur avait annoncé qu’il donnerait l’événement du sacre du nouveau -monarque comme texte d’amplification: _Pour bien se pénétrer de son -sujet_, dit Danton d’un ton décidé, _il faut se servir de ses yeux. Je -suis curieux de voir comment se fait un roi_. - -“Son projet n’est confié qu’à quelques fidèles camarades qui lui prêtent -de l’argent pour sa route. Il part sans prévenir son maître; il traverse -son pays d’Arcis sans voir ses parents, dans la crainte de les trouver -opposés à son pèlerinage. Après avoir franchi vingt-huit lieues sans -encombre, il arrive à Reims, se glisse partout; il suit attentivement -toutes les cérémonies du sacre, et il entend le jeune monarque, la main -sur l’Évangile, prononcer le serment _de régner par les lois et pour le -bonheur de la nation_. Que des réflexions fait naître un pareil spectacle -dans un cerveau ardent, déjà prompt à concevoir de rapprochements! - -“A son retour de Reims, les amis de Danton étaient impatients de -l’entendre raconter tout ce qu’il avait vu. Cet appareil ne l’avait -pas émerveillé, la richesse des décors de la cathédrale ne l’avait pas -séduit. Il raisonnait assez déjà pour sentir que ce n’était guère plus -qu’une pompe vaine, encore dispendieuse pour la France déjà si obérée. Le -jeune voyageur s’égayait en parlant de ce nombreux essaim d’oiseaux de -toute espèce auxquels on avait donné la volée dans l’église: “_Plaisante -liberté_, disait-il, _que de voltiger entre quatre murs, sans avoir de -quoi manger ni poser son nid_!” Il comparait aussi les oiseaux babillards -aux courtisans qui entouraient déjà le nouveau roi, par continuation -de leur dévouement pour le défunt. A l’entendre débiter avec autant de -simplicité que de malice ses réflexions sur le luxe, on peut entrevoir -que l’écolier moraliste, devenu grand, ne sera pas sans quelque exigence -envers la royauté, et sans quelque sévérité envers les agents qui vivent -des abus. - -“Danton, revenu à Troyes, éprouva des difficultés pour rentrer à sa -pension. Sa sortie, à l’insu du maître, avait indisposé celui-ci. Le -voyageur, soumis et repentant, proteste _qu’il na été à Reims que -pour se mettre en mesure de faire en connaissance de cause son devoir -d’amplification sur le sacre_. Il produit effectivement un morceau des -plus brillants, mais où il se défend d’introduire les observations -hardies échappées dans la familiarité de conversation, qui ne peuvent -se présenter dans une narration écrite, dont les convenances sont la -première règle. Le maître, satisfait et surpris du mérite de l’œuvre, -en fait lecture à ses élèves. Il dit _qu’il aurait donné la première -place à l’auteur s’il n’avait fait l’école buissonnière_. Les camarades -de Danton s’unissent avec enthousiasme à l’appréciation du maître; ils -admirent comment l’enfant prodigue, leur ayant fait un récit aussi -piquant, aussi jovial de son voyage, avait pu en même temps mettre dans -son style autant de réserve et de noblesse. C’est ainsi que Danton fait -admettre ses excuses, et sa grâce est devenue une espèce de triomphe. -Il reprend sa classe, dont les travaux allaient bientôt se terminer. -L’époque des compositions pour les prix annuels approchait; se fiant -à sa facilité, Danton ne semble pas se préparer au concours. Mais -dès que les sujets de composition sont donnés, il rassemble tous les -efforts de son intelligence et obtient toutes les couronnes. Il déploie -d’admirables moyens dans le discours français, la narration latine et -la poésie. Imagination, jugement, exactitude, saillie dans la pensée, -force, élégance, originalité dans l’expression, rien ne lui manque, -et le 18 août 1775 fut peut-être le plus beau jour de sa vie. Le nom -de _Danton-Camut_ (qui était celui de sa mère pour le distinguer d’un -homonyme son condisciple) fut répété au bruit des fanfares. Si le lauréat -fut heureux, ce fut surtout en apportant ses lauriers à sa mère, objet -de son culte et de son amour; cette piété filiale, dès lors le plus vif -de ses sentiments, demeurera la même dans son cœur pendant tout le cours -de sa vie, quelles qu’en soient les violences ou les distractions; plus -tard, il la montra mieux encore, et l’homme auquel il voua la haine la -plus tenace fut un misérable soupçonné d’avoir manqué de respect à Madame -Danton. - -“Lorsqu’un écolier se distinguait au collège, on songeait à la carrière -que lui ouvriraient ses talents. _Il faut en faire un prêtre ou un -procureur._ Le curé de Barberey, près Troyes, désignait déjà Danton -pour qu’il lui succédât dans son presbytère; mais le moment de séjour -que Danton avait fait au séminaire ne lui avait pas inspiré la vocation -ecclésiastique. Il avait besoin de liberté, il lui fallait les franches -allures, l’indépendance. Il demandait une profession libérale, il -désirait être avocat.... Démosthènes et Cicéron, qu’il venait de -commencer à connaître n’étaient-ils pas des avocats? La famille réunie -ayant déféré au vœu de Danton, il fut décidé qu’il irait à Paris et qu’il -travaillerait chez un procureur pour y apprendre la procédure en même -temps qu’il ferait ses études de droit, pour se préparer au barreau. - -“Ici vient se placer une circonstance intéressante qui fait honneur -à Danton et qui fournit une nouvelle preuve de sa tendresse pour ses -parents. Madame veuve Danton, demeurée seule avec sa nombreuse famille, -s’était remariée pour lui donner un soutien. Elle avait épousé M. -Recordin, estimable négociant, dont la bonté est restée proverbiale dans -le pays: _bon et brave comme Recordin_. Par suite de sa facilité dans ses -relations, les affaires de la maison Recordin se trouvèrent embarrassées. -Danton, loin d’exiger les comptes qu’il avait droit de demander de la -fortune qui lui revenait de son père, fut le premier à offrir des secours -à son beau-père; il mit à sa disposition tout ce qui lui appartenait; -il alla jusqu’à engager la portion du bien de ses tantes qui devait lui -échoir un jour, ne craignant pas d’aliéner son présent en son avenir. -_Il faut mettre ses affaires en règle,_ disait-il, _quand on fait un -grand voyage_. - -“Tels furent les préparatifs du départ. - -“Tous les témoignages de ses camarades, parents et amis, déposent de la -délicatesse de Danton sous tous les rapports; à l’exception du prêt de -quelques écus qui lui furent offerts par ses camarades pour le voyage de -Reims, il n’a jamais demandé d’argent à qui que ce soit, dans les moments -où, soit comme écolier, soit comme clerc de procureur, il a pu éprouver -de ces gênes de jeune homme qui rendent hardi aux emprunts. - -“Danton arrive à Paris en 1780 dans la voiture du messager -d’Arcis-sur-Aube, qui était l’ami de sa famille, et qui voulut lui faire -la conduite gratuitement. Il se logea à l’auberge du _Cheval noir_, -tenue rue Geoffroy-Lasnier par un nommé Layron, qui était l’hôte le plus -fréquenté par les Champenois. Danton avait très peu de fonds, et il dut -se mettre immédiatement au travail: il entra chez un procureur appelé -Vinot. Ce procureur commença par lui demander un modèle de son écriture, -qu’il ne trouva pas belle. Les procureurs de ce temps-là voulaient de ces -écritures promptes et faciles, propres à produire de larges grosses, de -longues requêtes. Le jeune Champenois déclara franchement _qu’il n’était -pas venu pour être copiste_. Ce ton d’assurance imposa au procureur -Vinot. Il dit: _J’aime l’aplomb, il en faut dans notre état_. - -“Danton fut admis comme clerc, avec la nourriture et le logement. Il -étudia la procédure non sans quelque dégoût; il fut chargé, comme on -dit dans le métier, _de faire le palais_. C’est la première initiation -des jeunes clercs aux affaires. Elle commence à les mettre en relation -avec les choses et les personnes du monde judiciaire, et leur donne -les éléments de la pratique par de petits plaidoyers sommaires et -des explications contradictoires qui leur ouvrent les idées et leur -apprennent à se conduire dans le labyrinthe où ils sont destinés à vivre. - -“Danton remplissait sa fonction de clerc avec intelligence et exactitude; -ses récréations les plus habituelles étaient toujours l’escrime, la -paume et la natation, sa passion favorite! dont il usait fréquemment; -c’était le besoin même de son tempérament. Il était assez habile à cet -exercice pour être cité au premier rang; il y trouva un encouragement -digne de son émulation. Il sauva plusieurs fois de la mort des camarades -qui auraient péri s’il n’était venu au secours de leur imprudence et de -leur faiblesse. Quelques-uns d’entre eux ont raconté les tours de force -véritables que Danton exécutait dans les courants les plus difficiles de -la rivière. De l’endroit même où ils prenaient leurs ébats, on voyait -les tours de la Bastille, et plus d’une fois les baigneurs ont entendu -Danton, dressant sa tête comme un triton, jeter une menace du côté de la -prison d’État et s’écrier de sa voix vibrante: _Ce chateau fort suspendu -sur notre tête m’offusque et me gêne. Quand le verrons-nous abattu? Pour -moi, ca jour là, j’y donnerais un fier coup de pioche!_ - -“Les constitutions les plus robustes sont souvent les plus exposées, -parce que cette exubérance de force donne plus de sécurité. Danton, à la -suite d’une double partie de natation et d’escrime, fut encore atteint -d’une grave maladie. Longtemps retenu au lit, alors que son corps était -réduit à l’inaction, il ne pouvait se livrer à ses exercices habituels, -mais son imagination ne restait point inactive. Avec son infatigable -ardeur de lecture, il s’obstina à lire _l’Encyclopédie_ tout entière, -et il avait achevé ce labeur si considérable avant que la convalescence -fût terminée. Il trouvait encore le temps de lire les grands publicistes -dont les principes et la morale politique commençaient à devenir les -guides du siècle. Montesquieu qu’il devait souvent citer, fut de sa part -l’objet d’une étude tout particulière, et, après avoir lu _l’Esprit des -lois_, il disait: _Quel horizon nouveau s’ouvre devant moi! Je n’ai -qu’un regret, c’est de retrouver dans l’écrivain qui vous porte si loin -et si haut, le président d’un parlement._ De Montesquieu, Danton passa -bientôt à Voltaire, à J.-J. Rousseau, puis à Beccaria, qui apparaissait -alors. Danton ne tarda pas à savoir par cœur l’admirable petit ouvrage -de cet auteur, le traité _Des délits et des peines_, qui allait réformer -la législation criminelle du monde; afin de se préparer des couleurs de -style pour le jour où il aurait à parler aux foules, afin d’apprendre, -à revêtir les questions sociales des belles images de la nature, Danton -étudia particulièrement l’_Histoire naturelle_ de Buffon: au moyen de -sa puissante mémoire il en retenait et récitait des pages entières. -Voilà d’amples provisions d’instruction qui pourront trouver un jour un -utile emploi dans la carrière de l’homme public! Tout en dédaignant la -littérature frivole et n’ayant jamais lu de romans que les chefs-d’œuvre -consacrés qui sont des peintures de mœurs, Danton apprit en même temps -la langue italienne assez pour lire le Tasse, l’Arioste et même le Dante. -Il faisait aussi des vers avec facilité, quelques-uns même adressés, en -tout bien et tout honneur, à une personne qui n’était pas indigne de les -lui inspirer, à la femme de son procureur. - -“Mais tous ces délassements littéraires étaient en dehors de la -profession qu’il voulait exercer. Ils ne lui firent point négliger -l’apprentissage de la procedure et du droit. - -“Il lui restait maintenant à devenir de licencié avocat, et comme il -avait gardé un bon souvenir de la ville de Reims, il alla se faire -recevoir avocat dans cette ville. Champenois de cœur, il était heureux -de contribuer de tous ses moyens à l’honneur de son pays natal. Il -avait toujours de bonnes saillies à son service, et ne manquait pas une -occasion de citer des hommes distingués dans les lettres et les arts de -diverses époques qui appartenaient à la province de Champagne. Parmi -les contemporains, Danton pouvait du reste trouver plus d’un exemple -à l’appui de son patriotique enthousiasme: c’est ainsi qu’il parlait -souvent de quelques notabilités qu’il connaissait, tels que le savant -_Grosley_, l’avocat _Linguet_. - -“De retour de Reims à Paris, Danton, après avoir achevé son stage, -s’essaya au barreau de la capitale pendant quelque temps. Chargé d’une -affaire, entre autres, pour un berger contre le seigneur de son village, -il eut l’occasion de produire, en cette circonstance, quelques-uns des -sentiments qu’il devait plus tard développer davantage sur un grand -théâtre. Il réclama avec autant de vigueur que d’adresse les principes de -l’égalité devant la loi. Il gagna sa cause devant la cour de parlement -qui, comme on se le rappelle, n’était alors composée que de nobles et -de privilégiés. Nous ne sommes encore qu’en 1785. Le factum de Danton -fut imprimé: il était concis, substantiel, énergique—nous n’avons pu -en retrouver la trace.—Cette première lutte soutenue par Danton fit -sensation au palais et valut au jeune avocat des témoignages d’estime de -Gerbier, Debonnière, Hardouin et toutes les sommités du barreau de cette -époque. Linguet, qui se connaissait en style, et qui, nous l’avons vu, -était de Reims, lui adressa à ce sujet de vifs encouragements. - -“Mais les témoignages de ces hommes éminents, qui assuraient à Danton un -succès d’honneur, ne le menaient point à la fortune; il s’en éloignait -même à mesure que son talent aurait dû l’en rapprocher davantage, car -il recherchait la clientèle du pauvre autant que d’autres recherchaient -la clientèle du riche. Il pensait qu’en thèse générale le pauvre est le -plus souvent l’opprimé, qu’ainsi il a le droit de priorité à la défense. -D’après ce principe de conduite, ceux qui ont dit que Danton n’avait -point fait fortune au barreau, pouvaient ajouter qu’il ne l’y aurait -jamais faite.... - -“S’ennuyant peut-être un peu, comme on a pu l’entrevoir, dans sa -profession d’avocat, Danton ne demandait point de distraction à des -plaisirs qui auraient pu prendre sur les ressources nécessaires à son -existence. Gagnant fort peu dans ses travaux de palais, il n’aurait pas -voulu ajouter à la gêne de sa position en contractant des dettes; il -était fort rangé, toujours avec une petite réserve d’économies qui lui -permettait de rendre des services sans en demander lui-même. Après son -frugal repas chez un traiteur, dont la maison était nommée l’_Hôtel de la -Modestie_, il prenait une demi-tasse de café et jouait quelques parties -de dominos. Ajoutez, de temps en temps, le spectacle d’une tragédie -classique au Théâtre-Français, voilà toute la defense et tous les -amusements du jeune avocat. - -“Un café où se rendait le plus habituellement Danton s’appelait _Café -de l’École_, parce qu’il était situé sur ce quai, presque au coin de -la place qui a conservé ce nom. C’était un rendez-vous très fréquenté -par les hommes de loi qui se trouvaient rapprochés du Châtelet et du -Palais de Justice. La rigueur du costume et de la coiffure, espèce de -signalement perpétuel, avait cet avantage qu’on n’était pas tenté de se -commettre. - -“Les maîtres des cafés, alors peu nombreux dans Paris, étaient eux-mêmes -des bourgeois d’honnête allure. Ils maintenaient le bon ton de leur -maison par leur civilité. Ils faisaient rarement fortune, à l’exception -de deux ou trois qui étaient de premier rang. Le _Café de l’École_ -n’était pas précisément à ce niveau; mais il était l’un de ceux qui -avaient la meilleure réputation. Nous croyons voir encore le maître de la -maison avec sa petite perruque ronde, son habit gris et sa serviette sous -le bras. Il était rempli de prévenances pour ses clients, et il en était -traité avec une considération cordiale. Une femme des plus recommandables -et fille de la maison, aussi douce que gracieuse, tenait le comptoir. -Parmi les habitués, qui paraissaient s’arrêter avec un intérêt -particulier à ce comptoir, on put remarquer un jeune avocat qui, d’abord -fort gai et jovial, parut quelque temps après plus sérieux. Ce jeune -avocat était Danton; il avait cru d’abord ne causer que généralement et -sans conséquence avec les dames du comptoir; son cœur s’y était pris, et -Danton était amoureux. Mademoiselle Gabrielle Charpentier n’avait pas -songé à se défier des assiduités de Danton; elle se trouva bientôt, à son -insu, préoccupée du même sentiment. Sans être dans le secret de cette -inclination, le père et la mère Charpentier ne furent pas très surpris -quand la main de leur fille leur fut demandée par le jeune avocat. La -vivacité de son caractère leur fit craindre un moment de consentir à -cette union; mais il avait su toucher le cœur de Gabrielle. Lorsqu’on -disait: _Qu’il est laid!_ elle répétait, presque comme l’avait dit une -femme au sujet de Lekain: _Qu’il est beau!_ Elle admirait son esprit, que -l’on trouvait trop piquant; son âme, que l’on trouvait trop ardente; sa -voix, que l’on trouvait forte et terrible, et qu’elle trouvait douce. - -“Il fallait cependant prendre des renseignements sur ce prétendant. -M. Charpentier visita particulièrement les procureurs chez qui Danton -avait travaillé, et les avocats avec lesquels il avait été en rapport au -barreau. Il n’y eut qu’une voix en sa faveur. D’après des renseignements -aussi satisfaisants, les bons parents ne s’informèrent point de sa -fortune; ils y tenaient peu, quoique en ayant eux-mêmes une assez -modeste. Pourtant, ils donnaient en mariage à leur fille une somme de -40,000 francs, ce qui était pour l’époque une dot considérable. Ils -imposaient à leur gendre une seule condition, c’est qu’il exerçât un -état; c’est qu’il fût _occupé_. La profession d’avocat au parlement était -sans doute une profession honorable et libre, mais trop libre peut-être, -et qui ne commandait pas un travail assez assidu. Danton promit de -remplir les vœux de son beau-père; il s’exprima dans des termes si -chaleureux, que le père et la mère Charpentier se mirent à aimer Danton -presque autant que leur fille. - -“Des amis de Danton lui conseillèrent d’acheter une charge d’avocat aux -conseils. M. et Madame Charpentier offrirent généreusement la dot de -leur fille; mais ce n’était que 40,000 francs, et il en fallait 80,000! -Des Champenois dévoués proposèrent de compléter ce qui manquait pour le -payement de la charge. - -“Ils s’en rapportaient tous à la délicatesse et à la probité de -Danton; sa bonne conduite était sa caution. Le mariage n’ayant plus de -cause de retard, les bans publiés, le consentement de sa mère arrivé -d’Arcis-sur-Aube, Georges-Jacques Danton et Gabrielle Charpentier -furent unis, et le même jour il entra, comme il le disait gaiement, _en -puissance de femme et en charge d’officier ministériel; le même jour, -mari et avocat aux conseils_. - -“Les avocats aux conseils réunissaient les doubles fonctions d’avocats et -de procureurs; ayant peu de procédure à faire, ils avaient l’avantage de -rester maîtres de leurs affaires et de ne pas subir, comme les avocats -des autres cours, la loi d’un procureur préoccupé du désir d’attirer à -lui tous les bénéfices. Les fonctions des avocats aux conseils avaient -aussi quelque chose d’éminemment propre à élever l’âme des jeunes gens; -leur mission consistait souvent à redresser les torts du parlement et des -cours supérieures. Ils communiquaient journellement avec les maîtres des -requêtes, avec les conseillers d’État, avec les hommes du plus haut rang, -qui étaient obligés de recourir à leur ministère pour lutter contre les -usurpations dont ils avaient à se plaindre. - -“Les avocats aux conseils avaient ainsi l’occasion, en discutant avec -les ministres eux-mêmes, soit pour les attaquer, soit pour les défendre, -d’apprendre à connaître les rapports des autorités entre elles, la vraie -distinction des pouvoirs, l’organisation civile dans toute son étendue, -l’ordre social dans son ensemble: c’était une excellente école pour créer -des économistes, des politiques, des législateurs. - -“En exposant le rôle et la mission des avocats aux conseils, nous aurions -peut-être dû expliquer que tels étaient au moins la pensée et le droit -de l’institution. Faut-il constater maintenant ce qu’était en fait -l’institution? Sur le nombre de soixante membres composant l’honorable -confrérie, on voyait plusieurs hommes distingués qui sentaient la -dignité de leurs fonctions, traitaient leurs clients avec générosité et -délicatesse, les affaires avec science, application et courage. Mais -tous, il faut bien le dire, n’avaient pas un sentiment aussi élevé de -leurs devoirs, et il en était quelques-uns dont l’émulation consistait à -faire beaucoup de _grosses_. - -“Au moment où Danton fut reçu avocat aux conseils, c’était en 1787; il -avait vingt-huit ans, sa femme en avait vingt-cinq. Dans ce moment, -l’Ordre était divisé en trois partis plus ou moins actifs. - -“Les anciens voulaient créer un _syndicat_, à la tête duquel ils auraient -été tout naturellement placés. - -“Les jeunes arrivants appartenaient aux idées nouvelles, et ne voulaient -être ni conduits ni éconduits. - -“Un troisième parti se composait des hommes modérés et pacifiques qui, -aimant le repos avant tout, et, comme on a dit depuis, _la paix partout -et toujours_, ne voulaient se mêler à aucune action et préféraient -laisser faire le mal à leur détriment plutôt que de se mouvoir en aucun -sens et se laisser déranger même par un progrès qui leur eût été utile, -mais qui aurait pu les _désheurer_. - -“On a déjà pressenti à quel parti Danton avait dû se rallier. Il ne -méconnaissait pas la discipline qui doit présider à la bonne organisation -d’une compagnie judiciaire; mais il croyait que la force et la puissance -réelles des compagnies sont dans leur indépendance, comme le talent -même des membres de ces corporations ne peut se passer de la dignité du -caractère. - -“L’homme qui, en entrant dans une compagnie, dessine ses opinions avec -une énergique rudesse, peut s’attendre à rencontrer bien des luttes et -bien des hostilités. - -“Voulant juger la valeur du nouvel arrivant, les avocats, sous prétexte -de bienvenue, et sans l’avoir averti à l’avance, lui firent subir une -épreuve en latin. On lui imposa pour sujet l’exposé de la situation -morale et politique du pays dans ses rapports avec la justice. -C’était, comme Danton l’a dit depuis, _lui proposer de marcher sur des -rasoirs_.... Il ne recula point. Saisissant même comme une bonne fortune -la difficulté inattendue dans laquelle on croyait l’enlacer, il s’en tira -avec éclat, et laissa ses auditeurs dans l’étonnement de sa présence -d’esprit et de la décision de son caractère. Il ne craignit point -d’aborder la politique qui commençait a pénétrer en toute affaire, et -qui était peut-être ici une cause secrète du piège qui lui était tendu. -On espérait surprendre en défaut un jeune avocat qui levait la tête et -annonçait des principes d’indépendance. Danton, en homme de talent habile -à triompher des plus grandes difficultés, osa parler des choses les plus -actuelles; il dit que, comme citoyen ami de son pays, autant que comme -membre d’une corporation consacrée à la défense des intérêts privés et -publics de la société, il désirait que le gouvernement sentît assez la -gravité de la situation pour y porter remède par des moyens simples, -naturels et tirés de son autorité; qu’en présence des besoins impérieux -du pays, il fallait se résigner à se sacrifier; que la noblesse et le -clergé, qui étaient en possession des richesses de la France, devaient -donner l’exemple; que, quant a lui, il ne pouvait voir dans la lutte du -parlement, qui éclatait alors, que l’intérêt de quelques particuliers -puissants qui combattaient les ministres, mais sans rien stipuler au -profit du peuple. Il déclarait qu’à ses yeux l’horizon apparaissait -sinistre, et qu’il sentait venir une révolution terrible. Si seulement on -pouvait la reculer de trente années, elle se ferait amiablement par la -force des choses et le progrès des lumières. Il répéta dans ce discours, -qui ressemblait au cri prophétique de Cassandre: _Malheur à ceux qui -provoquent les révolutions, malheur à ceux qui les font!_ - -“Plusieurs fois les vieux avocats qui avaient tendu ce piège à Danton -voulurent interrompre son improvisation. Ils avaient cru entendre des -mots qui les effrayaient, tels que _motus populorum, ira gentium, salus -populi suprema lex_.... Les jeunes gens qui, récemment sortis des -collèges, avaient le droit de comprendre le latin mieux que les anciens, -qui l’avaient oublié ou ne l’avaient jamais su, répondaient à leurs vieux -confrères qu’ils avaient mal entendu, que le récipiendaire était resté -dans une mesure parfaite, irréprochable. - -“Espérant constater plus facilement dans le texte d’une rédaction -écrite les pensées imprudentes qu’ils avaient cru saisir en écoutant -ses paroles, les anciens demandèrent que Danton déposât son discours -de réception sur la table de la chambre du conseil. Danton répondit -qu’il n’avait rien écrit. Il avait déjà pour système d’écrire le moins -possible. Ainsi qu’il l’a dit depuis, on n’écrit point en révolution. Il -ajouta d’ailleurs que si l’on désirait porter un jugement sur les paroles -qu’il avait prononcées, il ne prétendait pas s’y opposer. Il était assez -certain de sa pensée et de sa mémoire pour répéter avec fidélité toute -son improvisation.... Le reméde eût été pire que le mal. L’aréopage -trouva que c’était déjà bien assez de ce qu’on avait entendu, et la -majorité s’opposa avec vivacité à la récidive. - -“Le cabinet acheté par Danton était loin, au moment où il en devint -titulaire, de posséder une clientèle nombreuse. Il n’en fut pas moins -toujours d’un grand désintéressement vis-à-vis de ses clients. - -“Il se montrait peu exigeant dans la question des honoraires, même -lorsqu’il avait gagné sa cause. Lorsque son client venait s’acquitter -envers lui, il lui arrivait souvent de dire: _c’est trop_, et de rendre -ce qu’il appelait _le trop_. Dans certaines affaires perdues, il refusait -toute rémunération. ‘Je n’ai point de déboursés, disait-il, puisque je -n’ai point fait d’écritures, et que j’ai laissé à la régie son papier -timbré.’ Il lui arrivait, bien qu’il ne fût pas riche, de donner lui-même -des secours d’argent à des clients malheureux. - -“Une pareille conduite ne mène pas rapidement à la fortune. Cependant le -cabinet de Danton s’améliora en très peu de temps. En dirigeant dignement -ses affaires, il gagnait de vingt à vingt-cinq mille francs par an; son -sort de père de famille était assuré. - -“Dans ce temps où la France était encore divisée en provinces, les -classes inférieures pouvaient se réclamer des grands seigneurs de leur -pays, et ceux-ci aimaient souvent par vanité autant que par humanité à -protéger leurs vassaux. La maison de Brienne était de Champagne, près -Arcis-sur-Aube. Danton était connu du comte de Brienne, ancien ministre -de la guerre, et de l’archevêque de Sens, alors premier ministre. Il -comptait parmi ses clients M. de Barentin. Il avait des conférences avec -lui pour ses affaires particulières, et plusieurs fois, après les avoir -traitées, M. de Barentin s’entretenait avec son avocat des affaires -publiques. La manière supérieure dont Danton voyait les choses avait -frappé M. de Barentin et lui avait laissé une vive impression de sa -capacité. - -“Devenu garde des sceaux, M. de Barentin se souvint aussitôt de -son avocat et lui fit demander s’il voulait être secrétaire de la -chancellerie? Danton, dans un long entretien qu’il eut avec ce ministre, -lui exposa avec détails un plan qu’il croyait pouvoir éloigner -les déchirements que l’opposition des parlements allait enfanter. -Quelques-uns de ces parlements venaient d’être exilés: Danton pensait que -leur rappel n’était pas une chose de la plus grande urgence. Il fallait -avant tout les enlacer dans la participation aux réformes; ils en étaient -autant les adversaires que la noblesse et le clergé, dont ils faisaient -en quelque sorte partie et dont ils avaient les privilèges. Tous les -privilégiés enfin, quels que fussent leurs costumes, qu’ils eussent -un manteau de noblesse, une soutane de prêtre ou une robe de palais, -tous, selon l’opinion de Danton, devaient contribuer aux charges qui ne -pesaient que sur le tiers État, c’est-à-dire sur l’immense majorité; la -nation attendait l’allégement du fardeau intolérable qu’elle ne pouvait -plus supporter, la résignation était épuisée.... - -“Si ces idées étaient acceptées, le roi, étant à leur tête, se trouverait -conquérir dans l’intérêt de tous une puissance supérieure à tous les -intérêts particuliers. Il pourrait réaliser les demandes de la raison et -donner, par un progrès réel, toute satisfaction aux lumières du siècle et -à la philosophie, interprète des vrais besoins de l’humanité. - -“En résumé, le plan conçu par Danton tendait à faire accomplir par le -roi une réforme progressive qui, laissant en place les pouvoirs établis, -les rendit, à leur insu ou malgré eux, les instruments de cette équité -pratique qui aurait fortifié à la fois tous les organes du mécanisme -social. M. de Barentin parla du projet de Danton à l’archevêque de Sens. -On parut l’approuver. Dans l’intervalle, la cour répudia ce système trop -net et trop décisif pour ses allures. Le parlement fut rappelé. Brienne -croyait en avoir gagné les principaux membres. - -“Mais trois mois après—novembre 1787—lorsque le roi fut obligé de -venir à Paris tenir un lit de justice à ce même parlement pour obtenir -l’enregistrement d’un édit portant création de divers emprunts jusqu’à -concurrence de 450 millions, Louis XVI rencontra la plus violente -opposition dans cette cour qu’on croyait réduite. Il voulut vaincre -l’opposition en exilant les plus récalcitrants, les conseillers Fréteau, -Sabatier, de Cabre et le duc d’Orléans.... Au mois de mai suivant, 1788, -le même parlement rendit un arrêt qui réclama avec véhémence ‘les lois -fondamentales de l’État; le droit de la nation d’accorder des subsides, -le droit des cours du royaume de vérifier les édits, de vérifier dans -chaque province les volontés du roi, et de n’en accorder l’enregistrement -qu’autant qu’elles seraient conformes aux lois constitutives de la -province, ainsi qu’aux fondamentales de l’État; l’immovabilité et -l’indépendance des magistrats, le droit pour chaque citoyen de n’être -jamais traduit en aucune manière devant d’autres juges que ses juges -naturels désignés par la loi; le droit, sans lequel tous les autres sont -inutiles, de n’être arrêté, par quelque ordre que ce soit, que pour être -remis sans délai entre les mains des juges compétents; protestant la -cour du parlement contre toute atteinte qui serait portée aux principes -exprimés.’ - -“M. de Barentin proposa de nouveau a Danton d’être secrétaire du sceau. -Celui-ci remercia en disant que l’état de la question politique était -changé. ‘Nous n’en sommes plus aux réformes modestes; ceux qui les ont -refusées ont refusé leur propre salut; nous sommes, dit-il plus nettement -que jamais, à la veille d’une révolution. Eh quoi! ne voyez-vous pas -venir l’avalanche?... - - A. R. C. DE SAINT-ALBIN.” - - - - -VI - -EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS - -SHOWING THE PRICE PAID FOR DANTON’S PLACE AT THE CONSEILS DU ROI, -THE SOURCES FROM WHICH HE DERIVED THE MONEY FOR ITS PAYMENT, AND THE -COMPENSATION PAID ON ITS SUPPRESSION IN 1791. - - -The three documents from which I quote below are of the utmost importance -to a special study of Danton, because they give us most of our evidence -as to the value of his post at the Conseils du Roi, and permit us -to understand his financial position during the first years of the -Revolution. - -They are three in number:— - -(_a_) The deed of sale by which Danton acquired the post from Me. Huet de -Paisy. This deed was discovered by Dr. Robinet (from whose “Vie Privée -de Danton” I take all the documents quoted) in the offices of a Parisian -solicitor, Me. Faiseau-Jaranne of the Rue Vivienne. This gentleman was -the direct successor in his business of the M. Dosfant who drew up the -deed seventy years before. - -I have quoted only the essential portions of this exceedingly interesting -piece of evidence. They give us the date of the transaction (March 29, -1787), the price paid, 78,000 livres, or rather (seeing that Danton -acquired the right to collect a debt of 11,000) 67,000 livres net -(say £2600); the fact that some £2000 of this was paid down out of -a loan raised for him by his relations in Champagne and his future -father-in-law, while some £160 he paid out of his savings, and the rest -remained owing. The receipt of 1789, which I have attached at the end of -the extract, shows us that by that time the balance had been paid over -to Me. Huet de Paisy, including interest at 5 per cent. Incidentally -there is mention of Danton moving to the Rue de la Tissanderie, whence we -shall find him drawing up his marriage-contract. - -(_b_) The marriage-contract between Danton and Antoinette Charpentier, -contains all the customary provisions of a French marriage-contract, -and is witnessed by the usual host of Mends, such as we find witnessing -Desmoulins’ contract, three or four years later. It tells us, among other -things, the position of his stepfather Recordain and the well-to-do -connections of the Charpentiers; but the point of principal interest is -the dowry—20,000 livres, that is, some £800—of which the greater part -(£600) went to pay his debt on the place he held as Avocat ès Conseils, -and the fact that he had remaining a patrimony of some £500. - -(_c_) The acknowledgment of the sum due as compensation to Danton when -the hereditary and purchasable office which he had bought was put an -end to. All students of the period know the vast pother that has been -raised on this point, the rumour that Danton was overpaid as a kind of -bribe from the court, &c. &c. All the direct evidence we have of the -transaction is in these few lines. They are just like all the other forms -of reimbursement, and are perfectly straightforward. - -The amount is somewhat less than we should give in England under similar -circumstances, for (1) the State does not allow for the entrance-fees -(10,000 livres), which Danton had had to pay, and (2) it taxes him 12 -per cent. for the _probable_ future taxation which would have fallen -by death, transference, &c., on the estate. Finally, he gets not quite -70,000 livres for a place which cost him first and last 78,000. - -To recapitulate: the general conclusions which these documents permit us -to draw with regard to Danton’s financial position are as follows:—The -price of the practice he bought was 68,000 livres; of this, 56,000 was -paid down, a sum obtained by borrowing 36,000 from Mdlle. Duhattoir (a -mortgagee discovered by the family solicitor, Millot), and 15,000 from -his future father-in-law, Charpentier, the remaining 5000 being paid out -of his own pocket. - -He thus remains in debt to Me. Huet de Paisy, the vendor, in a sum of -12,000 livres at 5 per cent. interest. - -To this must be added a sum of 10,000 livres entrance-fee, which he -presumably pays by recovering a debt of somewhat larger amount (11,000) -which he had bought along with the practice. - -When he marries, his wife’s dowry cancels his debt to Charpentier and -leaves him 5000 livres over, he possessing at that time in land and -houses at Arcy some 12,000—in all 17,000 livres or their value are in -hand in the summer of 1787, and his total liabilities at the same date -are the 36,000 to Mdlle. Duhattoir and the 12,000 to Me. de Paisy. He -starts his practice, therefore, with 31,000 livres, or about £1200 of net -liability. The practice was lucrative; we know that he is immediately -concerned with three important chancery cases; he becomes the lawyer of -two of the wealthiest men in the kingdom; he lives modestly. We know that -he pays the 12,000 with interest in December 1789, and though we do not -possess the receipt for Mdlle. Duhattoir’s repayment, it is eminently -probable that, under such conditions, he could easily have met a debt -of less than £800 out of four years’ successful practice in a close -corporation, which of necessity dealt with the most lucrative cases in -the kingdom. I think, therefore, one may regard the reimbursement which -he received in 1791 as presumably free from debt, and see him in no -financial difficulty at any period of the Revolution. This opinion has -the advantage of depending upon the support of all those who have lately -investigated the same documents—MM. Aulard, Robinet, earlier Bougeart -(but he is a special pleader), and finally Mr. Morse Stephens in England. - - -(_a_) FROM THE DEED OF SALE BETWEEN HUET DE PAISY AND DANTON, _29th March -1787_. - - “Par devant les conseillers du Roi, notaires, &c.... - - “... Me. Charles-Nicholas Huet de Paisy, écuyer, ancien avocat - au Parlement et ès conseils du Roi, demeurant à Paris, Rue de - la Tissanderie, paroisse de St. Jean en Grève ... a vendu... - a Me. Jacques-Georges Danton, avocat au Parlement, demeurant - à Paris, Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, paroisse St. Germain - l’Auxerrois ... l’état et office héréditaire d’avocat ès - conseils du Roi, faisant un des 70 créés par édit du mois de - septembre 1738.... - - “Ledit Me. Huet de Paisy vend en outre en dit Me. Danton - la pratique et clientèle attachées au sous dit office, et - consistant en dossiers, liasses, &c.... - - “Cette vente est faite... par ledit Me. Danton qui s’y oblige - d’entrer au lieu... dudit Me. Huet de Paisy.... Moyennant - la somme de 78,000 livres... dont 68,000 sont le prix de la - pratique et 10,000 les charges accoutumées.... - - “Ledit Me. Huet de Paisy reconnaît avoir reçu sur les 68,000 - livres (prix de la pratique) la somme de 56,000 livres dont - autant quittances. Quant au 12,000 livres de surplus Me. Danton - promet et s’oblige de les payer dans quatre années du jour de - sa reception audit office avec l’intérêt sur le pied du dernier - vingt ... (5 per cent.). - - “Déclare en outre une ... somme de 11,000 livres lui être - légitimement due par.... (_Then follow the details of this debt - to the office. Danton consents to pay the 68,000 on condition - that he may collect this debt from the client of the office, - and specially mentions the fact that, if he is not given full - powers to collect, the price shall be not 68,000, but only - 57,000 livres_).... - - “A ces présentes est intervenu Me. François-Jacques Millot, - procureur au Parlement, demeurant à Paris, rue Percée, paroisse - St. Séverin. Fondé de la procuration spéciale pour ce qui - suit dû, Sieur François Lenoir, maître de poste, et dame - Marie-Geneviève Camus, son épouse, de dame Elisabeth Camus, - veuve du Sieur Nicolas Jeannet et de demoiselle Anne Camus, - fille majeure, demeurant tous à Arcy-sur-Aube, passée en brevet - devant Morey notaire à Troyes, en présence de témoins, le - deux décembre dernier, l’original de laquelle dûment contrôlé - légalisé a été certifié véritable et déposé pour minute à Me. - Dosfant, l’un des notaires soussignés par acte du vingt-huit - du présent mois. Lequel a, par ces présentes, rendu et - constitué lesdits Sieur et dame Lenoir, dame veuve Jeannet et - demoiselle Camus, cautions et répondants solidaires dudit Me. - Danton envers ledit Me. Huet de Paisy, ce faisant les oblige - solidairement avec lui, séparément les uns avec les autres - au payement desdites douze mille livres qui restent dues sur - ladite pratique, intérêts d’icelle, et au payement des dix - mille livres, prix du corps dudit office aux époques ci-dessus - fixées, à quoi ledit Me. Millot, audit nom, affecte, oblige et - hypothèque sous ladite solidarité, généralement tous les biens, - meubles et immeubles, présents et à venir de ses constituants. - - “Ledit M. Danton déclare que dans, les cinquante-six mille - livres par lui ci-dessus payées, il y a trente-six mille livres - qui proviennent des deniers qu’il a empruntés à demoiselle - Françoise-Julie Duhauttoir, demoiselle majeure, et quinze mille - livres qu’il a empruntées du Sieur François-Jérôme Charpentier, - contrôleur des fermes, sous le cautionnement desdits Sieur et - dame Lenoir, dame veuve Jeannet et demoiselle Camus.... (_What - follows is the receipt in full, signed by Huet de Paisy in - December 1789._) - - “Et le trois décembre mil sept cent quatre-vingt-neuf, est - comparu devant les notaires à Paris, soussignés, ledit Me. Huet - de Paisy, nommé et qualifié en l’acte ci-devant, demeurant à - Paris, rue des Couronnes, près de Belleville,—Lequel a reconnu - avoir reçu dudit Me. Danton aussi ci-devant nommé, qualifié - et domicilié, à ce présent, la somme de treize mille cinq - cent livres composée, 1ᵒ des douze mille livres qui, sur le - prix du traiteé ci-devant, avaient été stipulées payables en - quatre années du jour de la réception dudit Me. Danton et sur - lesquelles ce dernier devait exercer l’effet de la garantie - contractée par ledit Me. de Paisy, par le traiteé ci-devant, - relativement à l’affaire du Sieur Papillon de la Grange, de - l’effet de laquelle garantie, quoique cette affaire ne soit pas - encore terminée, ledit Me. Danton décharge ledit Me. de Paisy; - 2ᵒ et de quinze cents livres pours les intérêts de ladite somme - de douze mille livres échus jusqu’au premier octobre dernier - qu’ils ont cessé de courir, de convention entre les parties; de - laquelle somme de treize mille cinq cents livres et de toutes - choses au sujet dudit traité, ledit Me. Huet de Paisy quitte - et décharge Me. Danton;—Dont acte fait et passé à Paris, en - l’étude, lesdits jour et an et ont signé.” - - -(_b_) FROM THE MARRIAGE-CONTRACT OF DANTON AND MDLLE. CHARPENTIER, _9th -June 1787_. - - “Par devant les conseillers du Roi, &c.... - - “Me. Georges-Jacques Danton, avocat ès conseils du Roi, - demeurant à Paris, rue de la Tissanderie, paroisse de Jean - en Grève, fils du defunt Sieur Jacques Danton, bourgeois - d’Arcis-sur-Aube, et dame Jeanne-Madeleine Camus, sa veuve - actuellement épouse du Sieur Jean Reordain négociant audit - Arcis-sur-Aube, de présent à Paris, logée chez ledit sieur, son - fils, à ce présent, stipulant le dit Me. Danton d’une part. - - “Et Sieur François-Jerome Charpentier, controleur des Fermes, - et dame Angelique-Octavie Soldini, son épouse... demeurant à - Paris, quai de l’École, paroisse de St. Germain l’Auxerrois, - stipulant pour... demoiselle Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier - leur fille majeure... d’autre part. - - “... Ont arrêté les conventions civiles dudit mariage ... à - savoir... - - (_Then follow the names of the witnesses to the contract; - their only importance is the idea they give us of the social - position of the two bourgeois families concerned. They include - Papillon, a surgeon; Dupont, a lawyer of the Châtelet; Duprat - and Gousseau, barristers; Wislet, a banker; Mme. Tavaval, widow - of a painter to the Court, and so forth._)... - - “... Les biens dudit futur époux consistent:— - - “(1ᵒ) Dans l’office d’avocat aux conseils... acheté à Me. Huet - de Paisy... le 29 mars dernier... moyennant la somme de 68,000 - livres qu’il doit en entier soit audit Me. Huet de Paisy, soit - aux personnes qui lui ont prêté les sommes qu’il a payées - comptant. - - “(2ᵒ) Dans de terres, maisons et heritages situé audit - Arcis-sur Aube et aux environs de valeur de la somme de 12,000 - livres.... - - “Les père et mère de ladite demoiselle lui donnent en dot - ... une somme de 18,000 livres... pour s’acquitter de cette - somme ils... déchargent ledit Me. Danton de celle de 15,000 - livres qu’ils lui ont prêtée, et qui a été employée par lui au - payement de partie du prix... attachée à l’office dudit Me. - Huet de Paisy.... - - “Ils ont présentement payé audit Me. Danton les 3000 livres - completant les dix huit milles livres. - - “Enfin ladite demoiselle future épouse apporte ... la somme de - 2000 livres provenant de ses gains et épargnes.” - - (_The remainder of the document is a statement of the - “community property” in marriage and the settlements made in - case of decease, the whole regulated by the “custom of Paris.” - They have no interest for this book._) - - -(_c_) FROM THE NOTE LIQUIDATING DANTON’S PLACE AT THE CONSEILS DU ROI AND -HIS RECEIPT FOR THE REIMBURSEMENT, _8th and 11th of October 1791_. HELD -BY DE MONTMORIN IN HIS OFFICE. - - “Nous, Louis-César-Alexandre-Dufresne Saint-Léon, commissaire - du Roi, directeur général de la liquidation. - - “Attendu la remise à nous faite des titres originels... - concernant l’office d’avocat ès conseils du Roi dont était - titulairé ... le Sieur Georges-Jacques Danton. - - “Ledit office liquidé... par décret de l’Assemblée Nationale - ... sanctionné par le Roi le deux octobre, à la somme de 69,031 - livres 4 sols.... Avons delivré au Sieur Danton... la présente - reconnaissance définitive de la dite somme de 69,031 livres 4 - sols, qui sera payée a la caisse de l’extraordinaire.... - - “M. Georges-Jacques Danton, avocat ès conseils, en présence - des soussignés... a reconnu... la liquidation... de l’office - d’avocat ès conseils du Roi dont été titulairé... ledit - Georges-Jacques Danton... savoir. - - “(1ᵒ) 78,000 livres... principale moyennant laquelle il a - acquis l’office le 29 Mars 1787. - - “(2ᵒ) 240 livres pour le remboursement du droit de mutation. - - “(3ᵒ) 416 livres 4 sols pour celui du Marc d’or. - - “(4ᵒ) 125 livres pour celui des frais de Sceau. - - “Deduction faite de 9750 pour le huitième du prix retenu.... - Au moyen du paisement effectif qui sera fait audit Sieur Danton - de ... 69,031 livres 4 sols ... quitte et décharge l’état, M. - Dufresne de Saint-Léon et tous autres de ladite somme de 69,031 - livres 4 sols ... &c.” (_The remainder of the document is the - mention of the original deed of sale having been shown to the - liquidator, and the correction of certain clerical errors in a - former document._) - - - - -VII - -EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS - -SHOWING THE SITUATION OF DANTON’S APARTMENT IN THE COUR DE COMMERCE, ITS -FURNITURE AND VALUE, &C. - - -The extracts given below are of a purely personal interest, and do not -add anything material to our knowledge of the Revolution. On the other -hand, they are of value to those who are chiefly concerned with Danton’s -personality, and with the details of his daily life. They show what kind -of establishment he kept, with its simple furniture, its two servants, -its reserve of money, &c., and enable us to make an accurate picture of -the flat in which he lived, and of its position. It is from them that I -have drawn the material for my description of the rooms in Appendix II. -on p. 329. Incidentally, they tell us the profession of M. Charpentier’s -brother (a notary), give us a view of the religious burial practised in -the spring of 1793, show us, as do many of his phrases elsewhere, the -entire absence of anti-clericalism in Danton’s family as in his own mind, -the number of the house, the name of its proprietor, Danton’s wardrobe, -his wine, the horse and carriage which he bought for his hurried return -from Belgium, and many other petty details which are of such interest in -the study of an historical character. - -Like most of the documents quoted in this Appendix, they are due to the -industry and research of Danton’s biographer, Dr. Robinet, and will be -found in his Memoir on Danton’s private life. They are three in number:— - -(_a_) The various declarations of Thuiller, the justice of the peace -for the Section du Théâtre Français. He put seals upon the doors and -furniture (as is the French custom) upon the death of Danton’s first -wife. This death occurred on February 11, 1793, while Danton was away on -mission in Belgium, and the visit of the justice of the peace is made on -the following day, the 12th. Danton returns at once, and the seals are -removed on various occasions, from the 24th of March to the 5th of April, -in the presence of Danton himself, or of his father-in-law, Charpentier. - -(_b_) The inventory which accompanied the sealing and unsealing of the -apartments. - -(_c_) The raising of the seals which were put upon the house after -Danton’s execution. Interesting chiefly for the astonishing writing and -spelling of the new functionaries. - -All the three were obtained by Dr. Robinet from the lawyers who have -succeeded to, or inherited from, the original “Etudes” where the -documents were deposited. - - “Cejourd’hui douze février mil sept cent quatre-vingt-treize, - l’an deuxième de la République française, dix heures du matin, - nous, Claude-Louis Thuiller, juge de paix de la section du - Théâtre-Français, dite de Marseille, à Paris, sur ce que - nous avons appris que la citoyenne Antoinette-Gabrielle - Charpentier, épouse du citoyen Georges-Jacques Danton, député - à la Convention Nationale, était décédée le jour d’hier - en son appartement, rue des Cordeliers, cour du Commerce, - dans l’étendue de notre section, et attendu que ledit - citoyen Danton est absent par commission nationale, nous - sommes transporté avec le citoyen Antoine-Marie Berthout, - notre secrétaire-greffier ordinaire, en une maison sise à - Paris, rue des Cordeliers, cour du Commerce, et parvenus à - l’entrée de l’escalier qui conduit à l’appartement dudit - citoyen Danton, nous avons trouvé des prêtres de la paroisse - de Saint-André-des-Arts et le cortège qui accompagnait - l’enlèvement du corps de la d. Charpentier, épouse dudit - citoyen Danton, et étant montés au premier étage au-dessus de - l’entresol et entrés dans l’appartement dudit citoyen, dans un - salon ayant vue sur la rue des Cordeliers, nous y avons trouvé - et par-devant nous est comparue la citoyenne Marie Fougerot, - fille domestique dudit citoyen Danton.—Laquelle nous a dit - que ladite citoyenne Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, épouse - dudit citoyen Danton, est décédée dans la nuit du dimanche - au lundi dernier en l’appartement où nous sommes, par suite - de maladie; que ledit Danton est absent par commission de la - Convention Nationale; que la mère de ladite défunte Charpentier - a envoyé chercher hier son fils encore en bas âge, qu’elle - comparante, le citoyen Jacques Fougerot, son frère qui, depuis - quinze jours, habite la maison où nous sommes, et la citoyenne - Catherine Motin, aussi fille domestique dudit citoyen Danton, - sont les seuls qui restent dans l’appartement dudit Danton; - que les clefs des meubles et effets étant dans l’appartement - où nous sommes ont été prises et emportées par la mère de - ladite défunte Charpentier qui était présente à ses derniers - moments; qu’elle vient d’envoyer chercher lesdites clefs chez - le citoyen Charpentier, qui demeure quai de l’École. Et a signé - M. Fougerot. - - “A l’instant est comparu le citoyen François-Jérôme - Charpentier, demeurant à Paris, quai de l’École, nᵒ 3, section - du Louvre.—Lequel nous a représenté un paquet de clefs.” - - -(_a_) EXTRACTS FROM THE “APPOSITION DES SCELLÉS” BY M. THUILLER, JUSTICE -OF THE PEACE, ON FEBRUARY 12, 1793, AND FROM THE “VACATIONS” BY THE SAME. - - “Surquoy nous, Juge de Paix susdit ... avons apposé nos scellés - comme il suit. Premierment dans le dit salon ayant vu sur la - rue des Cordeliers ... dans un petit salon étant en suite ayant - même vue ... dans la chambre à coucher étant en suite et ayant - même vue.... - - “Le citoyen Charpentier a fait observer des louis que ledit - citoyen Danton avait remis à sa femme pour payer aux mandats - de ceux qui viendraient le rejoindre dans la Belgique.—Des - scellés ... sur une porte d’un cabinet noir qui communique - avec une petite chambre à coucher ... sur la porte d’entrée - dudit cabinet noir ... dans une chambre dernière le salon - ayant vue sur la cour du Commerce... dans un anti-chambre près - de la cuisine ayant vue sur la cour du Commerce.... Dans une - chambre de domestiques à l’entresol.... Dans la petite salle - audessous.... Dans la salle a manger ayant vue sur la cour du - Commerce.... Dans une chambre en suite à toilette.... Dans la - cuisine.... Dans la cave.... - - “Et le 24 février 1793, l’an deuxième de la République - française, est comparu devant nous le citoyen Georges-Jacques - Danton, député à la Convention ... lequel nous a requis ... de - procéder à la levée des dits scellés ... apposés après le décès - de la dite dame (_the word “citoyenne” is evidently still a - little unfamiliar_) Antoinette Charpentier.... - - “Ensuite à la réquisition des parties nous nous sommes ... - transportés dans une maison, rue du Pæon, Hotel de Tours ... où - il a été procédé à l’estimation d’un cabriolet, d’un cheval, - d’une jument et harnais.... Le C. Antoine-François Charpentier, - notaire, demeurant rue du l’Arbre-Sec, a comparu ... et le C. - François-Jerome Charpentier, nᵒ. 3 Quai de l’École....” - - (_The rest of the document is a long account of the raising of - the seals on various occasions, from March 1 to April 5. It - contains nothing of interest._) - - -(_b_) SUMMARY OF THE INVENTORY TAKEN IN DANTON’S HOUSE AFTER HIS FIRST -WIFE’S DEATH, _25th February 1793_. - - “L’an mil sept cent quatre vingt-treize, le deuxième de la - République française, le vingt-cinq février, huit heures du - matin. - - “A la requête de Georges-Jacques Danton, député a la Convention - Rationale, demeurant, etc. ... il va être par lesdits notaires - a Paris soussignés, procédé à l’inventaire de tous les biens, - meubles, &c.... dans les lieux composant l’appartement du - premier étage d’une maison située a Paris, rue des Cordeliers, - passage du Commerce, appartenant au Sieur Boullenois.” - - (_Here follow the details of the Inventory, of which I give a - summary in English._) - - Livres - - _In the Cellar._—Three pieces of Burgundy, 62 bottles - of claret, 92 bottles of Burgundy, a small barrel of - white wine 600 - - _In the Kitchen._—The usual _batterie de cuisine_ of a - French household, enumerated in detail, and valued at 208 - - _In the Pantry and Offices of the Kitchen._—A few chairs, - a pair of scales, cups, saucers, and so forth 98 - - _In a Bedroom adjoining, and giving on the Cour de - Commerce._—The usual furniture; probably a dressing-room. - Here was the watch found on Danton after his execution, - his writing-table, &c.: the whole, including dishes in - the cupboard and a stove 264 - - _In a larger Bedroom giving on the Rue des - Cordeliers._—After the usual furniture, a small - piano, a guitar, two looking-glasses, and a writing-table 990 - - _In a little Room opening out of this._—Usual furniture - of a small study or boudoir, furnished in the white - wood of the period 470 - - _In the Drawing-room._—The furniture, mostly grey and - white, no piece worth any special mention 992 - - A large cupboard near the chimney contained some summer - clothes put away, and the sword which Danton had worn - in the old Bataillon of the Cordeliers. The whole - valued at 332 - - _In a little Room looking on an inner court_ (evidently - used as a Library, the list of whose books will be found - on p. 380):—Furniture, chiefly bookcases, to the value of 160 - - _In a little Lumber-room._—Three empty trunks and a bed 16 - - _In two little Rooms adjoining._—Furniture (mostly put away) 214 - - The rest of the inventory mentions the household linen, the - clothes, the plate, and the jewels. The summary is as follows:— - - Household linen, in all 734 - - Clothes, including every item 925 - - Plate, including several wedding presents, marked with - initials 291 - - Knives and forks other than plate 20 - - Jewellery (including two women’s rings, set with brilliants, - and a wedding-ring) 509 - - This gives us the whole value of the furniture, clothing, &c., - in the house, and it amounts to a total of just over 9000 - livres, that is, about £360. There was £50 in money in the - house, which he had left with his wife before going off to - Belgium. - - -(_c_) EXTRACTS FROM THE RAISING OF THE SEALS AFTER DANTON’S DEATH. - - “L’an trois de la République une et indivisible, cejourd’hui - vingt-cinq messidor, neuf heures de matin, à la requête du - bureau du Domaine national du département de Paris et en - vertu de son arrêté en _datte_ du seize susdit mois, signé - Rennesson et Guillotin, portant nomination de nous Jourdain, - pour en notre qualité de commissaire dudit bureau, à l’effet - de nous transporter, assisté de deux commissaires civils de - la section du Théâtre-Français, et d’un commissaire de toute - autorité constituée qui aurait fait apposer des scellés dans la - demeure de feu Jacques-Georges Danton, condamné à mort le seize - germinal, an deuxième, par le Tribunal Révolutionnaire établi à - Paris, y procéder à la levée d’iceux, et pareillement à celle - de ceux dudit bureau du domaine national en ladite demeure, - sise rue des Cordeliers, nᵒ 24, le tout en présence du citoyen - Charpentier, beau-père dudit feu Danton et tuteur d’Antoine et - François-Georges Danton, enfants mineurs dudit _deffunt_, et de - la citoyenne feue Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, fille dudit - citoyen Charpentier, ayeul et tuteur desdits mineurs; faire - ensuite concurremment avec ledit tuteur, et en présence de la - citoyenne seconde femme en secondes noces dudit Danton, ou de - son fondé de pouvoir, le recollement des meubles et effets - dudit _deffunt_ sur l’inventaire qui en a été précédemment - fait, ensuite mettre le logement cy-dessus désigné, et - pareillement les titres et papiers, meubles et effets qui se - trouveront à la disposition dudit citoyen Charpentier au nom et - qualité qu’il procède, moyennant décharge valable, destituer le - gardien préposé à la garde des scellés, duquel remise lui sera - faite par extrait de ladite destitution. - - “Nous, Jean-Baptiste Jourdain cy-dessus _qualiffié_, - demeurant audit Paris, rue de la Liberté, nᵒ 86, section du - Théâtre-Français. - - “Étant accompagné des citoyens Beurnier et Leblanc, - commissaires adjoints au comité civil de la susdite section, - requis par nous audit comité civil, sommes ensemble et en vertu - de l’arrêté ci-dessus _datté_, transporté en la demeure sus - _ditte_, rue des Cordeliers, _ditte_ de l’_Écolle_ de Santé, - audit nᵒ 24, entré de la cour du Commerce, où étant nous avons - requis le citoyen Desgranges, gardien, de nous faire ouverture - lors de l’intervention dudit citoyen Charpentier et de la - citoyenne Gély, seconde femme dudit Danton.... - - “Clos le présent à deux heures de relevée dudit jour, - vingt-cinq messidor, an troisième de la République une et - indivisible, et ont lesdits citoyens Charpentier et Gély, - ainsi que nos adjoints et ledit citoyen Desgranges, signés - le présent avec nous, après lecture, approuvé trente-neuf - mots rayés comme nuls, ainsi signés Gély, Charpentier Le - Blanc, Desgranges, Jourdain et Beurnier. Plus bas est écrit. - Enregistré à Paris, le premier thermidor an 3ᵒ. Reçu quatre - livres. Signé Caron. Deux mots rayés nuls à la présente. - - “Pour _coppie_ conforme, délivrée par nous, membres du bureau - du Domaine national du département de Paris. - - “A Paris, le sept thermidor an troisième de la Republique une - et indivisible. - - Signé RENESSON, DUCHATEL. - - “Collationné à l’original, déposé aux archives de Seine-et-Oise. - - _L’archiviste_, - SAINTE-MARIE MÉVIL.” - -The lack of education in the Robespierrian functionary is worth noting. - - - - -VIII - -CATALOGUE OF DANTON’S LIBRARY - - -No part of the very scanty evidence we possess upon Danton’s personal -life and habits is of more value than this little list. It is the small -and carefully chosen bookcase of a man thoroughly conversant with -English and Italian as well as with his own tongue. He buys a work in -the original almost invariably, and collects, in a set of less than two -hundred works, classic after classic. He has read his Johnson and his -Pope; he knows Adam Smith; he has been at the pains to study Blackstone. -It must be carefully noted that every book he bought was his own choice. -There were only a few legal summaries at the old home at Arcis, and -Danton was a man who never had a reputation for learning or for letters, -still less had he cause to buy a single volume for effect. I know of few -documents more touching than this catalogue, coming to the light after -seventy years of silence, and showing us the mind of a man who was cut -off suddenly and passed into calumny. He had read familiarly in their own -tongues Rabelais and Boccaccio and Shakespeare. - -_The following volumes are in English_:— - - A translation of Plutarch’s Lives 8 vols. - Dryden’s translation of Virgil 4 ” - Shakespeare 8 ” - Pope 6 ” - Sussini’s Letters 1 vol. - The Spectator 12 vols. - Clarissa Harlowe 8 ” - A translation of Don Quixote (probably Smollett’s) 4 vols. - ” ” Gil Blas 4 ” - Essay on Punctuation 1 vol. - Johnson’s Dictionary (in folio) 2 vols. - Blackstone 1 vol. - Life of Johnson 2 vols. - Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” (number of vols. - given as 23, probably an error) - Robertson’s History of Scotland 2 ” - ” ” America 2 ” - Works of Dr. Johnson 7 ” - -_The following are in Italian_:— - -(The names are not given in Italian by the lawyer, and I can only follow -his version.) - - Venuti: History of Modern Rome 2 vols. - Guischardini: History of Italy 4 ” - Fontanini: Italian Eloquence 3 ” - Denina’s Italian Revolutions 2 ” - Caro’s translation of Virgil 2 ” - Boccaccio’s Decameron 2 ” - Ariosto 5 ” - Boiardi’s edition of the “Orlando Furioso” 4 ” - Métastase (?) 8 ” - Dalina (?) 7 ” - Reichardet (?) 3 ” - Davila: History of the French Civil Wars 2 ” - “Letters on Painting and Sculpture” 5 ” - Il Morgante de Pulci, 12 mo 3 ” - -_The remainder (except one or two legal books and classics) are in -French._ - - Métamorphoses d’Ovide, traduit par Banier, in 4to 4 vols. - Œuvres de Rousseau, 4to 16 ” - Maison Rustique, 4to 2 ” - Lucrèce, traduit par La Grange, 8vo 2 ” - Amours de Daphnis et Chloé, 4to, Paris, 1745 - Œuvres de Lucien, traduit du grec, 8vo 6 ” - — de Montesquieu, 8vo 5 ” - — de Montaigne, 8vo 3 ” - — de Malby, 8vo 13 ” - — Complètes d’Helvétius, 8vo 4 ” - Philosophie de la nature, 8vo 7 ” - Histoire Philosophique, de l’Abbé Raynal, 8vo 10 ” - Œuvres de Boulanger, 8vo 5 ” - Caractères de la Bruyère, 8vo 3 ” - Œuvres de Brantôme, 8vo 8 ” - — de Rabelais, 8vo 2 ” - Fables de La Fontaine, avec les figures de Fessard, 8vo 6 ” - Contes de La Fontaine, avec belles figures, 8vo 2 ” - Œuvres de Scarron, 8vo 7 ” - — de Piron, 8vo 7 ” - — de Voltaire, 12mo 91 ” - Lettres de Sévigné, 12mo 8 ” - Œuvres de Corneille, 12 mo 6 ” - — de Racine, 12mo 3 ” - — de Gresset, 12mo 2 ” - — de Molière, 12mo 8 ” - — de Crébillon, 12mo 3 ” - — de Fiévé (sic), 12 mo 5 ” - — de Regnard, 12mo 4 ” - Traité des Délits, 12mo 1 vol. - Le Sceau Enlevé, 12mo 3 vols. - Tableau de la Révolution Française, 13 cahiers - Dictionnaire de Bayle, folio 5 vols. - César de Turpin, 4to 3 ” - Œuvres de Pasquier, folio 2 ” - Histoire de France de Velly, Villaret et Garnier, 12mo 30 ” - Histoire du P. Hénault, 8vo 25 ” - — Ecclésiastique de Fleury, 4to 25 ” - — d’Angleterre de Rapin, 4to 16 ” - Dictionnaire de l’Académie, 4to 2 ” - Corpus Doctorum, 4to 1 vol. - Dictionnaire Historique, 8vo 8 vols. - Abrégé de l’Histoire des Voyages, 8vo 23 ” - Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle de Bomard, 8vo 15 ” - Virgile de Desfontaines, 8vo 4 ” - Œuvres de Buffon, 12mo, figures 58 ” - Hérodote de Larcher, 8vo 7 ” - Œuvres de Démosthenes et d’Eschyle, par Auger, 4to 4 ” - Histoire Ancienne de Rollin, 12mo 14 ” - Cours d’Etudes de Condillac, 12mo 16 ” - Histoire Moderne, 12 mo 30 ” - — du Bas-Empire, 12mo 22 ” - Corpus Juris Civilis, folio 2 ” - Encyclopédie par Ordre de Matières, toutes les - livraisons excepté la dernière (1). - -The whole is valued at just over a hundred pounds (2800 livres). - - - - -IX - -EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMOIR WRITTEN IN 1846 BY THE SONS OF DANTON - - -This memoir was written by Danton’s sons. Both survived him, the one by -fifty-five, the other by sixty-four years (1849, 1858). Their fortune -was restored to them by the Republic two years after their father’s -death (13th April 1796). Their guardian, Charpentier (their maternal -grandfather), died in 1804; they then were taken in by Danton’s mother, -Mme. Recordain, who was still living at Arcis. She died in October -1813, a year in which the youngest came of age, and they sold out the -greater part of the land in which Danton’s fortune had been invested, -and appear to have put the capital into one of the new factories which -sprang up after the peace. In 1832 we find them partners and heads of a -cotton-spinning establishment at Arcis, which they maintain till their -deaths. They left, unfortunately, no surviving sons. - -The manuscript was written for Danton’s nephew, the son of a younger -brother. This nephew became inspector of the University of Paris, and -lent the MSS. to several historians, among others, Michelet and Bougeart. -It finally passed into the possession of the latter, who gave it to Dr. -Robinet. This writer printed it in the appendix of the “Vie Privée,” from -which I take it. - -It is not a precise historical document, such as are the official -reports, receipts, &c., upon which much of this book depends. Thus, -it ignores the dowry of Mdlle. Charpentier and the exact date of the -second marriage; it is weak on some points, especially dates, but there -attaches to it the interest due to the very quality from which these -errors proceed—I mean its familiar reminiscences. While the memory of -these men, advanced in life, is at fault in details, it is more likely to -be accurate in the motives and tendencies it describes than are we of a -hundred years later. - - “Rien au monde ne nous est plus cher que la mémoire de notre - père. Elle a été, elle est encore tous les jours calomniée, - outragée d’une manière affreuse; aussi notre désir le plus - ardent a-t-il toujours été de voir l’histoire lui rendre - justice. - - “Georges-Jacques Danton, notre père, se maria deux fois. Il - épousa d’abord en juin 1787, Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, - qui mourut le 10 février 1793. Dans le cours de cette même - année 1793, nous ne pourrions pas indiquer l’époque precise, - il épousa, en secondes noces, Mademoiselle Sophie Gély, qui - vivait encore il y a deux ans (nous ne savons pas si elle - est morte depuis). Notre père en mourant ne laissa que deux - fils issus de son premier mariage. Nous sommes nés l’un le 18 - juin 1790, et l’autre le 2 février 1792; notre père mourut le - 5 avril 1794; nous n’avons donc pas pu avoir le bonheur de - recevoir ses enseignements, ses confidences, d’être initiés à - ses pensées à ses projets. Au moment de sa mort tout chez lui - a été saisi, confisqué, et plus tard, aucun de ses papiers, à - l’exception de ses titres de propriété, ne nous a été rendu. - Nous avons été élevés par M. François-Jérôme Charpentier, notre - grand-père maternel et notre tuteur. Il ne parlait jamais - sans attendrissement de Danton, son gendre. M. Charpentier, - qui habitait Paris, y mourut en 1804, à une époque où, sans - doute, il nous trouvait encore trop jeunes pour que nous - puissions bien apprécier ce qu’il aurait pu nous raconter de - la vie politique de notre père, car il s’abstint de nous en - parler. Du reste, il avait environ quatre-vingts ans quand il - mourut; et, dans ses dernières années, son esprit paraissait - beaucoup plus occupé de son avenir dans un autre monde que de - ce qui s’était passé dans celui-ci. Après la mort de notre - grand-père Charpentier, M. Victor Charpentier, son fils, fut - nommé notre tuteur. Il mourut en 1810. Quoiqu’il habitât - Paris, nous revînmes en 1805 à Arcis, pour ne plus le quitter. - La fin de notre enfance et le commencement de notre jeunesse - s’y écoulèrent auprès de la mère de notre père. Elle était - affaiblie par l’âge, les infirmités et les chagrins. C’était - toujours les yeux remplis de larmes qu’elle nous entretenait - de son fils, des innombrables témoignages d’affection qu’il - lui avait donnés, des tendres caresses dont il l’accablait. - Elle fit de fréquents voyages à Paris; il aimait tant à la - voir à ses côtés! Il avait en elle une confiance entière; elle - en était digne, et, s’il eût eu des secrets, elle les eût - connus, et nous les eussions connus par elle. Très souvent - elle nous parlait de la Révolution; mais, en embrasser tout - l’ensemble d’un seul coup d’œil, en apprécier les causes, en - suivre la marche, en juger les hommes et les événements, en - distinguer tous les partis, deviner leur but, démêler les fils - qui les faisaient agir, tout cela n’était pas chose facile, - on conviendra: aussi, quoique la mère de Danton eût beaucoup - d’intelligence et d’esprit, on ne sera pas surpris que, d’après - ses récits, nous n’ayons jamais connu la Révolution que d’une - manière extrêmement confuse... - - “Sa mère, d’accord avec tous ceux qui nous ont si souvent parlé - de lui pour l’avoir connu, et que notre position sociale ne - fera, certes, pas suspecter de flatterie, sa mère nous l’a - toujours dépeint comme le plus honnête homme que l’on puisse - rencontrer, comme l’homme le plus aimant, le plus franc, le - plus loyal, le plus désintéressé, le plus généreux, le plus - dévoué à ses parents, à ses amis, à son pays natal et à sa - patrie. Quoi d’étonnant, nous dira-t-on? Dans la bouche d’une - mère, que prouve un pareil éloge? Rien, sinon qu’elle adorait - son fils. On ajoutera: Est-ce que pour juger un homme la - postérité devra s’en rapporter aux déclarations de la mère - et des fils de cet homme? Non, sans doute, elle ne le devra - pas, nous ne convenons. Mais aussi, pour juger ce même homme - devra-t-elle s’en rapporter aux déclarations de ses ennemis? - Elle ne le devra pas davantage. Et pourtant que ferait-elle si, - pour juger Danton, elle ne consultait que les ‘Mémoires’ de - ceux qu’il a toujours combattus?... - - “On a reproché à Danton d’avoir exploité la Révolution pour - amasser scandaleusement une fortune énorme. Nous allons prouver - d’une manière incontestable que c’est à très grand tort qu’on - lui a adressé ce reproche. Pour atteindre ce but, nous aliens - comparer l’état de sa fortune au commencement de la Révolution - avec l’état de sa fortune au moment de sa mort. - - “Au moment où la Révolution éclata, notre père était avocat aux - conseils du Roi. C’est un fait dont il n’est pas nécessaire de - fournir la preuve: ses ennemis eux-mêmes ne le contestent pas. - Nous ne pouvons pas établir d’un manière précise et certaine - ce qu’il possédait à cette époque, cependant nous disons que, - s’il ne possédait rien autre chose (ce qui n’est pas prouvé) - _il possédait au moins sa charge_, et voici sur ce point notre - raisonnement:— - - “(1ᵒ) Quelques notes qui sont en notre possession nous prouvent - que Jacques Danton, notre grand-père, décédé a Arcis, le 24 - février 1762, laissa des immeubles sur le finage de Plancy et - sur celui d’Arcis, il est donc présumable que notre père, né - le 26 octobre 1759, et par consequent resté mineur en très bas - âge, a dû posséder un patrimoine quelconque, si modique qu’on - veuille le supposer.”... - - [Here follow guesses as to how he paid for his place in the - _Conseils_. They are of no importance now, as we possess - the documents which give us this (p. 365). The only point - of interest in the passage omitted is the phrase, “probably - our mother brought some dowry.” We know its amount (p. 366), - but the sentence is an interesting proof of the complete - dislocation which Germinal produced in the family.] - - “Nous allons établir que ce qu’il possédait au moment de sa - mort n’était que l’équivalent à peu près de sa charge d’avocat - aux conseils. Nous n’avons jamais su s’il a été fait des actes - de partage de son patrimoine et de celui de ses femmes, ni, si, - au moment de la confiscation de ses biens, il en a été dressé - inventaire, mais nous savons très-bien et très-exactement ce - que nous avons recueilli de sa succession, et nous allons le - dire, sans rester dans le vague sur aucun point, car c’est ici - que, comme nous l’avons annoncé, nos arguments vont être basés - sur des actes authentiques. - - “Nous ferons observer que l’état que nous allons donner - comprend sans distinction ce qui vient de notre père et de - notre mère. - - “Une loi de février 1791 ordonna que le prix des charges et - offices supprimés serait remboursé par l’État aux titulaires. - La charge que Danton possédait était de ce nombre. Nous n’avons - jamais su, pas même approximativement, combien elle lui avait - coûté. Il en reçut le remboursement sans doute, car précisément - vers cette époque, il commença à acheter des immeubles dont - voici le detail:— - - “Le 24 mars 1791, il achète aux enchères, moyennant - quarante-huit mille deux cents livres, un bien national - provenant du clergé, consistant en une ferme appelée - Nuisement, située sur le finage de Chassericourt, canton de - Chavanges, arrondissement d’Arcis, département de l’Aube, à - sept lieues d’Arcis.... Danton avait acheté cette ferme la - somme de quarante-huit mille deux cents, ci - - 48,200 liv. - ------ - A reporter 48,200 liv. - - “12 avril 91.—II achète aux enchères du district d’Arcis, par - l’entremise de maître Jacques Jeannet-Boursier.... - - [Then follows a list of purchases made in the month of April - 1791, of which the most important is an extension to the house - at Arcis—the total of these is 33,600 livres; and in October - 1791 a few acres of land in the town and a patch of wood for - 3160 livres. Then follows the sum total.] - - “Total du prix de toutes les acquisitions d’immeubles - faites par Danton en mil sept cent quatre-vingt-onze: - quatre-vingt-quatre mille neuf cent soixante livres, ci - - 84,960 liv. - - “On doit remarquer qu’il est présumable que la plus grande - partie de ces acquisitions a dû être payée en assignats qui, - à cette époque, perdaient déjà de leur valeur et dont, par - conséquent, la valeur nominale était supérieure à leur valeur - réelle en argent, d’où il résulterait que le prix réel en - argent des immeubles ci-dessus indiqués aurait été inférieur à - 84,960 livres. - - “Depuis cette dernière acquisition du 8 novembre 1791 jusqu’à - sa mort, Danton ne fit plus aucune acquisition importante:—... - - [Here then is what Danton left.] - - “(1ᵒ) La ferme de Nuisement (vendue par nous le 23 juillet - 1813); - - “(2ᵒ) Sa modeste et vieille maison d’Arcis, avec sa dépendance, - le tout contenant non plus 9 arpents, 3 denrées, 14 carreaux - (ou bien 4 hectares, 23 ares, 24 centiares) seulement, comme - au 13 avril 1791, époque où il en fit l’acquisition de - Mademoiselle Piot, mais par suite des additions qu’il y avait - faites, 17 arpents, 3 denrées, 52 carreaux (ou bien 786 ares, - 23); - - “(3ᵒ) 19 arpents, 1 denrées, 41 carreaux (898 ares, 06) de pré - et saussaie; - - “(4ᵒ) 8 arpents, 1 denrée, 57 carreaux (369 ares, 96) de bois; - - “(5ᵒ) 2 denrées, 40 carreaux (14 ares, 07) de terre située dans - l’enceinte d’Arcis. - - “Nous déclarons à qui voudra l’entendre et au besoin nous - déclarons _sous la foi du serment_, que nous n’avons recueilli - de la succession de Georges-Jacques Danton, notre père, - et d’Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, notre mère, rien, - absolument rien autre chose que les immeubles dont nous venons - de donner l’état, que quelques portraits de famille et le buste - en plâtre de notre mère, lesquels, longtemps après la mort de - notre second tuteur, nous furent remis par son épouse, et que - quelques effets mobiliers qui ne méritent pas qu’on en fasse - l’énumeration ni la description, mais que nous n’en avons - recueilli aucune somme d’argent, aucune créance, en un mot rien - de ce qu’on appelle valeurs mobilières, à l’exception pourtant - d’une rente de 100 fr. 5 p. 100 dont MM. Defrance et Détape, - receveurs de rentes à Paris, rue Chabannais, nᵒ 6, ont opéré la - vente pour nous le 18 juin 1825, rente qui avait été achetée - pour nous par l’un de nos tuteurs.... - - “On pourra nous faire une objection qui mérite une réponse; on - pourra nous dire: Vous n’avez recueilli de la succession de - votre père et de votre mère que les immeubles et les meubles - dont vous venez de faire la déclaration, mais cela ne prouve - pas que la fortune de votre père, au moment de sa mort, ne se - composât que de ces seuls objets; car sa condamnation ayant - entraîné la confiscation de tous ses biens sans exception, la - République a pu en vendre et en a peut-être vendu pour des - sommes considérables. Vous n’avez peut-être recueilli que ce - qu’elle n’a pas vendu. - - “Voici notre réponse:— - - “Les meubles et les immeubles confisqués à la mort de notre - père dans le département de l’Aube et non vendus, furent remis - en notre possession par un arrêté de l’administration de ce - département, en date du 24 germinal an IV. (13 avril 1796), - arrêté dont nous avons une copie sous les yeux, arrêté pris - en conséquence d’une pétition présentée par notre tuteur, - arrêté basé sur la loi du 14 floréal an III. (3 mai 1795), qui - consacre le principe de la restitution des biens des condamnés - par les tribunaux et les commissions révolutionnaires, basé - sur la loi du 21 prairial an III. (9 juin 1795), qui lève le - séquestre sur ces biens et en règle le mode de restitution; - enfin, arrêté basé sur la loi du 13 thermidor an III. (31 - juillet 1795), dont il ne rappelle pas les dispositions. - - “L’administration du département de l’Aube, dans la même - délibération, arrête que le produit des meubles et des - immeubles qui ont été vendus et des intérêts qui ont été perçus - depuis le 14 floréal an III. (3 mai 1795), montant à la somme - de douze mille quatre cent cinq livres quatre sous quatre - deniers, sera restitué à notre tuteur, en bons au porteur - admissibles en payement de domaines nationaux _provenant - d’émigrés seulement_. Nous ne savons pas si notre tuteur reçut - ces bons au porteur; s’il les reçut, quel usage il en fit; - nous savons seulement qu’il n’acheta pas de biens d’émigrés. - Il résulte évidemment de cet arrêté de l’administration du - département de l’Aube, que dans ce département le produit des - meubles et immeubles provenant de Danton et vendus au profit de - la République, ne s’est pas élevé au-dessus de 12,405 livres - 4 sous 4 deniers. C’était le total de l’état de réclamation - présenté par notre tuteur dans sa pétition, et tout le monde - pensera, comme nous, qu’il n’aura pas manqué de faire valoir - tous nos droits. On peut remarquer que dans cet arrêté il - est dit que ces 12,405 livres sont le montant du produit des - meubles et des immeubles vendus, et des _intérêts_ qui ont été - perçus depuis le 14 floréal an III. (3 mai 1795).... Mais si - d’un côté on doit ajouter 12,405 livres, d’un autre côté on - doit retrancher 16,065 livres qui restaient dues aux personnes - qui ont vendu à notre père les immeubles dont nous avons - hérité.... - - “Il est donc établi d’abord que dans le département de l’Aube, - le prix des meubles et des immeubles qui ont été vendus n’a pas - pu s’élever au-dessus de 12,405 livres; ensuite que notre père, - au moment de sa mort, devait encore 16,065 livres sur le prix - d’acquisition des immeubles qu’il y possédait.... - - “Maintenant nous allons citer quelques faits _authentiques_ qui - pourront faire apprécier la bonté de son cœur. Nous avons vu - précédemment que ce fut en mars et en avril 1791 qu’il acheta - la majeure partie, on pourrait même dire la presque totalité - des immeubles qu’il possédait quand il mourut. - - “Voici un des sentiments qui agitaient son cœur en mars et en - avril 1791. Il désirait augmenter la modeste aisance de sa - mère, de sa bonne mère qu’il adorait. Veut-on savoir ce qu’il - s’empressa de faire à son entrée en jouissance de ces immeubles - qu’il venait d’acheter? Jetons un regard sur l’acte que nous - tenons dans les mains. Il a été passé le 15 avril 1791 (deux - jours après la vente faite à Danton par Mademoiselle Piot) - par-devant Mᵉ Odin que en a gardé la minute, et Mᵉ Étienne son - collègue, notaires à Troyes. Danton y fait donation entre-vifs, - pure, simple et irrévocable, à sa mère de six cents livres de - rentes annuelles et viagères, payables de six mois en six mois, - dont les premiers six mois payables au 15 octobre 1791. Sur - cette rente de 600 livres, Danton veut qu’en cas de décès de sa - mère, 400 livres soient reversibles sur M. Jean Recordain, son - mari (M. Recordain était un homme fort aisé lorsqu’il épousa - la mère de Danton; il était extrêmement bon, sa bonté allait - même jusqu’à la faiblesse, puisque, par sa complaisance pour de - prétendus amis dont il avait endossé des billets, il perdit une - grande partie de ce qu’il avait apporté en mariage, néanmoins - c’était un si excellent homme, il avait toujours été si bon - pour les enfants de Jacques Danton, qu’ils le regardaient comme - leur véritable père; aussi Danton, son beau-fils, avait-il pour - lui beaucoup d’affection). Le vif désir que ressent Danton de - donner aux donataires des marques certaines de son amitié pour - eux, est la seule cause de cette donation. Cette rente viagère - est à prendre sur la maison et sur ses dépendances, situées à - Arcis, que Danton vient d’acquérir le 13 avril 1791. Tel fut - son premier acte de prise de possession. - - “On remarquera que cette propriété, au moment où Mademoiselle - Piot la vendit, était louée par elle à plusieurs locataires qui - lui payaient ensemble la somme de 600 livres annuellement. Si - Danton eût été riche et surtout aussi riche que ses ennemis ont - voulu le faire croire, son grande cœur ne se fût pas contenté - de faire à sa mère une pension si modique. Pour faire cette - donation Danton aurait pu attendre qu’il vint à Arcis; mais - il était si pressé d’obéir au sentiment d’amour filial qu’il - éprouvait que, dès le 17 mars 1791, il avait donné à cet effet - une procuration spéciale à M. Jeannet-Bourcier, qui exécuta son - mandat deux jours après avoir acheté pour Danton la propriété - de Mademoiselle Piot. Aussitôt que la maison était devenue - vacante et disponible, Danton, qui aimait tant être entouré de - sa famille, avait voulu que sa mère et son beau-père vinssent - l’habiter, ainsi que M. Menuel, sa femme et leurs enfants (M. - Menuel avait épousé la sœur aînée de Danton). - - “Au 6 août 1792 Danton était a Arcis; on était à la veille d’un - grand événement qu’il prévoyait sans doute. Au milieu des mille - pensées qui doivent alors l’agiter, au milieu de l’inquiétude - que doivent lui causer les périls auxquels il va s’exposer, - quelle idée prédomine, quelle crainte vient l’atteindre? Il - pense à sa mère, il craint de n’avoir pas suffisamment assuré - son mort et sa tranquillité; en voici la preuve dans cet acte - passé le 6 août 1792 par-devant Mᵉ Finot, notaire à Arcis. - Qu’y lit-on? ‘Danton voulant donner à sa mère des preuves des - sentiments de respect et de tendresse qu’il a toujours eus pour - elle, il lui assure, sa vie durant, une habitation convenable - et commode, lui fait donation entre-vifs, pure, simple et - irrévocable, de l’usufruit de telles parts et portions - qu’elle voudra choisir dans la maison et dépendances situées - à Arcis, rue des Ponts, qu’il a aquise de Mademoiselle Piot - de Courcelles, et dans laquelle maison sa mère fait alors sa - demeure, et de l’usufruit de trois denrées de terrain à prendre - dans tel endroit du terrain qu’elle voudra choisir, pour jouir - desdits objets à compter du jour de la donation. Si M. Jean - Recordain survit à sa femme, donation lui est faite par le même - acte de l’usufruit de la moitié des objets qu’aura choisis et - dont aura joui sa femme.... - - “Voici encore une pièce, peu importante en elle-même à la - vérité, mais qui honore Danton et qui prouve sa bonté: c’est - un pétition en date du 30 thermidor an II. (17 août 1794), - adressée aux citoyens administrateurs du département de Paris, - par Marguerite Hariot (veuve de Jacques Geoffroy, charpentier - à Arcis), qui expose que par acte passé devant Mᵉ Finot, - notaire à Arcis, le 11 décembre 1791, Danton, dont elle était - la nourrice, lui avait assuré et constitué une rente viagère - de cent livres dont elle devait commencer à jouir à partir du - jour du décès de Danton, ajoutant que, de son vivant, il ne - bornerait pas sa générosité à cette somme. Elle demande, en - conséquence, que les administrateurs du département de Paris, - ordonnent que cette rente viagère lui soit payée à compter du - jour du décès et que le principal en soit prélevé sur ses biens - confisqués au profit de la République. Nous ne savons pas ce - qui fut ordonné. Cette brave femme, que notre père ne manquait - jamais d’embrasser avec effusion et à plusieurs reprises - chaque fois qu’il venait à Arcis, ne lui survécut que pendant - peu d’années. - - “La recherche que nous avons faite dans les papiers qui nous - sont restés de la succession de notre grand’mère Recordain, - papiers dont nous ne pouvons pas avoir la totalité, ne nous - a fourni que ces trois pièces _authentiques_ qui témoignent - en faveur de la bonté de Danton dans sa vie privée. Quant - aux traditions orales que nous avons pu recueillir, elles - sont en petit nombre et trop peu caractéristiques pour être - rapportées. Nous dirons seulement que Danton aimait beaucoup - la vie champêtre et les plaisirs qu’elle pent procurer. Il ne - venait à Arcis que pour y jouir, au milieu de sa famille et de - ses amis, du repos, du calme et des amusements de la campagne. - Il disait dans son langage sans recherche, à Madame Recordain, - en l’embrassant: ‘Ma bonne mère, quand aurai-je le bonheur de - venir demeurer auprès de vous pour ne plus vous quitter, et - n’ayant plus à penser qu’à planter mes choux?’ - - “Nous ne savons pas s’il avait des ennemis ici, nous ne lui - en avons jamais connu aucun. On nous a très-souvent parlé de - lui avec éloge; mais nous n’avons jamais entendu prononcer un - mot qui lui fût injurieux, ni même défavorable, pas même quand - nous étions au collège; là pourtant les enfants, incapables de - juger la portée de ce qu’ils disent, n’hésitent pas, dans une - querelle occasionnée par le motif le plus frivole, à s’adresser - les reproches les plus durs et les plus outrageants. Nos - condisciples n’avaient donc jamais entendu attaquer la mémoire - de notre pere, il n’avait donc pas d’ennemis dans son pays. - - “Nous croyons ne pas devoir omettre une anecdote qui se - rapporte à sa vie politique. Nous la tenons d’un de nos amis - qui l’a souvent entendu raconter par son père, M. Doulet, - homme très recommandable et très digne de foi, qui, sous - l’Empire, fut longtemps maire de la ville d’Arcis. Danton - était à Arcis dans le mois de novembre 1793. Un jour, tandis - qu’il se promenait dans son jardin avec M. Doulet, arrive vers - eux une troisième personne marchant à grands pas, tenant un - papier à la main (c’était un journal) et qui, aussitôt qu’elle - fut à portée de se faire entendre, s’écrie: Bonne nouvelle! - bonne nouvelle! et elle s’approche.—Quelle nouvelle? dit - Danton.—Tiens, lis! les Girondins sont condamnés et exécutés, - répond la personne qui venait d’arriver.—Et tu appelles cela - une bonne nouvelle, malheureux? s’écrie Danton à son tour, - Danton, dont les yeux s’emplissent aussitôt de larmes. La mort - des Girondins une bonne nouvelle? Misérable!—Sans doute, répond - son interlocuteur; n’était-ce pas des factieux?—Des factieux, - dit Danton. Est-ce que nous ne sommes pas des factieux? Nous - méritons tous la mort autant que les Girondins; nous subirons - tous, les uns après les autres, le même sort qu’eux. Ce fut - ainsi que Danton, le Montagnard, accueillit la personne qui - vint annoncer la mort des Girondins, auxquels tant d’autres, en - sa place, n’eussent pas manqué de garder rancune.... - - “La France aujourd’hui si belle, si florissante, te placera - alors au rang qui t’appartient parmi ses enfants généreux, - magnanimes, dont les efforts intrépides, inouïs, sont - parvenus à lui ouvrir, au milieu de difficultés et de dangers - innombrables, un chemin à la liberté, à la gloire, au bonheur. - Un jour enfin, Danton, justice complète sera rendue à ta - mémoire! Puissent tes fils avant de descendre dans la tombe, - voir ce beau jour, ce jour tant désiré.” - - DANTON. - - - - -X - -NOTES OF TOPINO-LEBRUN, JUROR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL - - -The interest of these notes is as follows:—They are the only verbatim -account of the trial which we possess. There are of course the official -accounts (especially that of Coffinhal), and upon them is largely based -the account in M. Wallon’s _Tribunal Révolutionnaire_; but these rough -and somewhat disconnected notes, badly spelt and abbreviated, were taken -down without bias, and as the words fell from the accused. Topino-Lebrun, -the painter, was at that time thirty-one years of age, a strong -Montagnard of course; he hesitated to condemn Danton, but was overborne -by his fellows, especially by his friend and master David. - -These notes were kept at the archives of the Prefecture of Police until -the year of the war. In 1867 M. Labat made copies, and gave one to Dr. -Robinet, and one to M. Clarétie. Each of these writers has used them in -their works on the Dantonites. The original document was burnt when, in -May 1871, the Commune attempted to destroy the building in which they -were preserved. - -There are given below only those portions which directly refer to Danton -and his friends. - - _Au président, qui lui demande ses nom, prénoms, âge et - domicile_, il répond: Georges-Jacques Danton, 34 ans, né a - Arcis-sur-Aube, département de l’Aube, avocat, député à la - Convention. Bientôt ma demeure dans le néant et mon nom au - Panthéon de l’histoire, quoi qu’on en puisse dire; ce qui est - très sûr et ce qui m’importe peu. Le peuple respectera ma tête, - oui, ma tête guillotinée! - - -SEANCE DE 14 GERMINAL (13 AVRIL). - -[Westermann having asked to be examined, the judge said it was “une forme -inutile.”] - - _Danton._ Nous sommes cependant ici pour la forme. - - _Vest. insiste._ Un juge vas (_sic_) l’interroger. - - _Danton dit_: Pourvu qu’on nous donne la parole et largement, - je suis sûr de confondre mes accusateurs; et si le peuple - français est ce qu’il doit être, je serai obligé de demander - leur grâce. - - _Camille._ Ah! nous aurons la parole, c’est tout ce que nous - demandons (grande et sincère gaieté de tous les députés - accusés). - - _Danton._ C’est Barrère qui est patriote à present, - n’est-ce-pas? (Aux jurés)—C’est moi qui ai fait instituer le - tribunal, ainsi je dois m’y connaître. - - _Vest._ Je demanderai à me mettre tout nu devant le peuple, - pour qu’on me voye. J’ai reçu sept blessures, toutes par - devant; je n’en ai reçu qu’une par derrière: mon acte - d’accusation. - - _Danton._ Nous respecterons le tribunal, parceque, &c.... - Danton montre Cambon et dit: Nous crois-tu conspirateurs? Voyez - il rit; il ne le croit pas. Écrivez qu’il a rit.... - - _Danton._ Moi vendu? un homme de ma trempe est impayable! La - preuve? Me taisais je lorsque j’ai défendu Marat; lorsque j’ai - été décrété deux fois sous Mirabeau; lorsque j’ai lutté contre - La Fayette?—Mon affiche, pour insurger, aux 5 et 6 octobre! - Que l’accusateur (Fouquier-Tinville) qui m’accuse d’après la - Convention, administre la preuve, les semi-preuves, les indices - de ma vénalité! J’ai trop servi; la vie m’est à charges. _Je - demande des commissionaires de la Convention pour recevoir ma - dénonciation sur le système de dictature._ - - J’ai été nommé administrateur par un liste triple, le dernier, - par de bons citoyens en petit nombre [that is, substitute in - December 1790]. - - Je forçai Mirabeau, aux Jacobins, de rester à son poste; je - l’ai combattu, lui qui voulait s’en retourner à Marseille. - - Où es ce patriote, qu’il vienne, je demande a être confondu, - qu’il paraisse, j’ai empêché le voyage de Saint-Cloud, j’ai été - décrété de prise de corps pour le Champ de Mars. - - J’offre de prouver le contraire [that is, the contrary of St. - Just’s statement that he was unmolested when he fled to Arcis] - et lisez la feuille de l’orateur: Des assassins furent envoyés - pour m’assassiner à Arcis, l’une a été arrêté.—Un huissier - vint pour mettre le décret à execution, je fuyais done, et le - peuple voulut en faire justice.—J’etais à la maison de mon - beau-père; on l’investit, on maltraita mon beau-frère pour moi, - je me sauvais (_sic_) à Londres, je suis revenu lorsque Garran - fut nommé. On offirit à Legendre 50,000 écus pour m’égorger. - Lorsque les Lameth ... devenu partisans de la cour, Danton - les combattit aux Jacobins, devant le peuple, et demanda la - République. - - Sous la législature je dis: la preuve que c’est la cour qui - veut la guerre c’est qu’elle a [a word illegible] l’initiative - et la sanction. Que les patriotes se rallient et alors si nous - ne pouvons vous vaincre nous triompherons de l’Europe (?). - - —Billaud-Varennes ne me pardonne pas d’avoir été mon - secrétaire. Quelle proposition avez-vous faite contre les - Brissotins?—La loi de Publicola! Je portai le cartel à Louvet, - qui refusa. Je manquai d’être assassiné à la Commune.—J’ai - dit a Brissot, en plein, Conseil, tu porteras la tête sur - l’echafaud, et je l’ai rappelé ici à Lebrun. - - —J’avai préparé le 10 août et je fus à Arcis, parce que Danton - est bon fils, passer trois jours, faire mes adieux à ma mere et - régler mes affaires il y a des témoins.—On m’a revu solidement, - je ne me suis point couché. J’étais aux Cordeliers, quoique - substitut de la Commune. Je dis au ministre Clavières, que - venait de la part de la Commune, que nous allions sonner - l’insurrection. Après avoir réglé toutes les opérations et le - moment de l’attaque, je me mis sur le lit comme un soldat, - avec ordre de m’avertir. Je sortis à une heure et je fus à la - Commune devenue revolutionnaire. Je fis l’arrêt de mort contre - Mandat, qui avait l’ordre de tirer sur le peuple. On mit le - maire en arrestation et j’y restais (_sic_) suivant l’avis des - patriotes. Mon discours à l’Assemblée législative. - - —Je faisais la guerre au Conseil; je n’avais que ma voix, - quoique j’eusse de l’influence. - - —Mon parent, qui m’accompagna en Angleterre [Mergez, a - volunteer in 1792, and later a general of Napoleon’s] avait dix - huit ans. - - —Je crois encore Fabre bon citoyen. - - —J’atteste que je n’ai point donné ma voix à d’Orléans, qu’on - prouve que je l’ai fait nommer. - - —J’eûs 400 mille f. sur les 2 millions pour faire la rev., 200 - mille livres pour choses secrêtes. J’ai dépensé devant Marat - et Robespierre pour tous les commissaires des departements. - Calomines de Brissot. J’ai donne 6000 a Billaud pour aller à - l’armée. Les autres 200 mille, j’ai donné ma comptabilité de - 130 mille et le reste je l’ai remis. - - ... Fabre la disponibilité de payer les commissaires, parce que - Billaud-Varenne avait de refusé (_sic_). - - Il n’est pas à ma connaissance que Fabre prêcha la fédéralisme. - - —J’embrasserais mon ennemi pour la patrie, à laquelle je - donnerais mon corps à dévorer. - - Je nie et prouve le contraire. Ce fut Marat qui m’envoya un - porte feuille et les pièces, et j’avais fait arrêter Duport. Se - a été jugé à Melun, d’après une loi. Liu et Lameth out voulu me - faire assassiner. Ministre de la Justice, j’ai fait executer la - loi. Pour mon fait, je n’avais pas de preuves judiciaires. - - —La guerre feinte n’est que depuis quinze jours, et le - Brissotins m’ont pardieu bien attaqué. Lisez le _Moniteur_. - Barbaroux a fait demander par le bataillon de Marseille ma - tête et celles de Marat et de Robespierre. Marat avait son - caractère volcanisé, celui de Robespierre tenace et ferme, et - moi, je servais à ma manière.—Je n’ai vu qu’une fois Dumourier, - qui me tâta pour le ministre: je repondis que je ne le serais - qu’on bruit de canon. Il m’ecrivit ensuite.—Placé là, Kelerman - (_sic_) voulait passer la Marne et Dumourier ne le voulait pas; - embarrassé et mon dictateur, je soutins le plan de Dumourier, - qui reussit.—Craignant la jalousie de deux généraux, j’envoyai - Fabre, etc.... avait vu Vesterman, au 10, le sabre à la main. - - —Je talonnai Servan et Laenée; je n’ai connu de plan militaire - que celui de Dumourier et de Kelerman, et Billaud fut nommé - par moi pour surveiller Dumourier; il eu a rendu compte - à la législature et aux Jacobin. Ordre d’examiner ce que - c’etait... cette retraite (_sic_). La Convention a envoyé trois - commissaires. - - —Moi, ministre, j’embrassais la masse et les détails de la - Justice. - - —Billaud m’a dit qu’il ne savait pas si Dumourier était un - traître; d’ailleurs c’était une surabondance de patriotisme. - - —Sur, la Belgique, répète son dire aux Jacobins. - - —Le piège des Brissots était de faire croire que nous - desorganisions les armées. - - —On me refuse des temoins, allons je ne me défends plus! - - —Je vous fais d’ailleurs mille excuses de ce qu’il y a de trop - chaud, c’est mon caractère. - - —Le peuple dechirera par morceaux mes ennemis avant trois mois. - - -SÉANCE DU 15 GERMINAL (4 AVRIL). - - _Hérault._ Sur le petit Capet, nie le fait.—Il fut nommé pour - la partie diplomatique avec Barrère. Déclare que jamais il ne - s’est mêlé de negociations. Nie avoir jamais fait imprimer - aucune chose en diplomatie. Deforgues envoya Dubuisson. - - _Hérault._ Je ne conçois rien à ce galimathias. Je me suis - opposé a l’envoi de Salavie. C’est un moyen employé par nos - ennemis. Envoyé dans le Bas-Rhin par le Comité, je travaillè - (_sic_) avec Berthelemy (_sic_) à la neutralité de la Suisse - et j’ai sauvé à la Republique un armée de soixante-mille - hommes.—Jamais je n’ai communiqué a Proly rien en politique, - il n’y en avait pas. Au surplus, il fallait me confronter - avec Proly.—J’ai été trompé comme j’a jaie st fois [J. Jay - St. Foix] comme la Convention, comme jam bon [this does not - mean _ham_, but Jean-Bon St. André], qui le voulait emmener - secretaire, comme Colot. Comme Marat, Proly a été porté en - triomphe. La Convention, par un decret solemnel, a reçu mes - explications. Anacharsis me dit vient (_sic_) dîner avec moi, - dîner avec Dufourni, etc.... J’ai laissé la veuve Chemineau, - etc. L’huillier! c’est à l’instigation de Clootz. - - J’ai connu l’abbé guillotiné en troie [that is, in Troyes] - (_sic_), dans mon exil il était chanoine et non refractaire. - C’est donc un plaisanterie. Il n’etait pas soumis au serment, - il m’avait assisté dans mon exil. - - Au 14 juillet, à la Bastille, j’ai eu deux hommes tués à - mes côtés. Maltraité par mes parents, j’ai voyage, j’ai été - incarcéré trois semaines en Sardaigne et je suis revenu. - - _Camille._ Lors de sa dispute avec Saint-Just, celui-ce lui - dit qu’il le ferait périr,—j’ai denoncé Dumourier avant Marat; - d’Orleans, le premier, j’ai ouvert la Revolution et ma mort va - la fermer.—Marat s’est trompé sur Proly. Quel est l’homme qui - n’a pas eu son Dilon? Depuis le nᵒ 4 [that is, of the _Vieux - Cordelier_] je n’ai écris (_sic_) que pour me rétracter. J’ai - attaché le grelot à toutes les factions. On m’a encouragé! - écrit (_sic_) etc. demasque la faction Hébert, il est bon que - quelqu’un le fasse. - - _Lacroix._ Sur la déclaration de Miajenski, rappelle qu’il l’a - confondu, que la Convention a été satisfaite, et qu’il n’a - pas été accusé pour cela. Il dit: je fus envoyé a Liége pour - connaître des reproches faits à la Tresorerie, et vice-versà. - Nous étions trois. Jamais je n’ai vu Dumourier en présence - de Dumourier (au lieu de Miacrinski?). J’ai dit a Miajenski, - sa legion manquant de tout, que je appuyerais devant mes - collègues, mais qu’il etait étonnant que sur le pays ennemi - ou ne décrétât pas que les troupes étrangerès fussent payées. - Je n’ai ni bu, ni mangé avec Dumourier. Vu pendant six à sept - jours toujours ensemble. Danton, Gossuin et moi nous avions - visité toutes les caisses de la Belgique pour examiner les - faits.—Dumourier ne voulait point prêter les mains au decrêt, - je me levai et lui déclarai que s’il ne signait pas à l’heure, - nous le ferions garrotter, etc. Il signa l’ordre à Ronsin.—La - seconde fois nous nous rendîmes à Bruxelles, Dumourier était - en Hollande.—Tous mes collègues ont attesté que je preposai de - me laisser aller auprès de Dumourier l’observer et le tuer mes - collègues ne furent pas de cet avis. - - .. 1900 et 600 livres de linge acheté par Brune en présence - des collègues, pour la table. Il etait à bon marché. Il dut - être chargé sur les voitures que ramenaient en France les - restitutions des effets pillés par les généraux, c’était - contenu dans une malle à mon addresse. Je l’ai declaré alors - au comité de Salut. Alors je l’ai réclamée. Ne confondez pas - la première voiture d’argenterie qui fut pillé, elle etait - expédiée par tous nos collègues. - - _Danton._ J’avais défié publiquement d’entrer en explication - sur l’imputation des 400,000. Il résulte du procès-verbal qu’il - n’y a à moi que mes chiffons et un corset molleton. _Le bas_, - sommé, m’a donné communication. - - Appelé aux Jacobins par mes collègues, je déclarais (_sic_) - que le renouvellement était contre-revolutionnaire: ce - que portait (_sic_) les pouvoirs des envoyés des sociétés - populaires.—Billaud-Varennes m’appuya et je fus chargé de faire - la proposition le 11 à la Convention.—Hébert, le lendemain, me - dénonça dans sa feuille; et voilà le principe de la calomnie. - - Je fus indigné, au 31 mai, de voir un officier qui disait: - il n’y a ni Marais, ni Montagne; qui distribuait de l’argent - au bataillon de Courbevoie; je ... témoin Panis, Legendre, - Robespierre, Pache, Robert-Lindet. Alors je montais (_sic_) à - la tribune, etc. ... que nous n’etions pas libres. Au Comité, - devant Pache, le 2 juin, j’ai improuvé la mesure maladroite de - Hauriot. Nous l’avions prévenu qu’en rentrant nous décréterions - les 32, mais que ce n’était pas assez pour la chose publique, - qu’il fallait purger la Convention, et a proposé 500,000 livres - pour l’armée de Paris que avait sauvé la patrie. Barère s’y - opposa. C’est Barère qui a proposé le décret d’accusation - contre Hauriot; c’est moi qui ai défendu Hauriot contre cela. - Qu’on entende les témoins, la Convention a été trompée. - - —J’ai appelé l’insurrection en demandant cinquante - revolutionnaires comme moi. La Convention m’appuya, l’avais dit - trois mois avant, il n’y a plus de paix avec les Girondins, - ai-je la face Hypocrite? - - Hanriot crut que j’etais opposé à l’insurrection et alors je - lui dis: vas toujours ton train, n’aie pas peur, nous voulons - constater que l’Assemblée est libre. - - —Je n’ai jamais bu ni mangé avec Mirande, et je proposai à mes - collègues de l’arrêter, il s’y opposerent. - - Je pris la main à Hanriot et lui dis: tiens bon. - - _Hérault._ C’est moi qui ai découvert l’ordre signé au crayon - par Hauriot pour laisser passer la Convention, ainsi, etc. - - _Philippeaux._ Arrivé de mon dépt j’ignorais les intrigues, je - fus trompé par Roland. Je me suis rétracté à temps.—Lorsque je - m’aperçus du piége tendu dans l’appel au peuple, je montai à la - tribune et j’abjurai et votai de suite comme la Montagne. J’ai - voté pour Marat (c’est faux, il n’a voté ni pour ni contre). - Le Comité ne répondant point à mes lettres, je suis venu - ici. Le Comité ne m’a point entendu. Alors, pour remplir mon - devoir, j’ai écrit à la Convention, et l’événement, sur Hébert, - a prouvé, etc. On a fait contre moi des adresses contre moi - (_sic_) etc. On a envoyé de chez moi trois commissaires pour - connaître les faits et Levasseur les a fait arrêter. - - _Vesterman._ Lorsque Dumouriez etait en Belgique j’etais au - Hollande. Abandonné entre les ennemis, vivant de pillage, je - suis arrivé à Envers (_sic_) avec ma legion. Le regiment de - cavalrie fut attaqué. Je repoussai l’ennemi. - - Accusé de venir deux et trois fois apporter les dépêches de - Dumourier à Gensonné. - - L’armée manquait de souliers, je fus envoyé par Dumourier au - Conseil, et je les rapportai à l’armée. - - Dumourier lui montra la lettre de roi de Prusse pour son - secretaire, qu’il avait renvoyé, je courus après lui et - l’arrêtai de mon pouvoir. Le second voyage pour porter le pli - des articles arrêté (_sic_) entre les généraux. - - Il a encore été envoyé en otage à Mons, lors de - l’evacuation.—Troisième voyage pour amener Malus et - d’Espagnac, et porta un pacquet (_sic_) au président du comité - diplomatique.—J’ai denoncé au (_sic_) Jacobins, au Comité le - fils naturel de Proly, et on me rit au nez. Il engagea au - déjeuné (_sic_) pour rétablien Dumourier aux Jacobins. Pourquoi - ne m’a-t-on pas appelé lors de la déposition de Miajenski? - J’etais ici, mandé à la barre. Dumourier m’a toujours éloigné - de lui. A protesté sur la capitulation d’Anvers. Sur le fait de - Lille. - - Avant d’arriver à Menhem Proly me denonca. Ici, on me mis - (_sic_) hors de la loi et un officier prussien me montra la - feuille de la Convention et m’engagea à rester, qu’on me - payerait, et chercha à m’effrayer en disant que les autres - généraux avaient été massacrés. Voir au comité militaire. Je - fus à Lille avec ma troupe. Je trouvai Mouton et vint (_sic_) - prendre son ordre pour venir à la barre.—J’ai prêté serment - avant, à Douai. Le décret du 4 mai dit qu’il n’y avait lieu à - m’accuser. J’étais dénoncé aur comités, je ne connais point - Talma. - - _Danton._ C’est Barère qui est patriote à present et Danton - aristocrate. La France ne croira pas cela longtemps. - - _Danton, dans la chambre des accusés._—Moi conspirateur? Mon - nom est accoté de toutes les institutions révolutionnaires: - levée, armée rév., comité rév., comité de salut public, - tribunal révolutionnaire, C’est moi qui me suis donné la mort, - enfin, et je suis un modéré! - -[Topino-Lebrun left no notes of the following day, the 16 Germinal.] - - - - -XI - -REPORT OF THE FIRST COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY - -TREATING OF THE GENERAL CONDITION OF THE REPUBLIC, AND READ BY BARRÈRE TO -THE CONVENTION ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1793 - - -This report is the most important appendix not only to this book, but to -any description of the two days that expelled the Girondins. It is here -published for the first time, and, though of some length, will well repay -the reading for any student of the Revolution. - -I have dwelt sufficiently on its importance in the text, and I can -dismiss it here with a short introduction. - -It is the first great result of the Committee which Danton had helped -to create, and of which he was the soul. It is the first step taken by -this new organ of government towards that dictatorship to exercise which -it had been called into existence. The enormous amount of detailed work -necessary to produce it shows us the number of agents which the Committee -must have possessed, and their activity, as well as the industry of the -members themselves, for it had been at work but eight weeks. - -Danton undoubtedly inspired the tone and direction of the report, but the -somewhat florid style is Barrère’s own. Dr. Robinet thinks, however, that -the last pages, from the section on Public Instruction onwards, are in -Danton’s manner, and M. Boruard would even put it at the section on the -Colonies, two pages earlier. Even if this is the case, some sentences at -least were put in by Barrère, for they betray his inimitable verbiage, to -which Danton was a stranger. - -Of the important part the report played in the complicated history of -the week May 26-June 3, 1793, enough has been said in the text; it is -only necessary to add here that no speech or memoir contains such an -indictment of the Girondin misgovernment as is given indirectly by this -list of ascertained facts in the condition of France. - -The reading of the report is mentioned in the _Moniteur_ of May 31, but, -contrary to their custom, they did not print it on account of its great -length. It seems to have been read in the afternoon from about two to -four, just before Cambon’s motion was put to the vote. I give the more -important passages, about half the full length of the document. - - CONVENTION NATIONALE - - RAPPORT GÉNÉRAL - SUR - L’ÉTAT DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE - - _Fait, au nom du Comité de Salut Public, dans la seance du - mercredi 29 mai, l’an second de la République_: - - _Par Barrère_, - - _Député du département des Hautes-Pyrénées_ - - _Imprimé par ordre de la Convention Nationale_ - - CITOYENS,—Chargés par les représentans du peuple de leur parler - aujourd’hui des grands intérêts qui les rassemblent, et des - moyens que nous avons employés depuis deux mois pour le salut - de la patrie en péril; nous réclamons d’abord de votre justice - de remonter par la pensée, à l’èpoque de notre nomination, et - de vous rappeler en quel état se trouvaient alors la République - et toute les parties d’administration nationale. - - Quoiqu’accablés par la tâche périlleuse et grande que vous nous - avez imposée, nous avons dû obéir. Votre confiance, notre zèle - et l’amour de notre pays ont dû nous tenir lieu de facultés. - - Au-dehors se présentait une guerre terrible à soutenir sur des - frontières d’une étendue immense et sur des côtes indéfendues. - Audedans, se propageaient des dissensions civiles, portant - avec elles les deux caractères les plus funestes, le fanatisme - royal et religieux, secouru par des perfidies multipliées dans - l’intérieur, et par des intelligences combinées audehors. - -What follows is a general indictment of the results of Girondin rule, -with special and particular attacks on the Ministry of War and on their -fear of responsibility. - - On voyait dans toutes nos armées des besoins impérieux et - sans cesse renaissans; des secours nuls ou tardifs; des - approvisionnemens insuffisans ou de mauvaise qualité et des - administrations dévorantes, dont quelques-unes, n’ont d’autre - but réel que d’agrandir la fortune de beaucoup d’agioteurs - et de quelques capitalistes. Dans nos ports des travaux - ralentis et une inertie coupable; partout des trahisons - ourdies et des coalitions préparées; des états-majors à - refaire ou à épurer; des armées à organiser ou à improviser; - des fonctionnaires civils et militaires à surveiller ou à - remplacer; des forces à créer sur tous les points menacés par - les troubles; des armes à fabriquer; des canons à fondre; - la marine à créer; l’esprit public à remonter avec énergie; - l’anarchie à attaquer; la discipline à rétablir; des mouvemens - contra-révolutionnaires à comprimer et un cahos d’intérêts, de - plaintes, de passions, d’abus, de prétentions et de préjugés - à débrouiller, au milieu d’une correspondance journalière et - centuplée par ces circonstances actuelles. Quel vast génie - ou quel courage inépuisable il eût fallu pour répondre tout - à coup à des circonstances aussi extraordinaires ou pour - dominer des évènemens aussi imprévus? Nous avons borné notre - tâche à parcourir d’abord toutes les parties du gouvernement - provisoire, et à nous frayer ensuite une route au milieu de cet - assemblage énorme de forces et de résistances, de bons et de - mauvais principes. - - Le premier obstacle qui s’est présenté à nous, est venu du - changement dans le ministère de la guerre, que avait précédé - notre établissement. - - Le second obstacle était dans le ministère de la marine - négligé, anéanti même, par un série de ministries royaux, - et dont nous avons été forcés de faire changer le chef et - plusieurs adjoints. - - Là s’est rompue, pour nous, la chaîne des opérations de ces - deux départemens, les plus importans dans un temps de guerre - de terre et de mer; et nous nous sommes vus privés, tout à - coup, de toutes les ressources de l’expérience. Nous n’avons pu - recueillir, dans l’agglomération des affaires de cette partie - de l’administration publique, que des états inexacts ou des - lumières incertaines. - - Un aperçu des délibérations du conseil exécutif nous a montré, - d’un côté, des travaux incohérens qui n’ont pu avoir aucune - espèce de succès à cause des évènemens qui les dominaient; - de l’autre, des négligences funestes et des fautes graves - que les évènemens suivants ont mieux fait sentir. Depuis - les bouches de l’Escaut, ouvertes par un usurpation de la - puissance souveraine, jusqu’aux extrémités de la Méditerranée, - qui ont été le théâtre de nos revers, et de la versatilité - ministérielle, nous n’avons vu ni cette suite d’opérations - qui assurent les succès, ne cette prévoyance des mesures qui - diminuent les revers. Point d’ensemble, point de conceptions - vastes, point de vues hardies, point de plan arrêté, point - d’énergie, et partout la terreur de la responsabilité, marchant - en avant du ministère, tandis qu’il s’agit de marcher fièrement - à la liberté, sans regarder en arrière. - - Au mois d’octobre, la résistance à l’ennemi avait donné des - conceptions et des forces au conseil exécutif. - - Les succès du mois de novembre ont amolli le conseil. Jemmappes - a été pour les ministres (_sic_) la Capoue qui a détruit son - énergie et atténué ses travaux. - - Le département de l’intérieur, machine trop lourde, trop - compliquée pour un homme, quand il serait plein de talens - et de moyens d’exécution, avait refroidi pendant longtemps - l’esprit public et engourdi les corps administratifs. Il - était impossible que la main d’un seul homme pût remuer cette - machine énorme surchargée de details, d’une administration - immense, d’opérations mercantiles dont le succès est douteux, - dont le résultat exige de grands sacrifices, et dont le secret - appelle la défiance. La seule ressource que ce ministère - disproportionné pouvait trouver, était dans les administrateurs - départementaires, dont la plupart, insoucians sur les travaux - qui leur sont confiés, négligent de correspondre, ou dont la - conduite exagérée et sans mesure leur faisait méconnaître toute - subordination. - - Le département de la guerre, dans lequel chaque ministre a - porté ses préjugés et ses assertions, ses routines et ses - haînes; le ministère de la guerre désorganisé sans cesse par la - fréquente mutation de ses agens et par la diversité de leurs - principes ou de leurs opinions, présentait et présent encore un - chaos inextricable, des abus sans nombre, et une impuissance - réelle dans tout homme que ne serait pas né très actif dans - la manière d’ordonner et entreprenant sur tous les moyens de - défense. - -In what follows note the hand of Danton, almost his phraseology in the -second paragraph. - - Le ministère des affaires étrangères, couvert d’obscurités - politiques, ne pouvant avoir au milieu des défiances produites - par la révolution et des mouvemens irréguliers de la guerre, - ni fixité dans les opérations, ni vues suivies, ni projets - déterminés, ni secrets dans les plans, a saisi seulement le - fil de quelques affaires importantes, et redonne maintenant - de l’activité aux moyens nombreux dont l’intérêt de plusieurs - gouvernemens prépare le succès. - - C’est de l’audace dans les conceptions politiques, c’est de - l’ensemble dans les mesures, c’est de la promptitude dans les - moyens d’exécution, que dépend la diplomatie nouvelle d’un - peuple qui naît à la liberté. - -Again, a direct attack on the Girondins, especially in the characteristic -phrase, “the paralysis of honesty.” - - Le ministère de la marine enrayé longtemps dans les opérations - par une probité paralytique, et par des sous-ordres - inexpérimentés ou suspects, n’ayant donné ni protection au - commerce, ni défense pour nos côtes, ni moyens au succès de - la course, ni activité aux grands armemens dans nos ports, ni - approvisionnemens suivis pour les flottes, reprend sous un - ministre nouveau son activité, nous promet une défense et une - marine.... - -Here again is a half-concession to the Girondins, which was part of the -policy I have spoken of in the text. - - Le conseil exécutif en sent lui-même la nécessité: et nous lui - devons la justice de dire, que ne se dissimulant pas cette - caducité politique, amenée par les circonstances, par des - dénonciations multipliées, et par la presqu’impossibilité de - tenir régulièrement le gouvernail au milieu de la tempête; - le conseil exécutif désire et sollicite le renouvellement du - ministère.... - - DE L’ETAT MILITAIRE. - - Pressés entre la nécessité de pourvoir sans délai aux besoins - des armées, et l’impossibilité d’approfondir en si peu de temps - des plans généraux, nous avons recherché d’abord des armes.... - - Des arrêtés du comité ont ordonné l’envoi des commissaires pour - dénombrer subitement les armes et les canons qui se trouvaient - dans les fabriques et les manufactures nationales, et pour les - faire transporter aux armées et dans les départemens les plus - dénués de ce genre de secours. Saint-Etienne, Ruel, Mont-Cénis, - Indret, Toulouse, Lyon, Charleville, Sedan, Maubeuge, ont reçu - des ordres pressants sur cet objet.... - - Divers arrêtés ont ordonné le transport de vieilles armes qui - se trouvent dans diverses fabriques ou arsenaux, pour les faire - raccommoder dans les diverses villes dont la population offrait - des ouvriers, et surtout dans les départemens limitrophes des - pays révoltés.... - - Les ministres et les assemblées nationales ont mis trop peu - d’importance à la manufacture de Saint-Etienne, depuis le - commencement de la révolution. - - Les ouvriers brûlaient du désir de travailler pour la - république, mais le prix de l’arme ayant toujours été fixé - au-dessous des déboursés du fabricant, ils ont travaillé pour - les corps administratifs, dont la concurrence a augmenté la - valeur. Le fer et le salarie de l’ouvrier sont augmentés de - prix. - - Des commissaires du pouvoir exécutif viennent de requérir tous - les fabricans de porter à la commission de verification, toutes - les armes qui sont en leur pouvoir, pour être expédies pour - Bayonne, Perpignan, et Tours. Les livraisons se font chaque - jour. - - Les commissaires s’occupent de redonner la plus grande activité - à la manufacture d’armes de Saint-Etienne, qui secondée par - le patriotisme des ouvriers et de la municipalité, portera la - fabrication à quatre ou cinq cents fusils ou pistolets par jour. - - Il y a à Tulle un grand nombre d’armes à réparer, le comité - en a fait distribuer à plusieurs départemens méridionaux; le - ministre de la marine donne de l’activité à la manufacture de - Tulle, pour armer nos marins. Dans ce moment, le commissaire - Bouillet, envoyé par le conseil exécutif, est a Tulle, pour - accélérer la fabrication des armes nécessaires à la marine, et - pour connaître l’état des vieilles armes qu’on a entassés dans - ce dépôt.... - -The following passages indicate the motives of what was to be the Terror, -a system based, of course, upon the necessity for commissariat. - - VIVRES. - - Les vivres sont aussi nécessaires que les armes; on se plaint - dans quelques armées organisées trop lentement, ou improvisées - trop à la hâte, pour que tout ce qui leur était nécessaire - fût préparé, et ces plaintes sont justes; nous accélérons - l’approvisionnement des armées, autant qu’il est en nous, - par le ministre et les administrations qui en dépendent. La - latitude des pouvoirs donnés à vos comités, peut suppléer la - faiblesse du ministère de la guerre l’insuffisance de ses - agens, et la malveillance ou la torpeur de ses régies. Il est - cependant des obstacles éprouvés par les régisseurs et par - leurs agens, à cause des craintes propagées sur le manque de - subsistances, et le comité s’est occupé de faire cesser ces - obstacles. - - L’administration chargée de l’approvisionnement des places de - guerre a présenté au comité des états de situation rassurante - sur l’approvisionnement des places les plus menacées: il lui a - montré les dispositions générales prises pour les fournitures - de subsistances dans toutes les divisions. Il en résulte que - les évènemens imprévus de la Belgique, en ramenant subitement - l’ennemi sur nos frontières, ont contrarié des calculs et - nous ont privé des approvisionnements faits d’après un autre - système; mais le comité presse les directeurs de pourvoir - aux approvisionnements, et avertit sans cesse le ministre - des autres besoins des armées, à mesure que ces besoins se - démontrent ou que les plaintes nous parviennent. Un changement - dans cette administration, dont vous nous avez renvoyé - l’examen, mérite toute notre sollicitude, et se trouve être la - suite inévitable des changements perpétuels dans le ministère - de la guerre; changement qui entraîne celui de ses principes et - de ses moyens.[165] - - Le partie de l’habillement et de l’équipement, qui a coûté tant - de trésors à la nation, a été mal fournie, mal administrée, et - pillée dans la Belgique avec autant d’impudeur que de trahison. - - Les fournisseurs, plus avares que patriotes, ont distribué à - toutes les armées des étoffes de mauvaise qualité. Un force de - prodigalité nationale payait les habits à l’avarice agioteuse - qui les fournissait, et le soldat, au milieu des fatigues et - des perils de la guerre, était sans habits ou en portait qui - n’étaient pas de long usage. - - Ces jours derniers il a défilé devant vous un détachement de - braves soldats du régiment ci-devant Conti, qui allait vers les - départemens révoltés. On n’aurait pas présenté au plus petit - prince d’Allemagne, ou au plus pauvre de l’Italie, des troupes - aussi mal vêtues; elles ont paru devant les représentans - d’une nation qui dépense pour la guerre, chaque mois, plus de - millions que plusieurs rois de l’Europe n’ont de revenu dans un - an.... - - L’armée des Ardennes, réunie à celle du Nord, se forme sous les - regards de commissaires actifs, et les recrues y abondent à - un point que votre comité a cru devoir les faire refluer vers - l’armee du Nord. - -The next allusion is interesting as showing us the appreciation of what -was to be the reinforcement of the army of Sambre-et-Meuse. - - L’armée de la Moselle a pris des positions avantageuses. Réunie - à celle du Rhin, elles annoncent que Mayence pourra devenir - le tombeau des hordes prussiennes. L’esprit est bon dans - cette armée, distinguée par la discipline, et les recrues s’y - encadrent tous les jours. - - On s’occupe à faire camper et exercer l’armée des Alpes, - dont le recrutement est entièrement effectué. On fortifie - tous les points de défense, et on augmente la garnison des - places. Les recrues nombreuses qui y sont arrivées ont fourni - un excédant de vingt-un mille hommes; vous avez disposé de - huit mille contre les départemens révoltés. Les treize mille - restans renforceront l’armée d’Italie, diminuée pour servir à - la défense de la Corse, formeront une réserve ou renforceront - l’armée des Pyrénées orientales. - - Le département du Mont-Blanc s’est empressé d’organiser - plusieurs bataillons et de prouver ainsi son attachement à la - République; ils réclament des armes, et nous espérons qu’avec - des moyens mis déjà en activité ils seront bientôt armés. - - La révolte de Thonnes est appraisée et les coupables jugés. - C’était la mêche d’une mine préparée sous le Mont-Blanc, et - dont l’explosion était combinée avec la prochaine attaque des - Piémontais et des Autrichiens. - - L’armée d’Italie se prépare à défendre ce que la valeur et la - liberté ont conquis à Nice. Mais des agitateurs y ont causé de - la fermentation, comme dans l’armée des Alpes; ils y tenaient - des propos injurieux à la Convention nationale; ils y parlaient - de royauté, et se servaient du moyen de la paye en assignats - pour altérer le bon esprit des troupes; des alarmes ont été - jetées sur les subsistances, dont le comité s’occupe dans ce - moment. - - Le général de l’armée d’Italie a pris les moyens propres à - découvrir les agitateurs et à les faire conduire au tribunal - extraordinaire. - - L’armée des Pyrénées a été la plus négligé et la plus mal - pourvue en armes et en munitions, et c’est contre les troupes - les plus féroces et les plus fanatiques qu’elles doivent - défendre les plus belles contrées de la République. - - Aussi nous sommes accablés tous les jours par des relations - malheureuses qui ne sont que le triste résultat de la - négligence de deux anciens ministres de la guerre qui n’ont - jamais su penser qu’il existât une armée des Pyrénées.... - -The whole of the above is an interesting example of the detailed methods -of the Committee, with its reiteration against the Girondin management of -the war. It continues in much the same spirit. - - Du côté de l’Océan, la trahison de quelque chef des Miquelets - et la lâcheté d’une partie du régiment vingtième ont livré un - point de la frontière. Une terreur panique produite par le mot - de trahison et par des malveillans semés dans les petits camps - formés sur l’extrème frontière, a désorganisé le peu de force - qui y étaient arrivées, a découragé ceux qui y accouraient et - forcé d’abandonner Andaye et tout le pays qui se trouve entre - la rivière de Nivelle et la frontière pour ne former qu’un seul - camp à Bidarre. - - La discipline à rétablir, le courage à relever, étaient les - premiers besoins de cette armée. - - Nos commissaires se sont vus forcés d’établir provisoirement un - règlement sévère de discipline. Ils nous disent que l’ennemi - abat partout l’arbre de la liberté, fait les incursions sur les - maisons des patriotes dans la partie française abandonnée; mais - les habitans des campagnes ont le courage de ne pas obéir aux - requisitions du général espagnol. - - Il paraît qu’il n’est fort que de notre faiblesse, et que si - des secours d’armes et d’artillerie sont portés a nos frères, - notre territoire sera bientôt évacué. Le commandement de - Bayonne est confié au patriote Courpon, et la citadelle de - Saint-Esprit est défendue par des républicains. Vingt canons - et quatre compagnies des canonniers de Paris y ont été envoyés - en poste, et doivent avoir secouru cette frontière le 14 de ce - mois; le camp de Bidarre se forme avec succès. - - La division de l’armée des Pyrénées en deux grands parties, - nous donnera plus de force pour une défense active au besoin: - la terre y produit des bataillons d’hommes libres; nous leur - devons des secours abondans, car ils ont été oubliés jusqu’à - présent. On eût dit, en voyant l’état de ces frontières, que - le complot était prêt, que la force devait envahir le Nord, - tandis que la perfidie et l’indéfense livreraient le Midi. - Mais l’intrépidité et l’enthousiasme des Méridionaux pour la - liberté, est un obstacle invincible au succès des négligences - ministérielles, des trahisons intérieures, et des succès que - le perfide Pitt a promise à l’Espagne. Le camp se forme devant - Bayonne et il a repris du terrain du côté d’Andaye; l’armée - reprend l’attitude qui convient à des phalanges républicaines, - et l’artillerie commence à y arriver avec des provisions. - - L’affaire de la Vendée n’a été envisagée trop longtemps que - comme une affaire de police, ou une querelle élevée dans un - coin d’un département. - -There follows a further indictment based upon a special case. - - L’armée des côtes n’a jamais existé; l’état-major n’avait pas - même été formé; quelques chefs militaires avaient été envoyés - avec de faibles moyens et de simples requisitions. On avait - donné des ordres pour que des cadres y fussent transportés; - ils ont été arrêtés dans leur marche par la crainte ou - l’impuissance momentanée que nous avait donné la trahison de - Dumouriez. Des recrues y ont été rassemblées, sans y trouver - ni cadres, ni armes, ni un nombre suffisant d’officiers - généraux.... - - Voilà l’état où se trouvaient les armées au 10 mai, époque à - laquelle le comité a demandé inutilement la parole.... - -Then a summary, the detail of which is well worth following. - - VOICI LE DERNIER ÉTAT. - - Il arrive des troupes à Bayonne ainsi que des canons. Le camp - qui était à Bidard entre Bayonne et Saint-Jean de Luz a été - porté, depuis vendredi, entre Saint-Jean de Luz et Andaye. - - L’armée des Pyrénées orientales qu’on espérait, au moyen des - recrutemens, mettre en état de contenir au moins l’Espagnol, a - essuyé presque consécutivement deux échecs qui compromettent la - sûreté de cette partie de la frontière. Cette défaite n’est due - qu’à la gendarmerie nationale; mais un exemple prompt et sévère - mettra un terme à cette lâcheté ou à cette trahison. - - Aux Alpes nous venons d’être menacés d’une attaque très - prochaine exécutée par des forces très considérables, surtout - dans la partie du Var, débouché par lequel l’ennemi peut - menacer aussi Marseille et Toulon. Le comité de salut public - a dû prendre la seule mesure qui était en son pouvoir; il a - ordonné au général Kellerman, le seul qui eût une connaissance - suffisante des points de défense et de nos moyens militaires - dans cette partie, de s’y rendre avec la plus grande diligence, - afin de prévenir, s’il est possible, les malheurs que le - moindre retard pourrait amener. Le général de l’armée d’Italie - a paru craindre que la cour de Naples ne vienne renforcer - la coalition dans le midi. Mais le ministre des affaires - étrangères vient de communiquer des dépêches qui détruisent ces - nouvelles. - - Kellerman s’est fait précéder par un courrier extraordinaire - qui a porté à ses lieutenans les ordres préparatoires des - opérations auxquelles l’ennemi peut le forcer. Ce général, - investi de votre confiance et de celle des troupes, ne pouvait - être remplacé. On vous avait annoncé d’abord qu’il se rendrait - dans la Vendée; mais les avantages remportés un instant sur - les révoltés, et la certitude de la prochaine arrivée de Biron - dans les départemens révoltés, ont du faire changer la première - destination de Kellerman. L’armée d’Italie a des subsistences - assurées pour quelque temps. On a pris des mesures pour la - mettre à l’abri de la disette. - - Au Rhin, une action qui n’a servi qu’à la destruction des - hommes, sans avancer les affaires d’aucun parti, y laisse - les choses à peu près dans la même situation qu’auparavant, - avec cette différence, que le changement de général qui a - été en partie forcé, peut influer sur nos succès. Il est bon - d’observer que nos armées dans cette partie se trouvent avoir - en tête des forces les plus manœuvrières, et commandées par les - généraux les plus accrédités de l’Europe. - - Nos généraux, au contraire, portés au commandement pour la - première fois, ne peuvent avoir la même habitude et les mêmes - avantages que ceux auxquels les grands mouvemens de guerre - sont familiers. Les approvisionnemens dans cette partie et les - subsistances sont bien assurés. - - Dans le Nord, notre situation est très alarmante, et la - Convention doit connaître tous ces maux; elle a besoin d’être - instruite par le malheur, et de sentir les tristes effets de - ses divisions. - - Notre armée, repoussée entre Combrai et Bouchain, quittant - son camp de Famars pour prendre plus loin celui de Coefar, - abandonnant à leurs propres forces Condé et Valenciennes, - perdant ses communications avec Douay et Lille d’un côté, et de - l’autre avec Maubeuge et le Quesnoy, est exposée à de nouveaux - revers, si la présence du général Custine, qui a dû y arriver - le 25, ne lui rend pas la discipline qui lui manque et la - confiance sans laquelle il n’est point de succès à obtenir dans - la guerre. - - Si les efforts de ce général ne sont pas promptement secondés - par l’union des représentans du peuple, la Convention doit - s’attendre à tomber dans une situation plus embarrassante - qu’au moment où, pendant la dernière campagne, les esclaves - allemands entraient en Champagne, et menaçaient Paris et la - liberté. Alors d’heureux hasards, ou plutôt cette destinée - qui semble conduire la France, ont disparaître des dangers - aussi imminens; mais doit-on compter sur une nouvelle faveur - de l’aveugle fortune? ne devons-nous pas craindre une nouvelle - invasion, et pouvons-nous nous flatter que toutes nos villes - imiteront le généreux dévouement de celle de Maubeuge, qui - nous écrit le 26 de ce mois:—“Ici on bat la générale dans cet - instant: on a envoyé une partie de notre garnison dans la - Vendée; nous restons; nous déjouerons nos ennemis extérieurs et - intérieurs, ou nous mourrons libres. La ville sautera si nos - murs abattus permettent à l’ennemi de souiller notre enceinte.” - - Quant aux besoins de cette armée du Nord, peut-être croira-t-on - difficilement que, malgré toutes nos dépenses, la demande - qui vient d’être faite au comité, qui a été arrêtée par le - commissaire général de l’armée du Nord, et visée par les - commissaires de la Convention, monte à la somme de 49 millions. - - L’armée qui doit anéantir les révoltés s’organise; il arrive - un grand nombre de bataillons à Tours; les postes de la rive - droite de la Loire se renforcent, et l’on fait défiler des - troupes en poste. Si les rebelles menacent cette rive, ils sont - hors d’état d’exécuter ce project; leurs forces ce divisent, - mais ils rentrent dans les pays couverts. Les principaux chefs - des révoltés sont subordonnés aux prêtres; c’est une véritable - croisade; mais les habitans des campagnes commencent à se - lasser de cette horrible guerre, et murmurent. - - D’un autre côté, on nous écrit qu’il est parti, depuis notre - dernier succès, un courier de Bruxelles à Londres, pour engager - le cabinet de Saint-James à accélérer un armament tendant à - porter sur les côtes de Bretagne des troupes, des armes, des - munitions, et à vomir sur nos rivages un corps considérable - d’émigrés de Jersey et Guernsey. - - Le transfuge Condé a envoyé à Jersey tous les émigrés bretons - pour être déposés sur nos côtes et y seconder un des rejetons - de la famille de nos tyrans. - - On se plaignait presque partout des commissaires des guerres - ce corps essentiel des armées va être changé, amélioré sur de - nouvelles bases et épuré par des choix patriotiques. - - Quant à la suppression de la paie en numéraire, toutes - les armées de la République l’ont reçue sans peine; ils - sacrifient à chaque instant leur vie à la liberté, comment - s’occuperaient-il d’intérêts pécuniaires? mais aussi ils ont - droit à plus de surveillance pour les approvisionemens et pour - les subsistances. Quelques compagnies de l’armée d’Italie - seulement ont montré de la résistance; mais les agitateurs - seront déjoués par la surveillance qui y a été établie, et par - les soins de vos commissaires. - - Dans le choix des officiers généraux, nous avons dû quelquefois - obéir aux défiances populaires et aux dénonciations - individuelles; mais c’est là un des maux attachés à la - révolution, qui use beaucoup d’hommes, qui en éloigne un - plus grand nombre, et qui présente plus d’accusations que de - ressources. Sans doute après les odieuses trahisons qui ont - affligé et qui affligent encore la république et désorganisé - deux fois les armées, on peut, on doit même devenir défiant - et soupçonneux; mais la ligne qui sépare la défiance et la - calomnie, est trop facile à dépasser; et si la dénonciation - juste est une action civique, l’accusation intéressée est la - honte de nos mœurs et la ressource de la haine.... - - Le comité, pour ne rien négliger dans cette terrible partie - de la guerre, a interrogé des militaires instruits; il s’est - environné de leur expérience pour faire un plan de guerre - auquel se rattacheraient des plans de campagne pour chacune des - armées. Jusqu’à présent la guerre de la liberté a été faite - sans plans, sans suite, sans prévoyance même; il est plus que - temps de tracer les limites dans lesquelles la guerre sera - soutenue, dans quelle partie elle sera défensive, dans quelle - autre elle sera offensive, assigner à chaque armée la portion - de frontières qu’elle a à défendre, les points des ennemis - qu’elle doit attaquer ou couvrir. - -In what follows regarding the Navy, we see the attempt of the Committee, -which we know was foredoomed to failure, but which was a fine one, to -meet the English Power. The “error,” as English critics have called it, -of rapidly putting in new officers was an unfortunate necessity. - - DE LA MARINE. - - Ici nous devons accuser ce système perfide de Bertrand et - de ses semblables, qui, depuis plusieurs années, semblait - préparer, de concert avec l’Angleterre, l’abaissement de la - France, et assurer à nos plus constans ennemis l’empire des - mers.... C’est par la réunion des forces navales, que nos - ennemis out espéré d’attaquer plus sûrement notre indépendance, - et de nous dicter de lois. Quoique par cette coalition l’on - ait tenté aveuglement de faire passer la balance du pouvoir - à une nation maritime, déjà trop puissante pour l’intérêt - du continent; ... quoique, par la désorganisation passagère - de notre marine, par le dénuement de nos ports, par le - ralentissement des travaux, on ait espéré de changer la - destinée de la république française, ne craignons pas que l’on - parvienne à faire rétrograder la plus belle des révolutions. - - La surveillance constante du comité, le zèle du ministre, et le - dévouement de l’armée navale qui se forme, feront oublier tant - de trahisons ou de négligences, mais les moyens ne peuvent être - que lents. - - Des expéditions hardies, et confiées à des hommes courageux - sont préparées; les plaintes du commerce ont été enfin - entendues d’après le dernier rapport du ministre, le cabotage - va être protégé dans l’Océan par 34 canonnières, 12 corvettes, - 18 lougres, cutters ou avisos, et dans la Méditerranée, par - 18 corvettes, ou cannonières et 5 avisos, indépendamment des - frégates dont il est inutile de faire connaître le nombre et - les stations, sans trahir les intérêts de la défense de la - république.... - - Il existe beaucoup d’officiers capables; l’abaissement des - vains préjugés qui séparaient l’armée commerciale de l’armée - navale, nous assure des ressources, mais il faut les surveiller - et punir sévèrement la désobéissance ou la malversation; avant - de choisir les officiers, examen et impartialité; après le - choix, confiance entière, mais responsabilité impérieuse. Le - secret accompagnera nos opérations, si les inquiétudes du - commerçant ou les soupçons du zèle patriotique ne viennent pas - les altérer ou les contrarier; les corps civils ne doivent pas - s’immiscer dans le secret des opérations navales, ou bien nos - ennemis le sauront bientôt, et nous vaincrons sans nous laisser - sortir de nos ports. - - Le comité s’occupe des lois répressives que la discipline - navale réclame avec plus d’intérêt que jamais. Une grande - force s’organise dans les ports de la Méditerranée, qui par - notre position, doit être le canal de navigation du commerce - français.... - - On s’occupe des moyens les plus propres à retirer les colonies - de l’état malheureux où elles se trouvent, depuis qu’une cour - perfide voulait faire la contre-révolution en France, par les - malheurs de l’Amérique; et si, à côté de nous, des Français - veulent se rappeler qu’ils descendant de Guillaume, tous les - calculs de la politique insulaire pourront être dérangés. - - Le comité ne peut vous offrir aucun résultat précis et détaillé - dans ce moment; il serait même impolitique de la publier. Mais - tout se prépare, et quoique les forces de la république soient - très inférieures à celles des ennemis coalisés, le patriotisme - les dirigera de manière à rappeler le courage des filibustiers, - et les exploits des Bart et des Dugay-Trouin.... - -In foreign affairs we have the Dantonesque idea of pitting the Powers -against one another, which, unfortunately for France, fanatics who were -in power later abandoned. The remark on the impolitic nature of the -decree of the 19th of December should be specially noted: it comes direct -from Danton. - - DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES. - - ... Le ministère anglais est forcé, malgré son influence et - son orgueil avare, de voir Dantzick passer au pouvoir de la - Prusse, sans réclamation; de voir la Pologne, se partager sans - sa participation; et de se compromettre vis-à-vis la morale - et l’esprit public de la nation anglaise. Aussi l’intrigant - Pitt, qui ne peut se dissimuler que le ministre qui fait la - guerre, traite rarement de la paix, surtout chez une nation - éclairée et trompée sur cette guerre par l’astuce profonde de - son gouvernement, ne cesse d’invoquer sans cesse auprès de la - ligne, la cause générale des cours.... - - Le comité a cherché à resserrer le lien qui attache déjà, - par les relations commerciales, le peuple suisse et le - peuple français; et l’ambassadeur que la Suisse a reçu suit - constamment le vœu témoigné par la Convention nationale, de - s’allier avec les gouvernemens justes et les peuples libres. - - Nous apprenons que les peuples neutres et amis reçoivent avec - reconnaissance le décret du 15 avril, qui eut servi plus - utilement la liberté, s’il eut été d’une date plus reculée, - et si le décret impolitique du 19 décembre n’eût pas donné un - nouveau prétexte à la perfidie des cours étrangères. - - Ce décret par lequel vous aviez déclaré que la France - ne souffrirait jamais qu’aucune puissance semélât de sa - constitution et de son gouvernement, et qu’à son tour, elle ne - s’immiscerait en rien sur les autres gouvernemens; ce décret a - augmenté subitement le nombre de nos partisans dans la Suisse; - et le témoignage d’un peuple simple et libre a son prix auprès - des républicains. - - Des négociations d’alliance ne sont plus des chimères pour - la France libre. Il est des puissances qui ont senti que - l’élévation ou la ruine d’une nation intéressent toutes les - autres et que celles même qui sont le plus éloignées du théâtre - de la guerre, sont souvent les victimes de leur modération - ou de leur indifférence. Il est des alliés pour leur propre - sûreté, peuvent soutenir nos intérêts, avec autant de chaleur - que de bonne foi. Il est d’autres alliances que la politique - doit vous assurer, et d’autres qui seront dues en grande partie - à votre état républicain; votre commerce ne peut que s’en - féliciter. - - L’Italie voit avec intérêt le signe de la République arboré - dans ses villes, si j’excepte les villes gouvernées encore par - un prêtre et par la maison d’Autriche.... - - Nous apprenons que la Russie a fait faire à la Porte la demande - officielle du passage d’une flotte, menaçant de regarder le - refus qu’on pourrait lui en faire comme une déclaration de - guerre. La réponse a été dilatoire et sera négative; les - usurpations de la Russie trouveront enfin des bornes. C’est à - la politique européenne à aider le maître des Dardanelles à les - poser.... - - Une suite de coalisation faite contre la France, avait jeté des - obstacles à l’arrivée des chebecs à Alger. On voulait encore - vous aliéner cette puissance, amie de la République; mais - nous recevons la nouvelle que le dey a reçu, avec le plus vif - intérêt, les deux chebecs que la République lui a renvoyés, - et qu’il a témoigné les dispositions les plus favorables à la - France.... - -There follows the French criticism of the Alien Bill. - - Un bill infâme, qui insulte à l’humanité et aux droits des - nations, a été promulgué par le gouvernement anglais, et - traduit en espagnol à Madrid et dans les villes hanséatiques, - par les intrigues de l’ambassadeur anglais. Ce bill, dont - la haine pour la convention a dicté les clauses horribles - contre les Français, vous portera sans doute à user du droit - de représailles. Le comité vous fera un rapport sur cet - objet, ainsi que sur les diverses mesures à prendre contre la - gouvernement anglais. Des agens nombreux sont disséminés dans - l’Europe, pour connaître les complots de nos ennemis au dedans - et au dehors, et pour s’assurer des véritables amis de la - république. - - Il résulte enfin, de toutes nos relations, que Dumouriez et ses - aides-de-camp, chassés du Stoutgard, n’ont pas reçu un meilleur - accueil à Vursbourg, par ordre de l’électeur, quoique évêque. - Ainsi, les traîtres ne trouvent pas d’asyle même chez les - despotes à qui ils se sacrifient. - -Matters concerning the Interior are comparatively vague, for here the -Committee wished to compromise with the Gironde; but they are strong -against civil war. - - DE L’INTÉRIEUR. - - ... Quant aux approvisionnemens des armées et de la marine, les - commissaires éprouvent des obstacles, en ne pouvant, d’après le - dernier décret, acheter que dans les marchés. - - Le comité s’est occupé ensuite de sonder la plaie et de - connaître la source de toutes les agitations qui tourmentent la - république. - - Ici des vérités doivent nous être déclarées; car, vous êtes - sur le bord d’un abyme profond, et la Convention Nationale, au - milieu de ses divisions, a oublié qu’elle marchait entre deux - écueils, et qu’elle était conduite par l’aveugle anarchie. - - D’un côté, l’exécrable plan de la guerre civile, secondé par - l’Anglais, et sans doute dirigée de Londres, de Rome et par - des agens correspondans à Paris, étendait ses ramifications - sur toute la France, et principalement dans les pays qui - étaient, depuis la révolution, infestés de fanatisme, ou qui - avaient été le théâtre des troubles fanatiques et des complots - contre-révolutionnaires. - - D’un autre côté, une alarme générale s’est répandue parmi - les propriétaires d’un territoire de vingt-sept mil de - lieues quarrées, et ces craintes ont eu pour base des - motions exagérées, des journaux feuillantisés et des propos - sauguinaires; le mécontentement né de nos discussions - personnelles a altéré la confiance, mais vous êtes nécessaires: - les aristocrates, redoutant les passions des patriotes, ont - excité les hommes énergiques contre les modérés auxquels - ils se rattachent sourdement; ils ont préparé des mouvemens - contraires.... - - Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Rouen, prenez garde, la liberté - vous observe sur votre marche dans la révolution; elle ne - vous croira jamais contraire à ses vues; mais craignez d’être - stationnaires dans le mouvement de l’opinion publique; écrasez - avec nous les révoltés, les anarchistes et les brigands; - mais aussi craignez le modérantisme et les intrigues de - l’aristocratie qui veut vous effrayer sur les propriétés et sur - le commerce, pour vous redonner des nobles, des prêtres et un - roi.... - - Au moment où le comité a été formé, presque partout les - administrations trop faibles ou trop au dessous des - circonstances se ressentaient de l’influence meurtrière des - passions particulières qui y correspondaient... - - A Lyon, l’aristocratie a un foyer plus profond qu’on ne peut le - penser; elle est secondée par l’égoïsme et l’indifférence.... - - Mais les campagnes et les villes de department de Rhône et - Loire, surtout Villefranche, présente un autre esprit, et là - surtout paraissent ces signes heureux, là sont entendues ces - acclamations énergiques qui caractérisent le patriotisme. - - A Marseille où tout annonce l’ardeur républicaine, à Marseille - où l’on voit presque à chaque pas un arbre de la liberté ou - une inscription civique, à Marseille où le pain, égal pour - tout et de mauvaise qualité, se vend sept sols la livre, cette - calamité est supportée sans murmurer, où l’on entend des - plaintes contre les traîtres, les égoïstes, les intrigans; - où les seuls malheurs dont on soit afflige sont ceux qui - frappent la République entière, Marseille a éprouvé des - convulsions violentes; mais si la répression de quelques excès - de la démagogie a fait craindre à de bons citoyens que le - modérantisme ne prévalût, le républicanisme n’en triomphera pas - moins des passions individuelles. Croyons que cette grande cité - ne dégénérera pas de sa renommée. - - Nous avons à gémir sur des excès commis à Avignon et à Aix; - ce qui s’est passé d’irrégulier à Toulon, relativement aux - officiers de la marine, vous sera rapporté quand le comité aura - fait le travail de cette partie. - - Le meilleur esprit règne dans ce moment à Perpignan; la vieille - antipathie nationale contre l’Espagnol, y réchauffé l’esprit - républicain que le département des Pyrénées orientales avait - déjà montré avec tant d’énergie le 21 Juin 1791. - - Bayonne se rattache aux bons principes. Les trahisons lui - ont donné de l’énergie; mais si cette place est dans ce - moment menacée de près par l’ennemi, le zèle des républicains - méridionaux la défendra contre les ennemis du dedans et du - dehors. - - Bordeaux ne cesse de fournir à la liberté et a ses armées des - trésors et des soldats; elle va défendre en même temps les - Pyrénées et les Deux-Sèvres. - - Les intentions manifestées à Nantes ne se ressentent pas assez - de l’enthousiasme civique qui doit animer dans ce moment tous - les citoyens. Ses moyens auraient pu être plus efficaces; - il y a du mécontentement et des craintes sur les effets des - divisions intestines. - - A Orléans, l’esprit public s’améliore, depuis que - l’aristocratie a été frappée par la loi révolutionnaire; mais - cette ville a le droit d’obtenir que les procédures faites par - les commissaires soient bientôt jugées, les coupables punis et - les bons citoyens rassurés. - - Dans le département de l’Allier, une correspondance interceptée - a fait découvrir des traînes contre la liberté, elles étaient - ourdies par des prêtres déportés, de concert avec leurs agens - à Moulins. Les corps administratifs, qui vivent dans la plus - heureuse harmonie, ont mis en lieu de sûreté les ci-devant - que leur conduite avait rendus suspects et les y font garder - avec soin et humanité, jusqu’à ce que la République n’ait plus - rien à craindre de ses ennemis intérieurs et de ces enfans - dénaturés. Le peuple a partout applaudi à cette énergie de ses - magistrats, et il les a secourus, parce que le peuple veut - franchement la liberté. - - A Roanne, le modérantisme est réduit en système, et dans la - crise où nous sommes, cette apathie politique est le plus - grand fléau de la République, qui ne peut s’établir que par le - développement de toute l’énergie nationale. - - A Tain, dans le département de la Drôme, des patriotes, que - n’étaient qu’aisés dans leur fortune (le patriotisme se trouve - rarement avec la fortune), se sont cotisés, et, de concert avec - le Maire, ont fait, sans y être contraints par la loi, mais par - amour pour la patrie, une cotisation, dont le produit a été - employé à fournir du pain à un prix modéré, pour les citoyens - peu fortunés. C’est ainsi que dans les provinces méridionales, - les mœurs et l’humanité font plus que les lois et le cœur des - riches dans les grandes cités.... - - A Tours, l’administration d’Indre et Loire, apprenant que - les ennemis étaient à Loudun, et marchaient à Chinon, a pris - la résolution, par un mouvement civique et spontané, de se - transporter toute entière au milieu des dangers qui les - menaçaient, et décidée à s’ensevelir sous les ruines de la - ville, plutôt que de se rendre. Une commission y est restée. - Loudun a demeuré sans défense. Quelques aristocrates en ont été - heureusement chassés. - - Poitiers, trop influencé par des fanatiques et par des hommes - de l’ancien régime, peut donner des espérances aux révoltés, - et déjà l’administration nous a fait craindre le résultat du - mauvais esprit d’une partie de ses habitans, malgré l’énergie - connue des patriotes qu’elle renferme. - - Paris qu’on accuse sans cesse, qu’on agite presque toujours, - tantôt par des crimes, tantôt par des intrigues, tantôt par - des passions personnelles, tantôt par des intérêts secrets et - étrangers, et plus souvent encore par l’action prolongée ou - l’exaltation des passions révolutionnaires; Paris, réceptacle - de tant d’étrangers, de tant de conspirateurs, doit attirer vos - regards. - -The following passage on the Commune of Paris is noteworthy for its -non-committal character, in keeping with the attempt to get rid of the -Gironde, if possible, without an insurrection. - - Vous devez contenir le conseil général de la commune de - Paris dans les limites que l’unité et l’indivisibilité de - la République exigent et que la loi lui prescrit. C’est à - vous qu’il appartient seul de dominer toutes les ambitions - politiques, de détruire toutes les usurpations législatives; - c’est à vous de répondre à la France du dépôt de pouvoir qui - vous a été religieusement confié. - - Vous devez aviser aux movemens inégaux et anarchiques que des - intrigans font passer dans plusieurs sections peuplées de bons - citoyens, et aux mouvemens aristocratiques qu’on pourrait - cependant leur communiquer. - - Vous devez surveiller également le moderantisme qui paralyse - tout et prépare la perte de la liberté, et les excès le la - démagogie dont les émigrés et les ambitieux, déguisés parmi - nous, tiennent le secret et le prix journalier. - - L’esprit des habitans de Paris est bon, malgré les vices de - l’égoïsme, de l’avarice et de l’apathie d’un certain nombre de - ses habitans. L’amour de la liberté, qu’on a voulu tant de fois - y neutraliser, sort victorieux de toutes les épreuves; et nous - pensons que Paris n’appartiendra jamais qu’à la liberté; Paris - qui à détruit le trône, ne souffrira pas qu’aucune autorité - usurpe le pouvoir national, qui est la propriété de tous, et - qui est le véritable lieu de tous les départemens. - - Malgré toutes les intrigues par lesquelles on a cherché à - empêcher Paris de prononcer son patriotisme en marchant contre - les révoltés, chaque section a fourni ou s’occupe de fournir - son contingent pour former douze ou quatorze bataillons de - mille hommes.... - -I quote certain portions which show the fear of the Committee, so often -justified, with regard to foreign intrigue. - - FINANCES. - - Il a agioté le numéraire pour avilir l’assignat; il a fait - hausser les changes, par ses opérations à la bourse. - - DISSENTIONS CIVILES. - - Il a alimenté le fanatisme de la Vendée; il a fourni des - hommes, des armes et des munitions.[166] - - ROYALISME. - - C’est l’anglais, qui a combiné les regrets et ravivé les - espérances, par l’excès du républicanisme qu’il a fomenté, par - les motions des lois agraires, dont il cherchait ensuite à - faire imputer les projets à des patriotes connus.... - - GÉNÉRAUX. - - Celui qui avait acheté Arnold en Amérique, a acheté Dumouriez - en Europe, et il a dû traiter de même les militaires qui - n’aiment pas la république.... - - DE L’ORGANISATION SOCIALE. - - L’anglais a semé l’effroi dans l’âme des propriétaires par - des motions sur les partages des terres, et dans le cœur des - commerçans par le pillage des magasins.... - - L’anglais a imaginé de la bloquer, de l’affamer, de l’incendier - dans ses ports, dans ses édifices publics; de détruire son - industrie; il armé tour à tour l’aristocrate contre le - patriote, et le patriote contre l’aristocrate; enfin, le peuple - contre le peuple, espérant que le spectacle de nos troubles - ôtera au peuple anglais le courage de détruire chez lui le - despotisme royal. - - PERTE DE PARIS. - - C’est au cœur que les assassins frappent; c’est sur les - capitales que les conquérans dirigent leurs coups. On ne - pouvait perdre Paris par les armés; on a voulu perdre Paris par - les départemens; on y a semé dès terreurs pour le ruiner par la - fuite des propriétaires et des riches; on a semé des idées de - suprématie, pour séparer, pour isoler les départemens de Paris. - -The danger of civil war and vigorous methods for meeting it are the -subject of the passages that follow. - - DIVISION DU TERRITOIRE. - - L’anglais enfin a espéré diviser la France pour la morceler ou - la ruiner. Dans son délire, il a espéré de voir une monarchie - impuissante s’établir dans le nord, et des républiques - misérables et divisées se former dans le midi. - - J’ai dévoilé le gouvernement britannique; il n’est plus à - craindre. - - Dans un très grand nombre de départemens on a procédé à la - réclusion des personnes notoirement suspectes d’incivisme et - soupçonnées d’entretenir des intelligences avec les émigrés - et les contre-révolutionnaires. On en accuse généralement les - prêtres et les moines, les émigrés rentrés impunément sur notre - territoire, et les correspondants qui les soutenaient de leurs - fortunes et de leurs espérances. - - On a dû prendre des mesures sévères, alors que tous les - aristocrates correspondaient à la Vendée, et que des lettres - interceptées annonçaient un rassemblement à Nantes. - - Des arrestations nombreuses ont dû être la suite de ces - méfiances, de ces trahisons disséminées dans toute la France; - l’autorité, dans les temps de révolution, a plus d’yeux et - de bras que d’entrailles; mais le législateur doit à tous - les citoyens cette justice exacte qui vient régulariser les - premiers mouvemens et faire statuer sur la liberté individuelle - avec les précautions que les circonstances peuvent admettre. - Vous devez abattre également toutes les aristocraties et toutes - les tyrannies; vous devez approuver vos commissaires s’ils ont - bien fait, les blâmer et les punir s’ils ont violé les droits - des citoyens. Le comité pense que le comité de législation et - de sûreté générale doivent proposer incessamment une loi qui - règle le mode de jugement de la légitimité de ces arrestations, - et qui renvoie aux tribunaux les coupables ou laissât en - réclusion ceux qui ne sont que notoirement suspects. - - Le département de l’Ain voit l’esprit public se rétablir - parmises habitans. - - La conspiration qui a éclaté dans l’Ouest semblait se montrer - dans les départemens de l’Ardèche, du Gard, de la Haute Loire - et du Cantal; mais les administrateurs et vos commissaires - sont parvenus à les réprimer. Ces troubles de la Lozère ont un - caractère plus fort; mais le patriotisme de ce département et - de ses voisins y mettra bientôt un terme. - - Les tribunaux ont sévi contre les coupables; nous avions craint - que vos commissaires n’eussent dépassé leurs pouvoirs dans le - département de l’Ardèche, et nous les aurions déféré à votre - sévère justice pour donner l’exemple de la punition de ceux - qu’on affecte d’appeler des proconsuls, pour empêcher le bien - qu’ils peuvent faire ou en empoisonner les résultats; mais un - décret avait déjà mis hors de la loi les coupables complices de - Defaillant. - - La trahison de Dumouriez que tout annonce avoir eu des branches - très étendus, a été un trait de lumière; elle a frappé es - administrations et les citoyens d’un coup électrique. Tous nos - moyens ont centuplé par cet évènement destiné à les paralyser; - mais de tous les maux préparés insensiblement dans les - départemens frontières comme dans le centre, comme au milieu - de nous le plus grand, le plus effrayant par ses progrès, est - la marche imprévue des contre-révolutionnaires nobiliares, - sacerdotaux et émigrés qui, du fond de la Vendée et du Morbihan - remontent la Loire, menacent nos cités de l’intérieur, et - emploient à la fois, des moyens de terreur et de persuasion.... - - Les révoltés ont plusieurs corps de rassemblement. Le principe - qui s’était porté a Thouars, était, suivant les uns, de - quinze mille suivant la dernière relation envoyée par un de - nos commissaires, il était de vingt à vingt-cinq mille hommes - armés, partie de piques, partie de fusils; ils traînent avec - eux, treize pièces de canon, selon les uns, et d’après le - dernier succès de Thouars, trente pièces d’artillerie. - - Ils sont commandés par des ci-devant nobles et accompagnés par - des prêtres; toutes leurs femmes leur servent d’espions; ils - se battent pour des fiefs et des prières. Les agriculteurs - fanatiques combattent avec fureur et ne pillent pas; ils - composent la moitié de la troupe. - - Un quart est composé de gardes-chasses, d’échappés des galères - et de faux sauniers. Ils pillent, dévastent, égorgent, et sont - bien dignes de leurs chefs. - - L’autre quart est formé d’hommes pusillanimes ou indifférens, - que la violence force de marcher, mais qui, à la première - défaite des brigands, se retireraient, et forment, pour ainsi - dire, la propriété du premier occupant. C’est à la liberté de - s’en emparer par des succès. - - Il n’y a que les émigrés, les ci-devant, et les prêtres qui - voudraient mettre de l’ordre dans les rassemblemens, et de la - tactique dans cette guerre. Ils paient, les rebelles deux tiers - en numéraire. - - Les chefs connus sont les ci-devant de Leseur, - Laroche-Jacquelin, Beauchamp, Langrenière, Delbecq, - Baudré-de-Brochin, Debouillé-Loret, un abbé appelé Larivière. - Domengé est colonel-général de la cavalerie; Demenens et - Delbecq commandent l’armée catholique-royale. - - Le comité a pourvu journellement par des arrêtés pressans, à ce - que cette guerre intestine fût efficacement comprimée.... - - Déjà l’armée s’organise à Tours; une commission centrale est - établie à Saumur; déjà des troupes de ligne ont dépassé Paris - pour s’y rendre, et le renfort considérable que le comité avait - requis, est en route pour s’y rendre. Les voitures des riches, - les équipages du luxe, auront du moins servi une fois à la - défense de la patrie et de la liberté. Une armée est dirigée - en poste sur les rives de la Loire. C’est ainsi qu’un des plus - fameux guerrieurs du nord alla écraser en 1757 les autrichiens - à la bataille de Liffa ou Leuten, avec une armée arrivée en - poste sur le champ de bataille.... - - Le comité prépare un rapport sur les agens périodiques de - l’opinion publique, et sur les arrêtés violateurs de la liberté - de la presse. - - Tel est le tableau de l’intérieur de la république, d’après les - rapports et la correspondance des commissaires et des corps - administratifs. Nous devons le terminer par une réflexion sur - les commissaires, dont on cherche trop à effrayer les citoyens, - et même plusieurs membres de la convention.... - -The influence of Cambon is apparent in what follows. - - DES CONTRIBUTIONS PUBLIQUES. - - Quant aux contributions, rien ne prouve mieux le désir de voir - fonder la République, et de voir renaître l’ordre social le - paiement des impositions, au milieu des ruines et de débris - de l’ancien gouvernement; s’il y a de l’arriéré, ce n’est - que par les fautes des administrations qui n’ont pas encore - terminé la confection des rôles; quelques-unes ont arrêté tout - envoi de fonds. Mais un moyen de salut public, appartient à - cette partie de l’administration, c’est de vous occuper sans - relâche, des lois concernant les contributions publiques, de - l’accélération de la vente des biens d’émigrés, et des maisons - ci-devant royales, objets qui semblent encore attendre leurs - anciens et coupables possesseurs; et des moyens de retirer de - la circulation, une certaine masse d’assignats. Vous devez - cette loi au peuple, qui a vu s’augmenter par une progression - effrayante et ruineuse, le prix des subsistances; vous le - devez à tous les créanciers de la République et à tous ceux - qu’elle salarie, afin de rétablir la balance rompu trop - rapidement, par la masse énorme de cette monnaie. La portion - du peuple qui mérite avant toutes les autres l’attention de - ses représentants, est celle qui souffre tous les jours au - surhaussement du prix des denrées. - - Les contributions indirectes, perçues au milieu des mouvemens - de la révolution, et des défiances semées sur son succès, par - des mécontens et des ennemis publics, alimentent abondamment le - trésor national. Déjà dans les trois derniers mois de Janvier, - Février et Mars, la perception des impôts indirects excède de - plusieurs millions l’estimation qui en a été faite. Le total - des trois mois, se porte a 52,182,468 livres en y comprenant - 5,400,000 livres, de l’adjudication des bois. Que serace - dans un temps de paix et de prospérité? Quelle confiance la - République doit avoir de ses forces et de ses moyens? - - Nous avons vu avec regret, parmi les produits de l’imposition - indirecte, des droits qui devraient être inconnus à des peuples - libres, des droits de bâtardise et de déshérence, et que les - sauvages de l’Amérique repousseraient. - -From henceforward Danton’s hand is apparent throughout the report. Some -matters on the Constitution and on Public Construction, which have little -to do with the insurrection of June 2nd, have been omitted, but the -Dantonian policy of framing a constitution which should reconcile enemies -is printed in full. - - DES COLONIES. - - Nous ne disons encore rien des colonies, quoique nous ayons - reçu des mémoires et des vues sur cet objet important - et malheureux, d’où dépend la prospérité publique, et - l’agrandissement de la marine française. Peut-être eût-il mieux - valu de ne pas plus parler dans les assemblées nationales, des - colonies que de la religion, jusqu’à ce que la révolution du - continent eût été à son terme. Perfectionner dans ces contrées - lointaines le commissariat civil, adoucir les effets du régime - militaire, détruire insensiblement le préjugé des couleurs, - améliorer par des vues sages et des moyens progressifs le sort - de l’espèce humaine dans ces climats avares, etait peut-être - la mesure la plus convenable; mais la révolution a fait des - progrès terribles sous ce soleil brûlant. Saint-Domingue - est aussi malheureux que les îles des vents sont redevenues - fidèles, et ses malheurs ne paraissent pas rès de leur terme. - - On examinera un jour s’il est des moyens de rattacher les - colonies à la France, par leur propre intérêt, c’est-à-dire, - par la franchise absolue de leur commerce avec nous, et - une disposition générale des droits perçus sur le commerce - étranger, dans ces mêmes colonies. De pareilles lois qui nous - défendraient mieux que des escadres, demandent d’être méditées. - - Cette partie de l’intérêt national, doit être traitée - séparément et avec une forte sagesse; le comité est chargé - de préparer en attendant ce rapport, des mesures propres à - diminuer les maux que cette belle colonie souffre encore. - - DE LA FORCE PUBLIQUE DE L’INTÉRIEUR. - - Elle se ressent partout de l’anarchie que règne. Là, elle - délibère; ici, elle agit au gré des passions. Disséminée - dans toutes les sections de l’empire, elle semble avoir une - versatilité de principes et d’actions, qui peut effrayer la - liberté. Dans une ville, les citoyens riches et les égoïstes, - se font remplacer; défendre ses foyers, semble être encore une - corvée plutôt qu’un honneur, une charge plutôt qu’un droit. - Dans une autre cité, le service public frappe des artisans peu - aisés ou des ouvriers, qui ont besoin du repos de la nuit, pour - le travail qui alimente leur famille, il est plus que temps - d’effacer ces lignes de démarcation intolérable dans un régime - libre. La nature seule a décrit des différences; elle est dans - les âges; les jeunes citoyens depuis seize ans jusqu’à 25, - sont les premiers que la patrie appelle; moins occupés et plus - disponibles, c’est à eux de voler aux premiers dangers. Cette - première force est-elle insuffisante (car il ne faut pas penser - à la défection) l’autre âge plus fort et plus sage, présente - à la société ses moyens, c’est l’âge de 25 à 35; la troisième - classe sera de 35 à 45; la dernière réquisition doit frapper - tout ce qui peut porter les armes. Alors, la société appelle - à son secours, tous ceux qui partagent la souveraineté; une - exception favorable se présente pour les pères nourrissant leur - famille du produit de leur travail. Une exception contraire - doit frapper les célibataires et les hommes veufs sans enfans. - - C’est à la législation et à la morale à flétrir ceux qui ne - paient cette dette ni à la nature ni à la République. - - C’est ainsi qu’il convient aux Français, d’organiser le - droit de réquisition. Cet exemple est sorti des besoins de - la liberté, dans les terres américaines. La réquisition est - l’appel de la patrie aux citoyens; cet appel peut être fait par - les généraux, quand la loi le leur a confié momentanément, et - dans les cas de guerre; cet appel peut être fait par le pouvoir - civil dans toutes les autorités constituées, et encore plus par - les assemblées nationales, qui sont à la fois pouvoir civil, - législatif et national. - - Le comité a pensé qu’il devait présenter un mode uniforme, - de requérir la force publique dans toutes les parties de la - République, et de la part de toutes les autorités, afin que - chaque fonctionnaire et chaque citoyen, connaisse l’étendue de - son pouvoir ou de son obligation.... - - D’ailleurs, on trouverait plusieurs avantages à borner ainsi la - constitution aux articles nécessaires. - - (1ᵒ) Une plus grande espérance qu’elle sera acceptée par le - peuple. - - (2ᵒ) Une plus grande espérance encore que les citoyens - ne demanderont point si promptement, une réforme de la - constitution. - - (3ᵒ) On détruirait par cette seule résolution, même avant que - la constitution fût faite, une partie des espérances de nos - ennemis, parce qu’alors, ils commenceraient à croire que la - Convention donnera une constitution à la France, ce que jusqu’à - présent ils ne croient pas. - - En effet, il est difficile de ce tromper dans des articles - généraux importants, sur ce qui convient véritablement à la - nation française, et l’on n’a pas à craindre ces difficultés, - cette presqu’ impossibilité d’exécution qui, si on se livre - aux détails, pourraient faire désirer la réforme d’une - constitution, d’ailleurs bien combinée. - - On pourrait donc proposer de borner la constitution à ces - articles essentiels, dans le nombre desquels on sent que doit - être compris le mode de réformer la constitution, lorsqu’elle - cessera de paraître, à la majorité des citoyens, suffisante - pour le maintien de leurs droits; et si l’assemblée adoptait - cet avis, elle chargerait quatre ou cinq de ses membres, - adjoints au comité de salut public de lui présenter un plan - de constitution, borné à ces seuls articles, et combiné de - manière que ces articles puissent être soumis immédiatement à - la discussion. - - Le travail de ce comité ne prendrait qu’une semaine, - et l’assemblée pourrait suivre ses discussions sur la - constitution, car rien ne serait plus facile que de placer dans - ce plan, les points déjà arrêtés par la Convention. - - Ce travail même serait utile, quand même l’assemblée voudrait - se livrer ensuite à plus de details: - - (1ᵒ) Parce qu’il en résulterait un meilleur ordre de - discussions; - - (2ᵒ) Parce qu’on aurait toujours alors, un moyen d’accélérer le - travail, selon que des circonstances impérieuses l’exigeraient. - C’est d’après cette idée simple que nous vous proposerons de - décréter que la Convention charge une commission, composée de - cinq de ses membres, adjoints au comité de salut public, de lui - présenter dans le plus court délai, un plan de constitution, - réduit aux seuls article qu’il importe de rendre irrévocables - par les assemblées législatives, pour assurer à la République - son unité, son indivisibilité et sa liberté, et au peuple - l’exercice de tous ses droits. - - Reprenons donc avec constance le travail de la constitution, - et discutons-en le petit nombre d’articles vraiment - constitutionals, avec cette sagesse qui n’exclut pas - l’énergie, et avec ce talent qui ne flétrisse pas les défiances. - - Songez que le dernier article de la constitution sera le - commencement du traité de paix avec les puissances. Il leur - tarde de savoir avec qui elles peuvent traiter, quelle que soit - la forme de notre gouvernement.... - -There follows a strong attack upon the Federal idea, showing the -Committee to be definitely anti-Girondin in its sociology. - - Mais cette inscription sera-t-elle donc toujours mensongère? - verra-t-on sans cesse, dans le palais de l’unité, les fureurs - de la discorde, et 44 mille petites républiques y agitant leurs - dissensions par des représentans?... - - Il faut qu’à votre voix, tous les Français se prononcent, - que l’égoïste et l’avare soient flétris par l’opinion, et - punis dans leurs richesses. Ne vous y méprenez pas, il n’y a - plus de gloire et de bonheur pour vous, que dans le succès - de la liberté, dans le rétablissement de l’ordre, et dans - l’affermissement des propriétés. - - Voilà la base de toutes les sociétés politiques, et le - législateur qui la méconnaîtra, sera en horreur à ses - contemporains et à la postérité. - - Il sera aussi exécré le législateur qui aura méconnu les droits - du peuple, et qui n’aura pas écouté la plainte des malheureux. - - Si vous perdez cette occasion d’établir la république, vous - êtes tous également flétris, et pas un de vous n’échappera aux - tyrans victorieux, quelle que soit la nuance de votre opinion - ou le principe de vos actions. Le glaive exterminateur frappera - les appelans au peuple, et les votans pour la mort du tyran; - et c’est la seule égalité que vous aurez fondée. Vos noms ne - passeront à la postérité que comme ceux des rebelles et des - coupables: vous aurez reculé le perfectionnement des sociétés - humaines; vous aurez perdu les droits des peuples, vous aurez - fait périr 300 mille hommes, et dilapidé des trésors que la - liberté avait déposés dans vos mains pour son affermissement; - vous aurez rétrograder la raison publique; vous serez complice - de la tyrannie des rois et de la barbarie de l’Europe, et l’on - dira de vous; la convention de France pouvait donner la liberté - à l’Europe, mais par ses dissensions, elle riva les fers du - peuple, et servit le despotisme par ses haines.... - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] C. W. Oman, “History of England,” p. 581. - -[2] Taine, “La Révolution,” preface. - -[3] Victor Hugo, “Quatre-vingt-treize.” Illustrated edition of 1877. -Paris, pp. 136-150. - -[4] _E.g._ he says the “gentry” of France should imitate the gentry -of England. But to do this it is necessary to own the houses of the -peasantry; and even then the system does not always suit the Celtic -temperament, they say. - -[5] For example, the island of Serque. - -[6] Bonaparte may have had a noble ancestry. But so had more than one -true bourgeois whose family had had neither the means nor the desire to -insist upon the privileged rank in the past. - -[7] For the sake of clearness I do not mention the large class who had -purchased fiefs, all technically noble, many practically bourgeois. - -[8] Lyons was, of course, a frontier town of the empire, but locally it -is the centre of its own country the “Lyonnais.” - -[9] All biographers agree. The first publication of the extract from the -civil register was obtained by Bougeart in August 1860. It was furnished -to him by M. Ludot, the mayor at the time. There is a ridiculous error in -the _Journal de la Montagne_, vol. ii. No. 142, “né à _Orchie_ sur Aube.” - -[10] The date is given in the extract mentioned in the preceding note. - -[11] See the action of the relatives in No. VI. of the Appendix. - -[12] Bougeart, p. 12. A Danton, who was presumably the son of this -brother, was an inspector of the University under the second Empire. - -[13] See Appendix No. V.; also _Théâtre de l’Ancien Collège de Troyes_, -Babeau, published by Dufour-Bouquet, Troyes, 1881. - -[14] See list of his library, Appendix VIII., and his interview with -Thomas Payne, at the beginning of Chapter VII. - -[15] Speech of August 13, 1793. Printed in _Moniteur_ of August 15. - -[16] M. Béon. - -[17] _Danton, Homme d’État_, p. 29. - -[18] See “Notes of Courtois de l’Aube” in Clarétie’s “Desmoulins.” - -[19] _Danton, Homme d’État_, p. 30. - -[20] An excellent reading is afforded by the _Avocat aux Conseils du Roi_ -of M. Bos (Machal & Billaud, Paris, 1881), quoted more than once in this -work. - -[21] Since 1728 membership of this body had been purchasable and -hereditary; a striking example of how wrongly society was moving. - -[22] See Appendix VI. - -[23] M. Bos, quoted above. - -[24] Ibid., p. 520. - -[25] See Appendix V. - -[26] See Appendix II. on Danton’s lodgings in Paris. - -[27] See Robinet, _Danton vie Privée_, p. 284. - -[28] See Appendix VI. - -[29] By nature his nose was small. His was one of those faces rarely -seen, and always associated with energy and with leadership, whose great -foreheads overhang a face that would be small, were it not redeemed by -the square jaw and the mouth. Thus Arnault, “une caricature de Socrate.” - -[30] I refer to the English reformer who, on taking ship at Bristol, cast -his perruque into the water, crying, “I have done with such baubles,” and -sailed bald to the New World. - -[31] See Appendix VIII. - -[32] See Appendix IX. - -[33] From the _Almanack Royal_ of 1788. Dr. Robinet, whose opportunities -of information are unique, tells us that he first moved into the Rue des -Fossés St. Germains, and later into the Cour du Commerce, some time in -1790. The statement as to the first direction is unaccompanied by any -authority, but Dr. Robinet possesses a letter with this address on it; -now here the definite information of an official list seems to me of the -greatest weight. - -[34] See Appendices II. and VII. Some rooms look on the Rue des -Cordeliers, some on the Cour du Commerce. - -[35] De Barentin. See preceding chapter and Appendix V. He became -Danton’s client just before the decree that summoned the States-General. - -[36] Sécretaire du Sceau. - -[37] See Appendix V., Rousselin. The anecdote is little esteemed by -Aulard, but is admitted to be of value by other biographers. Aulard -relies for his opinion upon the undoubted errors in the matter of date. -But Rousselin may have been right in the main, though (writing many years -after) mistaken in the matter of a month or so. - -[38] E. Champion, _La France en 1789._ _Esprit des Cahiers_ in _La -Révolution_ (_Hist. Générale_, viii.). - -[39] Ibid. - -[40] Aulard, who quotes Chassin, _Les Elections de Paris_, vol. ii. p. -478. M. Aulard tells us that M. Chassin saw the document himself before -the war. - -[41] Less than six hundred. - -[42] Appendix V. - -[43] This description is taken from a contemporary water-colour sketch -which I have seen in the collection of Dr. Robinet. - -[44] See Appendix I. - -[45] See the discussion of the somewhat meagre authorities in Robinet, -_Danton, Homme d’État_, pp. 37-40. - -[46] _Documents authentiques pour servir à l’Histoire de la Révolution -Française Danton_, par Alfred Bougeart. Brussels, 1861 (La Croix, Van -Meenen & Cie.). - -[47] Aulard, who quotes Charavay, _Assemblée electorale de Paris_. - -[48] Chassin, _Les Elections et les Cahiers de Paris_, iii. 580-581, on -which this whole scene is based. - -[49] Aulard, _Revue de la Révolution Française_, February 14, 1893. - -[50] See the figures given in the petition against Danton’s arrest, p. -108. - -[51] This decree was passed by the Cordeliers on Tuesday, July 21, 1789. -It is not so unreasonable as it might seem, for but two days afterwards -(July 23rd) the informal municipal body recognises the necessity of new -city elections. - -[52] Signed 21st September; promulgated 3rd November. - -[53] An excellent example is on p. 45 of _Danton, Homme d’État_. - -[54] Their names were Peyrilhe, De Blois, De Granville, Dupré, Croharé. -They can be found, with all the decrees touching this business, in -_Danton, Homme d’État_ (Robinet, 1889), p. 248. Printed, like all the -Cordeliers’ decrees, by _Momoro_ in the Rue de la Harpe, and signed, -“d’Anton.” - -[55] It may be remembered that Bougeart (p. 69) claims the presidency for -Danton at the very beginning of ’89. The error of this has been pointed -out. On the other hand, Aulard says he was not President till October. -This is another error. There is at least one earlier document, that of -September, quoted on the preceding page. - -[56] They had sat for a while at the Evéché; on the Island of the Cité, -while the Manège was being prepared. - -[57] _Rev. de Paris_, xxiii. p. 20. - -[58] November 11th and 12th. - -[59] 22nd of December. - -[60] 12th November and 14th of December. - -[61] 31 against 20 (Aulard, from _Journal de la Cour et de la Ville_, p. -518). - -[62] _Danton, Homme d’État_, pp. 256, &c. Signed, “d’Anton.” - -[63] Danton, his friend Legendre, Testulat, Sableé, and Guintin. Several -authorities have placed Danton’s election in September 1789 instead of -January 1790, an error due (probably) to following Godard’s list, which -was published in 1790, but bore the title, “Members of the Commune -elected since September 1789.” - -[64] Marat’s presses were hidden in a cellar of the Cordeliers now -situated under the house of the concierge of the Clinique. - -[65] January 19th. - -[66] The Rue des Fossés was (and is, under its new name) remarkably -straight for an old street. Cannon could be used. - -[67] Their names were Ozanne and Damien; the same Damien, I believe, who -committed the blunder of September 13, 1791. See p. 150. - -[68] Article 9 of the decree of October 8 and 9, 1790. - -[69] “Notables-adjoints,” to the number of seven in each district. Danton -himself was elected on to such a body in May or June 1790, and served for -a few months. - -[70] That is, till his election as substitute to the Procureur in -December 1791. - -[71] January 25, 28; February 4, 16; March 3, 5, 13, 19; June 15, 19, 23. -Aulard, _Rev. Française_, February 14, 1893, pp. 142, 143. - -[72] It is this warrant which has probably misled one biographer as to -the date of the “Affaire Marat.” (_Danton, Homme d’État_, p. 67: “En -_mars_ survint l’affaire Marat.”) - -[73] That is, of course, the inclusion of Paris into the general scheme -of December 1789—a scheme that enfranchised the peasants, but created an -oligarchy in the towns. See above, pp. 21, 22, and 93. - -[74] He received 12,550 votes, the great bulk of the limited suffrage. -Forty-nine odd votes were cast for Danton, but he was obviously not a -candidate (Aulard). - -[75] _Ami du Peuple_, No. 192. - -[76] _Révolutions de France et Brabant_, tom. x. p. 171. - -[77] There is a misprint (a very rare thing with this careful historian) -in footnote No. 3, p. 231, of M. Aulard’s article on Danton in the _Rev. -Française_ for March 14, 1893. For “November” we should read “September,” -for we know that the voting was over on September 16. See Robiquet, -_Personnel Municipal_, p. 373, and the evidence on all sides that a new -poll was ordered on September 17 in his Section. - -[78] This big building in the island next Notre Dame disappeared in the -restorations of Viollet le Duc. It was often used in the revolutionary -period for public meetings, and even the Assembly sat there for a few -days after entering Paris in October, and while the Riding-School was -being prepared for it. - -[79] _Moniteur_, Old Series, No. 316 (1790). - -[80] M. Aulard says “somewhere between the 10th and the 15th,” and -“nous n’avons pas la date precise.” He has probably overlooked _L’Ami -du Peuple_, No. 290, “Le 14 de ce mois Danton a été nommé à la place du -Sieur Villette.” - -[81] Aulard. The other biographers all assume that he did not resign. - -[82] _Orateur du Peuple_, vol. iii. No. 24. - -[83] Ibid., vol. vi. No. 27. - -[84] The letter will be found in M. Etienne Charavay’s _Assemblée -Electorale_, p. 437. - -[85] I quote from M. Aulard, _Rev. Française_, March 14, 1893. - -[86] Note that Lafayette in his Memoirs (vol. iii. p. 64) talks of Danton -“at the head of his battalion.” I doubt an error on the part of a soldier -whose business it was to know his own command. - -[87] _e.g._ that of the quarter of the Carmelites (ibid.). - -[88] _Révolutions de France et Brabant_, No. 74. - -[89] See his Collected Works, vol. xii. pp. 264, 265. - -[90] M. Aulard points out an error in Condorcet’s own note (xii. p. 267), -where it is mentioned as the 12th of July; but the _Bouche de Fer_ of the -10th gives us the above date over these two speeches. - -[91] He wrote a funny little letter (among other things) to the -_Républicain_ of July 16, describing a “mechanical king,” “who is -practically eternal.” - -[92] See _Société des Jacobins_, vol. ii. p. 541. - -[93] _Moniteur_, July 16, 1791. - -[94] _Ami du Peuple_, June 22, 1791. - -[95] _Révolutions de France et de Brabant_, No. 82. - -[96] This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. It indicates, as will be seen -later in the chapter, the very number that finally formed the garrison -of the palace—a point not hitherto noticed, and well worth remembering, -for it shows how Lafayette’s accusations are half the truth. He had -approached Danton, and he had told him many of his plans. Danton had not -acceded, but he used the knowledge. - -[97] _Révolutions de France et de Brabant_, No. 82. - -[98] Appendix II. - -[99] On June 24. - -[100] I follow Aulard in this as to the general scheme, and largely as to -authorities also. - -[101] Aulard is my authority for the fact that the actual text of this -second petition disappeared in 1871, when the Hotel de Ville was burnt -by the Commune, but that Berchez saw it before that event, and carefully -drew up a list of the principal names. Danton is not among them. - -[102] The _Courrier Français_ of July 22 asks if “the man in holland -trousers and a grey waistcoat was Danton,” but says nothing more. - -[103] See the letter published in the _Rev. Française_, April 1893, p. -325. - -[104] _Orateur du Peuple_, viii. No. 16. Not over-trustworthy. - -[105] Possibly later. Beugnot seems to speak as though Danton was still -in Troyes on at least as late a date as the 6th of August (_Mémoires_, i. -pp. 249-250). - -[106] Since writing the above I notice that M. Aulard in the same article -quotes a remark of Danton’s in the Electoral Assembly of September 10th. -This is taken from the _procès verbal_ of the Assembly, and M. Charavay -communicated it to M. Aulard. - -[107] His election was not declared till the 7th, but was known on the -6th. - -[108] January 20, 1792. - -[109] I see in that phrase all Danton’s attitude upon the war. - -[110] There was a minority of seven. - -[111] Perhaps as early as the evening of the 28th. - -[112] This account is translated from the _Moniteur_, August 3, 1792. - -[113] _Journal des Débats_, 183. - -[114] I take this document from Robinet, _Danton, Homme d’État_, pp. 109, -112; but neither he nor Aulard (who quotes it) gives the authority. The -circular is quoted often under the date of August 19; it was issued on -that Sunday, but was drawn up and dated on the Saturday to which I have -assigned it. - -[115] Aulard, who quotes from the _Moniteur_, xii. 445. - -[116] The scene can be reconstructed from his testimony at the trial of -the Girondins and from his speech at the Jacobins on the 5th of November. - -[117] I take all this from Aulard’s article in the _Révolution Française_ -of June 14, 1893. - -[118] The votes of the 30th, 31st, and 2nd. - -[119] The word “illegally” is just, for the constitution of the Commune -and all its acts were legally dependent on the Assembly. On the other -hand, the Commune had given this committee right to add to its numbers, -but such men as Marat, who was not a member of the Commune, were surely -not intended. - -[120] First _La Poissonnière_, then the _Postes_ and the _Luxembourg_. - -[121] It is possible that this sentence, including the preceding phrase, -“le tocsin qui va sonner,” &c., are the only part of the speech that -has been literally reported. The _Logotachygraphe_ was not founded till -January, and while the _Moniteur_ and the _Journal des Débats_ give much -the same version, the latter calls it a “summary.” - -[122] “Appel à l’impartiale posterité.” Madame Roland had the great -historical gift of intuition, that is, she could minutely describe events -which never took place. I attach no kind of importance to the passage -immediately preceding. If Danton and Pétion were alone, as she describes -them, her picture is the picture of a novelist. The phrase quoted above -may be authentic—there were witnesses. - -[123] _Moniteur_, January 25, 1793. Speech of January 21st. - -[124] Speech of January 21, 1793. - -[125] The accusations against Danton in this matter are given and -criticised in Appendix IV., where the reasons are also given for omitting -any mention of Marat’s circular in the text. - -[126] For the figures and very interesting details as to Egalité’s -election see _Révolution Française_ August 14, 1893, second note, page -129. - -[127] More than 700 and less than 1000 died. The common exaggeration is -Peltier’s 12,000. - -[128] As a fact, his successor, Garat, was not elected till the 9th of -October, and did not begin to act till the 12th. Danton seems to have -remained at the Ministry till the evening of the 11th. - -[129] October 23. - -[130] _Michelet_, 1st edition, vol. iv. pp. 392-394. - -[131] October 10 and 11. - -[132] He made a speech on the 6th of November demanding (of course) -the trial of the King, but not with violence. He left for Belgium with -Delacroix on the 1st of December. - -[133] This Dannon was a friend of Danton’s. He began, but did not -complete, a collection of his speeches, &c., and an inquiry into his -accounts. He was a member for Pas de Calais. It is not easy to get his -name accurately spelt. I follow the spelling of a list of the Convention -published in 1794. Dannon voted for banishment. - -[134] I must not omit to mention one phrase which is far more -characteristic of him—that spoken after Lepelletier’s assassination: “It -would be well for us if we could die like that.” - -[135] The proofs of the connection with Talleyrand are based only on -inference. They will be found discussed in Robinet’s _Danton Emigré_, -pp. 12-16 and pp. 270, &c. As for Priestley’s correspondence, it was -sympathetic and deep, and continued in spite of the massacres of -September. There is a draft of a Constitution in the French archives -which some believe to be Priestley’s, but I am confident it is not in his -handwriting. - -[136] _Moniteur_, March 9, 1793. - -[137] _Ibid._ March 10, 1793. - -[138] See _Patriote Français_, No. 1308. - -[139] See _Moniteur_, March 13, 1793. - -[140] Paine’s ignorance of French was such that his speech on Louis’s -exile was translated for him. - -[141] La Roche du Maine. - -[142] Levasseur tells us that Delmas spoke first, and that his remarks -took the form of a definite motion for the appearance of the Committees -to account for their action. Legendre is mentioned here because he -alone is agreed upon by all the eye-witnesses (and by the _Moniteur_) -as being the principal defender of Danton. We must not underestimate -his courage; it was he who with a very small force shut the club of the -Jacobins on the night of the 9th Thermidor, and so turned the flank of -the Robespierrian faction. - -[143] “Quand les restes de la faction ... ne seront plus ... vous n’aurez -plus d’exemples à donner ... ils ne restera que le peuple et vous, et le -gouvernement dont vous êtes le centre inviolable.” - -[144] “Mauvais citoyen, tu as conspiré; faux ami, tu disais, il y a deux -jours, du mal de Desmoulins que tu as perdu; méchant homme, tu as comparé -l’opinion publique à une femme de mauvaise vie, tu as dit que l’honneur -était ridicule ... si Fabre est innocent, si D’Orléans, si Dumouriez -furent innocents tu l’est sans doute. J’en ai trop dit—tu repondras à la -justice.” - -[145] Robespierre’s notes for St. Just’s report were published by M. -France in 1841 among the “Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre.” - -[146] “La Convention Nationale après avoir entendu les rapports des -Comités de Sureté générale et du Salut Public, décrète d’accusation -Camille Desmoulins, Hérault, Danton, Phillippeaux Lacroix ... en -conséquence elle declare leur mise en jugement.” These were the last -words of St. Just’s speech, and formed his substantive motion. - -“Ce décret est adopté à l’unanimité et au milieu des plus vifs -applaudissements.”—_Moniteur_, April 2, 1794 (13th Germinal, year II.). - -[147] Couthon was a cripple. Once (later) in the Convention it was -called out to him “Triumvir,” and he glanced at his legs and said, “How -could I be a triumvir?” The logical connection between good legs and -triumvirates was more apparent to himself than to those whom he caused to -be guillotined. - -[148] We have the fragments of this “No. VII.,” which was not published. -See M. Clarétie’s _C. Desmoulins_, p. 274 of Mrs. Cashel Hoey’s -translation. - -[149] Danton would have been thirty-five in October. Desmoulins had -been thirty-four in March—_not_ thirty-three, as he said at the trial. -I give this on the authority of M. Clarétie, who in his book quotes the -birth-certificate, which he himself had seen (March 2, 1760). - -[150] March 10, 1793. Exception has been taken to the whole sentiment -by Dr. Robinet, but great, or rather unique, as is his authority, I -cannot believe that an appeal—especially an exclamatory appeal of this -nature—was foreign to his impetuous and merciful temper. - -[151] Wallon, _Tribunal Révolutionnaire_, vol. iii. p. 156. - -[152] It is known that Fleuriot and Fouquier were alone when the jury -were “chosen by lot.” This appeared at the trial of Fouquier. For the -notes of Lebrun, see Appendix X. - -[153] Wallon, _Tribunal Révolutionnaire_, vol. iii. p. 155. - -[154] See Appendix X. The speeches which I have written here are -reconstructed from these notes, and I must beg the reader to check the -consecutive sentences of the text by reference to the disjointed notes -printed in the Appendix. - -[155] See p. 199. - -[156] Wallon, _Tribunal Révolutionnaire_, iii. 169, quotes _Archives_, W. -342, _Dossier_ 641, 1st Part, No. 34. - -[157] Fouquier had written a letter to his distant relative Desmoulins, -begging for some employment, on August 20, 1792, just after the success -of Danton’s party, in which Desmoulins had of course shared. It is by no -means dignified and almost servile. See Clarétie, _Desmoulins_, English -edition, p. 318. - -[158] This is M. Wallon’s opinion, who gives both versions, and from whom -I take so much of this description. See _Tribunal Révolutionnaire_, iii. -177. - -[159] All this appears in the trial of Fouquier. - -[160] They are given in Clarétie’s _Desmoulins_ in the Appendix. - -[161] See the list of the prisoner’s effects in Clarétie’s _Desmoulins_. - -[162] This gate may be seen to-day just to the right of the great -staircase in the court of the Palais de Justice. It has an iron grating -before it. - -[163] The original of this I take from Clarétie, who quotes P. A. -Lecomte, _Memorial sur la Révolution Française_. - - “Lorsqu’arrivés au bords du Phlégéton - Camille Desmoulins, D’Eglantine et Danton, - Payèrent pour passer ce fleuve redoutable - Le nautonnier Charon (citoyen équitable) - A nos trois passagers voulait remettre en mains - L’excédant de la taxe imposée aux humains. - ‘Garde,’ lui dit Danton, ‘la somme toute entière; - Je paye pour Couthon, St. Just et Robespierre.’” - -[164] It was Madame Gély who told this to Despoi’s grandfather. Clarétie -has mentioned it. But Michelet must have heard from the family about this -same priest (Kerénavant le Breton), for according to Madame Gély it was -he who married Danton for the second time. - -[165] Ce qu’il y a de certain d’après le résultat donné par la commission -des subsistances militaires, c’est que les armées sont approvisionnées -jusque vers le premier octobre; l’armée d’Italie, la plus mal -approvisionnée, a des subsistances pour quelques mois, et l’on a déjà -préparé pour elle d’autres approvisionnements. - -[166] Des traîtres se sont mêlés dans les rangs des patriotes et dans les -convois de l’artillerie qui allaient combattre les révoltés; le comité -en a fait arrêter la marche, et le comité de surveillance retient les -principaux auteurs de ce nouveau complot. Malgré tant de surveillance, -quelques soldats français, indignes de ce nom, ont trahi leur devoir -et sont allés grossir la horde des rebelles. Partout les obstacles se -multiplient; partout les administrations veulent régler les mouvemens des -troupes et les commissaires veulent faire les fonctions de généraux, des -communes arrêtent à leur gré des armes qui ont une autre destination, et -c’est ainsi que toutes les forces s’atténuent et que les brigands ont des -succès. - -Mais du moins les rives qui correspondent aux perfides de George III. -sont garanties. Les trois divisions commandées par le général Canclaux, -qui occupent les ports intermédiaires entre les Sables et Nantes, -entretiennent la communication entre ces deux villes, et contiennent les -brigands à une certaine distance des côtes. - -La communication par terre, entre Nantes et Angers, est libre, on -travaille à rétablir la libre navigation de la Loire entre ces deux -villes. Quelques bateaux armés de canons sont préparés, et suffiront pour -cette protection. - -Déjà une victoire signalée vient de raviver toutes les espérances de -la patrie. A Saint-Mexent, l’artillerie et les approvisionnemens des -révoltés sont le prix de la première victoire signalée que les patriotes -viennent de remporter. - - - - -INDEX - - - Agriculture, depression of, before Revolution, 16. - - Amelinau case, Danton’s opinion in, 51. - - Antoinette, Marie, _see_ “Marie Antoinette.” - - Arcis-sur-Aube, Danton born at, in 1759, 40; - position of, 40; - effect on Danton’s politics, 42; - visited by Danton in 1791, 148; - again in August 1792, 166; - last retirement of Danton to, 237. - - Army, condition of, at Valmy, 192; - Danton’s first mission to, 199; - second mission, 204; - third, 209; - position of on Sambre in June 1793, 297; - of “Sambre et Meuse,” 298; - attitude towards Robespierre, 299, 300. - - Arnault, witness of Danton’s death, 278. - - Arrest of D’Eglantine, 246; - of Hébert, 247; - of Desmoulins and Danton, 248, 249. - - Artisans, loss of influence of Church on, 21; - their disfranchisement, 22; - causes of their discontent, the guild, the octroi, 20; - character of before Revolution, numbers, influence of, 19. - - Assembly, National, _see_ “States General.” - - - Bailly, of the professional class, 24; - opposition of Cordeliers to, 82; - elected mayor of Paris, 112; - resignation of, 152. - - Barbarian invasions of ninth century, 13. - - Barentin, de, intimacy with Danton, 51, 60. - - Barrère, a Bourgeois, 23; - his action on first committee with Danton, 220; - Report against Robespierre, 305, 306. - - Bastille, fall of, 73-74; - effect of this, 78-80. - - Battles, of Valmy, 192, 193; - of Jemappes, 196; - Neerwinden, 208; - Turcoing, 293; - Fleurus, 298. - - Belgium, Danton proposes annexation of, 204. - - Bourgeoisie or middle class, effect of Revolution on, definition of, - 22, 23; - produces most of the revolutionaries, 23. - - Brienne, de, client of Danton’s, 51. - - Brissot, draws up petition of Jacobins, 146; - attacked by Desmoulins, 226. - - Brunswick, Duke of, his manifesto, 161-166; - his hesitation, 177. - - Burning at stake in United States, 5; - by Parliament of Strasbourg in 1789, 5. - - - Cahiers, their nature, 62, 63; - that of Cordeliers destroyed, 63. - - Carnot, a Bourgeois, 23; - in first Committee of Public Safety, 210; - Robespierre’s attack on, 304. - - Centralisation, of pre-revolutionary France, 10; - quality of, 10; - before Revolution, examples of, 16; - pre-revolutionary fails to raise revenue, 26; - used as a practical engine of reform, rapid raising of armies, 28. - - Charlemagne, marks the end of settled Roman order, 12; - Imperial tradition of in France, 15. - - Charleroy, stronghold of Coburg, 297; - captured, 298. - - Charpentier, his Café des Écoles, 52; - his daughter marries Danton, Mlle., _see_ “Wife.” - - Châtelet, impossibility of reforming it, 7; - nature of, 98; - issue warrant against Marat, 99; - against Danton, 107. - - Church, its loss of power in villages during eighteenth century, 17; - loss of influence over citizens, 21; - not main cause of egalitarian feeling in France, 32; - intention of making Danton a priest in, 44. - - Cicé, de, Danton as orator of municipal deputation demands - resignation of, 129, 131. - - Civil constitution of clergy, _see_ “Clergy.” - - Class system, vigour of, before Revolution, 16. - - Classes, social, five principal, before Revolution, 16. - - Clergy, Danton’s defence of, 198; - civil constitution of, 118; - its vast importance, 119, 120; - its details, 121; - passes the Assembly, 122; - Louis ratifies, 123. - - Coburg, his position on Sambre, 297; - is defeated at Fleurus, 298. - - Collot d’Herbois, attacked by Danton in Jacobins, 136; - beaten by Danton in election for Substitute Procureur, 152. - - Committee of Public Safety, first, proposed by Isnard, Danton - elected, 210; - determines overthrow of Girondins, 223; - Danton resigns from, 234; - Robespierre elected on, 234; - powerful force in winter of 1793, 240; - determination to continue Terror in spite of Danton, 240; - abandons Robespierre, 301. - - Commune (before August 1792, _see_ “Municipality”), insurrectionary - of, August 1792, 161; - increases in power, 172; - Marat joins its “Comité de Surveillance,” 183; - its quarrel with Gironde, 216-228; - opposes committee in winter of 1793, 240; - attacked by Danton, 243; - captured by Robespierre, 293; - attempts to save him and fails, 310-314. - - Condorcet, of the professional class, 24; - example of balance of two French tendencies, 27; - demands Republic, 141, 142. - - Conseils du Roi, Old Court of Appeals, nature of, 48; - Danton enters at Bar of, 49. - - Contrat social, written just after Danton’s birth, 41. - - Convention, elections of Paris to, Danton elected to, 188; - its parties, 189; - its appearance on first meeting, 190; - declares Republic, 191; - debate on king’s death in, 201, 202; - votes arrest of Girondins, 202; - Legendre defends Danton in, 253; - St. Just attacks Danton in, 254, 255; - subservience to Robespierre, 296; - outlaws him, 307-310. - - Cordeliers, district of, social character, 64; - position of Convent Hall in, 65; - meets after elections, importance of this, 69; - petitions against Danton’s arrest, 108; - merged in section of Théâtre Français, 112. - - Cordeliers, club of, contrasted with Jacobins, 80; - their numbers and character, 81; - opposition to new municipality, 82; - determine on independent use of their guard, 83; - attack municipality again, 88, 89; - create _Mandat Imperatif_, 89; - manifesto to march on Versailles, 91; - oppose Lafayette’s discipline in National Guard, 93; - oath of their deputies, 94; - victory of club over municipality, 96; - campaign against restriction of suffrage, 110-113; - Danton leaves them for Jacobins, 135; - Republican declaration of, on king’s flight, 142; - petition of, on king’s flight, not signed by Danton, 146. - - Cordelier, Vieux, published by Desmoulins to protest against Terror, - 244. - - Court, relations of nobles to, 24; - form party to influence king at Versailles, 85, 86; - last stand in the Tuilleries, 167, 168. - - Courts of Law, before Revolution, 48. - - Couthon, a Bourgeois, 23; - proposes law on worship of God, 290; - supports Robespierre in committee, 303. - - - Dannon, his name mistaken for Danton’s, Le Gallois’s misprint, - Michelet’s error based on this, 200, 201. - - Danton, a Bourgeois, 23; - very typical of nation, his attitude towards Paris, 36; - his rise during the war, 37; - preliminary summary of his career, 35-39; - forerunner of Napoleon, 38; - retirement and death, 39; - born at Arcis-sur-Aube, 1759, age compared with contemporaries, 40; - effect of birthplace on his politics, 42; - his father Procureur at Arcis, 42-43; - family of, house of, social position of father, death of father, - fortune of, his mother and aunts, 43; - to be made a priest, 44; - educated by Oratorians, their influence, destined for Bar, 45; - character as boy, 46; - coronation of Louis XVI. seen by, 46-47; - his stepfather Recordain, apprenticed to Vinot, solicitor in Paris, - called to Bar at Rheims, 47; - practice in lower courts, 48; - at bar of Conseils du Roi, 49; - his Latin oration, 50; - his opinion in Montbarey case, Du Barentin his client, and De - Brienne, his income at Bar, 51; - frequents Charpentier’s Café des Écoles, marriage, dowry of wife, - 52; - physical appearance, 53; - energy, style of oratory, knowledge of English and Italian, 54; - reading, pre-revolutionary politics, 55; - private life, 56; - goes to live in Cour du Commerce, 59; - Barentin’s offer of post to, 60; - his relation to masonic lodges, 65; - summary of his condition on outbreak of Revolution, 56-67; - Primary of his District convened, 68; - not president of District during elections, 69; - at Palais Royal, 71; - possibly present at fall of Bastille, 74; - action night after, clashes with Lafayette, 75; - in Club of Cordeliers, 81; - as President of Cordeliers attacks Municipality, 88; - creates _Mandat Imperatif_, 89; - placards manifesto for march on Versailles, 91; - nature of action supporting _Mandat Imperatif_, 95; - his success, 96; - elected to municipality, 97; - defends Marat, 101-107; - discovers error in warrant against Marat, 102; - appeals to assembly, 103; - false effect of his attitude, 104-105; - sworn in to municipality, 105; - with Legendre, 106; - goes in deputation to Louis XVI., 106; - warrant for arrest of, issued by Châtelet, 107; - district in his favour, 108; - his proposition for grand jury, appeal to Assembly, decision in his - favour, 109; - his policy at close of 1790, 123-125; - rejected at municipal elections of 1790, 125; - moderation during affair of Nancy, 126; - rejected as candidate for Notables, 127; - orator of city deputation (November 1790), 128-131; - elected head of his battalion, 131; - elected to administration of city (1791), 132; - letter to De la Rochefoucald, 134; - appears in Jacobins, 135; - attacks Collot d’Herbois in Jacobins, 136; - speech on death of Mirabeau, 137; - action on April 18, 1791, Desmoulins’ testimony untrustworthy, 138; - attitude during Louis XVI.’s flight, 140-141; - attacks Lafayette at Jacobins on king’s flight, 143-145; - reads Jacobin petition on Champ de Mars, absence from Cordeliers’ - manifestation there, 147; - Lafayette orders arrest of (August 4, 1791), 148; - his flight to England, 148-149; - his return, sent by his section to electoral college, 149; - attempted arrest of, 150; - elected substitute to Procureur of Paris (November 1791), 152; - his chances of a prosperous municipal career, 155; - opposes war policy, 156; - speech at Jacobins describing himself, 157; - justice of his opposition to war, 158; - retained on committee of insurrection (July-August, 1792), 161; - goes to Arcis to see his mother, 166; - leads insurrection of August 10, 167; - his position after 10th of August, Minister of Justice, 172; - his determination to form a strong government after fall of - monarchy, only practical man in executive in August, 1792, 173; - addresses Assembly as Minister of Justice, his circular to - tribunals, 175; - defence of himself in the circular, his power over cabinet, 176; - he and Dumouriez see chance of repelling invasion, 177; - his interview with Roland and ministers on news of invasion - reported by Fabre d’Eglantine, 180-181; - his political attitude just before massacres, 182; - he orders domiciliary visits and collection of arms, 183; - his speech, the volunteers, its success, 184; - why he did not interfere during massacres, 185; - anecdote of him during massacres, his future comment on, 186; - elected to Convention by Paris, 188; - his false position in the Mountain, accused of planning massacres, - 189; - his appearance on first meeting of Convention, 190; - resigns Ministry of Justice, 191; - repudiates Marat, 192; - his diplomacy secures Prussian retreat after Valmy, 194; - his attitude towards Dumouriez, partial reconciliation with - Gironde, 195; - anecdote of theatre and Madame Roland, of meeting with Marat, 196; - his reticence after Jemappes, 197; - speech on Catholicism opposing Cambon, 198; - attempt to reconcile Girondins in meeting at Sceaux, Guadet’s - opposition, 198-199; - starts on his first mission to army, 199; - debates on Louis XVI.’s death, misprint of Danton for Dannon, 200; - what he really did in the debate, 201; - unusual violence, 202; - caused by his wife’s illness, 203; - intimacy with Priestley, Talleyrand, his diplomacy spoiled by his - own violence on king’s death, demands annexation of Belgium, - 204; - second mission to army in Belgium, change of his politics on his - return, despairs of reconciling Girondins and Paris, 205; - accounted for by death of his wife, 206; - his military policy and appeal to Paris, 207; - creates Revolutionary Tribunal, 208; - violently attacked for his intimacy with Dumouriez, 209; - supports Isnard’s proposal of Great Committee, is named on it, 210; - compared with Mirabeau, 213; - summary of Danton’s position in Committee, as it changes, 215; - his practical policy impossible with Girondins, 217; - difficulty of following his action in April and May, 1793, speech - on acquittal of Marat, 218, 219; - curious action half in favour of Girondins, proposes committee of - twelve through Barrère, 220; - but prevents formation of special guard, 221; - Danton, through the Committee, overthrows the Gironde, 226; - his phrase with regard to Girondins, 227; - his difficulty in controlling forces after June 2, 1793, 228; - begins to lose his power, 229; - still retains enough power at end of June to produce Constitution, - 230; - and to persuade Convention to his policy, his second marriage, 231; - reasons for it, he loses power still more in July, 232; - puts his name reluctantly to St. Just’s report attacking fallen - Girondins, he resigns his place on Committee, 234; - his brilliancy whilst standing alone, great speeches in August, on - army, on strengthening government, 235; - his despair and illness, Garat’s interview with him, Desmoulins, - 236; - retires to his home at Arcis, 237; - his rest at Arcis, its effects, 237-240; - regret for execution of Girondins, returns to the Convention, 239; - his new politics against the Terror, 241, 242; - his defence of religious liberty and attack on Commune, 243; - Robespierre defends him in Jacobins, Desmoulins helps him, - publication of “Vieux Cordelier,” 244-245; - his first check, D’Eglantine arrested, he knows his attempt has - failed, 246; - still speaks in Convention, last interview with Robespierre, 247; - Panis comes to warn him, he is arrested, 248; - his trial and death, 249-281; - taken to the Luxembourg with Desmoulins, meets Paine, 249; - policy of his defence, of Committee, 251, 252; - Legendre defends Danton in Convention, 243; - St. Just’s report and vote against Danton, 254-255; - his remarks in the prison, 250, 257, 258; - trial begins, 259; - fear of an armed attempt to save him, his reply to the judges, 261; - charges against Danton, 262; - Westermann’s replies, 263; - Danton’s speech in his own defence, 264, 265, 266; - collusion of judge and prosecutor, 267; - Renault’s defence, 268; - judge and prosecutor appeal to Convention, 269; - St. Just’s second speech to Convention against Danton, 270; - Billaud-Varennes, 271; - taken back to Conciergerie, condemned, his action in prison, 272; - passage to guillotine, 273-279; - passes David, 275; - passes house of Duplay and Robespierre’s window, 276; - he rallies Fabre d’Eglantine, 277; - rhymes sold in Paris same night, 278; - his execution, 279-281; - effects of his death, 282, 283, 284; - contrasted with Robespierre, 285. - - Danton, Madame, _see_ “Wife.” - - David, artist, portrait of Danton (_frontispiece_); - animosity against Danton, 271; - sketches the condemned, 275; - false promise to Robespierre, 307. - - De Barentin, _see_ “Barentin.” - - De Brienne, _see_ “Brienne.” - - De Cicé, _see_ “Cicé.” - - D’Eglantine, _see_ “Fabre.” - - De Séchelles, _see_ “Hérault.” - - Decree of Dec. 1788, elections, 61. - - Desmoulins, Camille, house in Cour du Commerce, 59; - brings news of Necker’s dismissal, 73; - member of Cordeliers, 81; - testimony as to Danton’s action on April 18, 1791, 138; - Danton sleeps in his flat before insurrection of Aug. 10, 1792, 167; - his “Histoire des Brissottins,” allied to Robespierre, 226; - publishes “Vieux Cordelier,” 244; - arrested, 249; - his answer to his judges, 261; - his examination in court, 268; - tears up his written defence, 271; - his frenzy going to guillotine, 275, 276; - his death, 279. - - Districts, Paris divided into sixty, 64. - - District of Cordeliers, _see_ “Cordeliers.” - - Duke of Brunswick, _see_ “Brunswick.” - - Dumouriez, outflanked before Valmy, 192; - fears to attack, 193; - his political motives, his work with Danton after Valmy, 194, 195; - incident in theatre with Danton, 195, 196; - treason of, 209; - Danton attacked for friendship with, 209, 210. - - - Education, French, effect of, due to Jesuits, 45; - effect of on Robespierre and Desmoulins, 46; - of Danton, 44-47. - - Egalité elected for Paris, 188. - - Eglantine, d’, _see_ “Fabre.” - - Elections to, States General decreed, 61; - to first municipality, elected by Cordeliers, 88; - of priests and bishops, 121; - to Legislative, 150; - of Paris to Convention, 188; - of Danton, Bailly, &c., _see_ under their names. - - England, Danton’s flight to, 148, 149. - - English constitution, flexibility of, 6; - its vices described by Marat, 104. - - English language, Danton’s acquaintance with, 54, 249. - - English society, homogeneity of in eighteenth century contrasted with - the Continent, 73. - - - Fabre d’Eglantine, poet, member of Cordeliers, 81; - escorts officers of Châtelet through mob, 103; - reports Danton’s interview with other ministers, 180, 181; - arrested, 246; - trial of with Danton, 249-272; - his luxury in prison, 272; - his illness and despair on way to guillotine, 274, 275; - his “Maltese orange,” 276; - rhymes on him and Danton, 278. - - Fear, _see_ “Great.” - - Feudalism, founded in troubles of ninth century, 13; - fall of, in July, August, 1789, 83-85. - - Feuillants, club of, represents Lafayette’s supporters in - Legislative, 151. - - Flanders, regiment of, arrives to strengthen court in 1789, 90. - - Fleurus, battle of, 298. - - Fouquier-Tinville, public prosecutor, his action in Danton’s trial, - 267-271. - - France, centralisation of, before Revolution, 10; - egalitarianism in, is not due to Roman law or Church, 32; - material state of, prior to Revolution, 10; - before Revolution, character of centralisation in, 11; - imperial tradition in, 16; - origins of social constitution in, 12; - specially suited to growth of Roman law, 15; - Paris the bond of, 31; - re-made by the Revolution, 35; - effect of Rousseau upon, 28, 29; - united by monarchy, led by Paris as the king’s town, 33. - - Français, Théâtre, _see_ “Section.” - - Franchise, loss of, by artisans, 21, 22. - - French, character of, in pursuing political theories, 26, 27, 28, 29; - courts of law, nature in Ancien Régime, 48; - education, effect of Jesuit influence on, 45; - education, effect of on Robespierre and Desmoulins, Danton’s speech - on, 46; - peasantry, owners of land before Revolution, 18; - peasantry, effect of Revolution on, 18; - peasantry, condition before Revolution, 17; - village community, decay of, in eighteenth century, 18; - loss of Church in, 17; - nobility, origin of, as a definite class in ninth century, 13. - - French Revolution, _see_ “Revolution.” - - - Garat, his interview with Danton, 236, 237. - - Garran Coulon, Danton’s return from England on election of, 149. - - Girondins, represent the professional class, 24; - declare war, 15-18; - opposition to Danton from the beginning of the Convention, 192; - momentary reconciliation with, 195, 196; - failure of, meeting at Sceaux, Guadet rejects him, 199; - outbreak of quarrel with Paris, 208; - expulsion of, 216-228; - description of their character, excess of idealism, unworkable with - Danton’s practical policy, 217; - their misgovernment, opposition of Paris, 218; - bad news from Vendée weakens them in May 1793, 219; - Isnard’s menace to Paris, 212; - firmness during attack, Lanjuinais’ proposal to “break the - Commune,” 221; - vote of the twenty-nine arrests, 222; - confusion of their fall to be explained by great Committee, 223; - Danton’s phrase concerning, 227; - Vergniaud and Guadet attacked in St. Just’s report, 234; - Danton’s pity for, 236, 239. - - Gobel, schismatic Bishop of Paris, trial under Robespierre, 291. - - Great fear, peasants’ rising destroys feudality, 83, 84. - - Guadet, Girondin, rejects Danton at Sceaux, 199; - St. Just’s report on, 234. - - Guard, National, _see_ “National Guard.” - - Guard, Swiss, their defence of the Tuilleries, 166-169; - demand for vengeance against, by Parisians, 179; - special, proposed for the Convention, 191; - weak demand for, by Girondins, 220. - - - Hébert, member of the Cordeliers, 81; - his character, 220; - with Commune against Committee in winter, 1793, 240; - Danton’s opposition to his religious persecution, 243; - his arrest and execution, 247. - - Henriot, illegally given command of the city forces by the Commune, - 219; - at head of attack of Convention, 221, 222; - note sent to, by Committee on Danton’s trial, to prevent a rescue, - 261; - attempt to save Robespierre, 311. - - Hérault de Séchelles, present at taking of Bastille, 74; - added to Committee, 229; - expelled from Committee, 247; - trial of, 268, 269; - his death, 279. - - Herbois, d’, Collot, _see_ “Collot.” - - Herman, judge at Danton’s trial, 260-271. - - - Income, of Danton at Bar, estimated, 51. - - Institution, the, importance of, to France, 211, 213; - provided by the Committee, 214. - - Insurrection, of July 14, 1789, 72, 74; - of August 10, 1792, 166, 170; - of June 2, 1793, 221, 222; - attempted to save Robespierre, 311, 313. - - Invasions, siege of Verdun by Brunswick, 177; - Beaurepaire’s suicide, capitulation of Verdun, ferment in Paris, - 178; - causes massacre of September, 180; - Valmy, 192, 193; - Jemappes, 196; - defeat of Neerwinden, 1793, allies cross the Rhine, Alps, and - Pyrenees, take Valenciennes, 233; - Turcoing, 293; - battle of Fleurus, 298. - - Isnard, Girondin, proposes Committee of Public Safety, 210; - his threat to destroy Paris, 221. - - - Jacobins, character of, 135; - Danton’s speech in, on death of Mirabeau, 137; - Danton attacks Lafayette in, 143, 145; - moderate petition of, to Assembly on king’s flight, 146; - read by Danton in Champs de Mars, 147; - joined by radicals in Legislative, 151; - debate on war, 155, 156; - Robespierre reads his last speech in, 307; - Legendre closes, 312. - - Jemappes, battle of, 196. - - Judge, in Danton’s trial, _see_ “Herman.” - - Just, St., _see_ “St. Just.” - - Justice, Ministry of, Danton put into, 172; - his circular from, 175, 176. - - - Kersaint, associated with Danton at period of the flight of the king, - present at interview of Danton with other ministers in August, - 1793, he believes that Brunswick will reach Paris, 181. - - King, _see_ “Louis.” - - - Lafayette, a seceding noble, 25; - first clash with Danton, 75; - opposition of Cordeliers to, 82; - follows the mob to Versailles, 91; - his discipline of National Guard opposed by Cordeliers, 93; - sends National Guard to arrest Marat, 101; - attacked by Danton on flight of the king, 143, 145; - his accusation of Danton’s venality, 145; - his massacre of the Champs de Mars, 147; - again attacked by Danton, 159; - threatens civil war, 160. - - Law, Roman, twelfth century, renaissance of, study of, rise of the - universities, 14. - - —— Courts in France, Conseils du Roi, 48. - - Lawyers, action of, in preventing reform, 4; - become conservative as a body, 18. - - Legendre, a Bourgeois, 25; - a member of the Cordeliers, 81; - defends Danton before the Convention, 243; - shuts the Jacobins, 312. - - Legislative, elections to, 150; - reconciliation with monarchy, 150, 151; - parties in, 151; - Lafayette’s letter to, 159; - receives the Royal Family, 168; - quarrels with Commune just before massacres, 183; - Danton’s great speech in, 184; - close of, 188. - - Louis XVI., age of, compared with Danton, 40; - his coronation seen by Danton, 46; - his attitude to Assembly, 85; - his character, 86; - brought back to Paris from Versailles by mob, 91; - his attitude after this, 92; - thanks presented to, by Danton, 106; - accepts Civil Constitution of clergy, 123; - lost by death of Mirabeau, 137; - his attempt to go to St. Cloud, 137; - effect of his flight, 139, 140; - depends on success of August 10 to receive allies, 168; - takes refuge in Parliament, 168; - his secret payments, 179; - execution of, 202; - effect of, on America, 203. - - - Mandat Imperatif, 89, 95. - - —— head of National Guard, his death, 167. - - Manifesto of Brunswick, _see_ “Brunswick.” - - Manor or village community alone survives ninth century, 13; - its survival and power, 14. - - Manorial relations, their decay, 5. - - Manuel, Danton’s chief in municipality of 1791, 153. - - Marat, a Bourgeois, 23; - incident of, 97-104; - his character, 98; - warrant for arrest of, 99; - National Guard sent to arrest, 100; - importance of issues involved, Lafayette’s action, 101; - defended by Danton at Bar of Assembly, 103; - his escape, 104; - elected to “Comité de Surveillance” before massacres, 183; - puts Roland on his list of proscribed, 187; - his appearance in the Convention, 192; - accused by Girondins, acquitted, 218; - stabbed by Charlotte Corday, growth of Terror, 233. - - Marie Antoinette, age of compared with Danton, 40; - forms a court party against the Parliament, 85; - power over Louis after Mirabeau’s death, 137; - her determination to hold the Tuilleries, 167; - she alone realises the fall of the monarchy, 169; - effect of her death on Danton, 241; - her shocking trial and its influence on Danton, 242. - - Marseillais, their march on Paris, 160. - - Marseillaise, 160. - - Massacres of September, 178, 187; - precipitated by Montmorin’s acquittal, 179; - refusal of National Guard to interfere, 180; - Danton keeps Ministers at their posts just before, 181; - the Comité de Surveillance joined by Marat, 183; - begin at the Carmes, 184; - causes of Danton’s neutrality during, 185-187; - close of the massacres, 188; - effect of on politics, 189. - - Medieval Reform, continuity of, 3; - failure of after fifteenth century, 4. - - Middle class, _see_ “Bourgeoisie.” - - Mirabeau, age of compared with Danton, 40; - calls August 4 “an orgy,” 84; - his reasons for supporting the “Civil Constitution of the clergy,” - 121; - death of, 136; - Danton’s sympathy with, and speech on death of, 137; - compared with Danton, 213. - - Monarchy, French, causes Paris to become head of towns, realises - national unity, 33; - character of just before Revolution, 11; - clogged by local survivals, 12; - election of Hugh Capet, 14; - examples of pre-revolutionary centralisation in, 16; - gradually ceases to be national, 15; - origins of its action, 12; - reaches power through local institutions, 15; - why it could not reform, 12; - Danton’s attitude towards in crisis of the king’s flight, 140-145; - the fall of, 169, 170; - importance of, evident after fall, 171. - - Montmorin, evidence of Danton’s venality quoted by Lafayette in - Memoirs, really a receipt for Danton’s reimbursement, 145. - - —— Lucien de, acquittal of, hurries on massacres of September, - 179, 180. - - Mountain, party of Paris in the Convention, Danton’s false position - in, 189; - appearance of members of, 190; - attacked by Robespierre, 300. - - Municipal, system of France, 32, 33; - Revolution, 79. - - Municipality, of Paris, first insurrectionary, 76; - its weakness, 77; - reconstitution of, 87, 88; - quarrel with Cordeliers, 93-97, 110-113; - Danton elected to, 105-106; - Bailly elected mayor of, 124; - petitions against ministers, 129-131; - insurrectionary Commune plot against, 161; - dissolved by insurrectionary Commune, 166; - (after Aug. 10, 1792, _see_ “Commune”). - - - Nancy, affair of, Danton’s moderate action, 126. - - Nationality, differentiation of, in ninth century, 13. - - National Guard, formed, 77; - Lafayette’s plan of, 83; - Danton elected head of his battalion, 131; - clash with people, 126; - divided on April 18, 137; - fire on people in Champ de Mars, 147; - divided on Aug. 10, 160; - Santerre put at head of by Danton, 167; - refuse to interfere with massacres, 187; - Henriot succeeds Boulanger at head of, 219; - attack Convention, 221, 222; - do not rise for Robespierre, 213. - - Necker, position of, in 1789, his dismissal, 73. - - Nobles, origin of, as a definite class in France in ninth century, 13; - great numbers of, definition, relation to court, place in - Revolution, 24; - poverty of, did not at first oppose reform, 25; - why they could not rule France, 32. - - Notables, Danton rejected as candidate for, 127. - - - Octroi, effect on artisans, 20. - - Oratorians, educated principal revolutionaries, 45. - - Osselin, his courage after Montmorin’s acquittal, 180. - - - Paine, named in Committee with Danton, 197; - meets Danton in prison, 249. - - Panis, warns Danton before his arrest, 248. - - Paris, the bond of France, 31; - cause of headship, effect of Revolution on, 30, 31; - head of urban system because seat of monarchy, 33; - makes Danton’s career, 58; - first elections in, 69; - solidarity of, in early Revolution, 70; - provisional government during attack on Bastille, 76; - organises National Guard, 77; - model of municipal movement in France, 79; - restriction of suffrage in, 110; - restrained by Assembly, 111; - Bailly elected mayor of, 112; - effect of municipal system on, 114; - petitions for dismissal of ministers, 129; - effect of king’s flight on, 141; - Pétion, elected mayor of, 152; - anger at first disasters of war, 158; - effect of Brunswick’s manifesto on, 161; - ferment on news of invasion, 178; - clamours against arrested monarchists, 179; - Danton will not oppose, 182; - anarchy in, during massacres, 187; - elections to the Convention in, 188; - eulogy of by Danton, 191; - anger against Girondins, 208; - conflict of, with Girondins, 217; - Isnard’s threats against, 221; - used by Committee to expel the Gironde, 223; - refuses to rise for Robespierre, 313. - - Parliament of Paris, nature of, 48. - - Parliaments (representative), _see_ “States General,” “Legislative,” - “Convention.” - - Peasantry, French, condition of, before Revolution, 17; - ownership of land by, before the Revolution, 18; - effect of Revolution on, 18. - - Pétion, elected mayor of Paris, 152; - unable to interfere with the massacres, 187; - gets some hold on the city at their close, 188; - attempt of Danton to get him elected for Paris, 189; - named on Committee with Danton, 197. - - Petition, of municipality against ministers, 109; - of Jacobins on king’s flight, 146; - of Cordeliers, 147; - - Pitt, his reforms, 6. - - Priestley, Danton’s relations with, 149, 204. - - Procureur, definition of the office in the old regime, 42, 43; - of Paris, during Revolution, 153; - Danton elected substitute to, 152. - - Professional class, its character, numbers, constitution, 24. - - - Recordain, stepfather of Danton, 47. - - Reform, mediæval, continuity of, 3; - action of lawyers in preventing failure of, after fifteenth - century, 4; - Pitt’s attempt at, 6; - impossibility on Continent, 7; - impossible to French monarchy, 12; - its rapidity helped by centralisation, 28. - - Religious liberty, Danton’s speech in favour of, 243. - - Republic, not originated by Danton, 140; - demanded by Condorcet, 141, 142; - declared by Convention, 181. - - Revolution, French, nature of, 1, 2; - necessity for, on Continent, 7; - its violence, 8; - questions raised by, 9; - material causes of, 10; - main causes not economic, 11; - classes it dealt with, 16; - it revives religion in villages, 17; - effect on peasantry, 18; - on artisans, 19, 20, 21; - on Bourgeois, 22; - on professionals and nobles, 24; - theory of, 26; - effect of Rousseau on, 28, 29; - place of Paris in, 30; - summary of politics at outset of, 34; - its task, the re-creation of France, 35; - two periods of, 117, 118; - transformation of, in 1790, 114, 123; - summary of its results, 314-318. - - Revolutionary Tribunal, created by Danton, 208; - Marat acquitted by, 218; - Hébert tried by, 245; - Danton tried by, 249-272; - enslaved by Robespierre, 295. - - Robespierre, a Bourgeois, 23; - age of, 40; - effect of education on, 46; - joins Committee of Public Safety, 234; - his position in winter of 1793, clash with Danton, 241; - last interview with Danton, 247; - speaks against Danton in Convention, 253; - demonstration of condemned before his house, 276; - his character, 285; - his aims, 286; - his misreading of Rousseau, 287; - causes of his ascendency, 288-290; - abandons Danton’s diplomacy, 292; - heads feast of Supreme Being, 294; - proposes virtual abolition of trials, 295; - destroys independence of Convention, 296; - attacks Mountain, 300; - abandoned by Committee, 301; - causes of his fall, 302-304; - his last speech, 306-307; - outlawed by Convention, 309-310; - his last rally and execution, 310-314. - - Roland, a professional, 24; - Danton’s power over, in August 1792, interview with, in garden of - ministry, 180-181; - calls on Santerre to stop the massacres, 187; - prosecuted, 222. - - —— Madame, her hatred for Danton, 176; - she rejects his overtures to Girondins, 196. - - Roman Law, its fundamental ideas of ownership and sovereignty, 14; - suited to France, 15; - not main cause of egalitarian feeling in France, 32. - - Rome, transformation of her system in ninth century, 12; - the origin of French urban system, 32. - - Rousseau, his effect on France, 28, 29; - his genius and deficiencies, 29; - his faith the source of his power, essentially a reactionary, 29, - 30; - Robespierre’s view of his system, 286, 287. - - Rousselin, our authority for Danton’s boyhood, 46. - - - Saint Just, age of, compared with Danton, 40; - joins great Committee, 229; - report on Girondins, 234; - speech against Danton, 254-255; - second speech against Danton, 270; - proposal for bringing prisoners to Paris, 292; - with army on Sambre, 297; - fails to warn Robespierre, 299; - outlawed with Robespierre, 310; - joins Robespierre at Hotel de Ville, 312. - - St. Priest, his dismissal demanded by Paris, 128-131. - - Santerre, a Bourgeois, 23; - in the attack on Tuilleries, 161, 167; - fails to call out National Guard during massacres, 187. - - Sections, replace districts of Paris, forty-eight in number, 112; - Danton demands force to be raised from, 207; - convened by Robespierrians in Thermidor, 311. - - Section du Théâtre Français, replaces Cordeliers, 112; - battalion of, Danton elected commander, 131; - of Mauconseil begins agitation against ministry, 129; - begin insurrection of August 1792, 161. - - September, _see_ “Massacres of.” - - Social divisions, five principal, before Revolution, 10. - - Stake, burning at, in United States, by Parliament of Strasbourg in - 1789, 5. - - States General (or National Assembly), term Assembly first used, 26; - elections to, in Paris, 68; - reaction against, in early 1789, 72; - success of, after fall of Bastille, 78; - night of August 4 in, 85; - queen forms party against, political attitude of Louis towards, 85; - plotted against, by court, 90; - come to Paris, 91; - appealed to, in Marat incident, 103; - action to restrain Paris, 111; - establish Civil Constitution of clergy, 120-123; - debate on petition of Paris, 130-132; - indecision of, on king’s flight, 146. - - Suffrage, _see_ “Franchise.” - - - Talleyrand, Danton meets, at municipality, writes letter to Louis, - 138; - connected with Danton’s diplomacy, opposes Chauvelin in London, 204. - - Taxes, failure of, before Revolution, 26. - - Thermidor, attempted insurrection to save Robespierre in, 310-314. - - Tour du Pin, La, dismissal demanded, 128-131. - - Towns, nuclei of France, 36; - condition of small, 46. - - Turcoing, battle of, 283. - - - Vergniaud, orator of Girondins, understands Danton, 192; - present at incident in theatre, 196; - his simile in king’s trial, 202; - explanation of his vote, 203; - his oratory, 217; - prosecuted by Convention, 222; - St. Just’s report against, 234; - Danton’s regret for, 242. - - Versailles, Cordeliers’ manifesto for march on, 91; - king brought back to Paris from, 91. - - Village community, French, decay of, loss of religion in, 17. - - Vinot, solicitor in Paris, Danton apprenticed to, 47. - - - Wife, of Danton, _first_ (Charpentier) married, his devotion to her, - 52; - her illness and its effect on Danton, 201, 203; - her death, its effect on Danton, he exhumes her body, 206; - _second_ (Gély) married, 232. - - - Young, Arthur, his comments on pre-revolutionary France, 10. - - - -THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTON *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Danton</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>A study</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Hilaire Belloc</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 21, 2022 [eBook #68582]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTON ***</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger"><span class="smcap">Danton</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">A STUDY</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -HILAIRE BELLOC, B.A.<br /> -<span class="smaller">LATE BRACKENBURY SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE,<br /> -OXFORD</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="gothic">New York</span><br /> -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br /> -1899</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smaller">TO</span><br /> -ANTHONY HENLEY</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2> - -</div> - -<p>An historian of just pre-eminence in his university and -college, in a little work which should be more widely -known, has summed up the two principal characters of -the Revolution in the following phrases: “the cold and -ferocious Robespierre, the blatant Danton.”<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The judgment -is precipitate and is tinged with a certain bias.</p> - -<p>An authority of still greater position prefaces his notebook -on the Revolution by telling us that he is going -to describe the beast.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The learned sectarian does not -conceal from his readers the fact that a profound analysis -had led to a very pronounced conviction. So certain is -he of his ground, that he treats with equal consideration -the evidence of printed documents, of autograph letters, -and of a chance stranger speaking in a country inn of -a thing that had happened forty years before.</p> - -<p>The greatest of French novelists and a principal poet -has given us in “Quatre-vingt-treize” a picture moving -and living. Yet even in that work much is admitted, for -the sake of contrast and colour, which no contemporary -saw. The dialogue between Danton and Marat, with its -picturesque untruths, is an example.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> - -<p>If facts so conflicting be stated as true by men of -such various calibre, it would seem a very difficult task -to write history at all. Yet there is a method which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span> -neither excludes personal conviction, nor necessitates the -art of deceit, nor presupposes a primitive ignorance.</p> - -<p>It is to ascertain what is positively known and can be -proved, and with the facts so gathered—only with these—to -paint a picture as vivid as may be; on a series of -truths—with research it grows to respectable proportions—to -base a conviction, general, wide, and capable of constant -application, as to the character of a period or of a man.</p> - -<p>Such was the method of Fustel de Coulanges, and on -his model there has arisen from the minute, the sometimes -pedantic accuracy of French scholars, a school -which is the strongest in Europe.</p> - -<p>The method I have been describing has also this -advantage, that the least learned may enter upon such a -path without confusion and may progress, and that a -book of no pretensions can yet, by following these rules, -at least avoid untruth. With inferior tools, and on an -over-rough plan, I shall yet attempt in this life of Danton -to follow the example.</p> - -<p>The motto which is printed at the head of this book, -and which is borrowed from the most just of biographers, -must give a note to the whole of my description. What -was the movement which founded our modern society? -what were its motives, its causes of action, its material -surroundings? And what was the man who, above all -others, represented that spirit at its most critical moment?</p> - -<p>To find a right answer to such questions it is necessary -to do two things.</p> - -<p>First, we must make the sequence of cause and effect -reasonable. In giving an explanation or in supposing a -motive, we must present that which rational men, unbiassed, -will admit. To put in the same character irreconcilable -extremes is to leave no picture. To state a -number of facts so that no thread connects them, so that -they surprise by contrast but leave only confusion in the -mind, is a kind of falsehood. It is the method most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span> -adopted by partisans; they frame a theory upon the -lines of which such and such facts will lie, but they omit, -or only mention as anomalies, facts which are equally -true, but which would vitiate their conclusions. We must -(to use a mathematical metaphor) <i>integrate</i> the differentials -of history; make a complete and harmonious whole -of a hundred aspects; strike a curve which shall unite in -a regular fashion what has appeared as a number of -scattered points. Till we can say, “This man—seeing all -his character and innumerable known acts—<i>could not</i> have -acted as such and such a report would have us believe;” -or again, till we can say, “This epoch, with its convictions, -its environment, its literature, <i>could not</i> have felt the -emotions which such and such an historian lends it,”—till -we can say this, we do not understand a personality -or a period.</p> - -<p>In the second place, we must recognise in all repeated -and common expressions of conviction, and in all the -motives of a time of action, some really existing ideal. -There was a conviction common to many thousands of -Parliamentarians in the earlier stages of the English Civil -War. There was a genuine creed in the breasts of the -well-paid Ironsides of its later period. There was a real -loyalty and an explicable theory of kingship in the camp -of Charles the First.</p> - -<p>So in the period of which we deal there was a clear -doctrine of political right, held by probably the strongest -intellects, and defended by certainly the most sustained -and enthusiastic courage that ever adorned a European -nation. We must recognise the soul of a time. For -were there not a real necessity for sympathy with a -period which we study, were it possible for us to see -entirely from without, with no attempt to apprehend -from within, then of many stupendous passages in history -we should have to assert that all those who led were -scoundrels, that all their lives were (every moment of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span> -them) a continuous piece of consummate acting; that -our enemies, in fine, were something greater and more -wicked than men. We should have to premise that all -the vigour belonged to the bad, and all the ineptitude to -the good, and separate humanity into two groups, one of -righteous imbeciles, and the other of genius sold to hell. -No one would wish, or would be sincerely able to place -<i>himself</i> in either category.</p> - -<p>We must postulate, then, of the Revolution that which -Taine ridiculed, that for which Michelet lived, and that -which Carlyle never grasped—the Revolutionary idea. -And we must read into the lives of all the actors in that -drama, and especially of the subject of this book, some -general motive which is connected with the creed of the -time. We must make his actions show as a consonant -whole—as a man’s—and then, if possible, determine his -place in what was not an anarchic explosion, but a regular, -though a vigorous and exceedingly rapid development.</p> - -<p>A hundred difficulties are at once apparent in undertaking -a work of this nature. It is not possible to give -a detailed history of the Revolution, and yet many facts -of secondary importance must be alluded to. It is necessary -to tell the story of a man whose action and interest, -nay, whose whole life, so far as we know it, lies in less -than five years.</p> - -<p>Danton’s earlier life is but a fragmentary record, collected -by several historians with extreme care, and only -collected that it may supplement our knowledge of his -mature career. The most laborious efforts of his biographers -have found but a meagre handful of the facts -for which they searched; nor does any personal inquiry -at his birthplace, from what is left of his family or in -his papers, augment the materials: the research has been -thoroughly and finally made before this date, and its -results, such as they are, I have put together in the -second chapter of this book.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[xi]</span></p> - -<p>He does not even, as do Robespierre, Mirabeau, and -others, occupy the stage of the Revolution from the first.</p> - -<p>Till the nation is attacked, his rôle is of secondary -importance. We have glimpses more numerous indeed, -and more important, of his action after than before 1789. -But it is only in the saving of France, when the men of -action were needed, that he leaps to the front. Then, -suddenly, the whole nation and its story becomes filled -with his name. For thirteen months, from that 10th of -August 1792, which he made, to the early autumn of the -following year, Danton, his spirit, his energy, his practical -grasp of things as they were, formed the strength of -France. While the theorists, from whom he so profoundly -differed, were wasting themselves in a kind of -political introspection, he raised the armies. When the -orators could only find great phrases to lead the rage -against Dumouriez’ treason, he formed the Committee to -be a dictator for a falling nation. All that was useful in -the Terror was his work; and if we trace to their very -roots the actions that swept the field and left it ready -for rapid organisation and defence, then at the roots we -nearly always find his masterful and sure guidance.</p> - -<p>There are in the Revolution two features, one of -which is almost peculiar to itself, the other of which is -in common with all other great crises in history.</p> - -<p>The first of these is that it used new men and young -men, and comparatively unknown men, to do its best -work. If ever a nation called out men as they were, -apart from family, from tradition, from wealth, and from -known environment, it was France in the Revolution. -The national need appears at that time like a captain in -front of his men in a conscript army. He knows them -each by their powers, character, and conduct. But they -are in uniform; he cares nothing for their family or their -youth; he makes them do that for which each is best -fitted. This feature makes the period unique, and it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a>[xii]</span> -due to this feature that so many of the Revolutionary -men have no history for us before the Revolution. It is -this feature which makes their biographies a vividly concentrated -account of action in months rather than in -years. They come out of obscurity, they pass through -the intense zone of a search-light; they are suddenly -eclipsed upon its further side.</p> - -<p>The second of these features is common to all moments -of crisis. Months in the Revolution count as years, and -this furnishes our excuse for giving as a biography so -short a space in a man’s life. But it is just so to do. -In every history a group of years at the most, sometimes -a year alone, is the time to be studied day by day. In -comparison with the intense purpose of a moment whole -centuries are sometimes colourless.</p> - -<p>Thus in the political history of the English thirteenth -century, the little space from the Provisions of Oxford -to the battle of Evesham is everything; in the study -of England’s breach with the Continental tradition, the -period between the Ridolphi plot and the Armada; in -the formation of the English oligarchy, the crisis of April -to December 1688.</p> - -<p>This second feature, the necessity for concentration, -would excuse a special insistence on the two years of -Danton’s prominence, even if his youth were better known. -The two conditions combined make imperative such a -treatment as I have attempted to follow.</p> - -<p>As to authorities, three men claim my especial gratitude, -for the work in this book is merely a rearrangement -of the materials they have collected. They are Dr. Bougeart, -who is dead (and his clear Republicanism brought -upon him exile and persecution); M. Aulard, the greatest -of our living writers on the Revolutionary period; and -Dr. Robinet, to whose personal kindness, interest, and -fruitful suggestion I largely owe this book. The keeper -of the Carnavalet has been throughout his long and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiii"></a>[xiii]</span> -laborious life the patient biographer of Danton, and little -can now be added to the research which has been the -constant occupation of a just and eminent career.</p> - -<p>We must hope, in spite of his great age, to have from -his hands some further work; for he is one of those -many men who have given to the modern historical -school of France, amid all our modern verbiage and compromise, -the strength of a voice that speaks the simple -truth.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiv"></a>[xiv]</span></p> - -<p class="center">DANTON<br /> -A STUDY</p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp45" id="frontispiece" style="max-width: 62.5em;"> - -<img class="w100" src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption"><i>This Portrait is presumably a David, both from its style and from the fact -that it is the companion picture to that of Madame Danton which is certainly -by that master. Its date is either the Autumn of 1792 or possibly early 1793. -It is mentioned by Madame Chapin, Danton’s sister-in-law, in a letter which -she writes during the Empire to the two boys, Danton’s sons: she says “I am -sending you the portrait of your Father ... it has been retouched ... the coat -especially has been made dark-blue, as that is the colour he ordinarily -wore. Madame Dupin,” (Danton’s second wife) “has just seen it and calls it a -striking likeness.” Both this letter and the picture are in the possession of Dʳ -Robinet, to whom they were given by Danton’s grand-daughter & by whose -permission this portrait is reproduced.</i></p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xv"></a>[xv]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> - -</div> - -<table> - <tr> - <td class="tdr smaller">CHAP.</td> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td>PREFACE</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PREFACE">vii</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td>THE REVOLUTION</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td>THE YOUTH OF DANTON</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">40</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td>DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">57</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IV.</td> - <td>THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">114</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">V.</td> - <td>THE REPUBLIC</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">171</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VI.</td> - <td>THE TERROR</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">211</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VII.</td> - <td>THE DEATH OF DANTON</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">249</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> - <td>ROBESPIERRE</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">282</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="3">APPENDICES—</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td>NOTE ON THE CORDELIERS</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_I">321</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td>NOTE ON CERTAIN SITES MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_II">327</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td>NOTE ON THE SUPPOSED VENALITY OF DANTON</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_III">331</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IV.</td> - <td>NOTE ON DANTON’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_IV">340</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">V.</td> - <td>SHORT MEMOIR BY A. R. C. DE ST. ALBIN</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_V">347</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VI.</td> - <td>EXTRACTS SHOWING REIMBURSEMENT OF DANTON’S OFFICE</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_VI">365</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VII.</td> - <td>EXTRACTS CONCERNING DANTON’S HOUSEHOLD</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_VII">373</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> - <td>CATALOGUE OF DANTON’S LIBRARY</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_VIII">380</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IX.</td> - <td>EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMOIR WRITTEN IN 1846 BY THE SONS OF DANTON</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_IX">384</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">X.</td> - <td>NOTES OF TOPINO-LEBRUN, JUROR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_X">395</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XI.</td> - <td>REPORT OF THE FIRST COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_XI">403</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td>INDEX</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INDEX">430</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p> - -<h1><span class="smaller">THE</span><br /> -LIFE OF DANTON</h1> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE REVOLUTION</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>Before writing a life of Danton in English it is necessary -to do three things. First, to take a definite point of -view with regard to the whole revolutionary movement; -secondly, to explain, so far as is possible, the form which -it took in France; thirdly, to show where Danton stood -in the scheme of events, the nature of his personality, -the effects of his brief action. This triple task is necessary -to a book which, but for it, would be only a string -of events, always confused, often without meaning.</p> - -<p>What was the Revolution? It was essentially a -reversion to the normal—a sudden and violent return to -those conditions which are the necessary bases of health -in any political community, which are clearly apparent in -every primitive society, and from which Europe had been -estranged by an increasing complexity and a spirit of -routine.</p> - -<p>It has never been denied that the process of gradual -remoulding is a part of living, and all admit that the -State (which lives like any other thing) must suffer -such a process as a condition of health. There is -in every branch of social effort a necessity for constant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span> -reform and check: it is apparent to the administrator of -every kind: it is the business of a politician continually -to direct and apply such correction:—the whole body of -the law of England is a collection of the past results of -this guiding force.</p> - -<p>But what are the laws that govern it? What is the -nature of the condition that makes reform imperative? -What distinguishes the good from the bad in the matter -of voluntary change, and separates the conservative from -the destructive effort?</p> - -<p>It is in the examination of this problem that we may -discover how great a debt the last century owed to nature—a -debt which demanded an immediate liquidation, and -was often only paid at the expense of violence.</p> - -<p>It would seem that the necessity of reform arises -from this, that our ideas, which are eternal, find themselves -expressed in phrases and resulting in actions which -belong to material environment—an environment, therefore, -that perpetually changes in form. It is not to be -admitted that the innermost standards of the soul can -change; if they could, the word “reform” would lose all -moral meaning, and a thing not being good would cease -to be desired. But the meaning of words, the effect -on the senses of certain acts, the causes of pleasure -and pain in a society, the definition of nationality—all -these things of their nature change without ceasing, and -must as ceaselessly be brought into accordance with the -unchanging mind.</p> - -<p>What test can be applied by which we may know -whether a reform is working towards this rectification -or not? None, except the general conviction of a whole -generation that this or that survival obstructs the way -of right living, the mere instinct of justice expressed in -concrete terms on a particular point. It is by this that -the just man of any period feels himself bound. This -is not a formula: it seems a direction of the loosest and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span> -of the most useless kind; and yet to observe it is to keep -the State sane, to neglect it is to bring about revolution. -This much is sure, that where there exists in a State a -body of men who are determined to be guided by this -vague sense of justice, and who are in sufficient power -to let it frame their reforms, then these men save a State -and keep it whole. When, on the contrary, those who -make or administer the laws are determined to abide by -a phrase or a form, then the necessities accumulate, the -burden and the strain become intolerable, and the gravitation -towards the normal standard of living, which should -act as a slight but permanent force, acts suddenly at a -high potential and with destructive violence.</p> - -<p>As an example of the time when the former and the -better conditions prevailed, I would cite the period between -the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, when a -change of the most fundamental kind passed over the -society of Europe, indeed a change from barbarism to -civilisation, and yet the whole went well. Reform, being -continual, was easy. New institutions, the Parliaments, -the Universities, the personal tax, rose as they were -demanded, and the great transition was crowned with -the security and content that surrounded St. Louis. -Simplicity, that main condition of happiness, was the -governing virtue of the time. The king ruled, the knight -fought, the peasant dug in his own ground, and the priest -believed.</p> - -<p>It is the lack of simplicity that makes of the three -centuries following the fifteenth (with vices due perhaps -to the wickedness of the fifteenth) an opposite example. -Every kind of phrase, emblem, or cloak is kept; every -kind of living thing is sacrificed. Conditions cease to -be flexible, and the body of Europe, which after all still -breathes, is shut in with the bonds of the lawyers, and all -but stifled.</p> - -<p>In the sixteenth century one would say that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> -political quarrels of the princes were a mere insult to -nature, but the people, though they are declining, show -that they still exist; the passions of their religions -enliven the dead game of the Tudors and the Valois. -In the seventeenth the pedants give their orders, the -upper classes fight the princes, the people are all but -silent. Where were they in the Fronde, or in that less -heroic struggle the Parliamentary Wars? As the -eighteenth century falls further and further into decay -all is gone; those who move in comfort above the souls -which they have beneath them for a pavement, the rich -and the privileged, have even ceased to enjoy their -political and theological amusements; they are concerned -only with maintaining their ease, and to do this they -conjure with the name of the people’s memories.</p> - -<p>They build ramparts of sacred tombs, and defend -themselves with the bones of the Middle Ages, with the -relics of the saint and the knight.</p> - -<p>It is this which necessitates and moulds the Revolution. -The privileged men, the lawyers especially, held to -the phrase. They excused themselves in a time most -artificial by quoting the formulæ of a time when life was -most natural and when the soul was nearest the surface. -They used the name of the Middle Ages precisely because -they thought the Middle Ages were dead, when suddenly -the spirit of the Middle Ages, the spirit of enthusiasm -and of faith, the Crusade, came out of the tomb and -routed them.</p> - -<p>I say, then, that the great disease of the time preceding -the Revolution came from the fact that it had kept -the letter and forgotten the spirit. It continued to do -the same things as Europe at its best—it had entirely -neglected to nourish similar motives. Let me give an -extreme example. There are conditions under which to -burn a man to death seems admissible and just. When -offences often occur which society finds heinous beyond<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span> -words, then no punishment seems sufficient for the satisfaction -of the emotion which the crime arouses. Thus -during the Middle Ages (especially in the latter part -of their decay), and sometimes in the United States -to-day, a man is burned at the stake. But there are -other conditions under which a society shrinks with -the greatest horror from such a punishment. Security -is so well established, conviction in this or that so -much less firm, the danger from the criminal so much -less menacing, that the idea of such an extreme agony -revolts all men. Then to burn is wrong, because it is -unnecessary and undesired. But let us suppose the -lawyers to be bent on a formula, tenacious from habit -and become angrily tenacious from opposition, saying that -what has been shall be; and what happens? The Parliament -of Strasbourg condemns a man to be burnt while -the States General are actually in session in 1789!</p> - -<p>Again, take the example of the land. There was a -time when the relations of lord and serf satisfied the -heart. The village was a co-operative community: it -needed a protector and a head. Even when such a need -was not felt, the presence of a political personage, at the -cost of a regular and slight tax, the natural affection which -long habit had towards a family and a name—these made -the relation not tolerable, but good. But when change -had conquered even the permanent manorial unit, and the -serf owned severally, tilling his private field; when the -political position of the lord had disappeared, and when -the personal tie had been completely forgotten—then the -tax was folly. It was no longer the symbol of tenure -drawn in a convenient fashion, taken right out of the cornfield -from a primitive group of families; it had become an -arbitrary levy, drawn at the most inconvenient time, -upsetting the market and the harvest, and falling on a -small farmer who worked painfully at his own plot of -ground.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span></p> - -<p>It is difficult to explain to English readers how far -this deadening conservatism had been pushed on the -Continent. The constitution of England and the habits -of her lawyers and politicians were still, for all their vices, -the most flexible in Europe. Even Pitt could tinker at -the representative system, and an abominable penal code -could be softened without upsetting the whole scheme of -English criminal law. To this day we notice in England -the most fundamental changes introduced, so to speak, -into an unresisting medium: witness those miniature -revolutions, the Income Tax and Employers’ Liability, -which are so silent, and which yet produce results so -immeasurable.</p> - -<p>It has always been a difficulty in writing of the -Revolution for English readers, that in England the -tendency to reform, though strong, was not irresistible. -It was a desire, but it was not a necessity, and that on -account of the quality which has just been mentioned, -the lack of form and definition in the English constitution -and legal habit.</p> - -<p>But if we go a little deeper we shall see a further -cause. Nothing will so deaden the common sense of -justice in a legislator or a lawyer, nothing will separate -him so much from the general feeling of his time, as -distinction of class from class. When a man cannot frequently -meet and sympathise with every kind of man -about him, then the State lacks homogeneity; the general -sentiment is unexpressed, because it has no common organ -of expression, and you obtain in laws and legal decisions -not the living movement of the citizens, but the dead -traditions of a few.</p> - -<p>Now by a peculiar bent of history, the stratification -of society which is so natural a result of an old civilisation, -was less marked in England than elsewhere in -Europe. The society of the Continent is not more homogeneous -to-day, as contrasted with that of modern England,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span> -than was the society of England a hundred years -ago, as contrasted with that of the Continent then; and -any English traveller who is wise enough to note in our -time the universal type of citizen in France, will experience -something of the envy that Frenchmen felt -when they noted the solid England of the eighteenth -century. There great lawyers were occasionally drawn -from the people; there a whole mass of small proprietors -in land or capital—half the people perhaps—kept the -balance of the State, and there a fluctuating political -system could, for all its corruption, find a place for the -young bourgeois Wolfe to defeat the great gentleman -Montcalm.</p> - -<p>But while in England reform was possible (though -perhaps it has been fatally inadequate), in the rest of -Europe it was past all hope. Everywhere there must be -organs of government, and these on the Continent could -no longer be changed, whether for better or worse: they -had become stiff with age, and had to be supplanted. -Now to supplant the fundamental organs of government, -to make absolutely new laws and to provide an -absolutely new machinery—all this is to produce a violent -revolution.</p> - -<p>You could not reform such a body as the Châtelet, -nor replace by a series of statutes or of decisions such a -mass as the local coûtumes. Not even a radical change -in the system of taxation would have made the noblesse -tolerable; no amount of personal energy nor any excellence -of advisers could save a king enveloped with the mass -of etiquette at Versailles. These numerous symptoms of -the lethargy that had overtaken European society, even -the disease itself, might have been swept away by a sharp -series of vigorous reforms. Indeed, some of these reforms -were talked of, and a few actually begun in the garrulous -courts of Berlin and of St. Petersburg. Such reforms -would have merited, and would have obtained, the name<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> -of Revolution, but they might have passed without that -character of accompanying excess which has delayed upon -every side the liberties of Europe. We should be talking -of the old regime and of the Revolution as we do now, -but the words would have called up a struggle between -old Parliaments and young legists, between worn-out -customs and new codes, between the kings of etiquette -and the kings of originality, between sleep and the new -science; the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries -would have been united by some curious bridge—not -separated by an abyss.</p> - -<p>As it is, the word Revolution recalls scenes almost as -violent as those which marked the transition of Rome -from the Republic to the Empire. We remember the -name not of Condorcet but of Marat: in place of the divided -Europe and complicated struggle which (on the analogy -of the Reformation) should have attended a movement -upon which sympathy was so evenly divided, in place -of a series of long, desultory campaigns, you have a -violent shock of battle between the French and every -government in Europe; you have the world outlawing -a people; you have, as a direct consequence of such a -pressure, the creation of a focus from whose extreme heat -proceeds the conquering energy of Napoleon. Blows -terrible and unexpected are struck in the first four years -of the war, and there appears in 1796 a portent—the -sword that was not broken until it had cut down and -killed the old society of the West.</p> - -<p>To all these accidents which flow from the form the -Revolution took, one more must be added, and that the -most important. The shock was of such violence that -all the old bonds broke. I mean the permanent things -which hold society together, not the dead relics, which -would in any case have disappeared.</p> - -<p>Many great changes have passed over Europe and -have left the fundamentals untouched; the Revolution,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span> -which might so easily have remoulded the shape of -society, did more and possibly worse: it rebuilt from the -foundations. How many unquestioned dogmas were -suddenly brought out into broad daylight! All our -modern indecision, our confused philosophies, our innumerable -doubts, spring from that stirring of the -depths. Is property a right? May men own land? Is -marriage sacred? Have we duties to the State, to the -family? All these questions begin to be raised. A -German Pole has denied the sequence of cause and effect. -Occasionally a man suddenly rises and asks, “Is there a -God?” There is nothing left in reserve for the amusement -of posterity.</p> - -<p>Well, this unexampled violence, which, like the -wind on the Red Sea, has bared for a moment things -that had lain hidden for centuries—this war of twenty -years and its results were due to the fact that the -Revolution, which might have started in a different -form from almost any European centre, started as fact -from France.</p> - -<p>That France was the agent of the reform is the -leading condition of the whole story, for it was her -centralisation that made the change so rapid and so -effectual, her temperament that framed the abstract formulæ -which could spread like a religion, her political -position in Europe that led to the crusade against her; -and this war in its turn (acting on a Paris that led and -governed the nation) produced all the further consequences -of the Revolution from the Terror to Waterloo.</p> - -<p>Let us examine the conditions of the Revolution as a -purely French thing, see what it was that made it break -out when it did, what guided its course, what gave Paris -its position, what led to the wars and the Terror.</p> - -<p>In the first place, the causes of the Revolutionary -movement in France. They were two: First, the immediate -material necessity for reform which coincided with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> -the Revolutionary period; secondly, the philosophy which -had permeated society for a generation, and which, when -once a change was undertaken, guided and controlled the -development of that change.</p> - -<p>As for the material circumstances that led to so -urgent a necessity for reform, they may be stated as -follows:—The governmental machinery, which had been -growing more and more inefficient, had finally broken -down; and this failure had been accelerated by a series -of natural accidents, the most prominent among them -being two successive years of scarcity.</p> - -<p>Now why was France alone in such a deplorable -condition? Why was she all but bankrupt, her navy in -rapid decay, her armies ill-clothed, ill-fed, in arrears of -pay? Why could Arthur Young, observant, honest, and -inept, make his tour through France (in which the mass -of accurate detail is balanced by so astounding a misconception -of French society<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>), and in that book describe -the land going out of cultivation, the peasant living on -grass, the houses falling down, the roads impassable? -The answer is discovered in the very causes that led to -the past greatness of the country. Because France alone -in Europe was a vast centralised body—a quality which -had made the reign of Louis XIV.; because centralisation -could not continue to work under the old regime—a -condition which led to the abrupt wreck of 1788 and -1789.</p> - -<p>The government of France, in the century preceding -the Revolution, might be compared to a great machine -made with admirable skill out of the disjointed parts of -smaller engines; a machine whose designer had kept but -a single end in view—the control of all the works by one -lever in the hand of one man. But (to continue the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> -metaphor) the materials to which his effort had been -confined forbade simplicity; the parts would be repaired -with difficulty, or sometimes not at all; the cleaning and -oiling of the bearings was neglected, of necessity, on -account of their position; and after two generations of -work the machine had ceased its functions. It was -clogged upon every side and rusty—still dependent upon -one lever, but incapable of movement.</p> - -<p>France had become a despotism, but a despotism -which lacked organisation; all centred in the king, with -the result that none could act but he, and yet, when he -strove to act, the organs of action were useless. All had -been made dependent upon one fountain-head, yet every -channel was stopped up.</p> - -<p>It is of the utmost importance in studying the -Revolution to appreciate this fact: that nearly every -part of the national life was sound, with the exception -of the one supreme function of government. I do not -mean that France and the world needed no new ideas, -nor that a material change in the form of the executive -would have sufficed for society. But I mean that, more -than is usually the case in a time of crisis, a <i>political</i> act -was the supreme need of the moment.</p> - -<p>Capital was not well distributed, but at least it was -not centralised as it is in our modern industrial societies. -All men owned; the peasant was miserable beyond -words, but his misery was not the result of an “Economic -Law;” it was due to that much more tangible thing, misgovernment. -The citizen was apathetic, but potentially -he was vigorous and alert. If he knew nothing of the -jury or of public discussion, it was the system oppressing -the man, not the man creating, or even permitting, the -system. In a word, the vices or the misfortunes of -France were not to be traced to the character of the -social system or of the national temper. They were to -be found in an artificial centre, the Government.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span></p> - -<p>Now of all governments a pure despotism can most -quickly establish reforms. In Russia the serfs were -freed, the Jews expelled, by a stroke of the pen; in -India you may see great financial experiments, great -military groups, come into being almost simultaneously -with the decision that creates them. Why could not -the central government have saved France? Because on -every side its action was deadened by dead things, which -it pretended were alive; because throughout the provinces -and towns there lay thick the corpses of what had -once been local institutions, and because so far from the -Crown removing these, it had left to them the privileges -which at one time were the salaries of their activity, -but which had now become a kind of bribe to continue -inactive.</p> - -<p>How had this come about? How had a government -been developed whose note was centralisation and despotism, -and which yet carefully preserved the fossils of local -administration?</p> - -<p>To answer that question it is necessary to consider -the original matter of which French society was composed -and the influences that modified without destroying -this matter in the course of the Middle Ages. The -French, like every other national group in Western -Europe, may be said to have differentiated from the -mere ruins of the Empire in that dark period which -follows the death of Charlemagne; until that epoch -some shadow of unity remained, and certainly the forces -working against unity had not yet begun to be national. -The order of Rome, which had remained as an accepted -ideal for five hundred years, takes under Charlemagne a -certain substance and reality, as mystical and as strange, -as full of approaching doom and yet as actual as a -momentary resurrection from the dead. It ceases with -the close of his reign, and what Dr. Stubbs has well -called “the darkness of the ninth century” comes down.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span></p> - -<p>The northern pirates fall on the north and west, and -cut off the islands from the mainland, giving us in England -the barrier of the Danish invasions, beyond which -Anglo-Saxon history grows dim; they crush out the -customs, and even the religion, of the coasts of the -Continent. The Hungarian certainly, the heathen Slavs -of the Baltic presumably, cut in streams through the -Germanic tribes. The Saracens held the Mediterranean. -Society fell back upon its ultimate units; in all that -mechanical disintegration the molecules of which it is -composed remained. The village community, self-sufficing, -self-contained, alone preserved an organisation and -a life.</p> - -<p>For more than a century it hung upon a thread -whether the Roman tradition should survive, or whether -our civilisation should fall into the savagery which has -apparently been elsewhere the fate of systems almost as -strong. A new thing arose in Europe, destined more -than any other factor to deflect the current of its Latin -tradition. There was found, when the light began to -grow upon this darkness, in nearly every village a little -king. Whichever men had in the old times been possessed -of power, local officials, large owners of land, -leaders in the great armies, emerge from the cataclysm -welded into one new class—the nobles; and with the -appearance of this caste, with the personal emotions -and the strong local feeling that their system developed, -Europe becomes a feudal society. But that society -contained another element, which was destined to control -and at last to destroy the feudality. For strangely -enough, this period, which had thrown Europe into such -anarchy, had produced an idea the very opposite of such -a character. The nationalities begin to arise. The kings—weak -shadows—nobles, often of small power, but no -longer the mere leaders of armies, become symbols of a -local unit, separated from the Empire. They stood for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> -the nation round which the patriotism that you will -discover in the old epics was to gather.</p> - -<p>France, more perhaps than any of the new divisions, -illustrates all this. A small weak king, one Capet, was -elected from among the nobles at the end of the tenth -century, and the family which ultimately toppled over -from the immensity of its burden, descended from him -in direct line from father to son through more than -eight hundred years.</p> - -<p>In the early years of that crusading century which is -the vigorous opening of the life that was to produce our -Europe, a discovery was made which was destined to help -this new kingship to take a very different shape. In the -loot of Amalfi, in a petty war, the Roman Code of Law -was rediscovered.</p> - -<p>It had the effect which might be imagined in a -barbarous society which the Normans and Hildebrand -had at last aroused. It suddenly gave a text and an -accurate guide to those splendid but vague memories of -Imperial order and civilisation.</p> - -<p>Everywhere the Universities arise; from Bologna -come out the corporation of the lawyers, the students -of the code, the men whose decisions were final, who -led mediæval society as the scientists lead ours to-day; -and everywhere they tended to the two bases of the -Roman idea—absolute sovereignty in the case of the -State, absolute ownership in the case of the Individual.</p> - -<p>The logical end of such a movement should have -been the Empire—citizens all equal before the law, the -feudal system destroyed, the Church dominated by the -State, the will of the prince supreme. But Europe -contained a hundred elements beside the lawyers, though -these were the most permanent and active force of her -civilisation. The Manorial unit was strong; there are -places where it survives to-day.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The aristocracy was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> -strong. In Poland and England it ended by conquering -the Crown and the Roman law. The Church, affected as -it was by the new ideas, still had a host of anomalous habits -and institutions, grown up since the fall of the Empire.</p> - -<p>In the anarchy of the dark ages the framework -of intense local differences had been constructed; the -village, the guild, the chapter, each had their special -customs born of isolation. Finally, the spirit of secondary -nationalities was powerful in many places; notably -among the Germans it conquered every other tendency.</p> - -<p>Now France was especially favourable to the growth -of the influences of this law; she was very Roman by -tradition, and by tradition Imperial. Charlemagne had -left his clothes to Germany, but his spirit to Gaul. The -sub-nationalities, Provence, Normandy, the Gascons, had, -in spite of their local patriotism, epics in which they -harped on “Doulce France Terre Majeure.” But though -the national forces on the whole inclined towards the -lawyers and the Crown, the path by which absolute -centralisation could be reached was tortuous and had -to be well chosen. The nobles are slowly bereft of -political power, but their privilege remains; the peasant -gradually acquires the land, but many feudal dues lie -on a tenure which has lost all its feudal meaning. The -Church becomes the king’s, but it remains in administration -of its vast possessions: to the last the Crown -works through (or attempts to work through) the local -organisation that was once supreme and is fast dying.</p> - -<p>You may compare the progress of the Capetians -towards absolute power to the action of a gentleman who -obtains an estate at the cost of perpetual bribery, and -finds himself crippled when he has at last succeeded.</p> - -<p>Finally, the lawyers themselves become sterilised in -the general decay which their policy has created. Even -the Crown is half-allied to the privileged bodies in practice, -and altogether allied in sentiment; the government<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span> -which had for centuries created and sustained the people -now found itself remote from them and the source of its -power cut off.</p> - -<p>I will give but a couple of examples to illustrate the -centralisation and the hopeless confusion that accompanied -it. The first is from De Tocqueville. A village near Paris -wished to raise a small local rate to mend the steeple of -the church. They could not do so without appealing to -Versailles. The leave was granted after two years, but -the steeple had broken down. The second is from the -records of the election of ’89. In a bailiwick of Champagne -it was discovered that no one accurately knew the -boundaries of the district, that the next bailiwick was -similarly ignorant, and finally an arbitrary line was drawn. -This is one out of dozens of cases. The population of -Paris was not known; the number of electors in every -division was uncertain.</p> - -<p>Such was the France in which reform was necessary. -The land, by a continual and misdirected interference with -exchange, was going out of cultivation—or rather (for -even in the worst cases of depression this symptom is -rare) it was yielding less and less as time went on.</p> - -<p>The classes into which society was divided had become -separated by an etiquette as rigorous as a religion, and -though the thing has gone, the phrases that described -it are vigorous to this day, and lead continually to the -gravest misconception. A France where one Frenchman -has grown so like another still lets its literature run upon -some of the old lines.</p> - -<p>Five great divisions should especially be noticed in -connection with the Revolution—the peasants, the artisans, -the middle class, the professionals, the noblesse; -and side by side with these, a separate thing, the Church, -sharply divided into the higher and lower clergy. Let -me, at the risk of some digression, enter into the details -of these various groups.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span></p> - -<p>The peasants were the majority of the nation, as they -are to-day. At a rough guess, out of some five million -heads of families, three and a half at least were of this -class. What were they? They were more ignorant, more -fearful, and more unhappy than ever the inhabitants of -French soil had been before. I believe it is no exaggeration -to say that the worst of the barbarian invasions had -not produced among them such special and intense misery -as had the running down of the governmental machine in -the eighteenth century. Their songs had ceased. Search -the folk-lore of France, and you will find a kind of gap after -the centralisation was complete, and after the lords had left -them—after the seventeenth century. It is as though that -oldest sign of communal life, the traditions and the stories -of the little circle of the village, had died just before the -death of the village itself. As to religion, with which all -this natural and fertile love of legend is so closely knit, it -lingered, but it lingered hardly. The priest still survived, -but his action was cut off by penury; in places the extreme -physical needs of the peasantry, whose lot he shared, -entered into his life to an intolerable degree, and a half-paganism -resulted. Twenty, thirty pounds a year is not -enough for the celibate who holds the sacramental power -in the village. I will show you in the rural communes -of France church after church part of whose buildings are -very old, part very new: and what is the reason? That -in all these places the church fell into ruins till the new -State came to rebuild it. You may discover many cases of -restoration in the eighteenth century where a great cathedral -or a famous church or abbey is renewed: it is the work of the -upper clergy, and the dole out of their vast fortunes. In the -villages such cases are rare and eccentric. The Revolution, -for all its antagonism, gave to the Faith a new life. There -are to-day more monasteries and convents, more of the -clergy, both regular and secular, by far more missionaries, -than there were in 1789, but there are fewer bishops.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span></p> - -<p>The peasant owned land, his roof and a few acres -beside; he had been buying for generations, and the drift -of the law when it turned feudal tenant-right into ownership -was in his favour. But this ownership of the land, -the foundation of his future citizenship, was for the -moment his curse. It made him an independent man, -while he still had to pay the dues of his feudal dependence. -And independence works both ways. He stood, -ignorant and extremely poor, face to face with the all-powerful -State. His natural support and guide had left -the village for the court; the lord was nothing more than -a name for endless annoyance and local exaction. The -symptom that comes just before death showed itself in the -ploughman and the labourer in the vineyard. He lost -heart; he was too tired and too beaten to work; the great -burden of the State, its taxes, its follies, had accumulated -on his shoulders, and had bent them so low that he could -no longer stir the earth with vigour into harvests.</p> - -<p>Such men did not make the Revolution; they were the -inert mass upon which it worked. They did not sing the -war-songs; they did not understand the meaning of the -invasions. No peasant marked the assemblies with the -sense or cunning of the fields, the sound of patois was -lacking in the great chorus, and as you read the Revolution -you feel continually the lack of something closely -in touch with Nature, because the most French of all -Frenchmen had forgotten how to speak.</p> - -<p>The Revolution has made them; and to this day the -heirs of the Republic wonder at the peasant in his -resurrection. From him come the humour, the gaiety, -the manhood; it is his presence in the suffrage that -criticises and tones down the crudities of political -formulæ. He has re-created a host of songs, he has turned -all France into a kind of walled garden; underneath the -politicians, and in spite of them, he is working out the -necessary thing which shall put flesh on to the dry bones<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> -of the Revolution,—I mean the reconciliation of the -Republic and the Church.</p> - -<p>As to the artisans, they play in the story of the -movement a subsidiary but an interesting part. The -artisans (in the sense in which I use the term) were found -only in the great towns. At least the artisans outside -these centres must be reckoned as part of the peasantry, -for their spirit was that of the village. These craftsmen -of the towns did not form a large percentage of the nation. -Perhaps half-a-million families—perhaps a trifle more. -But their concentration, the fact that they could come in -hundreds and hear the orators, the fact that they alone, -by the accidents of their position, could form <i>mobs</i>, these -were the causes of their peculiar effect upon the Revolutionary -movement.</p> - -<p>Like the peasant, the ouvrier gives hardly any type to -politics. If we except Hébert, on the strength of his -being a vagabond ticket-collector, there is hardly any one -of prominence who comes from the labourers in the towns. -But the combined effort of the class was great and was as -follows:—It furnished for the party of revolt an angry -and ready army of the streets; it was capable of follies and -of violence almost unlimited; it was capable also of concentration -and common action. It filled the tribunes of -the clubs, and more than once terrorised the Parliament. -It was patriotic, but wofully suspicious; and in all it did the -main fault was a lack, or rather a dislike, of delay, of self-criticism, -and of self-control: the ruling passion anger, and -the motive of this anger the partial information, the -extreme false idea, of the political movement, which it -was willing to read into every speech delivered.</p> - -<p>I will attempt to say why this character, the worst -and the most dangerous of the period, was developed in -the labour of the towns. In the first place, the industrial -system is of itself fatal to the French character. It is not -in the traditions of the nation; it is opposed to the tendencies<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> -which the most superficial observer can discover in them. -The Frenchman saves and invests in small parcels, loves -to work with his own tools, is impatient of a superior -unless it be in some domestic relation, is attached to the -home life, and above all is no good specialist: “Il veut -rester homme.” You will find too many artists, too few -machines in a crowd of them.</p> - -<p>It may be that a cheap distribution of power, or -that some other economic change, will reinstate the small -capitalist; till then, for all his industry, the French -workman will be at a disadvantage. In the great towns, -in the manufactory, under a central control which has no -political basis of right, cut off from the fields for which -the peasant in him always yearns, he is like good wine -turned sour.</p> - -<p>In the second place, the system of the old regime -had produced an aristocracy of labour such as many -reformers demand in England to-day. Mediæval restrictions, -which had once applied to all workers, and had -been designed to limit competition between men all of -whom were employed, survived in 1789 as guilds and -companies strictly protected by law, with fixed hours of -labour, fixed wages—every kind of barrier to exclude -the less fortunate artisans. A system that under St. -Louis had made life more secure for all, had, under his -descendants, separated the workmen into two classes of -the over- and the under-paid, and these last increased.</p> - -<p>In the third place, the recent treaty of commerce -with England had worked most disadvantageously for -French manufacture, and in all the great towns, especially -in Paris, thousands of men were out of work.</p> - -<p>In the fourth place, the general scarcity of agricultural -produce struck the ouvrier, even if he were -employed at good wages, in the heaviest fashion.</p> - -<p>Between the cornfield and the city came the taxes, -the feudal dues, the provincial frontier duties, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span> -finally the octroi paid at the city gates. So inept a -method of continually harassing exchange could not -but react upon production, and even when the harvest -was plentiful bread was dear in the great cities. Even -when these internal taxes did not diminish the output, -they raised the price in the towns.</p> - -<p>Finally, the Church, which, as we have seen, had none -too firm a hold on the villagers, had lost all power over -the townsmen. To what was this due? Presumably -to the apathy which had overtaken the rich higher -clergy, a class which naturally congregated in the towns, -especially in Paris, and whose example influenced all -the surrounding priests. Add to this the destruction -of the old unit of the <i>parish</i> in the city. The industrial -system had broken up the neighbourliness of the capital. -Men rarely lived in their own houses, often changed their -lodgings to follow their work. There is no worse enemy -to the parochial and domestic character of our religion -than the economic change from which we suffer. Now -with the Church was associated all the morality of their -traditions; without it they were lost. They had not read -the philosophers; Rousseau had not permeated so deep. -For the matter of that, they would have cared little for -him or for Seneca; and, deprived of any code, they were -at the mercy of every passion and of all unreason. -Only this much remained: that they honestly hated -injustice; that egotism had very little to do with their -anger; that they were capable of admirable enthusiasms. -They had not the little qualities of the rich, and they -also escaped their vices. One great virtue attached to -them: they did nothing at the expense of the country’s -honour; no reactionary or foreigner bought them; they -were patriotic through all their errors.</p> - -<p>To these characters, which they brought into the -Revolution, a further accident must be added. They -became disfranchised. As we shall see later, the constitution<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span> -of 1790, based upon the very sound principle -of representing those only who supported the -State, gave no provision (as it should have done) for -making that support fall upon the shoulders of all. It -enfranchised the great bulk of Frenchmen—over four -million entered the ranks of the “Active Citizens”—but -it disfranchised the very class which sat in the galleries -of the Parliament or ran to the Place de Grève. The -workman, living in lodgings or flats sublet, often changing -his residence, rarely paid any direct tax; he alone, -therefore, lost the vote to which practically every peasant -was entitled. This accident (it was not planned) worked -in two ways. It added to the discontent of the Parisian -workman, but it also forbade his movements to take -political shape. To the very last the initiative was in -the hands of others.</p> - -<p>These others were the three remaining divisions—the -middle class, the professionals, and the nobles.</p> - -<p>It would be an error to make too hard and fast the -barriers between these classes. In the cart that took the -Dantonists to the guillotine all three were to be found. -Nevertheless it aids a history of the Revolutionary period -to distinguish each from each.</p> - -<p>The bourgeoisie meant almost anything from a small -shopkeeper to a successful lawyer. It was not so much -the man’s occupation as his breeding and domestic surroundings -that made him of this rank. Let me explain -what I mean. Suppose the family of a linendraper (such -as was Priestley’s family or Johnson’s in England) possessed -of several thousand pounds. Let them put a son -to the bar, and let the son succeed at the profession; well, -the man and his son, so different in their pursuits, would -yet remain in the class I desire to define, unless by some -accident they got “in with” one of the literary coteries -with which the noblesse mingled. And this separation -would be something much more definite than in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> -parallel case in England. This class of the bourgeoisie -stood like a great phalanx in the Revolution. Not one -in ten of the class I am attempting to describe had -entered the salons; there was not (as there is in an -aristocratic state) any great desire to know the noblesse. -An accident of surroundings, of eminence, or of friendship -might lift a man from this class, but he would leave -it with regret.</p> - -<p>Of this class were Robespierre, Marat (in spite of his -aristocratic milieu), Bonaparte,<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Danton himself, Santerre, -Legendre, Carnot, Couthon, Barrère—dozens of all the -best-known names in the second period of the Revolution.</p> - -<p>Brewers, builders, large shopkeepers, a host of provincial -lawyers—these all over France, to the number of -at least a million voters, formed a true middle class such -as we lack in England. Note also that they might rise -to a very considerable position without leaving this rank. -A man might be physician to the first houses, a king’s -counsel, a judge, anything almost except the colonel of a -regiment, and yet be a bourgeois, and his son after him. -In the memoirs of the last century you will find continually -a kind of disgust expressed by the upper class -against a set just below them; it is the class feeling -against the bourgeoisie, their choice of words, their restrictions -of fortune, their unfashionable virtues. These men -were often learned; among the lawyers they were the pick -of France; they had a high culture, good manners, in the -case of individuals wit, and sometimes genius, but they -were not gentlefolk, and had no desire to be thought so.</p> - -<p>Of those, however, who were technically bourgeois, -possessing no coat of arms nor receiving feudal dues, -some had practically passed by an accident of association<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span> -into the upper class of all. They met constantly in some -salon, library, or scientific body members of the privileged -order; their dress, manners, and conceptions were those of -the liberal noblesse. To such men, very small in number -and very influential, I would give the name of Professionals. -The class is complete if you add to it the many -noble names who stood prominent in the sciences or the -arts. It was recruited from legal families of long standing, -from financiers. It was polite, wealthy, often singularly -narrow. Of such a type were the Marquis de Condorcet, -Bailly, Sieyès; even Roland might be counted, though he -hardly stood so high. These were the theorisers of the -Revolution, with no practical grievance, ignorant of the -mob, despising and misunderstanding the bourgeoisie -(save in their political speeches); they were the orators of -the new regime, and died with the Girondins.</p> - -<p>As to the noblesse (who partly overlapped these last, -and yet as a class were so distinct), they formed a body -with which this book will hardly deal, and upon which -I will touch but lightly. In very great numbers, the -bulk of them by no means rich (though some, of course, -were the greatest millionaires of their day), they were -defined by a legal status rather than an especial manner.</p> - -<p>He was noble whom the king had ennobled or who -could prove an ancestry from the feudal lords of the -manors.<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The family name was never heard, only the -territorial name preceded by the “de.” They had also -this in common, that the whole great swarm of families, -thousands and thousands, had a cousinship with that -higher stratum which made the court. This cousinship -was acknowledged; it put them in the army; it gave -them the right to be spitted in a duel, and, above all, it -exempted them from taxes. It made them, wherever they -went, a particular class, to be revered by fools, and able<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span> -to irritate their enemies merely by existing—a privilege -of some value. They held together in the heat of the -reform, and it was only from the higher part of the -noblesse that the deserters came—Mirabeau, Lafayette, -and De Séchelles. The great bulk of them were poor, -and consequently determined in the matter of privilege -and feudal right that gave them their pittance. The class -was richer than the bourgeoisie, but numerous families -in it had not the capital of a bourgeois household, and -many a poor lady boasts to-day of family estates lost in -the Revolution, whose ancestry had no estates at all, but -only a few tithes and a chance in the spoil to be had at -court.</p> - -<p>Now to all these, without exception, reform seemed -necessary; it was only when the Revolution was in full -swing that the opposition of particular bodies appeared. -The peasant was in misery; the artisan was angry; the -middle class, possessed of that feeling which Sieyès expressed -in a phrase: “Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État?—Rien;” -and they were determined to work upon the -sequel: “Que doit-il être?—Tout.” To this general -chorus of demand the professionals added a strong conviction -(in the abstract) of the good of self-government -and of the necessity for removing State interference. -The noblesse, as a class, expected nothing in particular -to happen, but they were not unwilling for a Parliament -to meet; they also suffered from the extreme complexity, -or rather anarchy, into which things had fallen. Talent -saw itself wrecked by court intrigue; piety was offended by -the sight of a starving priest side by side with a careless, -wealthy, often irreligious member of the higher clergy. -Moreover, there ran through the nobility this curious -feeling—an error which you will always find in the more -generous of a privileged class—namely, that in some -mysterious way their special rights might be abolished -and they not suffer for it—as though there were some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span> -vast sum in reserve, into which the State had but to put -its hand and relieve the poor without taxing the rich. -On the moral as on the material side this error obtained, -and Lafayette, a man created by privilege, thought that -when privilege was abolished his native virtues would -lift him into the first rank.</p> - -<p>To all this attitude of expectancy, and to this instant -demand for reform, was added the insurmountable thing -that made the Parliament necessary. The great symptom -of decay had shown itself—the revenue could no longer be -raised. Luckily for France, there existed in the last century -no such international finance as exists at present, -and the fatal temptation of external debt was not offered. -With a population not quite two-thirds what it is to-day, -the country failed to raise one-twentieth of what it now -pays with ease. The debt was increasing with a terrifying -rapidity, and since all the methods of centralised routine -had failed, it was necessary to turn to the last resource, -and the nation was asked to vote a tax. With promises -of redress, with an understanding that the Assembly was -to reform upon all sides, with a special demand for a -statement of grievances, but especially for the necessities -of revenue, the States General were summoned for the -first time in a hundred and seventy-five years.</p> - -<p>Such was the condition that preceded the Revolution. -We have seen the attitude of the various social classes -and the material necessity that prepared the reform. -Now what were the ideas that were about to guide it? -What theory was moving the men who met at Versailles? -What form would the national character give to the -changes which were in preparation?</p> - -<p>It will be necessary here to propose a paradox. The -French character, which has been blamed so frequently -since the Revolution (and so justly) for an excess of -idealism, possesses at the same time a passion for the -positive, the objective, and the certain. In the same<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span> -man you will continually find some idea which pushes -him to extremes, and in the ordinary affairs of life a -most exact sense of reality, even sometimes an exasperating -accuracy of detail. They are not alone in discovering -an antithesis in the national character; in England, Germany, -or Northern Italy it would be equally possible to -show two apparently opposite characteristics united in the -same civic type. But perhaps the nearest parallel we have -at home to the contrasts of the French is to be seen in -the Scotch people; like the French, a nation of independents, -thrifty, investing continually in small sums, zealous -of pence; like the French, on the other hand, they delight -in the abstract problem; they will attach themselves to -some idea, and hold it to the point of martyrdom.</p> - -<p>What was the result of these two tendencies? In -some characters they balanced each other. Condorcet -comes to the mind as an example. But, as with other -nations, the two aspects of France appeared (in much -the greater number of her citizens) exalted to a violent -degree that corresponded with the extreme danger and -the extreme hopes of a moment of crisis.</p> - -<p>I do not mean that you would have found in France -two factions, the one of visionaries, the other of practical -men; I mean that throughout the Revolution the goal -and the method of attaining it reflected this double -nature. Consider the decrees and their effects. At -the sight of what the Assemblies from 1789 to 1795 -are trying to do you would say, “A set of men attempting -to build a city of dreams;” there is hardly anything -so unnatural but that they will attempt it; they are ready -to reconstruct from the foundation. The most violent -period, that of 1794, is nothing but an effort to make all -men conform to civic virtue and believe the necessary -things; the most sane, that of 1791, is yet an attempt -to realise in the State an equality and a justice that can -only exist in the soul.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span></p> - -<p>But if you turn to their methods and to the measure -of their success, then you have a very different idea. -They succeeded beyond all hope. They struck in a -few months the blows that remoulded all France. The -centralisation which the practical side of the character -had created was used to transform France as rapidly as -though the nation had been a household; and not only -do they find means to do this, but, when the necessity -arises, they suddenly raise armies of three hundred -thousand, of a million; they find the commissariat -somewhere in a starving people, and they succeed.</p> - -<p>While, then, the nation was fitted for action to such a -degree, what was the theory which its idealism was about -to embrace? There had permeated throughout the -noblesse and the bourgeoisie something more than a philosophy. -It was not only a set of eighteenth-century -phrases, of Reason, and Nature, and Right, but all these -things turned into a religion. The apostolic quality of -Rousseau had touched the mind of France.</p> - -<p>It is the fashion to belittle this man. Something in -him angers our successful and eager century, and yet but -for him our century would not have taken the shape it -has. It is needless to recall the movement which had -preceded and which surrounded him. He did but complete -the theory of the social contract; he hardly did -more than repeat the conclusions of the rationalists; in -the matter of economics he was entirely ignorant; he fell -continually into the error of superficiality where history -or where the details of institutions were concerned. A -resident in England, he imagined that her people were -represented; writing his famous work at Nuneham -Courtenay, he could not see that the squire was everything -in the little village. He had all the faults of -weakness; he invited a persecution which he had not the -wit to attack nor the stamina to sustain. What, then, -made him such a prophet? In the first place, the power<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> -of words. All his critics in this country (with the -exception of Mr. Morley perhaps) have failed to appreciate -how great this power was. See what the Jacobean -translation of the Bible has done in England; note what -the pure rhetoric of Burke, proceeding solely from passion -and untouched by any movement of reason, effected in -England within a year of the fall of the Bastille: it was -this that Rousseau did in France. But not this alone. -If he possessed the power of words, he also had to an extraordinary -degree that other quality which does not reside -in style but in the texture of the mind. He could write -in the pure abstract, and produce a piece of clear exposition -deduced in an unbreakable chain from some fundamental -dogma. He never commits the error of supposing -his first principles to rely upon reason; he postulates a -Faith. He allows that Faith to illumine his every -sentence. He is certain that the things common to all -men are the things of immeasurable importance; he is -certain that the accidents of living are secondary. He is -certain that our being part of all nature is the condition -of happiness and of good; he is certain that the complexity -of living which separates us from Nature is an -evil, and to a France tortured with age he proposes -this simple water of youth: that it should return to the -first conditions of a small hamlet; where the families -met together dictate the law; where each sees himself to -be a part of the whole, and where the harmony that all -men sought comes easily to an ideal democracy hidden -in happy valleys. It is idle to argue that complexity was -there; that France could not have at once the patriotism -of twenty million, and the institutions of a hundred, -hearths. Every one saw that difficulty, and in the midst -of ’94 the most fervent apostles of Rousseau compromised -on the chief point, for the principle of election, which he -hated, remained of necessity the chief method in their -scheme of democracy.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span></p> - -<p>It is not the obstacles, but the motive force that you -must examine if you would comprehend the fervour of -the Republic. And the motive force was that passion -for the conditions under which the race has passed how -many æons of its tutelage, the harking back to the prehistoric -things, the village and the tribe, all of whose -spirit ran through the books that preached simplicity -with such admirable eloquence.</p> - -<p>There remains one feature to be discussed before we -turn to a brief outline of Danton’s place in the movement—a -feature which will be of capital importance -throughout this book. That feature is the hegemony of -Paris. It was the rule of Paris that made the whole -course of the Revolution. In that focus of discussion -and of passion the great advances and the great blunders -of the Revolution took place. Paris alone made the 14th -of July, almost alone the 10th of August, alone and -against France the 2nd of June. Many an historian has -seen in her position an error that should have been and -could have been avoided. It is an opinion which from -the time of Mirabeau to our own day has lain in the mind -of French statesmen, that Paris must be jealously watched, -played, forbidden control.</p> - -<p>Why does Paris hold this position? Here is a city-state, -eager, concentrated, the centre in many things of -our European civilisation; that it should continually -exert a moral influence over the State is easily to be -understood, but Paris did more—it conquered and dominated -the State, and France continually permitted that -leadership.</p> - -<p>There is, I believe, a point of view from which this -historical fact becomes no longer an accident but a -reasonable thing; and if we take that point of view it -will be possible to understand why from the beginning -she preserved the initiative, and became and remained -till Thermidor the mistress of France.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span></p> - -<p>The people of that country are, for much the greater -part, the peasants whom I have described. They have -for centuries been owners of the soil, and for at least two -thousand years (perhaps far longer) they have found all -their social, all their physical, and most of their intellectual -interests in the intense but narrow life of a -village community. In any great expanse of view you -see the white houses, all huddled together without -gardens, and between each group bare vast brown fields -empty of farmsteads. These peasants have in them an -admirable cousinship with the soil; their phrases and -their proverbs are drawn directly from the fields and -rivers; they are as healthy as Nature herself. Such is -the general mass of France; but these innumerable -villages, these vigorous swarms of men who work in the -sunlight, need a bond. Some concrete object must be -present to give true unity to many vague national impressions. -Something must be the <i>persona</i> of these -millions, and through the mouth of that something they -must hear action formulated, patriotism expressed, the -law defined. From it must come the executive, and of -it are expected the direct orders and the government by -which, in times of crisis, a nation is saved.</p> - -<p>This brain, which is necessary to a complex organism, -might have been found in a high priest or a despot; -but we in England unconsciously look for it in an oligarchy. -Seeing the squires wanting, we think there is -nothing, and we draw doleful conclusions when we note -the absence in the French villages of the forces that -invigorate our own. We complain of the centralisation -that atrophies, forgetting the oligarchy that cows and -debases the inferior class; and while we despise the -political apathy of French country life, we ignore the -negation of society in our great cities.</p> - -<p>The truth is that no definite system can escape -attendant evils, and that if one nation does not adopt<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span> -the methods that have succeeded in another it is because -those methods are connected with instinct, and instinct -can neither be taught nor adopted.</p> - -<p>It was instinct that forbade the growth in France -of oligarchic institutions. Everything was ready for it; -the feudal system would seem its proper parent; the -lords of the manors were so many seeds of what should -have been a territorial aristocracy. They were destined -to fail, and to say <i>why</i> is impossible, because it is impossible -to explain Nature; we can only feel. Something in -the genius of the nation makes for equality with the -depth and silence of a strong tide at night. It is not -the Roman law—all the nations had that. It is not -even the Church—there is a something in the Church -which neglects if it does not despise civic ideals. It is -not the distribution of capital—that can be distinctly -proved to be an historical result and not a cause. No, -it is not an exterior force, but something from within -which has produced this passion, the soul (as it were) -forming the body. “La France a fait la France.”</p> - -<p>If aristocracy were impossible, what remained? The -walled towns. They are like pins on which the lace of -France is stretched; the roads unite them and make a -web which supports the rural communes. Never far -apart, always living a life intensely their own, the walled -towns stood guardian over surrounding villages. Here -was the cathedral or the abbey, the judges, the college. -It would give the name to a district, it would form with -its dependent communes a kind of little state. News -from the outside was concentrated here, and if a religious -or political enthusiasm ran from the Rousillion to the -Artois, it was not the villages that caught fire in the -mass, but the towns, that passed the message on like -beacons.</p> - -<p>Now as the roots of this municipal system were to -be found in Rome, these needed a little Rome to cap it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span> -These towns being all of a kind, they of necessity fell -grouped under the largest of their class. The tendency -was well marked even before Gaul was re-united; the -same force that made the great archbishoprics makes the -metropolitan civil influence. Thus Rheims, Lyons,<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and -Toulouse stand out hierarchically the heads of provinces—a -very different kind of town from Canterbury (let us -say) or Lichfield, where once they talked of an archbishopric -for Mercia.</p> - -<p>Well, as the power of the Crown increases (which is -another way of saying, “as the nation realises its memories -of unity”), there increase with it the means of communication, -and especially the strong centralised system -which, as we have seen in another part of this chapter, -had become a fatal necessity to France. Remember also -that till the very end of the seventeenth century Paris had -been uniquely the king’s town, and had so been (with -one short interval) for more than a thousand years. -Here was every single organ which the executive of a -centralised government may need, and (what is more -important) here was the place where each organ had grown; -they were in the fibre of the place. Even if we go back -no farther than the Capetians, we have a full seven hundred -years of development in one spot from the familiar -domestic origins, the little barbarous court in the palace -on the island to the great city of nearly a million souls, -whose terms and professions and classes, and whose every -institution had developed round the throne.</p> - -<p>When one remembers that the king had abandoned -Paris but a hundred years; that he had left in the capital -by far the greater part of the central machinery, especially -the lawyers; that even from what he had taken -many relics remained, and that professional men of all -classes had the family tradition of the court in the capital—then<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span> -we can understand what Paris was, is, and must -be to a France where no class is permitted to govern. -Add to this the increasing specialisation of function as -the organism develops—the concentration of the brain—and -Paris of the eighteenth century, abandoned as it is, -hurt in its dignity, and a little uncertain of its action, -still fulfils the geography-books, and is the capital of -France.</p> - -<p>She herself hardly knew how certainly power would -fall into her hands, yet from the first mention of the -States General it was fated.</p> - -<p>This, then, is the position as the States General meet. -A nation in absolute material need of reform, that must -have new institutions, especially new financial institutions, -or die; classes separate from each other, mutually ignorant -of each other, yet all in some degree feeling the position -into which France had fallen: in the case of the bulk of -the people, misgovernment appearing in the form of starvation; -in the case of the upper classes and of the government -itself, a conviction that the existing system was -contrary to all reason and opposed to every sound interest.</p> - -<p>In this society, at least in that part of it that will be -called upon to govern, is a conviction—a religion, if you -will—whose basis was the faith of Rousseau. Conditions -will moderate this for a time; the necessary compromise -with what exists, the desire for peace that was uppermost -in the first two years, will make men slow to uproot and -destroy what may touch the interests of friends and of -large classes. They will always attempt a legal though -a rapid reform. But, in spite of them, on account of that -passionate conviction which underlay their most moderate -actions, the Revolution will move up towards the region of -unattainable things. The reformer will give way to the -Republican idealist when once the serious opposition of -the court is felt; he in his turn will give way to the man -of passion and of action when the country is in danger;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span> -and even the man of passion and of action—the man -of realities—will give way to the mere visionary before -reaction can come to sweep the floor clean in 1794.</p> - -<p>Such will be the phases through which the form of the -Revolution will pass. As for the soul of it, France will be -steadily transformed, and, in spite of visionaries, reactions, -and every political accident, a new and a strong society -will be created. So the salt water comes in through old -dykes; on its surface you will note the phases of a flood, -innumerable little streams, a torrent, a spreading lake, and -ultimately calm, but only one thing all the while is happening—where -there has been land there will be the sea.</p> - -<p>What place did Danton take in this transformation? -Of his opinions in detail, his habit of body and mind, his -convictions, the accidents of his life, it is the purport of -this biography to treat. I will attempt only a very brief -description of his position, to make clear the drift of his -Revolutionary career, and with this close a chapter whose -only object has been to describe the surroundings of a -character with which the rest of this book is concerned.</p> - -<p>Danton belonged to the bourgeoisie in rank, to the -less visionary in the bent of his mind. A young and successful -lawyer of thirty, the Revolution found him unknown -to politics and not desiring election. It was the accident -of oratory that gave him his first position. He discovered -himself to be a leader, and there grouped round him a -knot of the most ardent, some of them the most brilliant, -younger reformers. The electoral district to which he -happened to belong became through him the most democratic, -and, in some ways, the most violent of Paris.</p> - -<p>That part of him which led to such a position was his -sympathy. His tenderness (and he had a great share of -this quality) was hidden under the energy of his rough -voice, great frame, and violent gesture. His pity he was -slow to express. But the great crowd of men who were -unrepresented, the smaller but more influential class of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> -those who felt and knew but could not speak—these -were attracted to him because he had the instinct of the -people. He was a demagogue at moments and for a -purpose, but never by profession nor for any period of -time. What he was, however, all his life and by nature, -was a Tribune.</p> - -<p>The secret workings of the soil, the power that makes -all the qualities of a nation from its wine to its heroes, -these had produced him as they produce the tree or the -harvest. He is the most French, the most national, the -nearest to the mother of all the Revolutionary group. -He summed up France; and, the son of a small lawyer in -Champagne, he was a peasant, a bourgeois, almost a -soldier as well. When we study him it is like looking at -a landscape of Rousseau’s or a figure of Millet’s. We feel -France.</p> - -<p>His voice was a good symbol of his mind, for there -was heard in it not only the deep tone of a multitude, -but that quality which comes from the mingling of many -parts—the noise of waters or of leaves. In his political -attitude he attained this collective quality, not by a varying -point of view which is confusion, but by an integration. -His opinions erred on the side of bluntness and of -directness. They were expressed in plain sentences of a -dozen words; he abhorred the classical allusion, he was -chary of metaphor. He spoke as a crowd would speak, -or an army, or a tribe, if it had a voice.</p> - -<p>This was Danton, the public orator and the Tribune, -who for two years was heard at the Cordeliers, who spoke -always for the purely democratic reform, who opposed -the moderates, and who helped to destroy the compromise. -Never identified with Paris, he yet saw clearly -the necessity of Paris. He admitted her claim, fenced -with her arrogance, but never worshipped her idols; once -or twice he even dared to blame her worst follies. Elected -to the administration of the city, he played but a slight<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span> -rôle, and until the spring of 1792 there is in him no -other quality.</p> - -<p>The spring of 1792 produced the war with Europe, -and from that date Danton appears in another light. -Had he died then, we should have known him only -by chance references, a centre of strong reforming -speeches, an obscure man in opposition. But with the -outbreak of a war which he had done nothing to bring -on, and which his party thought unwise, Danton shows -that his character, in summing up his fellows, caught -especially their patriotism. France was the first thought, -and if we could hear not the debaters only, but all the -voices of France when the invasion began, it would be -this immediate necessity of saving the country that -would drown all other opinions. Thence, and for a full -year after, Danton becomes the leading man of France. -The ability which has led to his legal success (now that -his office is abolished and its reimbursement invested -in land) seems turned upon the political situation, and -such ability combined with such a representative quality -pushes him to the front. Two qualities appeared in him -which he himself perhaps had not guessed—the power -of rapid organisation, and the power of so judging character -as to bring diplomacy to bear upon every accident -as it arrived.</p> - -<p>It was not strictly he who made the 10th of August, -but he was the leader. He saw that with the king in -power the Prussians would reach Paris, and more than -any man he organised the insurrection. That was the -one act of violence in his life.</p> - -<p>The rest of the nineteen months that fate allowed -were spent in the attempt to reconcile and harmonise all -the forces he could gather for the salvation of the nation, -Perhaps it was his chief fault that in this matter he held -to no pure idea.</p> - -<p>A Republican and an ardent reformer, he yet seems<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span> -to have thought France of so much the first importance -that he compromised and trafficked with all possible -allies. He attempted to stave off the war with England; -he attempted to keep Dumouriez; he tried to prevent -vengeance from following the Girondins; when the extremists -captured the great Committee, he acquiesced, -and still wrestled with the forces of disunion. He would -have hidden, if possible, those wounds which weakened -France in the eyes of the world, and he waged a futile -war with the pure idealists—the men of one dogma, -who in so many separate camps were destroying each -other for their civic faith, and preparing all the evils of a -persecution.</p> - -<p>On another side of political action he appeared more -resolute than any man. It was he who saw the necessity -of a strong government, he who created the revolutionary -tribunal, and he who is chiefly responsible for the first -Committee of Public Safety. He made the dictatorship, -caring nothing for the principle, caring only to throw -back the foreigner. “He stamped with his foot, and -armies came out of the earth.” The violent metaphor -is just. There is a succession, a stream of great armies -(they say four millions of men!) pouring out from France -for twenty years. If you will glance at the head of that -stream, and wonder when you read of Napoleon what first -called up the regiments, you may see on the Champ de -Mars in ’92, and later demanding the great levy of ’93, -the presence of Danton, the orator with the voice of -command, the attitude of a charge, the right arm thrown -forward in the gesture of the sword.</p> - -<p>Possessed of astounding vigour, but lacking ambition, -a lover of immediate but not of permanent fame, his -superb energy after a year of effort spent itself in a -demand for repose. In September 1793 he thought his -work done and his position secure. He went back into -his country home, walked in the fields he loved (and of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> -which he talked before his death), revelled in Arcis, -filling himself with the convivial pleasure that he had -always desired. He came back in November secure and -happy—ready, almost from without and as a spectator, -to continue the task of welding the nation together. It -was too late. He had created a machine too strong for -his control. He had seen the Terror swallow up the -Girondins, and had cried because he could not save them.</p> - -<p>With the winter he began his protests, his persistent -demands for reason and for common-sense; in the religious -and in the political persecution he called for a truce; -always his effort turned to the old idea—a united Republican -France, strong against Europe, with exceptional -powers against treason in a time of danger, but with a -margin on the side of mercy.</p> - -<p>He failed. The extreme theorists whom he despised -had captured his dictatorship, and in April 1794 they -killed him.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE YOUTH OF DANTON</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>I shall attempt in the following chapter to tell all that -is known of the first thirty years of Danton’s life. Our -knowledge of this period in his career is extremely slight. -It is based upon a minute research, but a research undertaken -only in the latter half of this century; and it is -to be feared that the scanty materials will never be -seriously augmented. Every year makes the task more -difficult, and a century has rendered impassable the gulf -which Michelet, Bougeart, and even Dr. Robinet, have -been able to bridge with living voices.</p> - -<p>He was born at Arcis-sur-Aube,<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> a lesser town of the -Champagne Pouilleuse, that great flat which stretches out -from the mountain of Rheims beyond the twin peaks, till -it loses itself in the uplands of the river-partings. Here, -though it is cold in winter, there are still vineyards -making their last bastion on the covered slopes of the -hills that form the northern boundary of the plain.</p> - -<p>The day of his birth was the 26th of October 1759;<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> -the date gives us his relation to the drama in which -he was to be a chief actor. Five months older than -Desmoulins, born some months before De Séchelles, eight -years older than St. Just, he was the junior of Robespierre -by one and a half, of Mirabeau by ten years; Louis XVI.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span> -and Marie Antoinette were respectively five and four -years his seniors. He was sixteen years old when their -predecessor died in ignominy and in dirt. Born six weeks -after the fall of Quebec, he received the lasting impressions -of early youth during the rapid decline of the French -monarchy—the end of a slow decay which threatened to -be that of the nation itself. But just then Rousseau was -writing the <i>Contrat Social</i>, to be published in two years; -Voltaire was still in the full vigour of his attack, with -nineteen years of life before him; it was the year of Candide; -Diderot was founding the Encyclopædia.</p> - -<p>The time of his birth coincided with the rising of a -certain sun which has not yet set upon Europe, but the -boy’s eyes turned to more immediate things, and saw in -a little provincial place the break-up of a wretched, experimental -reign.</p> - -<p>This point must be insisted upon, that a country -town was the best possible place for noting the collapse -of misgovernment. The country manors were more -wretched, the provincial capitals more loud and able in -their expressions of opinion; but few places could show -the fatal process of disintegration more clearly than these -little provincial centres, the sub-prefectures of to-day. -The confusion of power, the excess and the ill-working -of privilege, the complexity and weakness of government, -were there apparent upon every occasion. The wealth of -the nation was diminished most especially by the interference -with exchange. This (though ultimately a -source of their penury) was less directly evident to the -villagers, while the large town with its varied production -could (in another form) disguise the evil; but to the -small borough the experience was direct and terrible.</p> - -<p>Again, the practical equality of educated men was -there more apparent and more sinned against than in -the wider societies of the large towns. In a place like -Arcis-sur-Aube, isolated specimens of classes technically<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span> -distinct were continually in contact. The less the number -of their caste and order (and the less their importance), -the more do the noblesse, to this day, put on their pride; -and yet the more necessary is it, in the life of a small -town, that they should associate with those whose conversation -and abilities are precisely their own. In Paris -or in Lyons, where large cliques were occupied in general -interests, such differences were often neglected; in the -forgotten towns of the provinces never.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, the blind and dumb anger of the -peasantry would hardly reach Arcis. All over France -the town misunderstood the countryside, and in the early -Revolution actually fought against it. This will appear -strange to an English reader, who sees scarcely any contrast -between a country market and an overgrown village. -In England the distinction hardly exists, but in France -the borough is very separate from the peasant society -outside, and, though often smaller than some large neighbouring -village, it keeps to this day the Roman traditions -of a city.</p> - -<p>We see, then, that Danton’s birthplace in great part -accounts for the peculiar bent of his future politics: -practical, of legal effect, inspired by no hatred, though -strongly influenced by a personal experience of misgovernment. -But his parentage will show us still more clearly -how the conditions of his origin affected his career.</p> - -<p>He was of the lawyers. His father was <i>procureur</i> -in the bailiwick of Arcis. It is difficult to explain the -functions of his office at this date and to an English -reader, for it belongs to that “Administration” which is so -essentially Latin, and which we are but just beginning to -experience in England. Let it suffice to describe him as -the <i>official</i> whose duty it was to supply that which in -England the <i>institution</i> of the grand jury still in theory -provides, as it did once in reality. It was his business to -“present” the cases and the accused to the local criminal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> -court—local, because in France the circuit of assize is -unknown. Added to this were many duties and privileges -of registration, of stamping and so forth; and the -position required an accurate, and even a minute knowledge -of the royal law and provincial usage, the complicated -customary system of the old regime.</p> - -<p>It is perhaps of still more importance to appreciate -the social position of Jacques Danton. Belonging to the -lower branches of the legal profession, and placed in a -lesser borough of Champagne, the father of Danton held -something of the same rank as would a small country -solicitor in one of our market-towns, with whatever additions -of dignity might follow from a permanent office in -the municipality of the place.</p> - -<p>As to fortune, we do not accurately know the amount -of the family income during Danton’s boyhood, but we -know that the office which was afterwards purchased for -him was worth some three to four thousand pounds; that -the money was found largely upon the credit of his -father’s legacy,<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> and that the house in which the family -lived was their own—a useful rule existing throughout -provincial France. It is a substantial building, among -the best of the little town, standing in the market-place, -with the principal rooms giving upon the public square. -What with the probable capital and the known emoluments -of his position, we may regard Jacques Danton as a -man disposing of an income of about four to five hundred -pounds a year.</p> - -<p>His mother was of a somewhat lower rank. She was -the daughter of a builder from the Champagne, and -her brother was a master-carpenter of the town. Of -her two sisters, one had married a postmaster and the -other a shopkeeper, both in Troyes; her brother was the -priest of Barberey, near Arcis.</p> - -<p>The father died when the boy was two and a half<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> -years old, leaving four children. We must presume, -though we are not certain, that Danton had one brother: -and we know he had two sisters, one of whom married in -Troyes; the other died a nun at the same place in the -middle of this century.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> - -<p>On both sides of his family, through the connections -and marriages of his relations, their employment, their -dwellings, their descendants, we see the origin of Danton -absolutely separate from the lower and from the higher -ranks of the old regime. Only by an effort of imagination -could he later understand the workman or the -peasant; only by daily conversation could he appreciate -the strange nobles of 1790, with their absence of national -pride.</p> - -<p>In fine, Danton came out of that middle class which -has made the modern world, and which still insecurely -sustains it. “Respectability and its gig” is an epigram -that would exactly suit the dull and provincial surroundings -of his first home; but the converse of such provincialism -is sanity, order, and strength, and out of fuel -so solid and so cold the bourgeoisie has time and again -built a consuming fire.</p> - -<p>From his father’s death, before he was three years -old, till his ninth year, the child was with his mother in -the house at Arcis, for she had from the little fortune -just enough revenue to keep the family together and to -educate the children. The little boy was taught his -Latin elements in the town, and then sent to the “Lower -Seminary” at Troyes.<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> - -<p>It was the intention of his uncle at Barberey to -make him a priest, and in that case he would have passed -through the regular stages, taking the higher forms in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span> -the Upper Seminary, and finally being admitted to orders -a year or two after finishing his “Philosophie.” However, -this programme was never completed, and the Church -lost in him the material for a vigorous, charitable, and -obscure country vicar.</p> - -<p>The decision was probably the result of one of those -family meetings, such as were habitually held in France -to decide the career of an orphan child, and which the -Revolution raised to the dignity of an institution with -legal form. Some biographers have read the politics of a -man of thirty into the action of a little child, and have -made this step a precocious protest against clericalism. -These biographers have no children.</p> - -<p>The uncle consented to the change, and, with Madame -Danton’s two married sisters, agreed upon the bar as his -future profession. He was sent to Troyes and placed -with the Oratorians, a religious order which has had the -honour of training so many of the great reformers. In -their College he went through that training which no -amount of social change or new theories in pedagogy has -been able to uproot from the secondary education of -France. Little Greek, much Latin, two years all employed -in the literature of the late Roman republic and early -empire—a groundwork in the elements which gives the -educated French an almost mediæval familiarity with -Roman thought; such was the course which the bourgeois -did and does go through in the French schools. A -system founded upon the humanities of the sixteenth, -but developed in the classicism of the seventeenth century, -it has lost the Hellenism, the subtlety, and the -breadth of the former, while it has preserved the rigidity, -the strength, and the clearness which the latter owes to -the influence of the Jesuits. It fails to develop that -initiative coupled with originality to which we in England -attach so much importance; it achieves, upon the other -hand, a strength in the convictions, and above all a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> -soundness in the judgment, which our public schools -often fail to produce.</p> - -<p>From just such a curriculum came the exaggerated -classicism of Robespierre, the more brilliant but equally -Latin style of Desmoulins, though it must be admitted -that the first is a reminiscence of Cornelius Nepos, while -the second is at times well modelled upon Tacitus himself. -The error of such imitation, however, never marred -the speech of Danton in his later life; he owed this -singular freedom from the spirit of his age to travel, to -his vivid interest in surrounding things and men, and to -his intimacy with English and Italian.<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> - -<p>Yet in a famous speech upon public education he -makes a just reference to the influence of this schooling -upon the mind of his contemporaries, and notes truly its -tendency to turn men republican.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> - -<p>Unfortunately he did not remain at such a school -long enough to receive its last and most beneficial impressions. -The head form at a French school is called -“Philosophie,” and the last year is spent largely in reading -the sociology and the metaphysics of the old world. -Danton left at the age of sixteen, when he had just completed -“Rhétorique,” but what he lost in polishing he -gained in being left to his own development for one more -year of his life than were his fellows.</p> - -<p>Active, often rebellious, full of laughter, he showed -his intelligence in the final examinations, his vigour in an -escapade that endeared him to at least one of his school-fellows,<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> -who has given us, with Rousselin, the only notes -we possess as to this period of his life. He ran off in his -last year to Rheims, seventy odd miles away, that he -might see the crowning of Louis XVI. Going and returning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span> -on foot, he satisfied the desire which he had expressed -to his school-fellows of “seeing how they made a king.” -So as a boy he went to look at the making of a king, and -afterwards, when he grew older, Danton himself unmade -him.</p> - -<p>In 1780—his twenty-first year<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>—he entered the -office of a solicitor at Paris named Vinot. Apprenticed as -a clerk in order to read law, and above all to watch the -procedure of the courts, he spent the next four years in -preparing for the bar. If we are to depend on a chance -phrase dropped just before his death, he was at that time -entirely dependent on his master and his pen.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> We know, -at any rate, that he received no salary, but lodged and -boarded with his employer; nor is it probable that he -received any money from home, for his mother had -married again, and a short time after this second husband -(a certain Recordain) was so deeply involved that -Danton was begged to hand over the most part of his -inheritance to save the family. He did so, and remained -with some five or six hundred pounds only as his share -of the family fortune. It was invested in land near -Arcis, and he kept it for his ultimate purpose of buying -a barrister’s practice in one of the higher courts.</p> - -<p>He was called to the bar (a process in the same form -as taking a degree) in 1785,<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> choosing, with provincial -patriotism, Rheims as the place in which formally to -join the profession; but he intended to practise in the -capital, and returned thither at once.</p> - -<p>It is not easy to render to an English public the -meaning of the various courts before 1789. Even in -France (so completely has the new order supplanted the -old anarchy) their forms have been forgotten, and -research purely antiquarian cannot give us more than<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span> -disjointed particulars as to their procedure.<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> There was -a division corresponding to the English between Common -Law and Equity. This was to be discovered in every -country of the West, and had arisen of necessity from -the imposition of the king’s power and the Canon Law -over those local customs, mixed with reminiscences of -Rome, which had once been the whole life of the early -Middle Ages.</p> - -<p>To the body of lawyers who in Paris (or in any of the -great centres) formed the courts for all ordinary pleas, -the name of “Parliament” was given. But that it comprised -more persons, that it never went upon circuit, and -that it included many barristers as well as judges, the -Parliament of Paris corresponded more or less to what -the English Bench would be were our judges to form a -kind of permanent council for advising the Crown and -registering its decrees, as well as for trying the cases -brought before them. To plead at their bar was no -difficult matter. It required but the taking of one’s -degree in law, and the fees of entrance were slight. -Danton determined to adopt this branch of the profession, -and to use it as a stepping-stone towards the higher -court, which he soon reached.</p> - -<p>This higher court, “Court of Appeal,” as we should call -it, or “Cour de Cassation,” as it is named in the modern -French system, bore a title significant of the intense -conservatism of old France. It was called the “Court -of the King’s Councils”—very much what we should -have to-day in England had we preserved in fact the -theory that the king in his council is the final authority. -But though it bore a name drawn from the Curia Regis -of the thirteenth century, it had of course lost all its old -simplicity. It was a Bench like any other, but there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span> -pleaded at its bar an order of lawyers strictly limited -in number and highly privileged.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> It dealt, as did its -parallel in the English system, mainly with disputed -inheritances, especially in matters of land, and, as we -shall see, it showed the true mark of a court of Chancery, -in that it took more than a hundred and thirty years to -make up its mind. To plead before this court, with its -monopoly of valuable causes, was to have at once an -assured income and prestige; therefore its vacancies -were prizes to be bought and sold. Danton determined -to plead so long at the common law courts as might -assure him, with economy, a substantial addition to the -few hundred pounds that formed his whole capital, and -then to seek a loan that might eke out these savings -and place him at the Chancery bar.</p> - -<p>Young, eloquent, eminently capable of seeing a real -issue, he was well fitted for the lower practice, and he -succeeded. Within two years he had a sum to offer as -part payment, which was at once a proof of his business -habits and of his talents. His family, therefore, especially -those members of it who had urged him to go to the -bar, were willing to advance the necessary sums in addition -to his own savings and his little patrimony. The -purchase-money was delivered, and a bond to the amount -of £3000 (a sum which he could not then have furnished) -was signed by his aunts and uncles at Troyes. It was -in March 1787<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> that this step was taken, and this date -was in some sense his entry into public life, for it brought -him into direct contact with the wealthy—that is, with -the ruling class.</p> - -<p>We have on this date a vivid anecdote surviving. -A Latin oration had to be delivered off-hand to the -assembled college on the reception of a candidate to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span> -the order. The subject set for Danton when he entered -the hall was “The Moral and Political Situation of the -Country in their relations with the Administration of -Justice.” A fine theme for 1787! Such a quaint scene -the old regime delighted in, and its older members delighted -also in catching here and there a phrase of -quotation which they could understand. The genius -and the memory of their candidate seem on this occasion -to have furnished something new, to have given -them less platitude than was expected. He mentioned -reform; he spoke of the struggle in which the Parliament -was engaged against the ministers—a struggle of -which he wisely said, “They are fighting for the sacred -centres of civic liberty, but present no positive reform -by which that liberty may be brought into existence.” -“Sacred centres” was, of course, <i>aris et focis</i>. The -speech was necessarily in a large measure a series of -<i>clichés</i>, a stringing together of the well-worn Latin -mottoes. It even contained <i>salus populi suprema lex</i>, but -its argument was Danton’s own. There is to be marked -also this phrase, for it is the note of all his future work: -“Let the government feel the gravity of the situation -sufficiently to remedy it in the simple and in the natural -way downwards from its own authority.”</p> - -<p>The young men understood and applauded; the old -men were assured that, if they had not quite followed -an unconventional harangue, it was due to the originality -of the speaker. Presumably their souls were softened -by <i>aris et focis</i>, and <i>salus populi suprema lex</i>.</p> - -<p>For the next two years his forensic reputation is -continually rising. No longer the Common Law pleader, -with pathetic and oratorical appeals for a shepherd against -his lord, he had shown how large a part intellect had to -do with his power of commanding attention. On the -intricacies of his Chancery practice and the clearness -and ability of his analysis we have an excellent witness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span> -in one of the most learned of the modern Parisian bar,<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> -and three of his opinions, on the Amelinau, Dubonis, and -De Montbarey cases, have come down to us, and have -received the favourable criticism of an opponent.</p> - -<p>The last case (that of De Montbarey) shows us Danton -defending the claims of an old house and at work in the -rustiest of all the legal grooves. It had been on the -stocks since 1657, and Danton, in attempting to give -the quietus to this intolerable longevity, uses a phrase -which shows us the feeling that spared one grave -at least when the mob sacked St. Denis: “Jeanne -d’Albret<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> is a name dear to all Frenchmen, for it recalls -the memory of that other Jeanne d’Albret who was the -mother of Henri IV.”</p> - -<p>There came to be his clients, among others De -Barentin, the minister of justice, and De Brienne,<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> comptroller-general; -it is on his intimacy with the former -that his first recorded opinions on public affairs turn. -They will be dealt with in the next chapter.</p> - -<p>It is, of course, difficult to give an exact proof of a -man’s private income at any moment, but we are certain -that Danton’s cannot have fallen far short at this date -of a thousand pounds a year. His immediate success -at the bar, the monopoly and privilege of the body to -which he now belonged (the work certain to come to -the most inept was worth a lump sum of 60,000 francs, -to which talent would add indefinitely), his eloquence -and proved ability, the name of his clients, their importance -and their wealth—everything leads to this as -a certain conclusion. Immense fortunes were not then -made in the profession; his position was not an obscure -one.</p> - -<p>He married, on attaining this status, the daughter of -a man who kept one of the students’ restaurants, Charpentier<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> -by name. It was a café (Café des Écoles) very -much frequented by the University and the younger men -at the bar, and still one of the few remaining cafés of the -last century. Danton himself was a regular customer, -and there is an interesting picture, drawn by a friend, of -the avocats in their special costumes at this place. It -occupied the site of what is now the south-western corner -of the Place de l’École,<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> nor has any change been made -in it save the raising of the road level. Looking on the -river, and just over the river from the Palais, it was the -natural rendezvous for the young barristers in the mid-day -adjournment and after the court rose.</p> - -<p>Charpentier, the “limonadier” of Mdme. Roland, -was a man worth from five to six thousand pounds, -part only invested in his business;<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> he had, moreover, -a little post under the Taxes, requiring a slight amount -of work and bringing in only a hundred pounds a year. -When he married his daughter to Danton, she was given -20,000 francs.<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p> - -<p>As will be seen later, it is of the first moment in -proving Danton’s position to know accurately the capital -amount of which he disposed when the Revolution broke -out; for in the case of generous men in a democracy, -the accusation of venality is the most common and the -hardest to rebut.</p> - -<p>Passionately fond of his wife, and successful in his -profession, on the threshold of a great career, I would -apply to him a phrase which one of his worst enemies -has given us to describe a far lesser man, “Actif et sain, -robuste et glorieux, il aima sa femme et la parure.”</p> - -<p>We leave him, then, at the summit of a laborious and -perhaps of an arduous youth. He is twenty-eight years -old, in the best of his vigour and of his intelligence—the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> -age at which Jefferson ten years before had drafted -his immortal paragraph; the age at which Napoleon, with -his moving island of men, was ten years later to break -five armies of the Austrians from Lodi to Campo Formio.</p> - -<p>What picture shall we make of him to carry with -us in the scenes in which he is to be the principal actor?</p> - -<p>He was tall and stout, with the forward bearing of -the orator, full of gesture and of animation. He carried -a round French head upon the thick neck of energy. -His face was generous, ugly, and determined. With wide -eyes and calm brows, he yet had the quick glance which -betrays the habit of appealing to an audience. His -upper lip was injured, and so was his nose,<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> and he had -further been disfigured by the small-pox, with which -disease that forerunner of his, Mirabeau, had also been -disfigured. His lip had been torn by a bull when he was -a child, and his nose crushed in a second adventure, -they say, with the same animal. In this the Romans -would perhaps have seen a portent; but he, the idol of -our Positivists, found only a chance to repeat Mirabeau’s -expression that his “boar’s head frightened men.”</p> - -<p>In his dress he had something of the negligence -which goes with extreme vivacity and with a constant -interest in things outside oneself; but it was invariably -that of his rank. Indeed, to the minor conventions -Danton always bowed, because he was a man, and because -he was eminently sane. More than did the run of men -at that time, he understood that you cut down no tree -by lopping at the leaves, nor break up a society by throwing -away a wig.<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> The decent self-respect which goes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span> -with conscious power was never absent from his costume, -though it often left his language in moments of crisis, or -even of irritation.</p> - -<p>I will not insist too much upon his great character -of energy, because it has been so over-emphasised as to -give a false impression of him. He was admirably sustained -in his action, and his political arguments were as -direct as his physical efforts were continuous, but the banal -picture of fury which is given you by so many writers is -false. For fury is empty, whereas Danton was full, and -his energy was at first the force at work upon a great -mass of mind, and later its momentum.</p> - -<p>Save when he had the direct purpose of convincing -a crowd, his speech had no violence, and even no metaphor; -in the courts he was a close reasoner, and one who put -his points with ability and with eloquence rather than -with thunder. But in whatever he undertook, vigour -appeared as the taste of salt in a dish. He could not -quite hide this vigour: his convictions, his determination, -his vision all concentrate upon whatsoever thing he has -in hand.</p> - -<p>He possessed a singularly wide view of the Europe -in which France stood. In this he was like Mirabeau, -and peculiarly unlike the men with whom revolutionary -government threw him into contact. He read and spoke -English, he was acquainted with Italian. He knew that -the kings were dilettanti, that the theory of the aristocracies -was liberal. He had no little sympathy with the -philosophy which a leisurely oligarchy had framed in -England; it is one of the tragedies of the Revolution -that he desired to the last an alliance, or at least peace, -with this country. Where Robespierre was a maniac in -foreign policy, Danton was more than a sane—he was a -just, and even a diplomatic man.</p> - -<p>He was fond of wide reading, and his reading was of -the philosophers; it ranged from Rabelais to the physiocrats<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span> -in his own tongue, from Adam Smith to the “Essay -on Civil Government” in that of strangers; and of the -Encyclopædia he possessed all the numbers steadily accumulated. -When we consider the time, his fortune, and -the obvious personal interest in so small and individual a -collection, few shelves will be found more interesting -than those which Danton delighted to fill.<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p> - -<p>In his politics he desired above all actual, practical, -and apparent reforms; changes for the better expressed -in material results. He differed from many of his -countrymen at that time, and from most of his political -countrymen now, in thus adopting the tangible. It was -a part of something in his character which was nearly -allied to the stock of the race, something which made -him save and invest in land as does the French peasant,<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> -and love, as the French peasant loves, good government, -order, security, and well-being.</p> - -<p>There is to be discovered in all the fragments which -remain to us of his conversations before the bursting of -the storm, and still more clearly in his demand for a -<i>centre</i> when the invasion and the rebellion threatened the -Republic, a certain conviction that the revolutionary -thing rather than the revolutionary idea should be produced: -not an inspiring creed, but a goal to be reached, -sustained him. Like all active minds, his mission was -rather to realise than to plan, and his energies were -determined upon seeing the result of theories which he -unconsciously admitted, but which he was too impatient -to analyse.</p> - -<p>His voice was loud even when his expressions were -subdued. He talked no man down, but he made many -opponents sound weak and piping after his utterance. -It was of the kind that fills great halls, and whose deep -note suggests hard phrases. There was with all this a -carelessness as to what his words might be made to mean<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> -when partially repeated by others, and such carelessness -has caused historians still more careless to lend a false -aspect of Bohemianism to his character. A Bohemian -he was not; he was a successful and an orderly man; but -energy he had, and if there are writers who cannot conceive -of energy without chaos, it is probably because in -the studious leisure of vast endowments they have never -felt the former in themselves, nor have been compelled -to control the latter in their surroundings.</p> - -<p>As to his private life, affection dominated him. Upon -the faith of some who did not know him he acquired the -character of a debauchee. For the support of this view -there is not a tittle of direct evidence. He certainly loved -those pleasures of the senses which Robespierre refused, -and which Roland was unable to enjoy; but that his -good dinners were orgies or of any illegitimate loves -(once he had married the woman to whom he was so -devotedly attached) there is no shadow of proof. His -friends also he loved, and above all, from the bottom -of his soul, he loved France. His faults—and they were -many—his vices (and a severe critic would have discovered -these also) flowed from two sources: first, he -was too little of an idealist, too much absorbed in the -immediate thing; secondly, he suffered from all the evil -effects that abundant energy may produce—the habit of -oaths, the rhetoric of sudden diatribes, violent and overstrained -action, with its subsequent demand for repose.</p> - -<p>Weighted with these conditions he enters the arena, -supported by not quite thirty fruitful years, by a happy -marriage, by an intense conviction, and by the talents -of a man who has not yet tasted defeat. I repeat the -sentence applied to another: “Active and sane, robust -and ready for glory, the things he loved were his wife -and the circumstance of power.”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>A man who is destined to represent at any moment the -chief energies of a nation, especially a man who will not -only represent but lead, must, by his nature, follow the -national methods on his road to power.</p> - -<p>His career must be nearly parallel (so to speak) with -the direction of the national energies, and must merge -with their main current at an imperceptible angle. It is -the chief error of those who deliberately plan success that -they will not leave themselves amenable to such influences, -and it is the most frequent cause of their failure. Thus -such men as arrive at great heights of power are most -often observed to succeed by a kind of fatality, which is -nothing more than the course of natures vigorous and -original, but, at the same time, yielding unconsciously to -an environment with which they sympathise, or to which -they were born.</p> - -<p>It is not difficult to determine the accidents of action, -temperament, and locality which predispose to success in -one’s own society. It is less easy to appreciate what corresponds -to them under foreign conditions.</p> - -<p>It was seen in the first chapter that Paris sums up in -herself those conditions in the case of the French nation; -and it was seen also (a point of peculiar importance) that -Paris at the close of the eighteenth century was ill at ease—out -of herself, demanding her place and yet anxious as -to the means by which it might be attained.</p> - -<p>It might be imagined that this was a kind of usurpation.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> -Such a belief is entertained by most foreigners, and -certainly it has not been lacking among the more idealist -of the French Republicans. Nevertheless, such a view is -erroneous, and the Girondists, for all their virtues, went -(as we shall discover) against the nature of things when -they would have made of Paris but one of the cities, or -rather but “an aliquot voting part” of the nation. The -demand of Paris was essentially reasonable, and had to be -satisfied. Why? Because without her leadership not this -thing or that thing would have been done, but nothing -would have been done. The crowds who waited round -the coaching inns in the country towns for news of the -city in the great early days of ’89, by their very attitude -asked and expected Paris to move.</p> - -<p>Paris, then, is Danton’s gate. It is up the flood of -the Parisian tide that he floats. That tide rises much -higher than even he had thought possible, and it throws -him at last on the high inaccessible place of the 10th of -August. Once there, from a pinnacle he sees all France. -Just as Cromwell was the Puritan soldier till he reached -power, and then became, or desired to become, the representative -of England, so Danton is the Parisian Frondeur -till from a place of responsibility and direction he aims -partly at the realisation of French ideas, but mainly at the -integrity and salvation of France itself.</p> - -<p>Here he is, then, in the two years of active discussion -that precede the elections, by an accident of ambition, -Parisian; one of a group of young provincial lawyers, -but the most successful of them all. Some months after -his marriage, in the course of 1788<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> (we are not certain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span> -of the exact date), he moved into the house in which he -lived to his death, six angry years. It was the corner -house of the Cour du Commerce and the Rue des Cordeliers.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> -The house was better than that which he had -inhabited in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, when he -bought his practice; on the other hand, it was in a somewhat -less expensive neighbourhood. We may justly infer, -however, from the greater size of his new apartments, -and from the fact that he kept his office still in the old -house in the Rue de la Tixanderie, just behind the Hotel -de Ville, that he had prospered in his profession, and the -inference is sustained by our knowledge of the importance -of his cases and his clients. As to the exact -situation which he chose, it was doubtless determined -by its proximity to the apartments of his friends. Here -lived Desmoulins, his chief friend, a year younger than -himself, coming (after his marriage in 1790) to live in the -same house; for then, as now, in Paris it was not the habit -to take a whole house but a flat, and Danton was on the -first, Desmoulins on the second floor. Just across the -river, over the Pont Neuf, was the café on the Quai de -l’École which his father-in-law had kept, and above all, he -was here in the midst of the youth of the schools. It -was the slope of the famous hill of the University. Close -by he would find the Café Procope, of which Desmoulins -had written with such enthusiasm, which had once been -illuminated with the little smile of Voltaire, which had -heard the assertion of Diderot, and which in 1788 was -noisy every night with discussion and speech and applause. -All that atmosphere of debate which comes unconsciously -to young men learning rose on the sides of the Mont -Parnasse and centred in the room; and here in the -winter of the year, in a society so entirely of his own -rank that the high bourgeoisie and the noblesse knew<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span> -nothing of its power, his great voice and generous face -filled the circle with their energy. But there was yet -no dream of revolution, still less of violence. France -was waiting for great things, but they were to come of -themselves, or on the wave of universal enthusiasm. The -fire, however, was lit, and the group which afterwards -passed from the Montagne to the scaffold of Germinal -was already formed.</p> - -<p>To all this, however, which was but the relaxation of -an abundant spirit, must be added days of continual and -serious work on the other side of the river. If his nights -were in the Latin Quarter, his days were in the office of -the Rue de la Tixanderie. A minister of the crown<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> does -not intrust his family affairs to such a wastrel as the -chance memoirs of opponents would make of Danton at -this period, nor a lawyer who is never in his chambers, -but gadding about politicising, get the conduct of one of -the most important Chancery cases of his day.</p> - -<p>There is one matter in these pre-revolutionary months -which is of no very great importance, but which is well -worth noticing, though the confusion apparent in our one -account of it has lessened its value. There can be no -doubt that Barentin, apart from his business relations, -was personally intimate with Danton; and when that -careful and moderate man had succeeded Lamoignon in -September 1788, there was some kind of informal offer -made to Danton of what we should call an official secretaryship -to the minister<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>—or rather we have no name -for it, for the ministry in France was not associated with -legislation, but only with executive power, and therefore -positions in its gifts had not the political importance they -have with us.</p> - -<p>As to the precise date of the offer, how far it was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span> -pressed, or how seriously it was made, we can have no -exact knowledge. But it seems to me unwise to reject so -characteristic an anecdote, and one which fits in so well -with Danton’s known position, merely on the somewhat -strained theory that documentary evidence alone should -be admitted in history, and documentary evidence sifted -by the rules of a rigid cross-examination.<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p> - -<p>At any rate, Danton refused it. And not only did he -refuse it, but there is no trace of an attempt to use his -friend’s influence or to make a political success at a time -when nearly every man’s head was turned by the chances -of a great social change. He felt no need of politics, and -it was not till much later, after quite twelve months of -action and speech, that his oratory found foothold, and he -felt the imperious appetites of a new power. Success in -his profession was without question the one ambition -which occupied him in the close of 1788, it was an -ambition closely bound up with that business sense which -was a strong element in the sane and practical mind of -the Champenois lawyer.</p> - -<p>It was upon him and his group of friends, in a Paris -that every day grew keener in its discussion and attention, -that the long-expected decree of the 27th of December -fell. There were to be elections. Paris, all -pamphleteered to death, but inclining as a whole to the -moderate criticism of the more practical men, was at last -called upon to act.</p> - -<p>Many conditions must be made clear before we can -understand the effect of these elections upon the history -of the next three years. In the first place, France was -suffering from a great material evil: she was going bankrupt, -her agriculture was hopelessly depressed, her industries<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> -ruined, and thousands and thousands of men out of -work were wandering about the streets of the cities. In -the second place, the class which was going to vote for -the Commons was the tax-paying class. And in the -third place, the voting was by two degrees. I name -these three conditions as qualifying a broad and often -erroneous impression. I do not mean that the ideals -were not abroad; all the world knows how bright the -eyes of the young men were getting, and we are all -familiar with Desmoulins, eager, passionate, stuttering -but voluble, and passing from group to group as they -discussed or dreamed. But it is too common to read the -spirit of ’93 into those elections of ’89, and the error is -a grievous one. As well might you interpret the spirit -of an eloquent man who is about to defend a just and -practical cause by hearing what he said later in the day, -should his opponents have taken to fists and fought him -heavily for several hours.</p> - -<p>The immediate need was fiscal; the class called upon -to meet it were the middle class; the men they were -about to elect were of professional rank.</p> - -<p>The electoral units and all corporations were asked to -state their grievances before the gathering of the Parliament, -and it is in these “cahiers” that the spirit of the -time is best discovered. The abstractions, the phrases, -the great general conceptions are found (as we might -have expected, though it comes as a new thing) mainly in -the complaints of the clergy and nobility; the peasant, the -bourgeois, and the artisan have a more material grievance.</p> - -<p>Thus the nobility of Caen in their cahier talk of the -“National Contract,” and the clergy of Forez (after some -remarks on the care and cleansing of ponds) end up with -an admirable little essay on individual liberty, its limits -and proper extension.<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> The nobility of Nantes and of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> -Meulan talk roundly of the “rights of man,”<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and generally -this order calls for a Constitution—of which word -they had in a very short time supped and dined. With -lesser men the demands are rather for sublunary things, -but the complaints that made Beugnot laugh give a good -picture. “To have one’s dogs killed if necessary but not -hamstrung, to be allowed to keep a cat, to be allowed -to light a fire without paying dues, to sell one’s wine -when one liked;” and from the bourgeoisie, regular -trial, abolition of lettres de cachet, the old European -policy that the growth of rich corporations should be -checked and much of their property confiscated, the -equalisation of taxation—such are the points upon which -(a mere redress) the great bulk of Frenchmen were -determined. One might sum up and say, “They demanded -the freedom and common justice obtainable in -the modern State.” But the privileged orders, for all -their phrases, resisted when the time for reform was -come, and their friction lit the flame of the ideal, -disastrously for themselves and happily for the world.</p> - -<p>As for the cahier sent from the electoral district of -Paris in which Danton lived, it was destroyed by the -Commune when they burnt the Hotel de Ville in 1871. -We know, however,<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> that it demanded “the destruction -of the Bastille,” a symbolic act ever present to the minds -of Parisians, and, for the matter of that, by several cahiers -of the provincial noblesse and clergy. There is no -direct documentary evidence that Danton helped to draw -up this cahier, but I cannot believe that a man of such -influence in so small a space and among (comparatively) -so few voters<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> had nothing to do with the framing of -this document, especially when we consider the cry he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span> -gave as a boy, swimming in the river just beneath the -walls of the prison.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> There is, however, nothing to prove -it, and he certainly took no memorable part in an action -where all was tranquil and even tedious.</p> - -<p>The mention, however, of the districts of Paris, and -especially of that which could claim Danton, makes very -necessary a view of that focus of revolutionary energy. It -was called the district of the Cordeliers. It was small, one -of the smallest of the sixty into which Paris was divided, -yet it contained the very strongest of the brains and -eloquence of its time, very few nobles, and, for the matter -of that, very few of the artisans and hardly any of the proletariat. -Later, when Danton threatened the reactionaries -with the populace, it was not to the district of the Cordeliers, -but to the Faubourg St. Marceau that he appealed; -for the workmen were rare in its ancient, narrow streets, -with their tall houses and little dark courts framing each -some relic of the Middle Ages. Here were found many of -the clergy, but above all a swarm of the young lawyers -and students, the class that think high and hard and -breed thoughts in others, a kind of little united clan -of what was strongest in the youth of the University and -the professions; and the whole homogeneous group centred -round Danton.</p> - -<p>If you stood in the Cour du Commerce in Danton’s -time, and looked north to where his house made the -corner of the narrow entry, you would have seen a main -street only a trifle broader than the court, and running -at right angles. Standing in the mouth of the narrow -passage, you would have seen on the other side of the -main street, and a hundred yards up it, a little fifteenth-century -turret, capped with a pointed slate roof and -jutting outward on round supports.<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> This was the extreme<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> -angle of an old convent called the Cordeliers.<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> -Here the Franciscans had settled in St. Louis’s time, five -hundred years before, but the walls you would have seen -were not of the thirteenth, but rather of the early fourteenth -century, while the church which flanked the -street was of the sixteenth, and additions had been made -of all periods. As you came out of the Cour du Commerce -and went up the street, you would have the convent -running all along the opposite side, from the little turret -on the corner to the church of St. Come in the Rue de la -Harpe, save where it was interrupted by private houses, -and where it was broken in one place by a little lane -leading to the hall of the University College, which the -convent supported. Like so many great foundations, this -rich place was in full decay, and the vaulted hall, with -its dim light and resonant echoes, was given over to the -meeting of the district, and later to the thunder of the -voice that threw back the armies of Europe. Alone of -all the mediæval buildings of the Cordeliers this hall -remains to-day as the Musée Dupuytren.</p> - -<p>There is yet one further point to be mentioned before -we can make a complete picture of Danton’s position -before these elections of 1789. There can be no doubt -that the Masonic lodges had proved a powerful instrument -in the preparation of opinion, and though our information -on their formation in Paris is scanty, we can safely affirm -that Danton belonged to the lodge of the “Nine Sisters,” -which included such members as Sieyès or Bailly on the -one hand and Collot D’Herbois on the other.<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> It would -be foolish to over-estimate the influence of these societies. -The subsequent history of their members proves quite -clearly that the bond between them was slight (who can, -for instance, reproach Desmoulins with a secret support of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> -Bailly?), and (what is much more important) the very -character of their composition disproves effectually any -secret or prearranged action. The foolish Bailly, the -learned Sieyès, the admirable, unpractical, high-minded -Condorcet, the weak Garat, Collot D’Herbois the potential -Red, all members of one lodge! They can have been -little more than associations whose character of mutual -help and whose opportunities of club-life (that comfort so -lacking in Paris) attracted men. They were authorised, -and were one of the very few kinds of refuge from a -society where political discussion had decayed and where -combined action was almost unknown.</p> - -<p>This is all the importance, I think, which should be -attached to them. Where men are free, and where the -suffrage is open and common, secret societies may very -justly be dreaded; their action will be at all times -separate from that of society in general, and may be in -a hidden antagonism to the will of the nation. But in -a society where reunion, discussion, and all that is the -blood of civic political life has been exhausted, then, like -a special drug which cures, they have an excellent use. -They may, in such societies, just keep alive the habit -of political conversation and expectancy, and they may -develop in some at least that organising spirit without -which a political movement degenerates into anarchy.</p> - -<p>This, then (to recapitulate), is Danton’s position just -before the Parisian elections. He is in the midst of -what are to be his group of young Revolutionary friends -on the outskirts of the Latin quarter; his daily occupation -is the conducting in his office on the north bank -and at the Palace in the Cité of those important pleas in -the highest court, which bring him into contact with the -ministers, with the great corporations, and especially with -the various organs of government of the old regime—for -it was in cases for and against these that the Conseil du -Roi came into play. His income is sufficient for his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> -needs and for a slow but methodical payment of the price -of his practice. It amounted (we may presume) to something -in the neighbourhood of 25,000 francs, possibly a -little less, but not much, for it was drawn from one of -the most important Chancery cases of his day, and his -clientele, to judge by the names which alone have reached -us, was wealthy and of influence. He was thoroughly -well read; he was not expecting nor planning a political -career, as were so many of his friends (for instance, Desmoulins), -but certain characters which he was rapidly -developing, or rather discovering, in himself were preparing -that career of necessity. He was learning in -discussion and laughter, first that he was an orator, and -secondly that his energy sufficed for a whole group of -men, and that he could avoid leadership only at the -expense of entire seclusion. In a time of innumerable -pamphlets, he never put pen to paper outside his profession; -and in days that were producing the ardent -similes of Camille, and that were just beginning to feel -the ravings of Marat, he wrote nothing but three grave, -learned, concise, and dull opinions, which were admirable -in argument, clear in exposition, and tolerable only to -elderly lawyers.</p> - -<p>As for his politics, he was centred wholly on the -outward thing. He seems to have lacked almost entirely -the metaphysic. Here was France all ruined and every -day approaching more nearly to disaster; let her be -turned into a place where men should be happy, should -have enough to eat and drink, should be good citizens -to the extent of making the nation homogeneous and -strong. Reform should be practical: in part it would -require discussion, not too much of it. In part, however, -its lines were laid down for it. Economics taught certain -truths; let them be applied. He had read in Adam -Smith certain indubitable principles of this science; let -them be used. Science had in such and such matters<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span> -definite remedies to offer; let them be applied. Such -were his over-simple aims. He was of the Encyclopædists. -Had he no beliefs, then, in his politics? Undoubtedly -he had; no man could desire “the good” -without feeling it. But, like all minds of his type, he -refused to analyse. His dogmas were all the more -dogmas because he took them so entirely for granted -that he refused even to define them. At a time when -all men had their first principles ready-made in words, -his was rather that confused instinct which is, after all, -nearest to the truth. Patriotism, good-fellowship, freedom -for his activities, the satisfaction of the thirst for -knowledge—all these he desired in himself and for the -State. And that is why you will find his great body at -the head of mobs and daring criminal things when it is -a question of saving the nation, or later of breaking an -inquisitorial idea. It is this simplicity which makes him -daring, and this concentration on a few obvious points -which makes him judicious, unscrupulous, and successful -in the choice of means and of phrases.</p> - -<p>On the 24th of January 1789, the Primaries were -convened. It was the opportunity for movement, in -Paris especially, since it was the first definite action after -so much discussion, attention, and fever. The district -of the Cordeliers met in the hall of which so much -mention has been made above. But there does not seem -to have been anything of importance transacted, unless we -call this important; I mean the beginnings of the habit -of reunion and of open discussion. For three months the -place seems to have had its doors open to the first comer -of the quarter. The cahier was drawn up here, and the -rough foundations of what was to be the famous permanent -survival of the “République des Cordeliers” were -laid. But of Danton’s part in all this we have, as I -have said above, no trace. We can only conjecture and -infer.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span></p> - -<p>It was on April 21 that the elections were finally -held. The voters all met together in the central halls of -their districts (churches for the most part) and elected -the electors, who in their turn were to nominate the -deputies for Paris. Of Danton’s rôle in this important -action, again we know nothing. M. Bougeart<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> has taken -it for granted that he was at least “president of the -district,” chairman (as we should say) of the electoral -meeting; but he is either in error, or else he is relying -on some verbal evidence which he has not given us. -We have no document to prove it, and we know that -three months later Timbergue and Achimbault, two -barristers of the district, were successively presidents, not -Danton.<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> What we do know of importance is that the -Cordeliers were among those districts which did not -disperse after the elections, but maintained themselves -as a permanent club. This action by the districts was -of the very first importance in the history of the Revolution. -It created the municipal movement in July, it -made Paris an organisation, gave the town a method and -a voice, and more than any other accident it placed the -ladder for Danton’s feet.</p> - -<p>The elections of Paris once completed, the gates of -the Revolution are passed, and the States-General, whose -Commons formulated its first principles, are definitely -formed; for Paris completed its voting much later than -the provinces. The Parliament meets at Versailles, and -that town presents for the next six months the centre -of official interest. But since Paris is going to be, by its -destiny, the heart of the reform, and since Danton is the -tribune of Paris, we must, for the purposes of this -biography, mention the assembly only in its relation to -what passed in the capital.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span></p> - -<p>The tone of Paris during the first two months of the -Parliament was, as has been expressed earlier in this -chapter, essentially one of ill-ease and watching. But -this anxiety of the town took long to find a formula and -to recognise its own nature. What Paris needed was -the leadership; but to hear the confused murmur of the -thousand voices, you would have thought that all her -demands were for a number of more or less conflicting -ideals. And yet there was no appearance of Party. One -may say, by a just paradox, that her very cliques made -for solidarity. The higher bourgeoisie could afford at -first to ignore the group of the Latin Quarter, thinking -the young lawyers and students to be merely foolish -demagogues, not even dangerous. The ears of these last -were closed to the confused demands of the populace, and -the orators could honestly believe that ideas rather than -hunger were to be the goad of change. By great good -fortune their position was never wholly abandoned, and -the Revolution from first to last mastered Materialism -and its attendant Anarchy. Finally, the poor—the out-of-work, -the starving labourers of the economic crisis—standing -apart from both these leading classes, could -convince themselves that the great phrases meant bread, -and that a constitution was allied in some vague way to a -lowering of prices. They were right in that instinct, but, -with the picturesque inexactitude of mobs, they fearfully -under-estimated the length of the connecting links.</p> - -<p>The place where the average of these different views -could best be found was the Palais Royal. Here a great -popular forum gathered in the gardens which the Duke -of Orleans had thrown open to the people. It was not a -bad thing that the debts of this debauchee and adventurer -had led him to let out the ground-floor of the wide quadrangle, -for the cafés and shops that surrounded it made -it a more permanent resort than the squares or gardens -could have been, and there could be a perpetual mob-parliament<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> -held from day to day. Its orators were the -Dantonist group; its instigators, I fear, the unprincipled -men who surrounded D’Orleans, its committee-room and -centre (as it were) the Café Foy. Still, by the action of -the main virtue of revolutions, the general sense of the -meeting was stronger than any demagogue; for in such -times society is not only turbulent but fluid, and while it -will support a leader who can swim, no mortal force can -give it any direction other than that which it desires.</p> - -<p>In this great daily crowd Danton was a prominent -but not a principal figure; undoubtedly (though we cannot -prove it by any record) he had begun to speak in his -district, and we may presume that his voice had been -heard in the Palais Royal before July; for just after the -fall of the Bastille his name is mentioned familiarly. But -even had he desired to identify himself with the place, -which is doubtful, his profession would not have permitted -it. He was not briefless, unmarried, and free, -like Desmoulins, but a man of three years’ standing in -the highest branch of his profession; doubtless, however, -he was present daily when the crowd was thickest—I -mean on the holidays and during the summer evenings.</p> - -<p>All this pamphleteering, discussion, violence, salonising, -oratory, and anxious criticism, even the mob violence -which hunger and bad laws had inflamed, found a head -in the three famous days that followed July 12, 1789. -All the world knows the story, and even were it unfamiliar -it would be impossible to treat of it at any length in this -book, for Danton’s name hardly touches it, and our only -interest here, in connection with his life, is to discover if -he took part in the street fighting; for the event itself, -one of the most decisive in history, a few words must -suffice.</p> - -<p>Paris, and especially the Palais Royal, had been -watching the struggle at Versailles with gathering anger. -There, twelve miles off, every purpose for which the Parliament<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span> -had met, and every good thing which the elections -had seemed to ensure, lay in jeopardy. Step after step -the Commons had in fact, though not in their phrases, -been beaten, and the promises of six months before seemed -in danger, not through any known or calculable enemy, -but from the sudden appearance of an opposition which -the nation, and especially Paris, had ignored. The King -had retreated from his position of the last December, and -the privileged orders were sympathising with a growing -reaction. How far all this was due to the unconstitutional -and unprecedented action of the Commons in insisting -on a General Assembly cannot be discussed here. -Suffice it to say that, in the opinion of the nation, the -new departure of the Commons was in thorough accordance -with the spirit, if not with the letter, of the recent -decrees; the King was held to have broken his word, and -the privileged orders to have abandoned their declarations -in the face of facts. The symbol, though a poor one, of -the constitutional position was the personality of Necker. -Conceited, foreign, and common-place, the father of an -authoress whom neither Napoleon nor posterity could -tolerate, Genevese and bourgeois to the backbone, this -mass of impotence yet stood, by one of the ironies of -history, in the place of an idol. He, the banker, was -the imagined champion for the moment of that other -man from Geneva, who had died of persecution ten years -before, the tender-eyed, wandering, unfortunate Rousseau, -between whom and him was the distance between a -financier and an apostle.</p> - -<p>While the king was changing his advisers, and even -while the foreign troops—fatal error—were being massed -in wretched insufficiency on the Champ de Mars (not three -miles from the Palais Royal) Necker still stood like a -wooden idol, a kind of fetish safeguard against force. He -just prevented the growing belief in the dissolution from -becoming a certitude, and on account of his attitude Paris<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> -waited. These things being so, the king began his great -programme of working out the good of his people alone. -Relying on the three thousand foreigners, a regiment of -home troops, and practically no guns wherewith to hold -in check a tortuous city of close on a million souls, the -king on Saturday, July 11, dismissed Necker.</p> - -<p>Desmoulins first brought the news, running. It was -the morrow, Sunday, and the Palais Royal was crowded. -He forgot his stammer and hesitancy, and shouted to the -great holiday crowd in the gardens to strip the trees for -emblems, led them as they marched to the Place Louis -Quinze, saw the French troops defend their fellow-citizens -against the mounted mercenaries, and heard during a -night of terror and of civil war the first shots of -Revolution.</p> - -<p>All the next day, Monday, July 13, 1789, Paris -organised and prepared. Thanks to the permanence of -the assemblies in certain districts, a rough machinery was -ready, and on the 14th, a Tuesday, two great mobs -determined upon arms. The time is not untainted, for -St. Huruge was there promising and leading, but if -D’Orleans was trying to make the most of the adventure, -he no more created the uprising than a miller makes the -tide. One stream of men seized the arsenal at the -Invalides on the west side of the town, the other going -east in a smaller band demanded arms of the governor -of the Bastille, a place impossible to take by assault. -The demand was refused.</p> - -<p>A body of men, however, were permitted to enter the -courtyard, for which purpose the drawbridge had been -lowered: once in that trap, De Launay fired upon them -and shot them down. There is no evidence, nor ever -will be, as to the motives of that extraordinary act; but -to the general people who were gathering and gathering -all about in the narrow streets, it was an act of deliberate -treason, part of that spirit with which our own time is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> -not unfamiliar, and which has ruined a hundred reforms,—I -mean the sentiment that there is no honour to be kept -between government and insurrection. The misfortune or -crime of De Launay struck a clear note in the crowd; if -after that they failed, the blow that was being struck for -the Parliament would fail also. Thus it was that, under -a dull grey sky, the whole of Paris, as it were, ran up -together to the siege of the fortress. Curés were there -gathering up their soutanes and joining the multitude, -notably the man who had once been Danton’s parish -priest, the vicar of St. Germains, with his flock at his -heels, like the good Curé of Bazeilles in later times, or -the humorous Bishop of Beauvais six centuries before. -Lawyers, students, shopkeepers, merchants, the big -brewer of the quarter, the pedants, the clerks in the -offices, soldiers and their officers, the young nobles even—there -was nothing in Paris that did not catch the fever. -The castle fell at last, because its garrison sympathised -with the mob (of itself it was impregnable); the old -governor made a futile attempt to blow up his stronghold -and his command; some few who still obeyed him -(probably the twenty Swiss) fired on the mob just after -the white flag had been hoisted on the Bazinière tower, -and a great tide of men mad with a double treason -swirled up the fortress. Second on the wall was a man -with whom this book will have to deal again—Hérault -de Séchelles, young, beautiful, and of great family, beloved -at the court and even pampered with special -privilege, the friend and companion of Danton, and -destined five years later to stand in the cart with him -when they all went up to the scaffold together on a -clear April evening in the best time of their youth.</p> - -<p>The Cordeliers were in the attack, and presumably -Danton also, since all the world was there. But his -only allusion to the scene is a phrase of his circular to -the courts when he took the Ministry of Justice in 1792,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span> -and he mentions his district only without including his -own name. One anecdote, and only one, connects him -with the days of July. It seems that in the night of the -morrow, the early morning of the 16th, he was at the -head of a patrol in that sudden levy of which mention -will be made in this chapter. He thought it his duty to -pass into the court of the Bastille, probably in order to -gather some detached portion of his command; but he -was met by Soulès, whom the informal meeting at the -Hotel de Ville had named governor. Full of new-fangled -importance, Soulès pompously forbad him to enter, and -showed his commission. Danton did a characteristic -thing, part and parcel of that intense sectionalism upon -which he based all his action until Paris was at last in -possession of herself: for him power was from below, and -the armed district had a right of passage: he called the -informal commission a rag, arrested Soulès, and shut him -up in the guardroom at the Cordeliers; then, with a -rather larger force, he marched him back through the -streets and gave him into the custody of the Hotel de -Ville, whose authority for judgment he admitted. The -matter would be of no importance were it not for the -fact that, in the very natural and on the whole just -censure which the informal municipality passed on Danton’s -action, Lafayette showed an especial bitterness.<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> -It was the first clash between two men one of whom was -to conquer and drive out the other; and it was a -typical quarrel, for Danton stood in the matter for the -independence of the electoral unit and for the power of -Paris over itself: Lafayette represented the principle of -a strong municipality based on moderate ideas and on a -limited suffrage; in other words, the compromise which -was planned for the very purpose of muzzling the -capital.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p> - -<p>I have spoken of an armed force and a patrol: it is -in this connection that the meaning of the days of July—for -Danton and for the Revolution—must be considered. -They form above all a municipal reform. Those towns of -which I have spoken as being the bond of France harked -back suddenly to their primitive institutions, and were -organising communal government. Paris of course was -the leader. Even before the taking of the Bastille, the -districts had in some cases maintained their electoral -colleges as a permanent committee, and these electoral -colleges met at the Hotel de Ville, forming a rough -government for the two nights of the revolt, and finally -directing the whole movement. Such a body was of -necessity too large to work. But its plans were rapidly -formed. They named a committee, which was formed of -electors with one citizen (not an elector) added. They -invited and obtained the aid of the permanent officers of -what had once been the old dying and corrupt corporation, -and they thus had formed an irregular but sufficient -organ of government for the city. It was not confirmed -from above, nor had it, for days, any authority from the -King, but it reposed on a force which was admitted in -the theory of those times to be the source of power, for -it was composed of men elected by the new suffrage. -They had been elected for another purpose, but they were -the only popular representatives present at all in Paris.</p> - -<p>Their weakness, however, lay in this quality of theirs. -Reposing merely upon power from the districts, they -could not act with central authority, nor had they an -armed force of their own. They could, indeed, prevent -the success of the rough anarchy which threatened the -Hotel de Ville itself in the early morning of July 14, -before the attack on the Bastille, but they could not -prevent the lynching of those against whom the popular -rage had arisen—De Launey, De Méray, De Persan. As -for force, they organised a huge levy of 1200 men from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span> -each of the sixty districts, a force which, with certain -additions, rose to 78,000. It was in this suddenly armed -militia that Danton was elected a captain (for the moment), -and in connection with its duties of police on the nights -following the taking of the Bastille that his quarrel with -Soulès had occurred. They named Bailly their first mayor. -They gave the command of the new national guard to -Lafayette; on the 16th they ordered, with a pomp of -trumpets in the Place de Grève, the destruction of the -Bastille, in which their new governor was installed. But -through all this vigorous action there is one cardinal fact -to be remembered: the whole of their power was from -below, not only in theory but in fact. We may construct -a metaphor to express the future effect of this, and say -that, at the very origin of the Revolution, the body of -government in Paris was tainted by an organic weakness -which no structural changes could remove, and to whose -character all subsequent events for three years can be -traced. It was essentially <i>federal</i>; feeble at the centre, -continually asking leave, morally a servant and not a -master; lacking above all things the supreme force of -conviction, it acted without power because it did not -believe in itself.</p> - -<p>The history, then, of its struggle with the extremists -is the history of a body attempting by compromise and -ruse to attain a position whose theory it openly denies, -whose moral right it will not affirm, and whose very -existence is made dependent upon those whom it would -coerce against their will. The municipality tried to be a -strong government while it openly approved of voluntaryism, -to be powerful in its acts and weak in its -structure. Ultimately the centre of compromise is captured -by ardent revolutionaries whom it has attempted -to check, and <i>then</i> we get a true despotism in Paris—the -terrible commune of the second period of the Republic -and of the Terror.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span></p> - -<p>But if the character of the new municipal government -(a character which became specially prominent after -the legislation of the whole system later in the year) is -the special feature of the movement, its general motive -is of course more important. We have called it the -Reform; what occurred in the next few days was without -any question the origin of the active Revolution, and a -little examination of facts will show that the taking of -the Bastille was not merely a dramatic incident, still less -the exaggerated <i>bagarre</i> that certain modern special pleaders -would make it, but, on the contrary, the foundation of everything. -The contemporaries are proved to have been right -in their view of this matter, as of so many others.</p> - -<p>Why was this? Because, first, in taking the Bastille, -after having sacked the Invalides, the people of Paris -(for it was not a particular mob, but a gathering of every -possible class) held all the cannon in the city, and -were thoroughly provided with small arms. They were -suddenly become the masters of that insufficient camp -in the Champ de Mars on which the King had relied. -In open country and without artillery these seventy -thousand civilians would, of course, have been so many -sheep, but in the town and with a number of old artillerymen -(officers and men) to work their guns, it was another -matter. On and after July 14, 1789, Paris had found -that possession of herself which we postulated as her first -great appetite in the Revolution.</p> - -<p>Secondly, by this sudden stroke Paris forced the -Court to capitulate. At Versailles the King went bareheaded -to the Assembly, gave permission for the reunion -of the three orders, for a discussion of grievances before -supply, for the title of National Assembly, for the formation -of a constitution before the voting of fiscal measures—in -a word, for all that the Commons had demanded, and -for the fulfilment of all the promises from which he had -attempted to recede.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span></p> - -<p>Thirdly, the victory, or rather the act of Paris, changed -and weakened the opposition. From openly gathering -troops, and boasting an approaching attack on the Parliament, -they are reduced to intrigue and to the difficult -business of arming in the dark. Many of the heads of -the reaction (notably the Comte d’Artois) leave France -in the “first emigration,” and the whole action of the -uncompromising party is made weaker, and clearly unnational.</p> - -<p>Fourthly (and perhaps this is the most important -point), that municipal movement, of which mention has -been made above, took its rise directly from the 14th of -July. The towns hear of Necker’s dismissal and of the -Parisian rising by the same courier, and in a week or -ten days the story is repeated all over France. Rouen, -Lyons, Valence, Montpellier, Nîmes, Tours, Amiens (to -cite but a few of the more prominent examples), organise -a new town government. Sometimes the old hereditary -or appointed body is deposed, more often it is enlarged -by the addition of the electoral college of the city; -occasionally it takes upon itself the task of adding -to itself representatives of the three orders. Again, -the towns arm themselves as Paris did; and finally, by -what a contemporary called “spontaneous anarchy,” the -whole network of cities has received the pulse and vibration -of Paris; the National Guards are being drilled in -thousands; the rusty, confused, and broken machinery -of the <i>ancien régime</i> is replaced by a simple if rough -system of local government. Moreover, since all this has -been done by the people themselves, and without a command -or a centralised effort, since it is natural and not -artificial, it has entered into the body of the Revolution -and cannot be undone.</p> - -<p>You see, then, that the days of July gave Paris the -first word, and made the spirit of sectionalism and local -autonomy based upon a highly democratic theory. All<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> -these things are the conditions of Danton’s rise; they -make possible, and even necessary, the society of which -he is to be the guide. After the 14th of July the Cordeliers -meet daily; the bell was rung above the church -at nine in the morning, and an assembly of the district -was held.<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> It was not yet in name the famous “club”; -but when we consider the action of the popular societies -in Paris, we must always remember that this, even before -it regularly assumed its final name and functions, was a -society organised for debate and action, and that it was -the first to be established.</p> - -<p>From its origin, this famous meeting is sharply marked -in its spirit—the spirit that will later divide it not only -from the moderate clubs, such as the Feuillants, but from -the Jacobins themselves. In the first place, it is Parisian; -it attempts no provincial propaganda; it confines itself to -action in Paris, and even to its own immediate neighbourhood. -In the second place, it is purely popular. But (it -may be asked) were not the Jacobins in their later stage -a purely popular club? No, not in the same sense. -The Jacobins, as will be seen later in this book, were -an organised body; the public was admitted to their -galleries; but, even in the most feverish time of the -Revolution, they are distinguished by a close bond from -the general people. Their membership is almost exclusively -confined to the politicians, and their business is -inquisitorial. They preach certain political dogmas, and -make it their affair to canalise the Revolutionary current; -they desire to establish in France a Republican religion, -as it were, and we shall see later in Robespierre their -high priest and dictator.</p> - -<p>The Cordeliers had nothing of all this. If the -Royalist writers begin calling them from the outset the -“République des Cordeliers,” it is because they show the -general spirit which Danton surely gave to, rather than<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> -received from, his district. Freedom of opinion, the value -of varied discussion, open doors, and even an intermingling -with the street—such were their methods. The men -who sat on the benches would vary from one hundred to -three,<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> according to the interest of the debate or the -value of the occasion. The number inscribed on the -registers of the society were simply the whole voting -strength of the district; under the limited suffrage of -the time it would fluctuate round the figure six hundred; -and hence we may observe that those who were so -strongly touched by the contemporary movement as to -add meeting and debating to their mere votes numbered -a good half of the electorate. Standing grouped, or -moving in and out of the far end of the hall, would be -the chance-comers, the disfranchised multitude of the -district—those even who had no residence in the quarter, -but whom anger, interest, or curiosity might attract. It -was composed of every kind of man—the pedantic but -accurate Sieyès; the fastidious radical and poet D’Eglantine; -the coarse, brutal, and atheistic Hébert; Desmoulins, -ardent and admirably polished, linked by his style to the -classics of his own country and of Rome; Legendre, the -master-butcher, no great politician, but an honest friend; -and, added to all these, the lawyers. There was a preponderance -of the young men, the students and barristers -in their thirtieth year; but take it all in all, -it was the most representative, the most general of the -meetings.</p> - -<p>The society, then, from which Danton rises is marked -by these characters: it tends always to defend the presence -in politics of the whole people; it is unitarian, -designing above all things a common ground where -Frenchmen may found the new order in harmony; and -finally, it possesses nothing of the metaphysical spirit<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span> -abroad at the time. It is all for action along the lines -of common sentiments—the defence of the new individual -liberty, the destruction as soon as may be of whatever -relics of the old machinery might be spared by the fear -or inertia of certain reformers.</p> - -<p>I cannot leave what has already grown to an over-lengthy -description of their political attitude without -touching upon a quality of theirs, which was not indeed -a principle, but which was a method of action necessarily -flowing from the ideas they held. The Cordeliers are -essentially “Frondeurs.” They are rebellious and in -opposition so long as the Revolution remains incomplete. -They do things deliberately illegal, but which they justly -consider to be in the spirit of the reform and calculated -to aid its rapid development. Why was this? Because -the day after Paris had captured the position, in the very -moment when the city had forced reaction into subterranean -channels, her power was bridled. The King came -to Paris on the 17th of July and confirmed the revolutionary -appointments. Bailly is mayor, and Lafayette is -commissioned head of the National Guard. In those two -names you have the forces, or rather the resistances, -against which Danton and the Cordeliers made it their -business to fight. Both of them were amiable, both -weak, and both sincere; but they belonged, the one to -the high bourgeoisie, the other to the noblesse; they -were both full of an intense class-prejudice; both thought -rather of the restraints to be imposed than of the great -change in the midst of which they lived. The little -movements that Bailly might have mistaken for an -enthusiasm would arise at the sight of his telescope; the -undoubted excitability of Lafayette was aroused by the -public mention of his own name. Under these weaknesses -their external sign was pomposity, their political -action an attempt to confine the Revolution to the middle -class. Thus, later, the sixty districts are replaced by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span> -forty-eight sections in order to jerrymander the Parisian -radicals; thus Bailly tries to oppose Parisian appeals to -the Parliament; and thus Lafayette not only attempts -to convert the National Guard into a political army, but -makes it impossible for the poor to join it.</p> - -<p>Against all this the Cordeliers set their face. Such -a partial conception of the State was the enemy of that -ideal by which they lived and which has formed the -Republic in France and the Jeffersonian democracy in -America. Only four days after the King had worn his -tricolour cockade, smiling on the balcony of the Hotel -de Ville, they issue and print a resolution to use the -armed force of their district at its own discretion; they -do not (of course) claim to act further, but they determine -to be themselves the police which shall conduct -prisoners to the tribunals.<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> At the close of 1789, and -especially in the succeeding year, we shall find them in -the affair of Marat, of Danton’s election, of the <i>Mandat -Imperatif</i>, and of the Châtelet continually acting in the -spirit of local autonomy, and refusing to admit any -central authority save that of the whole people—bowing -after every revolt to the Assembly, but refusing to admit -the bourgeois power.</p> - -<p>The end of July was the destruction of the feudality -in France. When the towns had fallen with a shock into -the new conditions, the great dust of villages rose of itself -into a storm, and there passed over all the countrysides -that strange panic, “The Great Fear,” whose legend alone -of Revolutionary memories remains among the peasantry -to-day.</p> - -<p>The woods were full of terrors; ploughmen started -out at night by bands to meet invisible armies; an unsubstantial -enemy threatened the thousands of little<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span> -lonely villages that lie undefended on the skirts of forests -or lost on the leagues and leagues of plains. In that -mysterious panic the Jacquerie arose; the cowed and the -oppressed, who had forgotten the generous anger which -makes men brave, rose under the lash of fear. They had -heard of the promises of reform, they had seen the -cahiers drawn up that they might become free men, and -yet the town close by had risen and armed because -something had gone wrong; the King, whom they loved, -was not allowed to help his people; some one was delaying -or destroying their hopes, and the brigands were coming -down the road. Not with committees, organisation, and -battalions, as the intelligence of the towns had just done, -but instinctively and with the anarchy of the torch they -destroyed the skeleton idol of the old regime. Like their -fathers of four hundred years before, they were out to -destroy the records of their servitude, and where the -records were defended the country-houses burned. But -this time no vengeance followed: the wild beast was dead. -When in the noisy night of the 4th of August the privileged -men scattered away their rights, then that last -largesse of the nobles, the “Orgy,” as Mirabeau called it, -was but a gift of things already taken. After Paris, after -the cities, the peasantry had suddenly stiffened the phrases -by an act; perhaps it was their formless and vague energy -that laid the heaviest of the foundation-stones, for we -are told that in twenty years an exile returning thought -that France had been re-peopled with a new kind of -men.</p> - -<p>It is not wonderful that, with such a fire just -smouldering down, and with the spirit of renunciation -abroad as well, a regular stream of emigration should set -out. But it did not leave the opposition powerless -though it deprived it of chiefs. If we consider the Court, -the capital, and the Assembly in the months of August -and September, the next great step (and the first in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span> -connection with which the name of Danton is directly -connected) becomes clear.</p> - -<p>At Versailles all the first part of August is taken -up in voting the famous decree which consecrated the -debate of the 4th. The Parliament abolished feudal -dues, declaring all rights in service at an end, and -establishing a period for the national purchase and subsequent -abolition of the rest of the feudal dues. All -the second part of August and the whole of September -were occupied in drawing up the declaration of the -rights of man and in decreeing the fundamental articles -of the new Constitution. The National Assembly, then, -as a whole, is thoroughly the organ of France. It is not -yet so divided as to arouse definite party feeling in the -capital, nor to prevent on important occasions a practically -unanimous vote. But there is another factor. The -Court (especially the Queen) has a definite party formed; -it has its correspondence with the emigrés, and they with -the personalities, if not with the official organs of foreign -governments. It was without any question the object -of this very small and very powerful group to arrest the -Revolution, and if possible to wipe out the last six -months. Between and above these stands the King. -Louis (we are too apt to forget it in our knowledge of -what follows) still possessed far more power even than the -National Assembly; not only by the political decrees of -the time, but by that immeasurable force of custom, by -the affection which he personally had inspired in the -great bulk of men, he was a powerful king. What was -his attitude? He was patriotic; he greatly sympathised -with the ideas at the root of the reform; he was sensible, -and saw the practical value of casting away what is -broken and worn out. On the other hand, he was not -brave (especially in the face of the unknown); new -developments irritated him; he was (by the inevitable -result of his training) determined to preserve in his own<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span> -hands the bulk of power, and sometimes he was panic-stricken -at a phrase or a debate which seemed to put it -in jeopardy. Finally—a matter of the utmost importance -with a character of such well-balanced mediocrity—the -people with whom he hunted, dined, and conversed -were almost all of them members of a powerful, bitter, -and skilful faction, headed by the most determined and -able of all—his wife, for whom he had latterly developed -a marked tenderness and even respect.</p> - -<p>This ring of courtiers, who were Louis’s evil fates, had -a certain quality that gave them great power in spite of -their small numbers. It must be remembered that they -were of the high cosmopolitan type, those who, a generation -earlier, delighted in the wit of Voltaire, who, a -generation later, smiled at merely hearing the name -of Talleyrand. Perhaps there was never a body better -fitted to influence an isolated man by phrases, continual -conversation, and intrigue.</p> - -<p>What is the effect? That the King, always honestly -intending the reform, always hesitates a little too long, -with doubts that are often intellectual in origin and -sometimes wise in their nature, but foolish at the moment. -He hesitates to sign the decree of the 4th of August;<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> -he hesitates about this and that expression in the Declaration -of rights. He has a very strong reluctance to -forego the absolute veto; all through September you can -hear the machinery creaking, and it gets worse as the -autumn advances.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile in Paris two forces are at work to aid -this crisis at Versailles. First, the popular societies, -notably that meeting in the Palais Royal, which now -is almost a Parliament, where every prominent Parisian -name is heard, and whence those curious documents, -parodies of the old-fashioned decrees, emanate,<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> -unfrequently with the power to cause insurrection. -Secondly, the price of food, especially of flour, is rising -rapidly. We have explained in the first chapter how -largely the lack of food in the towns was due to vicious -interference with exchange: when such is the prime -cause of economic trouble, the least disturbance aggravates -it to a high degree; thus it was that while the -harvest was being gathered in the north, and in the south -had been already stored, the supply of cereals in the -capital was all but exhausted.</p> - -<p>Thus curiously side by side (and partly overlapping) -the intense political interest of the voting class and the -growing misery of the populace ran fatally towards the -days of October. At the Cordeliers, innocent of pedants, -practical, alert, debating with open doors, there met the -two revolutionary interests, those of the politicians and -of the poor; and this is why they are heard so loudly -in September, and why Danton and his district become -famous just before the march on Versailles.</p> - -<p>It will be remembered that the assembly of electors -at the Hotel de Ville had guided Paris through the great -storm of July 13-17; their powers were vague and unconstitutional, -for they had been elected at first merely to -choose Deputies for Paris, nevertheless it was they who -had made Bailly mayor, who had nominated Lafayette, -who had formed the National Guard, and who had been -confirmed by the King in their functions of a provisional -municipality. It was acting on this decree which gave -them a right to take political initiative, that on Thursday, -July 23, they had sent a circular to the sixty districts -asking each to name two members. The hundred and -twenty so elected were to draw up a plan for a new -municipality; they met, did so, and the result of their -labours was the issue on August 30th of a scheme for a -new municipal system, upon which the primaries in every -districts were asked to debate. Somewhat illogically,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span> -however, the complicated document was accompanied by -a writ demanding the immediate election in each district -of five members to form the new corporation. In other -words, the primaries were asked to form a new municipality, -to give it full powers, and then to debate -academically upon what they had done.</p> - -<p>It may have been only a blunder, but the Cordeliers -took alarm at what certainly seemed to be a plot on the -part of the Moderates. The project and the writ had -reached them on <i>Sunday</i> August 30th; by Thursday, September -3rd, they had arrived at a decision to refuse the -writ. They argued that it was absurd to ask the districts -to debate on a project <i>after</i> its most essential part had been -realised, namely, the election of deputies. On that election, -its methods, the powers of the members, and so forth, -the greater part of the discussions would turn, and by -the time the districts had arrived at such and such conclusions, -or had modified the powers of their deputies -in such and such a fashion, those deputies would already -have been sitting for some time as a municipal council, -would be helping to frame or to modify the new municipal -system on their own account. It would have been -not only confusion but an encroachment on the principle -by which (nominally) the districts had been consulted, -viz., that the electors themselves in their districts should -thrash out the new system. The Cordeliers named commissioners -who examined the whole matter, and, on -Saturday, the 12th, definitely rejected the writ. Nevertheless, -as the other districts had all obeyed and had -elected their five members each, the Cordeliers elected -their five under protest<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> on the following Monday, the -14th, and sent them, bound by a strict oath, to the Hotel -de Ville.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span></p> - -<p>This little incident merits a very considerable degree -of attention, although it has been somewhat neglected by -the historians, and even by Danton’s biographers. It was -the first skirmish in that decisive struggle between the -democratic idea, headed by the Cordeliers, and the limited -suffrage of the first municipality—a struggle which is at -the root of all the action of Paris. It is the first act -of Danton in an official position; in much that the -Cordeliers had done he was evidently the leader, but in -this document we learn that he is elected president of -the district, and see his name signed.<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> And finally, -there appears here, for the first time in the Revolution, -the <i>Mandat Imperatif</i>, the brutal and decisive weapon of -the democrats, the binding by an oath of all delegates, -the mechanical responsibility against which Burke had -pleaded at Bristol, which the American constitution -vainly attempted to exclude in its principal election, and -which must in the near future be the method of our -final reforms. It had been raised, and Danton had raised -it; for these five deputies, before being permitted to -attend at the Hotel de Ville, swore to a definite plan -of action whose terms were dictated at the general meeting -of the district.</p> - -<p>The struggle as it continues becomes of greater importance, -until, within four months, it faces Danton -himself in the Hotel de Ville; but we cannot describe -its further steps until we have mentioned the next action -with which the Cordeliers are associated, and in which -their decisive rôle is largely determined by the Revolutionary -championship which this brush with authority -had given them.</p> - -<p>We have described above the various forces that were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span> -fatally converging to form the whirlpool of October—the -hesitancy of the King, the desperate intrigues of the Court, -the intense political excitement of the Palais Royal and of -the electors in Paris, the growing misery of the populace. -We have pointed out how the Cordeliers, with their popular -audience and popular sympathies, were at once the only -great debating place in Paris and the only spot where the -forces of voters and non-voters could join hands. Add -to this the effect of the protest described above and of -the position such a struggle gave them in the democratic -movement, and their importance in the days of October -becomes evident.</p> - -<p>It was at the close of September that all these tendencies -came together. Again, after three months of -silence, the reaction found its voice, and the King’s uncertainty, -the Court faction’s plotting, culminated in the -arrival at Versailles of military reinforcements. The body-guards -were doubled, and there marched in the Regiment -of Flanders—a body (by the way) to whose name clings -something of comedy, and whose raggedness has passed -into a marching legend. This book is not the place to -describe at any length what followed, save in its connection -with Danton and the Club. On Thursday, October -the 1st, a famous dinner was given by the body-guard -to the newly arrived regiment. The Court dealt with -excellent material, and with the wine and the night the -admirable feelings of loyalty arose: the poor King assumed -the halo of a leader to these men whose regimental traditions -were knit up with the monarchy; soldiers, they -appreciated his defeat, and, being comrades, they were -angry at his loneliness. They greeted him with a passionate -song, destroyed the three-coloured cockades, and pinned -on the white ribbons; for the first time in a year enthusiasm -was with the beleaguered, though it lasted but a -few hours and stretched to but a few hundred of men. -To Paris, hearing of it on the next day, Friday, it was a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span> -challenge, discussed, oddly enough, with some contradictions -and confusions. Men talked of Bouillé, the courtier, -and his frontier command at Metz; people were afraid -that he would protect the King in some flight to the -provinces; there ran a vague uneasiness and a fear of -anarchy with the King’s disappearance; above all, in the -minds of the politicians a fear of armed reaction, and in -the minds of the starving a terror that the reforms which -were so material to them were in jeopardy. Still, all -Saturday the waters only moved at the surface, and you -might have thought that Paris was incapable of any -combined action.</p> - -<p>But if the reaction contained a powerful integrating -force in the Court party, Paris also possessed it in a small -meeting and in one supremely energetic man. On the -morning of Sunday, a day when there was leisure to read, -the walls were placarded with the manifesto of the Cordeliers. -It demanded an insurrection, and was signed -with Danton’s name. On Monday morning they rang the -tocsin at the belfry of the convent, and the battalion of -the district was drawn up and armed. De Crèvecœur, their -commander, prevented them marching in a body, but a -number of the district determined to merge with the -crowd. Meanwhile, the mob gathered from every quarter, -especially the Place de Grève—a true mob this time, and -accompanied, as all the world knows, by a crowd of women, -poured up the Versailles road. They made a hideous -night in the great space before the palace. Lafayette -followed tardily with his organised volunteers, the National -Guard; but on the Tuesday the palace was forced, and -some of its defenders killed. The royal family came in -their heavy coach down the twelve miles of falling road -into Paris, and, not without some state, they entered the -Tuilleries. The National Assembly followed the King -into the capital.</p> - -<p>Thus the second milestone of the Revolution was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> -passed. Of all the revolutionary days, these were the -most purely anarchic. The action was that of men hardly -possessing ideas, but fixed upon a practical thing—the -presence of the King in Paris. It had for its main -object good, and for its method mad anger. Nevertheless, -the instinct of the mob had hit the mark. Like all -sudden actions, it had made issues definite which had -till then been confused. It put an end once and for all -to the idea of crushing the reform at its outset by force; -it gave Paris a mastery over every subsequent action; of -the many ways the Court party might have tried it -reduced them to one only, namely, an organised secret -diplomacy with the object of raising Europe against -France.</p> - -<p>As for Louis, we may honestly believe that his capture -was not entirely distasteful to him: as he was less acute, -so he had certainly more common-sense than his wife. If -he was jealous of his dignity, which had been grievously -offended, yet he was very French, patriotic, and not unwilling -to see himself the object of a violent demand. -Everybody saw—the King must have seen it too—that -the whole uprising was monarchic. There was not any -class more monarchic in France than the poor. The King -as their father was an idea bred in them for centuries, and -he knew that they made of him a kind of providence who -could give them food; that they rose not to make him less -powerful, but to make a faction impotent. And there was -nothing distasteful to him in being a King of the French, -seated in the midst of his great capital, and on the summit, -as it were, of a new order. October did not threaten to -make him less, but more of a King. It was later, in -questions that affected the heart, especially in matters -of religion, that the gulf opened between Louis and his -people.</p> - -<p>With the King, then, at the Tuilleries, with the -Assembly some three hundreds yards off down the gardens<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> -in the riding-school of the palace,<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> we enter the long -avenue by which Paris obtains the initiative in every -subsequent reform. Let us turn, then, to follow once -more the action of the society and the man who, -between them, determine the direction of Paris for the -next three years.</p> - -<p>The quarrel which was sketched earlier in this chapter, -the assault of the district upon the Moderates, continued -throughout the autumn and winter. Four times running -Danton is elected President,<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> and it is under his guidance -that the affair proceeds. While the Assembly are making -a new France at the Manège, organising the departments,<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> -fixing the restricted suffrage,<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> creating the communes -over all France,<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> the Cordeliers are making the spirit of -a new Paris on the hill over the river; this spirit will -conquer and transform the debaters in the Parliament.</p> - -<p>On the 22nd of October they follow up their previous -action. Already before the revolt they had come into -collision with the municipality: in this new resolution they -protest against a demand of Lafayette for regular courts-martial -in the National Guard. The protest had a -meaning, for Lafayette was raising an armed bourgeois -power, but the motive of the Cordeliers was mainly the -desire to harass the Moderates. A week later the Municipal -Council gave its reply to these various encroachments -on the part of the Cordeliers in a decree of the -29th of October: it condemned the action of the district -in three definite points: first, its habit of passing resolutions -like a small municipal body; secondly, its habit of asking -the fifty-nine other districts to pass spontaneous resolutions -on important matters; thirdly (and most important),<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span> -its revolutionary action in demanding an oath from its -delegates. In this last point the purely democratic idea -on the one hand, and the senatorial theories of the -Moderates on the other, came face to face, and on that -point the issue turned. On the 2nd of November the -district replied by a resolution denying the right of the -elected to control the electors, and especially condemning -the interference of the Hotel de Ville with debates in -the districts. On the 12th, ten days later, they came -out into the open with a resolution that was like a -declaration of war against Bailly and Lafayette; they -drew up a form of oath which their five deputies were to -swear, and this oath bound the members of the district -not only to obey the district in all its resolutions, but also -to admit that they could be dismissed after being called -upon three times to resign by a majority of the district. -It was the full doctrine of delegacy and of the corporate -will.</p> - -<p>Only two of the five members took the oath, the -rest resigned and were promptly replaced by others, -and these presented themselves at the Hotel de Ville -on November 16th. Condorcet was President of the -municipal body, and practically everybody there was -furious against the Cordeliers. They demanded a -recital of the causes which had led to the dismissal -of the three members, and then they insisted on hearing -the terms of the famous oath that bound the five -deputies. Of the two who had consented to take the -oath in the first instance, one (Peyrilhe) muttered excuses, -but the other (Croharé), who seems to have been more of -a true Cordelier, was very proud of the position he held, -and would have explained the true doctrine at great -length, had not the meeting cut him short by a vigorous -vote, declaring all such oaths inadmissible, sending away -the three new members, and recalling those who had -resigned. On the next day the municipality broke the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span> -law. It turned Croharé out, but by a very small vote, in -which many abstained.<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Of course such an action was -not to be tolerated, for it would have made the majority -of the municipality able to end all opposition or debate, -and the mistake of Condorcet was Danton’s opportunity.</p> - -<p>Every character he possesses is apparent in the struggle -that follows. He carries it on with something of the -diplomacy that later was matched against all Europe: he -secures his allies and isolates his enemies: he pleads to -convince and to obtain official support, not (as do so many -of his contemporaries) in order to follow a line of thought. -In a word, he is <i>habile</i>, and practically he succeeds.</p> - -<p>Observe the quality of this action. When the -district meets on the 17th (while the Commune was -dismissing Croharé), Danton sees the importance of keeping -its debate in bounds. That gathering, which is so enamoured -of abstract rights, is suddenly bound down by the -superior ability of its chairman: the discussion is made -to follow points of legal technicality, and Danton imposes -upon the Cordeliers so strict a discipline for one day, that -two points alone emerge from the speeches, and they are -precisely the two which could be used as arguments. (1.) -That the Commune was <i>provisional</i>, and its <i>raison d’être</i> -was the formation of a new municipal system: in such -cases (say the Cordeliers) the subjects of the experiment -must remain masters, and it would be absurd to take away -the power of control, that later would have to be readmitted -when the new municipal constitution should be sent to -the districts for acceptance or rejection: in a word, they -argued on the <i>vice de raisonnement</i>—the want of logic—in -the Commune’s action. (2.) They appealed to -the Assembly—that is, they recognised and submitted to -the centre of national power.<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> The Assembly was in -a dilemma. It was in full sympathy with the Moderates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span> -with Bailly and with Lafayette; on the other hand, it -could not, without a great loss of prestige, deny the -very principles upon which its own power rested. Their -committee on the subject desired a complete admission of -the Cordeliers’ claim; the Assembly rejected this, and tried -to compromise by saying that both parties should go back -to “the state of things of November 10th”—that is, to the -state of things before the oath and before the whole -trouble. The compromise would not hold. The deputies -thus legally reinstated all resigned (except Croharé) on -account of the feeling in their district, and the Cordeliers -then, with full legality, re-elected their popular champions -of the <i>Mandat Imperatif</i>.</p> - -<p>The Commune took its defeat ill. They tried to prove -that the old members had not really resigned. They sent -a committee to interview them, but the committee came -back with proof that the resignation was voluntary, and -finally, on November 28, the little company of democrats -were sworn in to a very ungracious and unwilling Assembly, -and Danton had won.</p> - -<p>My readers must excuse so detailed an account of an -event which is empty of picturesque detail and which -is so small a part of that fertile winter. From the point -of view of general history it is the first appearance of -the <i>Mandat Imperatif</i> in action; and from the point of -view of Danton’s rôle in the Revolution it is of the -utmost importance, though it is so insignificant a catalogue -of quarrels. It was Danton’s first victory, and it -was decisive. It put a wedge, as it were, into the gate -that he was forcing open by persistent effort; and though -his final position in the administration of Paris is won -after many further failures, it is a direct consequence of -this success in 1789. At the same time it showed that -a young, loud-voiced lawyer of the middle class could -have that one necessary quality of skill lying under the -coarse exterior; he could play the game with the subtlety<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span> -of appreciation which was so necessary in the terrible -year of invasion, the keen aptitude of the mind which -the visionaries were too unpractised, the demagogues too -brutal to attain. That aptitude had appeared in Danton’s -pleading, and was to make him during the war a man -necessary to France.</p> - -<p>It was a month or six weeks after these events, on -some date in January which we can only fix by indirect -evidence, that Danton was himself elected to represent -the district. The restless society had caused a further -resignation, and five new members came to the Hotel -de Ville.<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> He came unimportant, effaced, known merely -as a demagogue, into that municipal assembly which -contained the most dignified, the most learned, and the -most representative of the noblesse and higher bourgeoisie, -to sit under the frowns and endure the silence, -and at first the contempt, of Condorcet, of D’Espagnac, -of the academicians Laharpe and Suard, the astronomer -De Cassini, Lavoisier, De Moreton-Chabrillant captain -of the guard, Bailly and Lafayette themselves. And in -the very first hours of his presence, before he had taken -the oath, an incident occurred which clinched, as it were, -the disfavour in which he was regarded, and which for a -year put him in the background of a council which he -was destined ultimately to master. I refer to what is -known as the incident of Marat.</p> - -<p>Marat was more of a gentleman than Danton; it is -also fair to say that he was nearly mad. No two men -could have been more different than the learned, irritable, -visionary physician and the young, healthy country lawyer -who was for a moment his champion. The one has -met continually the ruling class, and has suffered from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span> -its insolence and privilege; the other has known professional -friends indeed of the first rank, but has passed -his life with the trading middle class, and has entered -perhaps during all his career in Paris not one salon, nor -met perhaps one of the brilliant women of his time.</p> - -<p>Marat presented from the outset the first problem to -be faced by a people who are testing liberty. He was a -journalist and pamphleteer of unbridled license, one of -those who cannot find in themselves that control which, -when it is absent in public writers, can only be supplanted -by the cumbersome, dangerous, and necessary -machinery of the Censor. Not for money, of course, nor -for any unworthy motive, but for the excellent end of -attaining freedom, this morbid mind poured out the -wildest, the most sensational, and the most dangerous -appeals.</p> - -<p>Now the courts were in process of transition; rapidly -as the reform had marched since the summer, much of -the old judicial procedure necessarily remained, and -among the rest a body known as the Châtelet, whose -removal was already planned, but which had to be maintained -until the new system could be put in working -order. It was very typical of the old regime. A body -of privileged lawyers, many of them young and ignorant, -holding their places by inheritance or purchase, and -charged with what we may call the police of the capital. -They had formerly possessed (and it had not yet been -abolished in detail) the power of arbitrary arrest. They -drew their name from the heavy fortress which had once -defended the Pont au Change when Paris was confined -to the island of the Cité; some of its walls dated at -latest from the Norman siege of the tenth century, and -beneath it were cellars which had for centuries been the -prisons of those arrested in Paris by the city guard. It -stood gloomy and strong on the site of the modern place -that bears its name, dominating the close streets of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> -Boucherie, and possessing in its associations and its -waning power all the qualities that had made the Bastille -odious to the people. It may be imagined how the jurisdiction -which it contained was bound to attract the chief -efforts of the reformers; it could not, however, cease to -exercise its functions until there was some more liberal -institution to supply its place, and it came of necessity -into violent collision with that spirit which was determined -to break down by force what the resolutions of -the Assembly had abolished in theory, but had not yet -supplanted in fact.</p> - -<p>The principal object of Marat’s tirades was the -moderate town council, and especially Bailly. Moreover, -the worthy astronomer was an admirable butt. He -assumed a livery, and put a fine coat-of-arms on his -carriage, and, while he weakly opposed the rising democracy -of Paris, he was very strong in the matter of -pomposity. Marat was called to the bar of the Commune -to answer for these attacks upon the mayor on the -28th of September. A warrant for his arrest was made -out by the Châtelet on the 6th of October, but the day -was too critical for an action of police against an -individual. On the 8th another warrant was sent out, -and Marat fled to a hiding-place up on Montmartre, from -which, like a mad prophet on a hill-top, he pamphleteered -the city at his feet. His quarrels, therefore (though very -different in kind) were contemporaneous with the important -struggle between the Cordeliers and the Municipality -which are detailed above. The two attacks began -to merge in December.</p> - -<p>Marat, on the 12th of that month, was hunted out of -his retreat, and brought before a lower court, but so confused -were the powers of the Châtelet in this period of its -reform and extinction that the prosecution was dropped. -Emboldened by this failure on the part of his opponents, -he came to live and print his sheet openly in the Rue des<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span> -Fossés St. Germains—that is, in the midst of the district -of the Cordeliers. What followed is well known. At a -moment when the struggle between the district and the -Hotel de Ville is at its height, just after the scene in -which Danton’s deputation had protested against the -mayor’s commission to the militia officers, while the -insulting irony of the term “my lord” was still ringing -in Bailly’s ears, and when Danton himself had been -actually elected for the district, and was present in the -Municipality on the point of taking the oath—when all -these causes of quarrel were, so to speak, met in one -date, the Moderates determined to strike. Marat was -pouring out his impossible diatribes from the territory of -the rebellious district, and no opportunity could be more -favourable. The Châtelet issued once more the warrant -for his arrest, and this time it was supported by Lafayette, -who promised to lend four thousand of the National -Guard.</p> - -<p>Now note the importance of what follows. Neither -side in the struggle of the autumn had definitely won. -The National Assembly had temporised, the advantage of -the Cordeliers in the matter of the disputed elections had -been achieved by a trick, and in the dead-lock between -two principles, the central power of the Municipality and -the local autonomy of the district, neither of the two -theories was based upon tradition, neither even (in the -confusion of rapid reforms) could justify itself by a definite -pronouncement of the law. On the one side was the -theory of a highly restricted suffrage, government by a -class socially refined and lying with the nobility rather -than with the people; this side was determined to form -an army to support their politics, and it was they who, -when they did act at last, achieved—but much too late—the -sharp and sanguinary reaction of July 1791. On the -other side was the desire for a wide, later for a universal, -suffrage; a determination to emphasise in the development<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> -of the Revolutionary theory, equality and the general -will, rather than order and the practical working of new -laws; a political attitude which was to lead the Revolution -into the intense idealism of 1792, and to end by -declaring the Republic. And all this was represented in -the demand which, of its nature, is the expression of extreme -democracy—I mean the demand for local autonomy, -the idea that an act of government is most just when -it emanates not even from representatives, but from the -lips of the governed themselves.</p> - -<p>Such were the two forces opposed to one another in -the affair of Marat—forces which, if not in all France, were -in Paris at least the two great camps of the Revolution. -Already the district had declared its intention to protect -the liberty of the press within its boundaries,<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> and had -been wise enough to specially condemn Marat’s violence; -already had it named a committee of five to see that no -arbitrary arrest should take place in its territory,<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> when -Lafayette sent his militia, cavalry and infantry, on the -22nd of January to help the arrest of Marat. Not content -with the 3000 men thus employed, he clinched the -matter with cannon, placing a couple of pieces at the -end of the Rue des Fossés St. Germains.<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> He was determined -to settle things by force, and beat the extremists -with their own weapons. His effort did not find force -opposed to it, as he had hoped; it broke itself in the -most unexpected manner upon the legal ability of -Danton.</p> - -<p>The district might have raised, all told, 1500 men, -and it possessed two pieces of artillery; but Danton -was far too wise to use them in such a cause as -that of defending Marat. A street fight, and one in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span> -which the Cordeliers would have been infallibly beaten, -would have ruined the future chances of their politics. -He armed no one, and did not add a single man to -the small guard which each district kept permanently -drilled, but he assigned them as their guard-room for the -week the ground-floor of Marat’s house. Then he went -there himself with his four companions on the newly -elected committee, and awaited developments.</p> - -<p>The great body of the National Guard were massed -in their blue and white at the end of the street, their two -pieces sweeping it, and there was opposed to them nothing -but a small crowd and few arguments. Through their -ranks, and accompanied by a small detachment, came the -two officers or policemen of the Châtelet.<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> They presented -their writ, and Plainville, the commander of the -little detachment that accompanied them, asked to be -allowed to place sentries at the door. The commissioners -gave them leave with the greatest pleasure in the world, -but when the officers presented their warrant, the opportunity -which Danton had been waiting for with some -anxiety presented itself. With a slovenliness that was -part and parcel of the old regime, the Châtelet had not -made out a new warrant, but had issued the old one -which had done duty on the 8th of October.</p> - -<p>Now, since that date the Assembly had passed several -important changes in the criminal law, notably one in the -same month October which declared that “no warrant -for arrest can be issued against a householder save in -case of those charges which, if proved, would lead to -imprisonment.”<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> A very obvious principle; but in -France of the old regime to seize a man, hold him, and -even to let him go without trial, merely for some purpose -of the police, was permitted, and the Châtelet may have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span> -acted upon this tradition. Add to this the fact that the -Assembly had created elective councils in each district to -watch the interest of every inhabitant arrested in criminal -cases,<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> and it is easily apparent that the Châtelet had -committed a great blunder, the value of which a man -trained in the courts and quick to seize an error in -procedure immediately recognised.</p> - -<p>Danton affirmed that the writ was illegal, offered -to prove it, and led the officers of the Châtelet to the -hall of the district. There he had the new procedure -read to them, compared it with the date of their warrant, -and so confused the minds of those simple men that -they signed a <i>procès-verbal</i> which declared that, after -hearing such reasons, they doubted how they should act. -They came back escorted by Fabre d’Eglantine through -an angry crowd, and were received by the officers of the -National Guard with some heat. They stood firm, however, -and refused to pursue the arrest until they could -consult with those who sent them, and finally the difficulty -was removed by Danton’s promising to appeal to -the National Assembly and to abide by its decision. The -terms were accepted, the sentries left Marat’s door, and -the troops withdrew.</p> - -<p>All this debate and turmoil had taken up the morning -and the luncheon-hour, the Rue des Fossés St. -Germains was evacuated in the early afternoon, and by -four o’clock of that day, 22nd of January 1790, Danton -and his companions were pleading their cause at the bar -of the House. It was the old policy of resorting to the -National Assembly as the last place of appeal, and of -using this principal result of the Revolutionary movement -as a weapon against the Parisian Moderates. The -Assembly found itself in the old dilemma, and adopted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> -the old compromise. By its theory it was democratic; all -its phrases and many of its decrees were based on the -“Contrat Social,” but by its personnel and its connections -it was naturally allied to the high professional class, to -the Baillys and the Lafayettes. It instructed Target -(the President of the fortnight) to write to the district; -he condemned the attitude of the Cordeliers, but Parliament -“relied upon their patriotism to execute the will of -the Assembly.” The district, true to its policy, at once -submitted. They sent Legendre and Testulat to tell the -commander of the forces (who had re-entered the Rue -des Fossés) that they had no longer the right to prevent -the arrest; whereupon he sent in the police and awaited -Marat in the street below. The house was empty, and -Marat was on his way to England, a country with which -he was not unfamiliar, and the vices of whose constitution -had already furnished a theme for his too facile pen.</p> - -<p>Such are the details of the story of the famous Friday -in the district of the Cordeliers, events which put Danton’s -name into some prominence, but which also showed him -to the most educated of his time, and therefore to posterity, -in something of a false light. He appears as the -friend of Marat, a man for whom he felt no sympathy, -to whom he was immeasurably superior, and whom he -had supported only because Marat’s quarrel was a tactical -opportunity against the Moderates. To have been from -the outset admitted by the cultured would have been -difficult to him—it would have needed tact, self-effacement, -and silence. For he showed by nature just those rough -gestures and loud, ill-chosen phrases which should be the -sign of a foolish and dangerous man; of what underlay -it, of his learning, his patriotism, and his common-sense -he was to give plenty of proof; but so violent were the -prejudices he had raised that only great length of time -has effaced the false impression of his first appearance -on the scene of politics. <i>We</i> can see the statesman<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -clearly, but his contemporaries never quite pierced the -medium that had gathered round him; here and there a -just and noble man, as was Condorcet, would admit his -own misconception, but to the bulk of the gentlemen in -power he was and remained the demagogue.</p> - -<p>Two years of careful action fail to clear him, because, -being already one of those whose superficial qualities -repel the close attention necessary to a just opinion, he -had also the misfortune to enter the arena from the -wrong door. Those who were most with him adored -him, the great bulk of his district-voters signed a fervent -declaration in his favour, and later his immediate friends -are willing to die with him. But the class with which -at heart he had most in common held aloof; he had -succeeded twice in a pitched battle with them; they -apologise for his acquaintance, vilify him in their letters, -and if his name has emerged from all this error, if he -has been given his statue in a time of social order and -reconstruction, it is because this man, who never wrote, -who left only a confused legend of his personality, saved -his country when it was at war with the whole world, -and such actions compel history to inquiry and restitution.</p> - -<p>On the 23rd, the day after the trouble, he was sworn -in to the reluctant Commune, and there follow two long -years<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> of patient attempt to gain the place for which he -feels himself fitted, but years (on the whole) of disappointment, -and in which his real position in Paris (I mean the -prominence he held in the thoughts of men) contrasts -curiously with the little part he played.</p> - -<p class="tb">1790 contains so great a portion of the Revolution, -and sows the seed of so much future division and civil -war, that it seems ridiculous to confine oneself to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> -description of the restricted action of one man who had -not yet even attained power. It will be necessary, however, -to make a survey of this restricted action in order -that we may comprehend the greater rôle of Danton in -the two years that follow.</p> - -<p>Danton came, then, with Legendre and the three others -into a city Council very much opposed to him and to the -district whose spirit he had formed. He was not often -heard, and there is no doubt that he deliberately tried to -purchase by silence the more just and equable judgment -of such men as he respected, but who knew him only by -unfavourable report. For the bulk of the Assembly he -cannot but have felt contempt; they had no instinct of -the revolutionary tide; even when they were attempting -to check the movement that Danton represented, they -were inefficient and unworthy opponents, from whom his -eye must have wandered inwards to the great battles that -were preparing.</p> - -<p>In the eight months during which he was a member -of the Provisional Commune, that is, from January to -September 1790, his name appears in the debates but -a dozen times.<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> More than half of these are mention of -committees upon which his common-sense and legal training -were of service; in one only, that of February 4, -does he speak on a motion, and that is in support of -Barré to admit the public when the oath was taken: one -other (that on the 19th of March concerning the formation -of a “grand jury”) would be interesting were it not -that the whole gist of the debate was but a repetition of -the much more significant discussion at the Cordeliers. -Finally, there is one little notice which is half-pathetic -and half-grotesque: he is one of the committee of twenty-four -charged with the duty of “presenting their humble -thanks, with the mayor at their head,” to the King for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> -giving the municipality a marble bust of himself. But -every entry is petty and unimportant: Danton at the -Provisional Municipality of 1790 is deliberately silent—he -can do nothing.</p> - -<p>If we turn, however, to a field in which he was more -at home, we find him during that year more than ever -the leader of the Cordeliers, which itself becomes more -than ever the leader of Paris.</p> - -<p>There are two important features in the part he -plays at the assemblies of the district during the spring -and summer in which he was a silent member of the -Commune. First, the affair of his arrest; secondly, his -campaign against what may be called “the municipal -reaction.”</p> - -<p>As to the first, it is a very minor point in the general -history of the Revolution, but it is of considerable influence -upon the career of Danton himself. When the -affair of Marat was (or should have been) forgotten, the -Châtelet, with that negligence which we have seen them -display in the business of the warrant for Marat’s arrest, -saw fit to launch another warrant, this time for the -arrest of Danton himself. Once more that unpopular -and moribund tribunal put itself on the wrong side of -the law, and once more it chose the most inopportune -moment for its action. It was on the 17th of March,<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> -nearly two months after the affair—two months during -which Danton had been hard at work effacing its effects -upon his reputation—that the warrant was issued, and the -motive of arrest given in the parchment was of the least -justifiable kind. In the district meeting of the day, -when the police officers had been taken to the hall of -the Cordeliers, and had had the changes in the law read -out to them, Danton had made use of a violent phrase:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> -its actual words were not known; some said that he -had threatened to “call out the Faubourg St. Antoine, -and make the jaws of the guard grow white.” Other -witnesses refused to attribute those words to him, but -accused him of saying, “If every one thought as I do, -we should have twenty thousand men at our back;” his -friends admitted that some angry and injudicious speech, -such as he was often guilty of, had escaped him, but -they affirmed that he had added, “God forbid that such -a thing should happen; the cause is too good to be so -jeopardised.”</p> - -<p>Whatever he said (and probably he himself could -not accurately have remembered), the place and the time -were privileged. It was a test case, but the logic of such -a privilege was evident. Here you have deliberative -assemblies to which are intrusted ultimately the formation -of a government for Paris: what is said in such a -constituent meeting, however ill-advised, must in the -nature of things be allowed to pass; if not, you limit the -discussion of the primary, and if you limit that discussion -you vitiate the whole theory upon which the new constitution -was being framed. It must be carefully remembered -that we are not dealing with deliberative bodies -long established, possessed of the central power, and holding -privilege by tradition and by their importance in the -State; we are dealing with the elementary deliberative -assemblies in a period which, rightly or wrongly, was -transforming the whole State upon one perfectly definite -political theory—namely, that these primary assemblies -were the only root and just source of power. When, -therefore, Parisian opinion rose violently in favour of the -president of a district so attacked, when three hundred -voters out of five signed a petition in Danton’s favour, -when he was re-elected president of the district twelve -days after the issue of the warrant, it was because the -whole body of the electors felt a great and justifiable fear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span> -of what was left of the old regime. The Châtelet had -acted so, not from a careful appreciation of public danger—to -fend off which temporary powers had been given -it—but because it was blind with old age; because it -dated from a time and was composed of a set of men -who hated all deliberative assemblies, and it was justly -thought that if such actions were justified, the whole -system of revolutionary Paris was in danger.</p> - -<p>As though in proof of the false view that the Châtelet -took of their man, on the 19th of March, two days after -the warrant was issued, Danton was urging the replacement -of the Châtelet by a Grand Jury; he had an -admiration and a knowledge of the old English system, -and it was against a man attempting so wise a reform -that the last relic of the old jurisprudence was making -an attack.</p> - -<p>An appeal was lodged with the National Assembly, -and Anthoine read a long report to the Assembly upon -May 18. This report was strongly in favour of Danton. -It was drawn up by a special committee—not partisan in -any way—and after examining all the evidence it came -to this conclusion against the Châtelet. Nevertheless -the House, a great body of nearly a thousand men, to -most of whom the name of Danton meant only a loud -Radical voice, hesitated. To adopt the report might have -irretrievably weakened the Châtelet, and the National -Assembly was extremely nervous on the subject of order -in Paris. It ended by an adjournment. The report -remained in Danton’s favour; he was not arrested, but -the affair was unfortunate for him, and threw him back -later at a very important occasion, when he might have -entered into power peaceably himself and at a peaceable -time.</p> - -<p>But while this business was drawing to its close, -during the very months of April and May which saw his -partial vindication, another and a far more momentous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span> -business was occupying the Cordeliers—a matter in which -they directed all their energy towards a legal solution, -but in which, unfortunately for the city, they failed.</p> - -<p>Ever since the days of October—earlier if you will—there -had been arising a strong sentiment, to which I -have alluded more than once, and which, for lack of a -better name, may be called the Moderate reaction in -Paris. It is difficult to characterise this complex body -of thought in one adjective, and I cannot lengthen a -chapter already too prolonged by a detailed examination -of its origin and development. Suffice it to say that -from the higher bourgeoisie (generally speaking), from -those who were in theory almost Republican, but whose -lives were passed in the artificial surroundings of wealth, -and finally from the important group of the financiers, -who of all men most desired practical reform, and who -of all men most hated ideals; from these three, supported -by many a small shopkeeper or bureaucrat, came -a demand, growing in vigour, for a conservative municipal -establishment—one that should be limited in its -basis, almost aristocratic in quality, and concerned very -much with the maintenance of law and order and very -little with the idea of municipal self-government.</p> - -<p>It is a character to be noted in the French people, -this timidity of the small proprietor and his reliance -upon constituted authority. It is a matter rarely observed, -and yet explaining all Parisian history, that this -sentiment does not mark off a particular body of men, -but, curiously enough, is found in the mind of nearly -every Frenchman, existing side by side with another set -of feelings which, on occasion, can make them the most -arrant idealists in the world.</p> - -<p>For the moment this intense desire for order was -uppermost in the minds of those few who were permitted -to vote. In the Cordeliers it was the other character of -the Parisian that was emphasised and developed. They<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> -were determined on democracy, like everybody else; but, -unlike the rest, they were not afraid of the dangerous -road. They were inspired and led by a man whose one -great fault was a passionate contempt of danger. On -this account, though they are taxpayers and bourgeois, -lawyers, physicians, men of letters and the like, they do -all they can to prevent the new municipal system from -coming into play, but they fail.</p> - -<p>Now, consider the Assembly. That great body was -justly afraid of Paris; indeed, the man who was head -and shoulders above them all—Mirabeau—was for leaving -Paris altogether. The Assembly, again, had the whole -task of re-making France in its hands, and it could not -but will that Paris, in the midst of which it sat, should be -muzzled. Through all the debates of the Provisional -Commune it could easily be seen that Bailly and Lafayette -were winning, and that the Parliament would be even -more Moderate than they. Three points were the centres -of the battle: first, the restricted suffrage which was to -be established;<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> secondly, the power which was to be exercised -over the new Commune by the authorities of the -Department; thirdly, the suppression of those sixty -democratic clubs, the districts, and their replacement by -forty-eight sections, so framed as specially to break up -the ties of neighbourhood and association, which the first -of the Revolution had developed. It was aimed especially -at the Cordeliers.</p> - -<p>Against the first point the Cordeliers had little to -say. Oddly enough, the idea of universal suffrage, which -is so intimate a part of our ideas on the Revolution, was -hardly thought of in early 1790. Against the second -they debated, but did not decree; it was upon the third -that they took most vigorous action. The law which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span> -authorised the new municipal scheme was passed on May -the 27th, and, faithful to their policy, the Cordeliers did -not attempt to quarrel with the National Assembly, but -they fought bitterly against the application of the law -by Bailly and his party. The law was signed by the -King on June the 27th, and on the same day the mayor -placarded the walls, ordering an immediate installation -of the new system. The 27th was a Saturday. Within -a week the new sections were to be organised, and on -the Monday, July 5, the voting was to begin. The very -next day, the 28th, the Cordeliers protested in a vigorous -decree, in which they called on the fifty-nine other -districts to petition the National Assembly to make a -special exception of the town of Paris, to consider the -great federation of July 14, which should be allowed -to pass before the elections, and finally to give the city -time to discuss so important a change. All through the -week, on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July, they published -vigorous appeals. They were partially successful, but in -their main object—the reconstruction of the aristocratic -scheme and the arousing of public spirit against it—they -entirely failed. Bailly is elected mayor on August 2 by -an enormous majority—practically 90 per cent. The -old districts disappear, and, like every other, the famous -Cordeliers are merged in the larger section of the Théâtre -Français. It may not sit in permanence; it may not -(save on a special demand of fifty citizens) meet at all; it -is merely an electoral unit, and in future some 14,000 -men out of a city of nearly a million are to govern all. -The local club, directing its armed force and appealing to -its fellows, is abolished. Danton then has failed.</p> - -<p>But, as we shall see later, the exception became the -rule. No mechanical device could check the Revolution. -The demand for permanent sections is continuous and -successful. From these divisions, intended to be mere -marks upon a map, come the cannon of the 10th of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> -August, and it is the section of the Théâtre Français, -wherein the traditions and the very name of the Cordeliers -were to have been forgotten, that first in Europe -declared and exercised the right of the whole people to -govern.</p> - -<p>If I may repeat a common-place that I have used -continually in this book, the tide of the Revolution in -Paris was dammed up with a high barrier; its rise could -not be checked, and it was certain to escape at last with -the force and destructive energy of a flood.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>I have taken as a turning-point in the career of Danton -the municipal change which marks the summer of 1790, -concluding with that event the first chapter of his political -action, and making it the beginning of a new phase. -Let me explain the reasons that have led me to make -such a division at a moment that is marked by no -striking passage of arms, of policy, or of debate.</p> - -<p>In the first place, a recital of Danton’s life must of -necessity follow the fortunes of the capital. The spirit -of the people whose tribune he was (their growing -enthusiasms and later their angers)—that spirit is the -chief thing to guide us in the interpretation of his -politics, but the mechanical transformations of the city -government form the framework, as it were, upon which -the stuff of Parisian feeling is woven. The detail is -dry and often neglected; the mere passing of a particular -law giving Paris a particular constitution, a system -not unexpected, and apparently well suited to the first -year of the Revolution, may seem an event of but -little moment in the development of the reform; but -certain aspects of the period lend that detail a very -considerable importance. In the rapid transformation -which was remoulding French society, the law, however -new, possessed a strength which, at this hour, we can -appreciate only with difficulty. In a settled and traditional -society custom is of such overwhelming weight -that a law can act only in accordance with it; a sudden<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span> -change in the machinery of government would break -down of itself—nay, in such a society laws can hardly be -passed save those that the development of tradition -demands. But in a time of revolution this postulate -of social history fails. When a whole people starts out to -make fresh conditions for itself, every decree becomes an -origin; the forces that in more regular periods mould -and control legislative action are, in a time of feverish -reconstruction, increased in power and give an impetus -to new institutions; the energy of society, which in years -of content and order controls by an unseen pressure, is -used in years of revolution to launch, openly and -mechanically, the fabric that a new theory has designed. -Thus you may observe how in the framing of the -American constitution every point in a particular debate -became of vast moment to the United States; thus in our -time the German Empire has found its strength in a set -of arbitrary decrees, all the creation of a decade; thus in -the Middle Ages the Hildebrandine reform framed in the -life of one man institutions which are vigorous after the -lapse of eight hundred years; and thus in the French -Revolution a municipal organisation, new, theoretic, and -mechanical, was strong enough, not indeed to survive so -terrible a storm, but to give to the whole movement a -permanent change of direction.</p> - -<p>This, then, is the transitional character of the summer -of 1790, as regards the particular life of Danton and the -particular city of Paris. What the Cordeliers had fought -so hard to obtain as a constitutional reform had failed. -The direct action of the districts upon the municipality -was apparently lost for ever, and the centre of the new -system was in future to be controlled in the expression -of ideas and paralysed in its action. What the Cordeliers -had represented in spirit, though they had not formulated -it in decrees—government by the whole people—was -apparently equally lost. The law of December<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span> -(that which established the “active and passive citizens”) -was working for Paris as for all France; and -though a suffrage which admitted two-thirds of the male -population to the polls could not be called restrictive, yet -the exception of men working for wages under their -master’s roof, the necessity of a year’s residence, and the -qualification of tax-paying did produce a very narrow -oligarchy in a town like Paris: the artisans were excluded, -and thousands of those governed fell just beyond the -limits which defined the municipal voter. Danton may -receive the provincial delegates, may make his speeches -at the feast in the Bois de Boulogne; but once the organ -of government has been closed to his ideas, the road -towards the democracy lies through illegality and revolt.</p> - -<p>Now there is another and a wider importance in this -anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. It is the point at -which we can best halt and survey the beginning of the -heat which turned the Revolution from a domestic reform -of the French nation to a fire capable of changing the -nature of all our civilisation. I do not mean that you -will find those quarrels in the moment; in 1790 there is -nothing of the spirit that overturned the monarchy nor -of the visions that inspired the Gironde; you cannot even -fairly say that there are general threats or mutterings of -war, although the Assembly saw fit to disclaim them: it is -a year before the fear of such dangers arises. But there is -in this summer something to be discovered, namely, an -explanation of why two periods differing so profoundly in -character meet so suddenly and with such sharp contrast -at one point in the history of the movement; it is from -the summer of 1790 and onwards that the laws are -passed, the divisions initiated, which finally alienate the -King, from that lead to his treason, from that rouse -Europe, and from the consequent invasion produce the -Terror, the armies, and the Empire. The mind needs -a link between two such different things as reform and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> -violence, and because that link is not supplied in the -mere declaration of war or in the mere flight to Varennes, -men commit the error of reading the spirit of the Republic -into the days of Mirabeau, or even of seeing temperate -politics in the apostolic frenzy of ’93. Some, more ignorant -or less gifted than the general reader, explain it by -postulating in the character of the French nation quaint -aberrations which may be proper to the individual, but -which never have nor can exist in any community of -human beings.</p> - -<p>Let me recapitulate and define the problem which, as -it seems to me, can be solved by making a pivot of the -anniversary of the States-General.</p> - -<p>There are, then, in the story of the Revolution these -two phases, so distinct that their recognition is the foundation -of all just views upon the period. In the first, the -leaders of the nation are bent upon practical reforms; the -monarchy is a machine to hand for their accomplishment; -the sketch of a new France is drawn, the outlines even -begin to be filled by trained and masterly hands. Phrases -will be found abundantly in those thirty months, because -phrases are the christening of ideas, and no nation of -Roman training could attempt any work without clear -definitions to guide it. But these phrases, though often -abstract in the extreme, are never violent, and the oratory -itself of the National Assembly is rarely found to pass the -limits which separate the art of persuasion from the mere -practice of defiance.</p> - -<p>In the second phase, for which the name of the Convention -often stands, those subterranean fires which the -crust of tradition and the stratified rock of society had -formerly repressed break out in irresistible eruption. -The creative work of the revolutionary idea realises itself -in a casting of molten metal rather than in a forging, -and the mould it uses is designed upon a conception of -statuary rather than of architecture. The majestic idol<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span> -of the Republic, in whose worship the nation has since -discovered all its glories and all its misfortunes, is set up -by those artists of the ideal; but they forget, or perhaps -ignore, the terrible penalties that attach to superhuman -attempts, the reactions of an exclusive idealism.</p> - -<p>What made the second out of the first? What made -a France which had discussed Sieyès listen to St. Just or -even to Hébert? The answer to this question is to be -discovered in noting the fatal seeds that were sown in -this summer of 1790, and which in two years bore the -fruit of civil war and invasion.</p> - -<p>In the first place, that summer creates, as we have -seen, a discontented Paris—a capital whose vast majority -it refuses to train in the art of self-government, and -whose general voice it refuses to hear.</p> - -<p>In the second place, it is the moment when the discontent -in the army comes to a head. The open threat -of military reaction on the side of a number of the -officers, their intense animosity against the decrees abolishing -titles, their growing disgust at the privileges -accorded to the private soldiers—all these come face to -face with non-commissioned officers and privates who are -full of the new liberties. These lower ranks contained -the ambitious men whose ability, the honest and loyal -men whose earnestness, were to carry French arms to the -successes of the Revolutionary wars.</p> - -<p>In the third place, it is the consummation of the -blunder that attempted to create an established National -Church in France. Before this last misfortune a hundred -other details of these months that were so many mothers -of discord become insignificant. Civil war first muttering -in the South, counter-revolution drilling in Savoy, the -clerical petition of Nîmes, the question of the Alsatian -estates, the Parisian journals postulating extreme democracy, -the Jacobins appearing as an organised and propagandist -body, the prophetic cry of Lameth—all these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span> -things were but incidents that would have been forgotten -but for the major cause of tumult, which is to be discovered -in the civil constitution of the clergy.</p> - -<p>Of course, the kings would have attacked, but they -were divided, and had not even a common motive. Of -course, also, freedom, in whatever form it came, would -have worked in the moribund body of Europe like a -drug, and till its effect was produced would have been -thought a poison. But against the hatred of every -oppressor would have been opposed a disciplined and a -united people, sober by instinct, traditionally slow in the -formation of judgments, traditionally tenacious of an -opinion when once it had been acquired. It would -have been sufficient glory for the French people to have -broken the insolence of the aggressors, to have had upon -their lists the names of Marceau and of Hoche.</p> - -<p>But with the false step that produced civil war, that -made of the ardent and liberal West a sudden opponent, -that in its final effect raised Lyons and alienated half the -southern towns, that lost Toulon, that put the extreme -of fanaticism in the wisest and most loyal minds—such a -generous and easy war was doomed, and the Revolution -was destined to a more tragic and to a nobler history. -God, who permitted this proud folly to proceed from a -pedantic aristocracy, foresaw things necessary to mankind. -In the despair of the philosophers there will arise -on either side of a great battle the enthusiasms which, -from whencever they blow, are the fresh winds of the soul. -Here are coming the heroes and the epic songs for which -humanity was sick, and the scenes of one generation of -men shall give us in Europe our creeds for centuries. -You shall hear the “Chant du Départ” like a great hymn -in the army of the Sambre et Meuse, and the cheers of -men going down on the <i>Vengeur</i>; the voice of a young -man calling the grenadiers at Lodi and Arcola; the noise -of the guard swinging up the frozen hill at Austerlitz.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span> -Already the forests below the Pyrenees are full of the -Spanish guerillas, and after how many hundred years -the love of the tribe has reappeared again above the conventions -that covered it. There are the three colours -standing against the trees in the North and the South; -and the delicate womanly face of Nelson is looking over -the bulwarks of the <i>Victory</i>, with the slow white clouds -and the light wind of an October day above him, and -before him the enemy’s sails in the sunlight and the black -rocks of the coast.</p> - -<p>It may be well, at the expense of some digression, to -say why the laws affecting the clergy should be treated as -being of paramount historical importance. They ruined -the position of the King; they put before a very large -portion of the nation not one, but two ideals; and what -regular formation can grow round two dissimilar nuclei? -Finally—a thing that we can now see clearly, though then -the wisest failed to grasp it—they went against the grain -of the nation.</p> - -<p>It is a common accusation that the Revolution committed -the capital sin of being unhistorical. Taine’s -work is a long anathema pronounced against men who -dared to deny the dogmas of evolution before those -dogmas were formulated. Such a criticism is erroneous -and vain; in the mouths of many it is hypocritical. The -great bulk of what the Revolution did was set directly -with the current of time. For example: The re-unison -of Gaul had been coming of itself for a thousand years—the -Revolution achieved it; the peasant was virtually -master of his land—it made him so in law and fact; -Europe had been trained for centuries in the Roman law—it -was precisely the Roman law that triumphed in the -great reform, and most of its results, all of its phraseology, -is drawn from the civil code. But in this one feature of -the constitution of the clergy it sinned against the nature -of France. Of necessity the Parliament was formed of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span> -educated men, steeped in the philosophy of the time, and -of necessity it worked under the eyes of a great city -population. In other words, the statesmen who bungled in -this matter and the artisans who formed their immediate -surroundings were drawn from the two classes which had -most suffered from the faults of the hierarchy in France.</p> - -<p>Mirabeau, for example, has passed his life in the -rank where rich abbés made excellent blasphemy; the -artisan of Paris has passed his life unprotected and -unsolicited by the priests, whose chief duty is the maintenance -of human dignity in the poor. Add to this the -Jansenist legend of which Camus was so forcible a relic, -and the Anglo-mania which drew the best intellects into -the worst experiments, and the curious project is inevitable.</p> - -<p>In these first essays of European democracy there -was, as all the world knows, a passion for election. In -vain had Rousseau pointed out the fundamental fallacy -of representation in any scheme of self-government. The -example of America was before them; the vicious temptation -of the obvious misled them; and until the hard -lessons of the war had taught them the truth, representation -for its own sake, like a kind of game, seems to -have been an obsession of the upper class in France. -They admitted it into the organisation of the Church.</p> - -<p>Now let us look in its detail at this attempt to make -of the Catholic Church in the eighteenth century a -mixture of the administration of Constantine, of the -presbyteries of first centuries, and of the “branch of the -civil service” which has suited so well a civilisation so -different from that of France.</p> - -<p>The great feature of this reform was the attempt to -subject the whole clerical organisation to the State. I -do not mean, of course, the establishment of dogmas by -civil discussion, nor the interference with internal discipline; -but the hierarchy was to be elected, from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> -parish priest to the bishop; the new dioceses were to -correspond to the new Departments, and, most important -of all, their confirmation was not to be demanded from -the Pope, but “letters of communion” were to be sent to -the Head of the Church, giving him notice of the election.</p> - -<p>This scheme passed the House on July 12, 1790, two -days before the great feast of the federation. A time -whose intellect was alien to the Church, a class whose -habits were un-Catholic, had attempted a reformation. -Why was the attempt a blunder? Simply because it -was unnecessary. There were certain ideas upon which -the reconstruction of France was proceeding; they have -been constantly alluded to in this book; they are what -the French call “the principles of ’89.” Did they necessarily -affect the Church? Yes; but logically carried out -they would have affected the Church in a purely negative -way. It was an obvious part of the new era to deny -the <i>imperium in imperio</i>. The Revolution would have -stultified itself had it left untouched the disabilities of -Protestants and of Jews, had it continued to support -the internal discipline of the Church by the civil power. -It was logical when it said to the religious orders: “You -are private societies; we will not compel your members -to remain, neither will we compel them to leave their -convents.” (In the decree of February 13, 1790.) It -would have been logical had it said to the Church: “It -may be that you are the life of society; it may be that -your effect is evil; we leave you free to prove your -quality, for freedom of action and competition is our -cardinal principle.” But instead of leaving the Church -free they amused themselves by building up a fantastic -and mechanical structure, and then found that they were -compelling religion to enter a prison. Nothing could be -conceived more useless or more dangerous.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, if this scheme as a whole was -futile, there were some details that were necessary results<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> -of what the clergy themselves had done, and some which, -if not strictly necessary, have at least survived the Revolution, -and are vigorous institutions to-day. It might have -been possible for Rome to seize on these as a basis of -compromise, and it is conceivable, though hardly probable, -that the final scheme might have left the Church -a neutral in the coming wars. But if the councils of the -Holy See were ill-advised, the Parliament was still less -judicious; its extreme sensitiveness to interference from -abroad was coupled with the extreme pedantry of a -Lanjuinais, and the scheme in its entirety was forced -upon Louis. He, almost the only pious man in a court -which had so neglected religion as to hate the people, -wrote in despair to the Pope; but before the answer -came he had signed the law, and in that moment signed -the warrant for his own death and that of thousands of -other loyal and patriotic men.</p> - -<p>While these future divisions were preparing, during -the rest of the year 1790 Danton’s position becomes more -marked. We find a little less about him in the official -records, for the simple reason that he has ceased to be a -member of an official body, or rather (since the first Commune -was not actually dissolved till September) he remains -the less noticeable from the fact that the policy which -he represented has been defeated; but his personality is -making more impression upon Paris and upon his enemies. -We shall find him using for the first time moderation, and -for the first time meeting with systematic calumny. He -acquires, though he is not yet of any especial prominence, -the mark of future success, for he is beginning to be singled -out as a special object of attack; and throughout the summer -and autumn he practises more and more that habit -of steering his course which up to the day of his death so -marks him from the extremists.</p> - -<p>The failure of his policy, the check which had been -given to the Cordeliers, and the uselessness of their protests<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span> -on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July, had a marked effect -upon the position of Danton even in his own district. He -had been president when they were issued, and his friend -D’Eglantine had been secretary. One may say that the -policy of resistance was Danton’s, and that but for his -leadership it would have been unheard. Hence, when it -has notoriously failed, that great mass of men who (when -there is no party system) follow the event, lost their faith -in him.</p> - -<p>Bailly is not only elected by an enormous majority -in all Paris<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> on the 2nd of August, but even Danton’s own -district, now become the Section of the Théâtre Français, -abandoned his policy for the moment. In a poll of 580, -478 votes were given for Bailly.</p> - -<p>In this moment of reverse he might with great ease -have thrown himself upon all the forces that were for the -moment irregular. The Federation of July had brought -to Paris a crowd of deputies from the Departments, and to -these provincials the good-humour and the comradeship -of this Champenois had something attractive about it. In -a Paris which bewildered them they found in him something -that they could understand. In a meeting held by -a section of them in the Bois de Boulogne it is Danton -who is the leading figure. When the deputies of Marseilles -ask for Chenier’s “Charles IX.,” it is Danton who gets it -played for them at the Théâtre Français in spite of the -opposition of the Court; and again it is Danton who is -singled out during an <i>entr’acte</i> for personal attack by the -loyalists, who had come to hiss the play.<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p> - -<p>The unrepresented still followed him, and he still -inspired a vague fear in the minds of men like Lafayette. -Innocent of any violence, he stood (to those who saw him -from a great distance) for insurrection. He was remembered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> -as the defender of Marat, and Marat in turn annoyed him -by repeated mention and praise in his ridiculous journal. -Note also that the time was one in which the two camps -were separating, though slowly, and the rôle of a demagogue -would have been as tempting to a foolish man on -the Radical, as the rôle of true knight was to so many -foolish men on the Conservative side. Each part was -easy to play, and each was futile.</p> - -<p>Danton refused such a temptation. He, almost alone -at that moment (with the exception, in a much higher -sphere, of Mirabeau), was capable of being taught by -defeat. He desired a solid foundation for action. Here -were certain existing things: the club of the Cordeliers, -which had for a while failed him; the Friends of the Constitution, -which were a growing power; the limited suffrage -of Paris, which he regretted, but which was the only -legal force he could appeal to; the new municipal constitution, -which he had bitterly opposed, but which was -an accomplished fact. Now it is to all these realities that -he turns his mind. He will re-capture his place in the -Section, and make of the quarter of the Odéon a new -République des Cordeliers. He will re-establish his position -with Paris. He will attempt to enter, and perhaps -later to control, this new municipality. It was for such -an attitude that St. Just reproached him so bitterly in the -act of accusation of April 1794, while at the moment he -was adopting that attitude he was the mark of the most -violent diatribe from the Conservatives. Nothing defines -Danton at this moment so clearly as the fact that he -alone of the popular party knew how to be practical and -to make enemies.</p> - -<p>The month of August may be taken as the time when -Danton had to be most careful if he desired to preserve -his place and to avoid a fall into violence and unreason. -It was the 2nd of that month (as we have said) that -saw Bailly’s election, the 5th that gave Danton a personal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span> -shock, for on that date he received, for an office which -he really coveted and for which he was a candidate, but -193 votes out of over 3000 present.</p> - -<p>From that moment he devotes all his energy to reconstruction. -The first evidence of his new attitude appears -with the early days of September. Already the old meeting -of the Cordeliers had been changed into the club, and -already his influence was gaining ground again in the -debates and in the local battalion of the National Guard, -when the news of Nancy came to Paris.</p> - -<p>A conflict between the National Guard and the people, -an example of that with which Lafayette continually -menaced Paris—the conflict of the armed bourgeoisie and -the artisans, or rather of the militia used as a professional -army against the people—this had happened at last. It -was an occasion for raving. Marat raved loudly, and the -royalists gave vent to not a little complacent raving on -their side. In the great question whether the army was -to be democratic or not, whether reaction was to possess -its old disciplined arm, it would seem that reaction had -won, and France had seen a little rehearsal of what in ten -months was to produce the 17th of July.</p> - -<p>In such conditions the attitude of the Cordeliers was -of real importance. During all Lafayette’s attempt to -centralise the militia of Paris this battalion had remained -independent; its attitude during the days of October, its -defence of Marat in January, had proved this. The crisis -appeared to demand from this revolutionary body a strong -protest against the use of the militia as an army to be -aimed against the people. Such a protest might have been -the cause of an outbreak in Paris. Under these circumstances -Danton—by what arguments we cannot tell (for -the whole affair is only known to us by a few lines of -Desmoulins)—obtained from his battalion a carefully-worded -pronouncement. “For all the high opinion we -have of the National Guards who took part in the affair<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> -of Nancy, we can express no other sentiment than regret -for what has happened.”<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> It was moderate to the degree -of the common-place, but it saved Danton from the abyss -and from the street.</p> - -<p>There followed another check in which he showed -once more his power of self-control. The “Notables”—corresponding -something to the aldermen of our new -municipal scheme in England—were to be elected for -Paris a little after the elections for the mayor and for the -governor of the Commune. Each Section was to elect -three, and Danton had so far regained his influence at -home as to be elected for the Théâtre Français.</p> - -<p>Unfortunately the new constitution of Paris had been -provided with one of those checks whose main object it -is to interfere with direct representation. The choice of -each Section was submitted to the censure or the approval -of all the others. It is by the judgment which they -pass that we can best judge the suspicion in which he -was held by the great bulk of his equals. A regular -campaign was led against him. The affair of Marat was -dragged up, especially the warrant for Danton’s arrest -which the Châtelet had issued six months before. That -very favourite device in electioneering, the doubt as to -real candidature, was used. The voter, not over-well -informed in a detail of law (especially at a time when all -law was being re-modelled), was told that the warrant -made Danton’s candidature illegal. They said he was -sold to Orleans, because he had haunted the Palais -Royal and because he hated Lafayette. The character -of demagogue—the one thing he desired to avoid—was -pinned to his coat, and alone of all the Notables he was -rejected by forty-three Sections (five only voting for him) -in the week between the 9th and the 16th of September.<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p> - -<p>In these five were the Postes, Invalides, Luxembourg. -It was not the purely popular quarters that supported -Danton, but rather the University and the lawyers.</p> - -<p>He took his defeat as a signal for still greater reserve, -letting his name take perspective, and refusing by any -act or phrase to obscure his reputation with new issues. -The tactics succeeded. When, in October, a public orator -was needed, they remembered him, and he presents the -deputation of the 10th of November. The circumstances -were as follows:—</p> - -<p>The ministry which surrounded the King was frankly -reactionary. I do not mean that it was opposed to the -constitution of the moment. Perhaps the majority (and -the less important) of its members would have been loath -to bring back anything approaching the old regime. But -there were in the Revolution not only the facts but the -tendencies, and in a period when every day brought its -change, the tendencies were watched with an extreme -care. France may have thought, seeing the federation -on the Champ de Mars and the altar where Talleyrand -had said mass, that the Revolution was at an end and -the new state of affairs established in peace, but those -in the capital knew better; and the men immediately -surrounding the King, who saw the necessary consequences -of his signing the civic constitution, and the growing -breach between himself and the assembly—these men -were on the King’s side. The affair at Nancy, which had -aroused so many passions, was the thing which finally -roused Parisian opinion; and at the very moment when -the King is secretly planning the flight to Montmédy—that -flight which six months later failed—Paris is for -the first time claiming to govern the councils of the -kingdom.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span></p> - -<p>It was the Sections that began the movement, those -Sections whose action was to have been so restricted, and -which, upon the contrary, were becoming the permanent -organs of expression in the capital.</p> - -<p>The Section Mauconseil on the 22nd of October sent -in a petition for the dismissal of the cabinet and appealed -to the National Assembly. The Section of the National -Library followed suit three days later, and sent its petition -not only to the Assembly but to the King. It must be -remembered that the legend of a good king deceived by -his advisers held at the time. Indeed, it survived the -flight to Varennes; it partly survived the 10th of August, -and only the research of recent times has proved clearly -the continual intrigue of which the King was the head.</p> - -<p>On the 27th Mauconseil came forward again with a -petition to the mayor, Bailly, to call the general council -of the Commune and consider the complaints. Fourteen -other Sections backed this petition. Bailly hesitated, and -while he temporised, all the forty-eight Sections named -commissioners and sent them to an informal gathering -at the Archbishopric.<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p> - -<p>Danton was a member of this big committee and was -made secretary. He drew up an address; the mayor was -twice summoned to call the general council of the Commune. -Hesitating and afraid, Bailly finally did so, and -after a violent debate the resolution passed. Bailly was -sent by the town to “present the Commune at the bar -of the Assembly and demand the recall” of the Ministers -of Justice, War, and the Interior—De Cicé, La Tour du -Pin, and St. Priest.</p> - -<p>Danton was taken out of the informal body to which -he had acted as secretary, and asked to be the orator<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span> -of the legal Commune. There followed on the 10th of -November a very curious scene.</p> - -<p>Bailly pitifully apologising with his eyes brought in -the representative body of Paris. It was present for the -first time in the National Parliament, and before three -years were over Paris was to be the mistress of the Parliament. -At present they were out of place; their demand -frightened them. It needed Danton’s voice to reassure -them and to bring the opposing forces to a battle.</p> - -<p>His voice, big, rough, and deep, perhaps with a -slight provincial accent, helped to strengthen the false -idea that the gentlemen of the Parliament had formed. -This Danton, of whom they heard so much, had appeared -suddenly out of his right place—for he had no official -position—and the Right was furious.</p> - -<p>Yet Danton’s harangue was moderate and sensible. -There is, indeed, one passage on the position of Paris -in France which is interesting because it is original, but -the bulk of the speech is a string of plain arguments. -This passage is as follows:—</p> - -<p>“That Commune, composed of citizens who belong in a -fashion to the eighty-three Departments—(<i>The Right</i>, No! -no!)—jealously desiring to fulfil in the name of all good -citizens the duties of a sentinel to the constitution, is -in haste to express a demand which is dear to all the -enemies of tyranny—a demand which would be heard -from all the Sections of the Empire, could they be -united with the same promptitude as the Sections of -Paris.”<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p> - -<p>For the rest, he is continually insisting upon the right -of the Parliament to govern—the right, above all, of a -representative body to dismiss a ministry. He had in -this, as in certain other matters, a very English point of -view, and certainly the arguments he used were able. -But he was interrupted continually, and we get, even in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span> -the dry account of the <i>Moniteur</i>, a good picture of what -the scene must have been like—</p> - -<p>“A dismissal which the Assembly has the right to -demand.”</p> - -<p>The Abbé Maury: “Who ever said that?” [Murmurs -and discussion followed. The Abbé was called to order, -when....]</p> - -<p>M. Cazales remarked: “It is our duty to listen, even -if they talk nonsense.”</p> - -<p>Danton began again with: “The Commune of Paris -is better able to judge the conduct of ministers than....”</p> - -<p>The Abbé Maury: “Why?” [He is again called to -order.]</p> - -<p>And so it went on. But in a duel of this kind lungs -are the weapons, and Danton had the best lungs in the -hall. He had also perhaps the soundest brain of any; -but the Abbé Maury and his friends had chosen more -rapid methods than those of arguments. The short -address ended (it did not take a quarter of an hour to -read), and the deputation left the Assembly. This last -debated and refused the decree; yet the Commune had -succeeded, for in a few days the Archbishop of Bordeaux -left the Ministry of Justice, and La Tour du Pin, “who -thought that parchment alone made nobility” (a phrase -of Danton’s which had upset the Right), left the Ministry -of War.</p> - -<p>The deputation had petitioned on Wednesday, the -10th of November. Four days later he was elected head -of the militia battalion in which he had served for a -year.<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> There is some doubt as to whether he remained -long at this post. Some antagonists talk vaguely of his -“leading his battalion” in ’92, but never as eye-witnesses.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span> -On the other hand, there is a letter in existence talking -of Danton’s resignation; but it is unsigned and undated. -Only some one has written in pencil, “Gouvion, 22nd -November.”<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p> - -<p>At any rate, the interest of the little incident lies in -the fact that it meant a meeting between Danton and -Lafayette, and, as Freron remarks in his journal, “Cela -serait curieux.”<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> Perhaps they did not meet.</p> - -<p>The campaign continually directed against Danton -was as active in this matter as in all others. It gives -one, for instance, an insight into the management and discipline -of the guards to learn that “Coutra, a corporal, -went about asking for signatures against Danton’s nomination.”<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> -He had just risen above the successes of his -enemies. November had put him on a sure footing again, -and in January he reached the place he had had so long -in view, the administration of Paris.</p> - -<p>It will be remembered that the voting was by two -degrees. The electors nominated an “electoral college,” -who elected the Commune and its officers. Already in -October Danton had been put into the electoral college -by twenty-six members chosen by his Section, but not -without violent opposition. Finally, after eight ballots, -on the 31st of January 1791, he became a member of -the administration of the town—the twenty-second on -a list of thirty-six elected. He failed, however, in his -attempt to be chosen “Procureur,” and through all the -year 1791 he keeps his place in the administration of -Paris merely as a stepping-stone. He does not speak -much in the Council. He used his partial success only -for the purpose of attaining a definite position from which -he could exercise some measure of executive control; this -position he finally attains (as we shall see) in the following<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> -December, and it is from it that he is able to direct -the movement of 1792.</p> - -<p>The year 1791 does not form a unit in the story -of the Revolution. It is cut sharply in two by the flight -of the King in June. Before that event things went with -a certain quietude. The tendency to reaction and the -tendency to extreme democracy are to be discovered, but -there can be no doubt that a kind of lassitude has taken -the public mind. After all, the benefits of the Revolution -are there. The two years of discussion, the useless acrimony -of the preceding autumn, began to weary the voters—there -is a sentiment of joviality abroad.</p> - -<p>After the flight of the King all is changed. To a -period of development there succeeds a period of violent -advance, and of retreat yet more violent; there appears -in France the first mention of the word republic, and all -the characters that hung round Lafayette come definitely -into conflict with the mass of the people. The action of -the troops on the Champ de Mars opens the first of those -impassable gulfs between the parties, and from that -moment onward there arise the hatreds that are only -satisfied by the death of political opponents.</p> - -<p>In that first period, then, which the death of Mirabeau -was to disturb, the 18th of April to endanger, and the -flight of the King to close, Danton’s rôle, like that of all -the democrats, is effaced. Why should it not be? The -violent discussions that followed the affair of Nancy led, -as it were, to a double satisfaction: the loyal party saw -that after all the Radicals were not destroying the State; -the Radicals, on the other hand, had learnt that the -loyalists could do nothing distinctly injurious to the -nation without being discovered. At least, they thought -they had learnt this truth. They did not know how for -months Mirabeau had been in the pay of the Court, and -how the executive power had concerned itself with the -King rather than with the nation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span></p> - -<p>A sign of this appeasement in the violence of the -time (a movement, by the way, which was exactly what -Danton desired) is his letter to La Rochefoucald, the -president of the Department, when the successful election, -which I have described above, was known. This letter, -one of the very few which Danton has left, is a singularly -able composition. He alludes to the mistrust which had -been felt when his name was mentioned; he does not deny -the insurrectionary character of the quarter of Paris which -he inspired. But he replies: “I will let my actions, -now that I hold public office, prove my attitude, and if -I am in a position of responsibility, it will have a special -value in showing that I was right to continually claim -the public control of administrative functions.” The -whole of the long letter<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> is very well put; it is Danton -himself that speaks, and it is hard to doubt that at this -moment he also was one of those who thought they were -touching the end of the reform, that goal which always -fled from the men who most sincerely sought it.</p> - -<p>He did not, however, come often to the Council—to -less than a quarter of its sittings, at the most; moreover, -the men who composed it still looked upon him with -suspicion; and when, on the 4th of May, the committees -were drawn up, his name was omitted. He asked on the -next day to be inscribed on the committee that contained -Sieyès, and his request was granted.</p> - -<p>The activity of Danton during these few months was -not even shown at the Cordeliers; though that club occasionally -heard him, it was at the Jacobins that he principally -spoke.</p> - -<p>This famous club, on which the root of the Revolution -so largely depends, was at this period by no means the -extreme and Robespierrian thing with which we usually -associate the name. It hardly even called itself “the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -Jacobins” yet, but clung rather to its original name of -“Friends of the Constitution.” Its origin dated from the -little gathering of Breton deputies who were in the habit, -while the Assembly was still at Versailles, of meeting -together to discuss a common plan of action. When -the Assembly came to Paris, this society, in which by -that time a very large number of deputies had enrolled -themselves, took up their place in the hall of the -Dominicans or “Jacobins,” just off the Rue St. Honoré. -(Its site is just to the east of the square of Vendôme to-day.) -It was a union of all those who desired reform, -and in the first part of the year 1790 it had been -remarkable for giving a common ground where the -moderate and extremist, all who desired reform, could -meet. The Duc de Broglie figures among its presidents. -It was the Royalists, the extreme Court party, that dubbed -these “Friends of the Constitution” “Jacobins,” and it -was not till somewhat later that they themselves adopted -and gloried in the nickname. It was composed not only -of deputies, but of all the best-born and best-bred of the -Parisian reformers, drawn almost entirely from the noble -or professional classes, and holding dignified sessions, to -which the public were not admitted.</p> - -<p>Almost at the same moment, namely, towards the -autumn and winter of 1790, two features appeared in it. -First, the Moderates begin to leave it, and the schism -which finally produced the “Feuillants” is formed; -secondly, there come in from all over France demands -from the local popular societies to be affiliated to the -great club in Paris. These demands were granted. -There arises a kind of “Jacobin order,” which penetrates -even to the little country towns, everywhere preaches -the same doctrine, everywhere makes it its business to -keep a watch against reaction. These local clubs depended -with a kind of superstition upon the decrees of -what, without too violent a metaphor, we may call<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span> -the “Mother House” in Paris; it was this organisation -that aroused the apathy of provincial France and trained -the new voters in political discussion, and it was this also -that was later captured by Robespierre, who, like a kind -of high priest, directed a disciplined body wherever the -affiliated societies existed.</p> - -<p>Danton first joined the society at the very moment -when this double change was in progress, in September -1790. His energies, which were employed in the club to -arrange the difficulty with the Moderates (if that were -possible), were also used (to quote a well-known phrase) -in “letting France hear Paris.” The Cordeliers had been -essentially Parisian; steeped in that feeling, Danton spoke -from the Rue St. Honoré to the whole nation.</p> - -<p>It is with the end of March that he begins to be heard, -in a speech attacking Collot d’Herbois; for that unpleasant -fellow was then a Moderate. It is apropos of -that speech that the “Sabbots Jacobites” give us the -satirical rhyme on Danton, which recalls his face when he -spoke, looking all the uglier for the energy which he put -into his words:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">“Monsieur Danton,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quittez cet air farouche,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Monsieur Danton,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On vous prendrez pour un démon.”<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>On the 3rd of April it was known in Paris that -Mirabeau was dead. He had been killed with the overwork -of attempting to save the King from himself. A -masterly intrigue, a double dealing which was hidden -for a generation, had exhausted him, and in the terrible -strain of balancing such opposite interests as those of -France, which he adored, and Louis, whom he served, -his two years of struggle suddenly fell upon him and -crushed him. He smiled at the sun and called it God’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span> -cousin, boasted like a genius, gave a despairing phrase to -the monarchy, demanded sleep, and died.</p> - -<p>Danton had always, from a long way off, understood -his brother in silk and with the sword. On this day -he passionately deplored the loss. Like all Paris, the -Jacobins forgot Mirabeau’s treason, and remembered his -services when the news of his sudden death fell upon -them. From their tribune Danton spoke in terms in which -he almost alone foretold the coming reaction, and he was -right. The King, hardly restrained from folly by the -compromise of the great statesman, plunged into it when -his support was withdrawn. He had been half Mirabeau’s -man, now he was all Antoinette’s.</p> - -<p>It was the fatal question of religion that precipitated -the crisis. Louis could not honestly receive the Easter -communion from a constitutional priest. On the other -hand, he might have received it quietly in his household. -He chose to make it a public ceremony, and to go in -state to St. Cloud for his Easter duties. It was upon -April 18th, a day or two more than a fortnight after -Mirabeau’s death, that he would have set out. As one -might have expected, the streets filled at once. The -many battalions of the National Guard who were on the -democratic side helped the people to stop the carriage; -in their eyes, as in that of the populace, the King’s journey -to St. Cloud was only part of the scheme to leave Paris -to raise an army against the Assembly.<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p> - -<p>On the other hand, those of the National Guard who -obeyed Lafayette<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> could not, by that very fact, move -until Lafayette ordered them. Thus the carriage was -held for hours, until at last, in despair, the King went -back to the Tuilleries.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, what had occurred at the Hotel de Ville?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> -The testimony is contradictory and the whole story -confused, but the truth seems to have been something -of this kind. Lafayette certainly called on the administration -of the Department and asked for martial law. Bailly -as certainly was willing to grant it. Danton was called from -his rank and came to oppose it; but did he end the -matter by his speech? Camille Desmoulins<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> says so, -and draws a fine picture of Danton carrying the administration -with him, as he carried the club or the street. -But Desmoulins is often inaccurate, and here his account -is improbable. Danton’s own note of the circumstance -(which he thought worthy of being pinned to his family -papers) runs: “I was present at the Department when -MM. the commandant and the mayor demanded martial -law.” Nothing more.</p> - -<p>Desmoulins makes another mistake when he attributes -to Danton the letter which was written to the King, -and which was sent on the night of the 18th; it reproached -him for his action, sharply criticised his -rejection of constitutional priests. It was not Danton, -it was Talleyrand (a member also of the Department) -who wrote this letter.</p> - -<p>It is probable that Danton and Talleyrand knew each -other. Talleyrand was a good judge of men, and would -have many strings to his bow—we know that he -depended upon Danton’s kindness at a critical moment -in 1792—but the style of the letter is not Danton’s, and -the document as we find it in Schmidt is definitely -ascribed to Talleyrand.</p> - -<p>This is all we can gather as to his place in the -popular uprising to prevent the King’s leaving Paris. A -placard of some violence issued from the Cordeliers, saying -that he had “forbidden Lafayette to fire on the people;” -but Danton disowned it in a meeting of the Department.</p> - -<p>This much alone is certain, that the 18th of April<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> -had finally put Danton and Lafayette face to face, and -that in the common knowledge of Paris they would be -the heads of opposing forces in the next crisis. But their -rôles turned out to be the very opposite of what men -would have predicted. It was Lafayette who shot and -blustered, and had his brief moment of power; it was -Danton who made a flank movement and achieved a -final victory. For the next crisis was the flight of -the King.</p> - -<p>It would be irrelevant to give the story of this flight -in the life of Danton. Our business is to understand -Danton by following the exact course of his actions -during June and July, and by describing exactly the -nature of the movement in which his attitude took the -form which we are investigating.</p> - -<p>Two things command the attention when we study -the France of 1791. France was monarchic and France -was afraid. History knows what was to follow; the men -of the time did not. There lay in their minds the -centuries of history that had been; their future was to -them out of conception, and as unreal as our future is -to us. You may notice from the very first moment of -the true Revolution a passion for the King. For most -he is a father, but for all a necessary man. They took -him back to Paris; they forced him to declarations of -loyalty, and then, with the folly of desire, accepted as -real an emotion which they had actually dictated. Such -was the movement of the 4th of February 1790; such -the sentiment of the Federation in July of that year. -And the people understood his reluctance in taking communion -from a nonjuring priest, however much the upper -class might be astonished. What no one understood -was that only Mirabeau stood between the Crown and -its vilest temptations; only his balance of genius, his -great and admirable fault of compromise, prevented Louis -from yielding to his least kingly part, and while he lived<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span> -the king of the French preferred the nation to his own -person. But Mirabeau was dead. They did well to -mourn him, those who had smelt out his treason and -guessed the weakness of the artist in him; they did well -to forgive him; his head misunderstood France, but his -broad French shoulders had supported her. The 18th -of April was a direct consequence of his death; the -21st of June was a fall through a broken bridge: Louis -had yielded to himself.</p> - -<p>Well, France was also afraid. This democracy (as it -had come to be), an experiment based upon a vision, -knew how perilous was the path between the old and -the new ideals. She feared the divine sunstroke that -threatens the road to Damascus. In that passage, which -was bounded on either side by an abyss, her feet went -slowly, one before the other, and she looked backward -continually. In the twisting tides at night her one -anchor to the old time was the monarchy. Thus when -Louis fled the feeling was of a prop broken. France -only cried out for one thing—“Bring the King back.” -Tie up the beam—a makeshift—anything rather than a -new foundation.</p> - -<p>Here is the attitude of Danton in this crisis. France -is not republican; his friends in Paris are. He inclines -to France. It was Danton more than any other one -man who finally prepared the Republic, yet the Republic -was never with him an idea. The consequences of the -Republic were his goal; as for the systems, systems were -not part of his mind. At the close of this chapter we -shall see him overthrowing the Crown; he did it because -he thought it the one act that could save France; but -the Crown as an idea he never hated: he lived in existing -things.</p> - -<p>These were the reasons that made him hesitate at -this date. A man understanding Europe, he saw that -the governments were not ready to move; a man understanding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> -his own country, he saw that it would have the -King in his place again; a man, on the other hand, who -had met and appreciated the idealists, he saw that the -Republic already existed in the mind; and a man who -understood the character of his fellows better than did -any contemporary, he saw that the men who were bound -to lead were inclined to a declaration against the King. -He suffered more than his action should have warranted, -and he goes through a sharp few days of danger on -account of association and of friends in spite of all his -caution.</p> - -<p>When Louis was known to have fled, and when Paris, -vigilant beyond the provinces, and deceived by the declaration -of April, had undergone its first wave of passion, -the word Republic began to be spoken out loud. The -theorists found themselves for once in accordance with -public humour; and against the keenness, if not the -numbers, of those who petitioned for the deposition of -the King on his return, there stood two barriers—the -Assembly and the moderate fortunes of the capital. -Danton lived with the former, thought with the latter, -and was all but silent.</p> - -<p>The bust of Louis XIV. before the Hotel de Ville was -broken; men climbed on ladders to chisel off the lilies -from the palaces, and there soon appears a new portent: -some one cries out, “Only a Republic can defend itself at -the last.”</p> - -<p>To this somewhat confused cry for a Republic came -the very sharp announcement from no less a person than -Condorcet. Condorcet, the moderate and illumined, was -also half a visionary, and there had always floated in his -mind the system of contract by which England had -excused the movement of 1688, but which France took -seriously. England had for him the attraction which it -had for all the professionals of that date—an attraction -which lasted till the disasters of 1870, and which you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> -may yet discover here and there among those who are -the heirs of Lamartine. England had given them Locke, -and Condorcet’s reasoning on the King’s flight<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> reads like -a passage from the Bill of Rights. Yet he was a good -and sincere man, and died through simplicity of heart.</p> - -<p>On the 4th of July, ten days or more after the King -had been brought back to Paris,<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> it was Condorcet who -made the demand for the Republic; in a speech at -Fauchet’s club he asked for a National Convention to -settle the whole matter. He wrote so in the papers<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> -all through July, and even after the affair of the Champ -de Mars he continued his agitation.</p> - -<p>Now how do we know Danton’s attitude? The -Cordeliers presented a petition of June 21st itself and -demanded the Republic. It is largely from this document -that the error has arisen. But Danton was not then -with the Cordeliers; his name does not appear. It is at -the Jacobins that he is heard, and the Jacobins took up -a distinctly monarchical position. They all rose in a -body on the 22nd and passed a unanimous vote in favour -of the constitution and the King.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> Danton was present -when this vote was passed, and he had just heard the -hissing of the Cordeliers’ petition; he was silent. Thomas -Payne is demanding the Republic in the <i>Moniteur</i>; -Sieyès replies for the monarchy;<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>, even Robespierre -tardily speaks in favour of ideas and against change of -etiquette; Marat shouts for a dictator;<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> Danton, almost -alone, refuses to be certain. On June 23rd he spoke at -the Jacobins in favour of a council to be elected by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> -Departments immediately, but he proposed nothing as to -its actions; it was merely his permanent idea of a central, -strong power.</p> - -<p>Lafayette amused himself by arresting people who -repeated this in the street, but Lafayette hated Danton -blindly. Nothing republican can be made of a speech -which his enemies said was “a loophole for Orleans.”</p> - -<p>Danton attacked Lafayette: he saw persons more -clearly than ideas, and Lafayette was Danton’s nightmare. -He was that being which of all on earth Danton -thought most dangerous, the epitome of all the faults -which he attacked to the day of his death; in Louis, in -Robespierre, “The weak man in power.” He drove him -out of the Jacobins on the 21st, and later in the day -gave the cry against his enemy in the street, which the -fears of the Assembly so much exaggerated.</p> - -<p>For the events of the twenty-four hours had all -added to his natural opposition to Lafayette, and as we -relate them from Danton’s standpoint, we shall see this -much of truth in the idea that he led the movement, -namely, that the three days of the King’s flight and -recapture, while they put Lafayette into a position of -great power, made also Danton his antagonist, the leader -of the protest against the general’s methods. It is the -more worthy of remark that in such conditions the word -“Republic” never crossed his lips.</p> - -<p>At eleven o’clock at night on the Monday of the -King’s flight, Danton and Desmoulins were coming home -alone from the Jacobins. Each remarked to the other -the emptiness of the streets and the lack of patrols, and -at that moment, when the evasion was little suspected, -each was in a vague doubt that Lafayette had some -reason for concentrating the National Guard.<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> Desmoulins -will even have it that he saw him enter the palace, as -the two friends passed the Tuilleries.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span></p> - -<p>The next morning at the Cordeliers Danton cried out -against Lafayette for a moment, and then at the Jacobins -he made the speech that has been mentioned above. Continually -he attacks the man who was preparing a counter-revolution, -but I do not believe he would have attached -the least importance at that moment to a change in -the etiquette of government. Thus, as the Department -was sent for by the Assembly in the afternoon, Danton -came later than his colleagues, provided himself with -a guard, and as he crossed the Tuilleries gardens he -harangued the people, but against Lafayette, not against -the King.</p> - -<p>Now, to make sure of this feature, the duel between -Lafayette and Danton, and to see that it is the principal -thing at the time, turn once more to the scene at the -Jacobins, and compare it with Lafayette’s Memoirs, and -you will find that Danton was the terror of the saviour -of two worlds, and that it was upon Lafayette that Danton -had massed his artillery.</p> - -<p>Here is Danton at the Jacobins, sitting by Desmoulin’s -side; he goes to the tribune and speaks upon the -disgrace and danger that the Moderates have brought -about. When Lafayette entered during the speech, he -turned upon him suddenly, and launched one of those -direct phrases which made him later the leader of the -Convention: “I am going to talk as though I were at -the bar of God’s justice, and I will say before you, M. -Lafayette, what I would say in the presence of Him who -reads all hearts.... How was it that you, who pretend -to know nothing of me, tried to corrupt me to your views -of treason?... How was it that you arrested those who -in last February demanded the destruction of Vincennes? -You are present; try to give a clear reason.... How -was it that the very same men were on guard when the -King tried to go to St. Cloud on the 18th of April were -on guard last night when the King fled?... I will not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> -mention the 6000 men<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> whom you have picked as a -garrison for the King; only answer clearly these three -accusations. For in their light you, who answered with -your head that the King should not fly, are either a -traitor or a fool. For either you have permitted him to -fly, or else you undertook a responsibility which you could -not fulfil: in the best case, you are not capable of commanding -the guard.... I will leave the tribune, for I -have said enough.”<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p> - -<p>This is clear enough in all conscience to show what -was Danton’s main pre-occupation in the days of June -1791. And if, upon the other hand, you will turn to -Lafayette’s Memoirs, the third volume, the 83rd and -following pages, you will find that Danton was Lafayette’s -pre-occupation, and that he makes this moment the -occasion to deliver the most definite and (luckily) the -most demonstrably false of his many accusations of venality. -He tells us that he could not reply because it -would have “cost Montmorin his life;” that Montmorin -“had the receipt for the 100,000 francs;” that Danton -had been “reimbursed to the extent of 100,000 francs -for a place worth 10,000,” and so forth. We know now -exactly the amount of compensation paid to him and his -colleagues at the court of appeal,<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> and we know that -Lafayette, writing a generation later, animated by a bitter -hatred, and remembering that somebody had paid Danton -something, and with his head full of vague rumours of -bribing, has fallen into one of those unpardonable errors -common to vain and vacillating men. But at this juncture<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> -the main point that should be seized is that Danton -was taking the opportunity of the King’s evasion to attack -Lafayette with all his might, and that a generation later -the old man chiefly remembered Danton as leading the -popular anger which the commander of the guard thought -himself bound to repress. It is this that will explain -why Danton, who so carefully avoided giving the word -for the Republican “false start,” was yet marked out, -fled, and returned to lead the opposition.</p> - -<p>The Cordeliers followed Danton’s lead. They got up -a petition,<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> signed by 30,000 in Paris, demanding that -the affair should be laid before the country, but not demanding -the abolition of the monarchy. Memdar, their -president, declared himself a monarchist. But the petition, -though read at the Assembly, was not adopted, and, -on the 9th of July, the Cordeliers presented another. -Charles de Lameth (who was president that fortnight) -refused to read it. The Assembly, in other words, was -dumb; it was determined (like its successor a year later) -to do nothing—an attitude which (for all it knew) might -be very wise, and those who were following Danton determined -upon a definite policy. On Friday the 15th, at -the Jacobins, it was determined to draw up a petition -which begged that the Assembly should <i>first</i> recognise -Louis as having abdicated by his flight, unless the nation -voted his reinstatement, and <i>secondly</i> (in case the nation -did not do so), take measures to have him constitutionally -replaced. Now the constitution was monarchist.</p> - -<p>The petition was to be taken to be read at the Champ -de Mars on the altar, and there to obtain signatures. It -was drawn up by Danton, Sergent, Lanthanas, Ducanel, -and Brissot, who wrote it out and worded most of it. -The events that follow must be noted with some care, -because on their exact sequence depends our judgment -of Lafayette’s action and of Danton’s politics.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p> - -<p>On Saturday<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> the 16th, about mid-day, a deputation -of four from the Jacobins came to the Champ de Mars. -The petition was read by a little light-haired Englishman -on one side, and by a red-haired Frenchman in a red -coat on the other; picturesque but unimportant details. -Danton leapt on to the corner of the altar, and read it -again to the thick of the crowd. The signatures were -written in great numbers, and when the completed document -was about to start for the Assembly, when the deputation -that was to take it was already formed, it was -suddenly spread abroad that the Assembly had passed a -vote exonerating Louis.</p> - -<p>The Jacobins were appealed to, and replied that under -the conditions the petition which they had drawn up -could not be presented. The Cordeliers, however, lost -their tempers, and Robert determined to draw up a new -petition. Now in this second action Danton took no -part. It was this new petition that (signed by Robert, -Peyre, Vachard, and Demoy) was drawn up hastily in the -Champ de Mars on Sunday the 17th, to this that the -6000 signatures were attached, and this which demanded -a “Convention to judge the King.” There followed the -proclamation of martial law, the appearance of Lafayette -and Bailly in the Champ de Mars with the red flag, the -conflict between the National Guard and the crowd, and -all that is called the “Massacre of the Champ de -Mars.”</p> - -<p>That petition was not signed by Danton.<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> He was -not even present,<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> as we know from his speech on his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span> -election to be “Substitut-Procureur,” and especially from -the fact that in the fortnight of terror, when the red flag -stood over the Hotel de Ville, when the democrats were -arrested or in hiding, when the door of the Cordeliers -was shut and nailed, and when the Radical newspapers -were suppressed, no warrant of arrest could be issued, -because there existed nothing definite against him. Lafayette -was determined, however, to act in a military -fashion, and on the 4th of August the arrest of Danton -was ordered, on some other plea which he alludes to in -his speech of the next January, but the exact terms of -which have not come down to us.</p> - -<p>He had left Paris at once when he saw that Lafayette -had practically absolute power for the moment. He first -went to his father-in-law’s, Charpentier, at Rosny-sur-Bois, -and then escaped to Arcis. Before the warrant was -actually made out, Lafayette had sent a man to watch -him at Arcis. He was “giving a dinner. It would need -a troop of cavalry to arrest him. Everybody was on his -side.”<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Marseilles and Bar spoke up for him. But the -attack only grew stronger. On the 31st of July he -moved again to Troyes, to the house of Millaud, of his -father’s profession, and a friend, because he feared a new -arrival from Paris who seemed a spy.<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> He was there -when the warrant was sent down to the “procureur” for -the arrest; the official in question was Beugnot, and -Beugnot told Danton jocularly that he would not arrest -him. He did not think this a sufficient guarantee, and -as his stepfather, Recordain, was off to England to buy -some machinery for a cotton-mill that he thought of -starting, Danton went to England with him, and remained -in this country for a month, staying in the house -of his stepfather’s sons, who were established in London. -It was in the last days of July or the first days in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span> -August<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> that he arrived, and he did not return to -Paris until the appointment of his friend Garran de -Coulon as President of the Court of Appeal. He appears -again at the Jacobins on the 12th of September; some -say he was in Paris on the 10th.<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p> - -<p>It would be of the utmost interest to know how he -passed those thirty or forty days. Unfortunately there is -no direct evidence as to whom he met or what negotiations -he entered into. As to his English acquaintances, -his letters from Priestley and Christie, the relations he -had with Talleyrand, and their common diplomacy for the -English alliance—all these properly belong to Danton in -power, the minister directing France after August 1792, and -it is in that place that they will be dealt with. Of historical -events in his voyage we have none, and there is -no more regrettable gap in the very disconnected series -of ascertained facts concerning him.</p> - -<p>On his return, he discovered that the Section of the -Théâtre Français had named him a member of the electoral -college which sat at the Archbishop’s palace. Many members -of this Assembly had been arrested, or had fled during -Lafayette’s violent efforts of reaction in August and September. -The new Parliament which had just met did not -decree an amnesty (as it was asked to do on the 5th of -September), but it was of course far more democratic than -the old Assembly, and it was understood to be tacitly in -favour of the return of those whom Lafayette had driven -out. Following Danton’s example, they slowly came back; -but a curious incident shows how much of the danger -remained.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span></p> - -<p>On the 13th of September the Parliament, at the -desire of the King, voted the amnesty. While it was -actually voting, a constable called Damien got into the -gallery of the hall in which Danton and the electors were -debating, and sent a note to the president asking him to -allow the arrest. The president and the electoral college -(who did not like Danton, by the way, and who would -not give him more than forty votes when it came to electing -members for Paris) yet ordered the arrest by Damien, -and it was only when they learnt of the amnesty that, on -Danton’s own motion, he was released.</p> - -<p>It has just been said that Danton failed to be elected: -let us point out the conditions under which the Legislative -met, that short Parliament of one year which made -the war, and saw to its dismay the end of the monarchy.</p> - -<p>The Legislative was not elected in one of those moments -of decision which were the formative points of the Revolution. -It came upon a very curious juncture, and showed -in all its first acts a marked indecision.</p> - -<p>The members were chosen under the action of a -peculiar combination, or rather confusion of emotions. -The King had fled, had been recaptured. France, of many -possible evils, had chosen what she believed to be the -least when she reinstated him. “The New Pact” was -accepted even by those who had spoken of the Republic -in July. Condorcet, who had led the civic theorists -towards the Republic, leads them also now in this movement -of reconciliation. Again, these were the first elections -held since the middle class and the peasantry had -been given the suffrage over the heads of the artisans: -it was the most sober part of France that dictated the -policy of the moment. The divisions that the King’s -flight had laid bare, the sharp reaction and terror of the -Champ de Mars—all these were forgotten.</p> - -<p>Thus the Parliament will not have Garran-Coulon for -its first president, and yet on the next day passes the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span> -extreme democratic etiquette as to the reception of the -King should he visit the Assembly. Next day it repeals -this, and when the King does visit the Assembly, he is met -by an outburst of loyalty and affection.</p> - -<p>As to parties, the power lay, as it always does in a -French Assembly, with the centre—some three hundred -men, unimportant, of no fixed idea, unless indeed it were -to keep the Legislative to the work for which it had been -elected, that is, to keep it moving moderately on the lines -laid down for it by the constitution of 1791.</p> - -<p>The right, well organised, loyal and brave, was Feuillant; -that is, it was monarchic and constitutional, but -more monarchic than constitutional. It was the support -of Lafayette, and on the whole the centre would vote with -it on any important occasion.</p> - -<p>But there sat on the left a group less compact, full of -personal ambitions and personal creeds, containing almost -all the orators whose names were to make famous the -following year. It was but a group of 130 men, even if we -include all those who signed the register of the Jacobins -when the Assembly met; yet it was destined, ill-disciplined -as it was, part wild and part untrue, to lead all France. -Why? Because the King was to make impossible the -action of the Moderates, because his intrigue made Frenchmen -choose between him and France, and in the inevitable -war the men who were determined to realise the Revolution -could not but be made the leaders.</p> - -<p>As has been said above, Danton was not elected. -The electoral college, of which he was a member, chose -Moderates for the most part, such as Pastoret and De -Quincy, and the narrow suffrage represented the true drift -of Parisian feeling only in the case of a few—De Séchelles, -Brissot, Condorcet, and a handful of others. But though -Danton did not sit in the Legislative he was free for action -in two other directions, which (as it turned out) were the -commanding positions in the great changes that came with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> -the war. He was free to attain an administrative position -in the municipality of Paris, and he was free to use his -power of oratory at the Jacobins.</p> - -<p>As to the first, it came with his moderate but important -success in the municipal elections at the close of -the year. Bailly, frightened out of place, half-regretting -his action of the Champ de Mars, had resigned, and -Pétion, on November 16th, was elected in his place. -Only ten thousand voted, and he obtained 6700 votes. -On the same day the Procureur of the new Commune -was to be elected. A Procureur under the new system -was a position of the greatest importance. He was, so -to speak, the advocate of the town, its tribune in the -governing body, and with his two substitutes (who aided -and occasionally replaced him) was meant to form a kind -of small committee whose business was to watch the -interests and to define the attitude of the electorate -whenever those interests were in jeopardy or that attitude -was opposed to the policy of the elected body. -These three positions were dangerous, but would lead to -popularity, and perhaps to power, if they were directed -by a certain kind of ability. It was precisely such a -power, the quality of a tribune, that Danton knew himself -to possess.</p> - -<p>His candidature for the principal position was cordially -supported by the Cordeliers, but the Jacobins were -divided, and they hesitated. Manuel was elected, and -Danton obtained only the third place. This vote, however, -was not decisive, and there was a second ballot on -December the 2nd. In this Manuel was definitely elected.</p> - -<p>Cahier de Gerville (the second substitute) was made -Minister of the Interior, and Danton, on December 6th,<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> -was elected to his place by a majority of 500 over Collot -d’Herbois. It was from this position that he prepared -the 10th of August, and it was still as substitute that he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span> -remained side by side with the insurrectionary commune, -and lending it something of legal sanction when the -King was overthrown.</p> - -<p>Let me, before leaving this point, define exactly the -position in which his new dignity placed him. Three -men were charged with the advocacy of public opinion, -the Procureur and his two substitutes. Manuel, who was -elected to the principal position, was energetic, kindly, -and conscientious, but a man of no genius; he was good -to Madame De Staël in the days of September, as is -apparent from her rather contemptuous description of -how she appealed to him for safety; he did his very best -(with no power in his hands) to stop the massacres at that -same time. He was fond of work, and a little pompous -in his idea of office; he was, therefore, a man who would -only leave his substitutes the less important work to do, -and, from close by, would have been the dominating -member of the three. On the other hand, his lack of -decision and of initiative effaced him in moments of -danger or of new departures, and it is thus his second -substitute who seems to lead when seen from a distance, -from the point of view of the people, who only look -round when there is a noise.</p> - -<p>The first substitute was Desmousseaux. He had -not resigned, and had therefore not been re-elected. -Forming part of the old Commune, and in office since -the winter of 1790, he was a Moderate by preference and -long tradition.</p> - -<p>As for Danton himself, standing third in the group, -it was for him a position of honour and of dignity. That -part of him which was so capable of high office and so -desirous of an opportunity to act was well served by the -election. It seemed to put a term to the misconceptions -which his person, his faults, and the course of the -Revolution had created. But the great stream of events -moved him at their will. This office wherein he desired<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> -to appear settled at last, to show himself an administrator -rather than a leader of unreasoning men, was precisely -suited in case of danger to call out those other qualities -which had made him despised by many whom he himself -respected, and had aroused against him hatred—a passion -which he himself had never allowed to arise from anger.</p> - -<p>If the spirit of 1791 had been kept, and if after so -many false promises the Revolution had been really -accomplished, then the official, or, if you will, the statesman, -would have appeared in him. I can see him in the -difficulties which even a settled kingdom would have had -to meet, convincing his contemporaries as he has convinced -posterity. He was the man to impress on others the -true attitude of Europe—the only diplomat among the -patriots. His disadvantages were of the kind that are -forgotten in the constant proof of ability; and his learning, -which was exactly of the kind to be used in the new -regime (a knowledge of languages, of law, of surrounding -nations, a combination of detail and of comprehension)—this -learning would have made necessary a man so popular -with the people to be ruled, and, in the matter of the -heart, so honestly devoted to his country. Had France, -I say, by some miracle been spared her Passion, and had -she been permitted to be happier and to do less for the -world, then as the new regime settled into the lower -reaches of quiet and content, I believe Danton would -have remained for us a name, perhaps less great, but -certainly among the first. England has been permitted. -She has been given good fortune, and no fate has asked -her to save civilisation with her blood, and therefore in -England we are accustomed to such careers; men whose -origin, whose exterior, and whose faults might have exiled -them, have yet been seen to rise from the municipal -to the imperial office, because they were possessed of -supreme abilities, and because they devoted those abilities -to the service of England. They have died in honour.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span></p> - -<p>I will not discuss what it was that made the war. -There are no causes. Burke raved like a madman, but -then so did Marat. The King was alienated by the -clerical laws, but nothing is an excuse for treason. Pilnitz -was an affront and even a menace, but it was not a -declaration of war. There were peoples behind the kings, -as Mayence tragically proved; and if France fought intolerable -evils, she also seemed the iconoclast when she put -out the altar-lamp, which she is lighting again with her -own hand. There are no causes. Only, if you will look -and see how Europe has lived, and how our great things -have been done, you will find nothing but armies upon -armies marching past, and our history is an epic whose -beginning is lost, whose books are Roncesvalles and -Cortenuova and Waterloo, and whose end is never reached. -The war came, and with it a definite necessity to choose -between France and the Crown. In that crisis Danton is -thrown back upon insurrection. He, who desired men to -forget the days of October, was compelled to the 10th -of August because he was aroused. Even the massacres -were attached to his name, and there still trails after him -an easy flow of accusation, only a little less sordid or less -terrible.</p> - -<p>To follow his action during the first months of 1772, -to hear his speeches on the war, and to note his policy, -we must leave him at his post in the Commune (where -we shall find him again when Paris rises in the summer), -and see how he stands for the Mountain at the Jacobins.</p> - -<p>This club was now definitely the organ of the left. It -was after Danton had been elected, but before he was definitely -installed in office,<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> on the 14th of December, a week -after the former and five weeks before the latter event, that -the debate on the war was begun at the Jacobins,—a debate -of the first importance, because it opened the breach between -the Girondins and the Mountain, between the orators who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> -insisted on going to meet Europe, and even on a war of -propaganda, and the reformers who wished Europe to -take the first step, who dreaded war or who thought a -war of aggression immoral. At the head of these last -was Robespierre. But it is not too much to say that in -the first months of the year Danton was more important -at the Jacobins than Robespierre. What was his attitude? -It was part of the general policy upon which he had -determined: he compromised. In his first motion on the -14th of December, he attacked the idea of declaring war. -On the 16th he still attacked it, but in other terms. “I -know it must come. If any one were to ask me, ‘Are -we to have war?’ I would reply (not in argument, but -as a matter of fact), ‘We shall hear the bugles,’” But -the whole speech is taken up with an argument upon its -dangers, and especially upon “those who desire war in -the hope of reaction, who talk of giving us a constitution -like that of England, in the hope of giving us, later, one -like that of Turkey.”</p> - -<p>In March and April, the months when the war was -preparing and was declared, he was silent. And we can -understand his silence when we turn to his speech in the -Commune when he was given office. He alludes to the -false character given him; he speaks of the reputation -which his past actions in Paris had given; he says things -that indicate a determination to play the part of a -Moderate, and to see whether in his case, as in that of so -many others, there would not be permanence in the compromise -of the last six months. But there rankled in his -mind the insults of the men with whom he sat, Condorcet’s -disavowal in his paper of so much as knowing -Danton, and he made a peroration which at the time -offended, but which possesses for us a certain pathos. -“Nature gave me a strong frame, and she put into my face -the violence of liberty. I have not sprung from a family -which was weakened by the protection of the old privileges;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> -my existence has been all my own; I know that I have -kept and shown my vigour, but in my profession and in -my private life I have controlled it. If I was carried -away by enthusiasm in the first days of our regeneration, -have I not atoned for it? Have I not been ostracised?... -I have given myself altogether to the people, and -now that they are beyond attack, now that they are in -arms and ready to break the league unless it consents to -dissolve,<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> I will die in their cause if I must, ... for I -love them only, and they deserve it. Their courage will -make them eternal.”</p> - -<p>This outburst is the one occasion of his public life in -which Danton spoke of himself, and it has the ring of -genuine emotion; for in all his harangues he preserved, -both before and after this, an objective attitude, if anything -too much bent upon the outward circumstances.</p> - -<p>Thus, when the notes came to go between the Austrian -and the French governments, he was silent. He fears that -France is unprepared; he fears that the King is betraying -the nation. How much he was a traitor was -not known till a far later period; but when at least -it is proved that something is undermining the French -people, that, apart from the defeats and the lack of -preparation, there is treason, then he leaves his silence. -The policy of the Moderate acting in a settled state is no -longer possible to any one; the court and the nation stood -one against the other, and one side or the other must be -taken by every man. Then he put off the conventions -which he respected, and which he regretted to the end; -he went back into the street; he headed the insurrection, -destroyed the monarchy; for twelve months he took upon -himself all the responsibility of errors in his own policy, -and of crime in that of his associates. He saved France, -but at this expense, that he went out of the world with a -reputation which he knew to be false, that he saw his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span> -great powers vulgarised, and that he could never possess, -either in his own mind or before the world, not even in -France, his true name. The whole of this tragedy is to -be found in his trial, and here and there in the few -phrases that escape him in the speeches or with his -friends. If you sum it up, it comes to this paraphrase of -a great sentence: <i>Son nom était flétri mais la France était -libre</i>.</p> - -<p>It was upon April the 18th that the new Girondin -ministry received the note from Vienna rejecting the -French proposals of a month before. The poor King, -who had been protesting his loyalty to the nation in -Paris, had been protesting in Vienna the necessity of -sending an army to save him, and Austria gave this -reply. On April 20th the Assembly declared war with -practical unanimity<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> upon “the King of Hungary and of -Bohemia.” But the phrase was useless. You might as -well put a match into gunpowder and say, “It is the -sulphur I am after, not the charcoal.” Prussia joined, -and within a year we shall see all Europe at war with -France, in a war that outlawed and destroyed.</p> - -<p>Danton was right. France was hopelessly unready. -She had not learnt the necessary truth that the soldier is -a man with a trade. The orators had mistaken words -for things; honest and great as they were, they had fallen -in this matter into the faults common to small and dishonest -verbiage. The rout and panic under De Dillon, -his murder by the troops, the occupation of Quiévrain, -came one upon the other. Paris was full of terror and -anger in proportion to the greatness of the things she -had done, which now seemed all destroyed. “We said -and did things that should have convinced the world; -we were to be a people unconquerable from our love -of liberty, and we appear a beaten, panic-stricken lot—volunteers -and babblers who cannot stand fire.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span> -The King dismissed the Girondin ministers, even sent -Dumouriez away, heard Roland’s remonstrance, knew -that the Assembly was more and more against him; but -he remained calm. There was a plan of the simplest. -There was to be nothing but a few days of monotonous -marching between the allies and Paris. Lafayette with -his army of the centre was on his side. The Assembly -decreed a great camp of 20,000 men under Paris, and -the disbanding of the guard; the guard was disbanded, -but the King vetoed the decree. Lafayette wrote his -letter menacing the Parliament with his army; the reaction -seemed in full success and the invaders secure, -when Danton reappeared.</p> - -<p>On the 18th of June he found the old phrases -against Lafayette at the Jacobins. “It is a great day -for France; Lafayette with only one face on is no longer -dangerous.” He did not make, but he permitted the -20th of June; and as Paris rose, and the immense mob, -grotesque, many-coloured, armed with all manner of -sharp things, passed before the Assembly and into the -Tuilleries, it might have been a signal or a warning. -The excited citizen makes a poor soldier, but if Paris -moves the whole great body of France stirs. Such giants -take long to be fully awake, and it is a matter of months -to drill men; still it is better to let great enemies sleep. -There was in that foolish, amiable crowd, with its pleasure -at the sight of the King, its comic idea of warning him, -something serious underlying. Danton will be using it -in a very short time; for there are points of attack where -mobs are like machine-guns—ridiculous in general warfare, -but very useful indeed in special conditions, and in -these conditions invincible. This something serious was -that vague force (you may call it only an idea) which you -will never find in an individual, and which you will -always discover in a mass—the great common man -which the French metaphysicians have called “Le<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> -Peuple;” that, drilled, is called by the least metaphysical -an army.</p> - -<p>A week later Lafayette appeared. He demanded the -right to use the army, and July opened with the certainty -of civil war.</p> - -<p>July is the month of fevers; the heat has been -moving northward, and all France is caught in it. The -grapes fill out, and even in Picardy or in the Cotentin -you feel as though the Midi were giving her spirit to the -north. July made the Revolution and closed it. A -month that saw the Bastille fall and that buried Robespierre -is a very national time.</p> - -<p>If you overlook France at this moment, you may see -the towns stirring as they had stirred three years before; -it is from them that the opposition rises—especially from -Marseilles. A crowd of young men dragging cannon, the -common-place sons of bourgeois, whom the time had -turned into something as great as peasants or as soldiers, -surged up the white deserts along the Rhone, passing -the great sheet of vineyards that slopes up the watershed -of Burgundy. As they came along they sang an excellent -new marching song. When they at last saw Paris, -especially the towers of Notre Dame from where they -just show above the city as you come in from Fontainebleau, -and as the roads came in together and the suburbs -thickened they sang it with louder voices. On the evening -of the 30th they came to the gates, and the workmen -of the south-eastern quarter began to sing it and called it -the “Marseillaise.” No one can describe music; but if -in a great space of time the actions of the French become -meaningless and the Revolution ceases to be an origin, -some one perhaps will recover this air, as we have -recovered a few stray notes of Greek music, and it will -carry men back to the Republic.</p> - -<p>For ten days the insurrection grew. In a secret -committee which the Sections formed, men violent like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span> -Fournier, or good soldiers like Westermann, or local -leaders of quarters like Santerre—but all outside the -official body—organised the fighting force, and at their -head the one man who held the strings of the municipality—Danton. -The Assembly had heard Vergniaud’s -angry speech, but it had also confirmed the constitution -and the monarchy in the “baiser Lamourette.” Paris -had to work alone, and the King, seeing only Paris before -him, filled the Tuilleries, and stood by with a small -garrison to repress the mere movement of the city—“something -that should have been done in ’89.”</p> - -<p>It was on a Paris thus enfevered, doubtful, nursing -a secret insurrectionary plan, but full of men who hesitated -and doubted, having still many who were loyal, that -there fell<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> the document which the King had asked of -his friends—but which he must, on seeing it, have regretted—the -manifesto of the commander of the allies. This -extraordinary monument of folly is rarely presented in -its entirety. It is only in such a form that its full -monstrosity can be appreciated, and I have therefore been -at pains to translate for my readers the rather halting -French in which Charles William proposed to arrest the -movements of Providence. It ran as follows<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a>:—</p> - -<p>“Their Majesties the Emperor and the King of Prussia -having given me the command of the armies assembled -on the French frontier, I have thought it well to tell -the inhabitants of that kingdom the motives that have -inspired the measures taken by the two sovereigns and -the intentions that guide them.</p> - -<p>“After having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and -the possessions of the German princes in Alsace and -Lorraine, troubled and overset public order and their -legitimate government, exercised against the sacred person -of the King and against his august family violence which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span> -is (moreover) repeated and renewed from day to day, -those who have usurped the reins of the administration -have at last filled up the measure by causing an unjust -war to be declared against his Majesty the Emperor, and -by attacking his provinces in the Netherlands.</p> - -<p>“Several possessions of the German Empire have been -drawn into this oppression, and several others have only -escaped from a similar danger by yielding to the imperious -threats of the dominant party and its emissaries.</p> - -<p>“His Prussian Majesty with his Imperial Majesty, -by the ties of a strict and defensive alliance, and himself -a preponderant member of the Germanic body (<i>sic</i>), has -therefore been unable to excuse himself from going to -the aid of his ally and of his fellow State (<i>sic</i>). And -it is under both these heads that he undertakes the -defence of that monarch and of Germany.</p> - -<p>“To these great interests another object of equal -importance must be added, and one that is near to the -heart of the two sovereigns: it is that of ending the -domestic anarchy of France, of arresting the attacks -which are directed against the altar and the throne, of -re-establishing the legitimate power, of giving back to the -King the freedom and safety of which he is deprived, -and of giving him the means to exercise the lawful -authority which is his due.</p> - -<p>“Convinced as they are that the healthy part of the -French people abhors the excesses of a party that enslaves -them, and that the majority of the inhabitants are impatiently -awaiting the advent of a relief that will permit -them to declare themselves openly against the odious -schemes of their oppressors, His Majesty the Emperor -and His Majesty the King of Prussia call upon them -to return at once to the call of reason and justice, of -order, of peace. It is in view of these things that I, -the undersigned, General Commander-in-Chief of the -two armies, declare—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“(1) That led into the present war by irresistible -circumstances, the two allied courts propose no object to -themselves but the happiness of France, and do not -propose to enrich themselves by annexation.</p> - -<p>“(2) That they have no intention of meddling with -the domestic government of France, but only wish to -deliver the King, and the Queen, and the Royal Family -from their captivity, and procure for his Most Christian -Majesty that freedom which is necessary for him to call -such a council as he shall see fit, without danger and -without obstacle, and to enable him to work for the good -of his subjects according to his promises and as much as -may be his concern.</p> - -<p>“(3) That the combined armies will protect all towns, -boroughs, and villages, and the persons and goods of all -those that will submit to the King, and that they will -help to re-establish immediately the order and police -of France.</p> - -<p>“(4) That the National Guard are ordered to see to -the peace of the towns and country-sides provisionally, -and to the security of the persons and goods of all Frenchmen -provisionally, that is, until the arrival of the troops -of their Royal and Imperial Majesties, or until further -orders, under pain of being personally responsible; that -on the contrary, the National Guards who may have -fought against the troops of the allied courts, and who -are captured in arms, shall be treated as enemies, and -shall be punished as rebels and disturbers of the public -peace.</p> - -<p>“(5) That the generals, officers, non-commissioned -officers, and privates of the French troops of the line are -equally ordered to return to their old allegiance and to -submit at once to the King, their legitimate sovereign.</p> - -<p>“(6) That the members of departmental, district, -and town councils are equally responsible with their -heads and property for all crimes, arson, murders, thefts,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> -and assaults, the occurrence of which they allow or do -not openly, and to the common knowledge, try to prevent -in their jurisdiction; that they shall equally be bound to -keep their functions provisionally until his Most Christian -Majesty, reinstated in full liberty, has further decreed; -or until, in the interval, other orders shall have been -given.</p> - -<p>“(7) That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and -villages who may dare to defend themselves against the -troops of their Imperial and Royal Majesties by firing -upon them, whether in the open or from the windows, -doors, or apertures of their houses, shall be punished at -once with all the rigour of the laws of war, their houses -pulled down or burnt. All those inhabitants, on the -contrary, of the towns, boroughs, and villages who shall -hasten to submit to their King by opening their gates to -the troops of their Majesties shall be placed under the -immediate protection of their Majesties; their persons, -their goods, their chattels shall be under the safeguard -of the laws, and measures will be taken for the general -safety of each and all of them.</p> - -<p>“(8) The town of Paris and all its inhabitants without -distinction shall be bound to submit on the spot, and -without any delay, to the King, and to give that Prince -full and entire liberty, and to assure him and all the -Royal Family that inviolability and respect to which the -laws of nature and of nations entitle sovereigns from -their subjects. Their Imperial and Royal Majesties -render personally responsible for anything that may -happen, under peril of their heads, and of military -execution without hope of pardon, all members of the -National Assembly as of the Districts, the Municipality, -the National Guards, the Justices of the Peace, and all -others whom it may concern. Their aforesaid Majesties -declare, moreover, on their word and honour as Emperor -and King, that if the Palace of the Tuilleries be insulted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span> -or forced, that if the least violence, the least assault, be -perpetrated against their Majesties, the King, the Queen, -and the Royal Family, and if steps be not at once taken -for their safety, preservation, and liberty, they, their -Imperial and Royal Majesties, will take an exemplary -and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by giving up the -town of Paris to military execution and to total subversion, -and the guilty rebels to the deaths they have -deserved. Their Imperial and Royal Majesties promise, -on the contrary, to the inhabitants of Paris to use -their good offices with his Most Christian Majesty to -obtain pardon for their faults and errors, and to take -the most vigorous measures to ensure their persons -and goods if they promptly and exactly obey the above -command.</p> - -<p>“Finally, since their Majesties can recognise no laws -in France save those that proceed from the King in full -liberty, they protest in advance against any declarations -that may be made in the name of his Most Christian -Majesty, so long as his sacred person, those of the Queen -and of the Royal Family, are not really safe, for which -end their Imperial and Royal Majesties invite and beg his -Most Christian Majesty to point out to what town in the -immediate neighbourhood of his frontiers he may judge -it best to retire with the Queen and the Royal Family, -under good and sure escort that will be sent him for -that purpose, in order that his Most Christian Majesty -may be in all safety to call to him such deputies and -counsellors as he sees fit, call such councils as may please -him, see to the re-establishment of order, and arrange -the administration of his kingdom.</p> - -<p>“Lastly, I engage myself, in my own private name -and in my aforesaid capacity, to cause the troops under -my command to observe everywhere a good and exact -discipline, promising to treat with mildness and moderation -all well-meaning subjects who may show themselves<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -peaceful and submissive, and to use force with -those only who may be guilty of resistance and of recalcitrance.</p> - -<p>“It is for these reasons that I require and exhort, in -the strongest and most instant fashion, all the inhabitants -of this kingdom not to oppose themselves to the march -and operations of the troops under my command, but -rather to give them on all sides a free entry and all the -good-will, aid, and assistance that circumstances may -demand.</p> - -<p class="center">“Given at our headquarters of Coblentz, July 28.</p> - -<p class="right">(Signed) “<span class="smcap">Charles William Ferdinand</span>,<br /> -Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>With that weapon the insurrection was certain of all -Paris. Mandat, who had replaced Lafayette at the head -of the armed force in the town, was still loyal to the -King; he organised, as far as was possible, the forces -that he could count upon. The other side also prepared, -and the movements had all the appearance of troops -entrenching themselves before battle.</p> - -<p>Danton went to Arcis and settled an income on his -mother in case of his death, came back to Paris, and on -the night of August the 9th the Sections named commissioners -to act. They met and formed the “insurrectionary -commune.” At eight the next morning they -dissolved the legal commune, kept Danton, and directed -the fighting of the morning.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the King had gathered in the Tuilleries -about 6000 men, and depended very largely upon the -thick mass of wooden buildings in the Carrousel for -cover. The Swiss Guard, whom the decree had removed, -were only as far off as Rueil, and were ordered -into Paris, over 1500. They were the nucleus, and with -them some 2000 of the National Guard, 1500 of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> -old “Constitutional Guards,” and a group of “Gentilshommes.” -Mandat had ordered a battery of the National -Guard’s artillery to keep the Pont Neuf; they revolted -and joined the people, and Mandat himself, the chief of -the defence, was killed on the steps of the Hotel de -Ville. Danton, who had not slept, but had lain down -in Desmoulin’s flat till midnight, had been to the Hotel -de Ville since two in the morning, and he took before -posterity—in his trial—the responsibility of Mandat’s -death. He did more. He acted during the short night -(a night of calm and great beauty, dark and with stars) -as the organiser and chief of the insurrection. Especially -he appoints Santerre to lead the National Guard. On -these rapid determinations the morning broke, and the -first hours of the misty day passed in gathering the -forces.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously -in the Tuilleries gardens, and asked Roederer, like a -king in comic opera, “when the revolt would begin.”</p> - -<p>All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people -were slow to gather—“le tocsin ne rend pas”—and it was -not till the insurrectionary commune had done its work -that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disciplined, -came into the Carrousel.</p> - -<p>Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to -parley with the Swiss Guard; he asked them in German -(which was his native tongue, for he was an Alsatian) -to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard -retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people -would also retire. The Swiss—the only real soldiers in -Paris—replied that they were under orders, and when -Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire.</p> - -<p>Antoinette had said, “Nail me to the Palace,” and even -Louis, timid and uncertain, thought that the chances -were in his favour. Let only this day succeed, and the -city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span> -that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of -August 1st; it was Louis’s hope now.</p> - -<p>Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the -battle might have ended in favour of the garrison, -but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped -the attack, and the Swiss, unable to deploy, fought, -almost singly, a very unequal fight. There were no -volleys except the first. Rapid individual firing from -the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd pressing -up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hundreds -of lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the -“Grande Galerie” the Tuilleries were forced, the garrison -killed, and only a small detachment of the Swiss Guard -retreated through the gardens, firing alternate volleys, -and saving themselves by an admirable discipline.</p> - -<p>But while the issue was still doubtful, Louis and his -family had gone slowly through the same gardens to the -Riding-school, and had taken refuge with the Assembly. -The noise of the fusillade came sharply in at the windows, -and the event was still uncertain when the Parliament -received the King and promised him protection. The -president opened for him a small door at the right of the -chair, and the King and Queen and their children watched -the meaningless resolutions through a grating as they sat -in the little dark box that gave them refuge. The debate, -I say, lacked meaning, but the battle grew full of meaning -as they heard it. The shots were less frequent, the noise -of the mob—the roar—was suddenly muffled in the walls -of the palace. The crowd had entered it. Then came -the few sharp volleys of the retreating guard right under -the windows of the Manège, and finally the firing ceased, -and the Assembly knew that their oath was of no value, -and that the Tuilleries had fallen. Louis also knew it, -eating his grotesque roast chicken in the silent and -hidden place that was the first of his prisons. He saw -in the bright light of the hall many of the faces that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span> -were to be the rulers of France, but for himself, in his -silence, he felt all power to be gone. He had become a -Capet—there was truth in the Republican formula. There -had been played—though few have said it, it should be -said—a very fine game. The stakes were high and the -Court party dared them. They played to win all that -the Kings had possessed, and for this great stake they -risked a few foolish titles without power. The game was -even; it was worth playing, and they had lost. But the -man who had been their puppet and their figure-head -hardly knew what had happened. Perhaps the Queen -alone comprehended, and from that moment found the -proud silence and the glance that has dignified her end. -In her the legend of the lilies had found its last ally, but -now the great shield was broken for ever.</p> - -<p>So perished the French monarchy. Its dim origins -stretched out and lost themselves in Rome; it had already -learnt to speak and recognised its own nature when the -vaults of the Thermae echoed heavily to the slow footsteps -of the Merovingian kings. Look up that vast valley -of dead men crowned, and you may see the gigantic figure -of Charlemagne, his brows level and his long white beard -tangled like an undergrowth, having in his left hand the -globe and in his right the hilt of an unconquerable sword. -There also are the short, strong horsemen of the Robertian -house, half-hidden by their leather shields, and their sons -before them growing in vestment and majesty, and taking -on the pomp of the Middle Ages; Louis VII., all covered -with iron; Philip the Conqueror; Louis IX., who alone -is surrounded with light: they stand in a widening interminable -procession, this great crowd of kings; they loose -their armour, they take their ermine on, they are accompanied -by their captains and their marshals; at last, in -their attitude and in their magnificence they sum up in -themselves the pride and the achievement of the French -nation. But time has dissipated what it could not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> -tarnish, and the process of a thousand years has turned -these mighty figures into unsubstantial things. You -may see them in the grey end of darkness, like a -pageant all standing still. You look again, but with the -growing light and with the wind that rises before morning -they have disappeared.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE REPUBLIC<br /> -<span class="smcap">August 10, 1792—April 5, 1793</span></span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>The 10th of August is not, in the history of the Revolution, -a turning-point or a new departure merely; it is -rather a cataclysm, the conditions before and after which -are absolutely different. You may compare it to the rush -of the Atlantic, which “in one dreadful day and night” -swept away the old civilisation in the legend. It is like -one of the geological “faults” which form the great inland -escarpments, and to read or to write of it is like standing -on the edge of Auvergne. You have just passed through -a volcanic plateau, rising slowly, more and more desolate: -you find yourself looking down thousands of feet on to the -great plain of Limagne.</p> - -<p>There is no better test of what the monarchy was than -the comparison of that which came before with that which -succeeded its overthrow. There is no continuity. On the -far side of the insurrection, up to the 9th of August itself, -you have armies (notably that of the centre) contented with -monarchy; you have a strong garrison at the Tuilleries, the -ministers, the departments, the mayor of Paris (even) consulting -with the crown. The King and the Girondins are -opposed, but they are balanced; Paris is angry and expectant, -but it has expressed nothing—it is one of many -powers. The moderate men, the Rolands and the rest, -are the radical wing. It is a triumph for the Revolution -that the Girondins should be again in nominal control.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> -Pétion is an idol. The acute friction is between a government -of idealists standing at the head of a group of professional -bourgeois, and a crown supported by a resurrected -nobility, expecting succour and strong enough to hazard a -pitched battle.</p> - -<p>Look around you on the 11th of August and see what -has happened. Between the two opponents a third has been -intervened—Paris and its insurrectionary Commune have -suddenly arisen. The Girondins are almost a reactionary -party. The Crown and all its scaffolding have suddenly -disappeared. The Assembly seems something small, the -ministry has fallen back, and there appears above it one -man only—Danton, called Minister of Justice, but practically -the executive itself. A crowd of names which had -stood for discussion, for the Jacobins, for persistent ineffective -opposition, appear as masters. In a word, France -had for the moment a new and terrible pretender to the -vacant throne, a pretender that usurped it at last—the -Commune.</p> - -<p>The nine months with which this chapter will deal -formed the Republic; it is they that are the introduction -to the Terror and to the great wars, and from the imprisonment -of the King to the fall of the Girondins the -rapid course of France is set in a narrowing channel -directly for the Mountain. The Commune, the body -that conquered in August, is destined to capture every -position, and, as one guarantee after another breaks -down, it will attain, with its extreme doctrines and their -concomitant persecution, to absolute power.</p> - -<p>What was Danton’s attitude during this period? -It may be summed up as follows: Now that the Revolution -was finally established, to keep France safe in the -inevitable danger. He put the nation first; he did not -subordinate the theory of the Revolution; he dismissed -it. The Revolution had conquered: it was there; but -France, which had made it and which proposed to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> -extend the principles of self-government to the whole -world, was herself in the greatest peril. When discussion -had been the method of the Revolution, Danton -had been an extremist. He was Parisian and Frondeur -in 1790 and 1791; it was precisely in that time that he -failed. The tangible thing, the objective to which all -his mind leaned, appeared with the national danger; -then he had something to do, and his way of doing it, -his work in the trade to which he was born, showed him -to be of a totally different kind from the men above -whom he showed. I do not believe one could point to -a single act of his in these three-quarters of a year which -was not aimed at the national defence.</p> - -<p>It is a point of special moment in the appreciation of -his politics that Danton was alone in this position. He -was the only man who acted as one of the innumerable -peasantry of France would have acted, could fate have -endowed such a peasant with genius and with knowledge. -The others to the left and right were soldiers, poets, or -pedants every one. Heroic pedants and poets who were -never afraid, but not one of them could forget his theories -or his vision and take hold of the ropes. Such diplomacy -as there is is Danton’s; it is Danton who attempts -compromise, and it is Danton who persistently recalls the -debates from personalities to work. It is he who warns -the Girondins, and it is he who, in the anarchy that followed -defeat, produced the necessary dictatorship of the -Committee. Finally, when the Committee is formed, you -glance at the names, the actions, and the reports, and you -see Danton moving as a man who can see moves among -the blind. He had been once “in himself the Cordeliers”—it -had no great effect, for there was nothing to do but -propose rights; now, after the insurrection, he became “in -himself the executive,” and later “in himself the Committee.” -So much is he the first man in France during -these few months of his activity, that only by following<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span> -his actions can you find the unity of this confused and -anarchic period.</p> - -<p>It falls into four very distinct divisions, both from the -point of view of general history and from that of Danton’s -own life. The first includes the six weeks intervening -between the 10th of August and the meeting of the Convention; -it is a time almost without authority; it moves -round the terrible centre of the massacres. During this -brief time the executive, barely existent, without courts -or arms, had him in the Ministry of Justice as their one -power—a power unfortunately checked by the anarchy -in Paris.</p> - -<p>The second division stretches from the meeting of the -Convention to the death of the King. It covers exactly -four months, from the 20th of September 1792 to the -21st of January 1793. It is the time in which the -danger of invasion seems lifted, and in which Danton in -the Convention is working publicly to reconcile the two -parties, and secretly to prevent, if possible, the spread -of the coalition against France.</p> - -<p>The third opens with the universal war that follows -the death of Louis, and continues to a date which you -may fix at the rising of the 10th of March, or at the -defeat of Neerwinden on the 19th. Danton is absent -with the army during the greater part of these six weeks; -he returns at their close, and when things were at their -worst, to create the two great instruments which he -destined to govern France—the Tribunal and the Committee.</p> - -<p>Finally, for two months, from the establishment of -these to the expulsion of the Girondins on the 2nd of -June, he is being gradually driven from the attempt at -conciliation to the necessities of the insurrection. He is -organising and directing the new Government of the -Public Safety, and in launching that new body, in imposing -that necessary dictator, we shall see him sacrificing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> -one by one every minor point in his policy, till at last -his most persistent attempt—I mean his attempt to save -the Girondins—fails in its turn. Having so secured an -irresistible government, and having created the armies, -the chief moment of his life was past. It remained to -him to retire, to criticise the excesses of his own creation, -and to be killed by it.</p> - -<p class="tb">Immediately after the insurrection, a week after he -had taken the oath and made the short vigorous speech -to the Assembly,<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> Danton sent out his first and almost -his only act as Minister of Justice, the circular of the -18th of August,<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> which was posted to all the tribunals -in France. It is peculiar rather than important; it is -the attempt to convince the magistracy and all the courts -of the justice and necessity of the insurrection, and at the -same time to leave upon record a declaration of his own -intentions now that he had reached power. In the first -attempt he necessarily fails. The old judicature, appointed -by the Crown and by the moderate ministers, -largely re-elected by the people, wealthy for the most -part, conservative by origin and tradition, would in any -case have rejected such leadership; but the matter is -unimportant; this passive body, upon which the reaction -had counted not a little, and which De Cicé had planned -to use against the Revolution, was destined to disappear -at the first demand of the new popular powers. France -for weeks was practically without courts of law.</p> - -<p>Those passages, on the other hand, in which Danton -makes his own apology are full of interest. They contain -in a few sentences the outline of all his domestic policy,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span> -and we find in them Danton’s memories, his fears of what -his past reputation might do to hurt him.</p> - -<p>“I came in through the breach of the Tuilleries, -and you can only find in me the same man who was -president of the Cordeliers.... The only object of my -thoughts has been political and individual liberty, ... the -maintenance of the laws, ... the strict union of all the -Departments, ... the splendour of the State, and the -equality, not of fortune, for that is impossible, but of -rights and of well-being.”</p> - -<p>If we except the puerilities of the new great seal, the -Hercules with eighty-four stars (to represent the union of -the Departments), replaced by the conventional Liberty -and fasces, there is practically nothing more from Danton -as Minister of Justice. But as the one active man in the -Cabinet he is the pivot of the whole time. Those -qualities in him which had so disgusted the men of -letters were the exterior of a spirit imperatively demanded -in Paris at the time. His heavy, rapid walk, -the coarseness and harshness of his voice, his brutality in -command, exercised a physical pressure upon the old -man Roland, the mathematician Monge, and the virtuous -journalists who accompanied them. I know of but one -character in that set which could have prevented Danton’s -ascendancy, and have met his ugly strength by a force as -determined and more refined. Roland’s wife might have -done it, but though she was the soul of the ministry, she -was hardly a minister, and being a woman, she was confined -to secondary and indirect methods. Her hatred of -Danton increased to bitterness as she saw him succeed, -but she could not intervene, and France was saved from -the beauty and the ideals which might have been the -syrens of her shipwreck.</p> - -<p>The three weeks following the 10th of August were -filled with the news of the invasion. The King of Prussia -had hesitated to march. France, full of herself, never<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span> -understood that such a thing was possible. The kings -were on the march, the great and simple ideas, so long in -opposition, had met in battle. All France thought that -1792 was already 1793. Perhaps there were only two -men in the country who saw the immaturity, the complexity, -and the chances of the situation—I mean Danton -and Dumouriez: Dumouriez, because he was by nature a -schemer who had seen and was to see the matter from -close at hand; Danton, because, from the first moment of -his entrance into the ministry, he had gathered up the -threads of negotiation into his hand.</p> - -<p>The King of Prussia had hesitated, so had Brunswick. -It was the success of the insurrection that decided them. -They made the error that the foreigner always makes, -the error that led the most enlightened Frenchmen to -exaggerate the liberal forces in England, the error of seeing -ourselves in others. They imagined that “the sane -body of the nation,” the Frenchmen that thought like -Prussians, would rise in defence of the monarchy and in -aid of the invasion. They had no conception of how -small in number, how hesitating, and how vile were the -anti-national party.</p> - -<p>On Sunday the 19th the frontier was crossed; on the -Thursday Longwy capitulated, and a German garrison -held the rocky plateau that overlooks the plain of Luxembourg. -A week later, Thursday the 30th, Verdun was -surrounded.</p> - -<p>From the hills above the town, the same hills which -make of Verdun the fifth great entrenched camp of -modern France, the Prussian batteries bombarded with -a plunging fire. There may have been food and ammunition -for two or three more days, but fire had broken out -in several quarters, and the town council was imploring -Beaurepaire to surrender. Brunswick proposed a truce -and terms of capitulation. On the Saturday, the 1st of -September, after a violent discussion, the terms were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span> -rejected, but Beaurepaire knew that nothing could save -the town, and in the night he shot himself. On the -next day, Sunday the second, Verdun yielded and the -road to Paris lay open.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, in the capital itself, a vortex was opening, -and the poor remnants of public authority and of public -order were being drawn down into it. The 10th of -August had been a victory into which there entered three -very dangerous elements. First, it was not final; it had -been won against a small local garrison under the menace -of an invasion, and this invasion was proving itself irresistible. -Secondly, it had left behind it terrors accentuated -by success; I mean whatever fears of vengeance or -of the destruction of Paris existed before the insurrection -were doubled when so much greater cause had been given -for the “execution” that Brunswick had threatened. -Finally, the success of the insurrection had of itself -destroyed the last shadow of executive power, for all -such power, weak and perishing though it was, had -centred in the King.</p> - -<p>But besides these clear conditions which the 10th of -August had produced, there was something deeper and -more dangerous—the fear which fed upon itself and -became panic, and which ran supported by anger growing -into madness. There was no news but made it worse, -no sight in the streets and no rumour but increased the -intolerable pressure. Trade almost ceased, and the whole -course of exchange, which is the blood of a great city, -seemed to have run to the heart. Over the front of the -Hotel de Ville hung that enormous black flag with the -letters “Danger” staring from it in white, and in the -heavy winds another blew out straight and rattled from -the towers of Notre Dame. Every action savoured of -nightmare, and suffered from a spirit grotesque, exaggerated, -and horrible. The very day after the fight a great -net had been cast over Paris and drawn in full of royalists.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span> -The gates had been shut suddenly, and every suspect -arrested by order of the Commune. The prisons were full -of members of the great conspiracy, for in civil war the -vanquished appear as traitors. Then there arose a violent -demand for the trial and punishment of those who had -called in the foreigner, and a demand as violent, touching -on miracle, for innumerable volunteers. In every project -there ran this spirit of madness mixed with inspiration.</p> - -<p>If Paris lost its head, so did the Assembly and the -Moderates, but in another fashion. Paris was pale with -the intensity of anger, Roland from a sudden paralysis. -The fear of Paris was an angry panic; with the Girondins -it was the sudden sickness that takes some men at the -sight of blood. Paris had clamoured for an excess when -it demanded the trial of the Swiss, who had done nothing -beyond their mercenary duty; but the executive met it -by an excess of weakness when it produced its court of -ridiculous and just pedants, afraid to condemn, afraid to -decide. Already the people had learned the secret payments -of the old civil list,<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> the salaries paid to the -emigrants, the subsidised press. Golier’s report had -appeared but a day before the invasion.</p> - -<p>The news of Longwy was already known. Verdun -stood in peril, when the acquittal of Montmorin on Friday -the 31st seemed to be the deciding weakness of the -government that pushed the populace to their extreme -of violence.</p> - -<p>He had been governor of Fontainebleau, openly and -patently a conspirator on the side of the Tuilleries; he -was not acquitted of this. It was admitted that he had -“planned civil war;” he was released by that heroic but -fatal fault of the Girondins, the fault that later sent them -to the guillotine, and that now inspired their tribunal—they -would not bend an inch to compromise with necessity; -rather than do so they would deliberately aggravate the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span> -worst conditions by inclining against the passions of the -moment. They seemed to say, “You clamour for mere -reprisals; we will show, on the contrary, that we are just, -and we will even irritate you with mercy.” Yet they -knew that Montmorin deserved death.</p> - -<p>After that decision, and when Osselin the judge took -with great courage the prisoner’s arm in his own and led -him away, a voice in the court cried out, “You acquit him -now, and in a fortnight his friends will march into Paris.” -The massacres were certain from that moment; the thing -had been said which made the small band of murderers -start out, which made Paris look on immovable, and -which kept the National Guard silent, refusing to stop -the carnage. “We will go to the frontier, but we will -not leave enemies behind us. If the law will not execute -them, the people will.” The damnable spirit which runs -in colonies and wild places had invaded civilised Europe, -and the lynching was determined.</p> - -<p>When the Assembly had yielded to the Commune, -when it was certain that the insurrectionary Commune -would have its own way, and when it was known that -Longwy had fallen, that Verdun was surrounded, there -took place one of those scenes that stand out like -pictures in the mind, and that interpret the characters -of history for us better than any accumulation of detail.</p> - -<p>In the garden of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at -its end, and away from the house, and under the low -foliage, the six ministers were met in an informal gathering—rapid, -half-silent, a council not predetermined, -suited to the time; a few hurried words, whose description -has come down to us by no minute, but by the -accident of Fabre’s presence. Fabre d’Eglantine, the -uncertain poet, Danton’s protégé, and dangerous, ill-balanced -friend,<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> stood watching at a little distance.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span></p> - -<p>Roland spoke for all his friends. He was very pale -and broken-down; he leaned his head against a tree—“We -must leave Paris.” Danton spoke louder, “Where -do you mean to go?” “We must go to Blois. We -must take with us the King and the treasure.” So said -Servan; so said Clavière. Kersaint, whom Danton had -known at the old Commune in 1791, and who was something -of Danton’s kind, added his word: “I have just -come from Sedan, and I know there is nothing else to be -done. Brunswick will be here in Paris within the fortnight -as surely as the wedge enters when you strike.” -Danton stopped six waverers by a phrase, a phrase of -just such a character, exaggerated, violent, as his good -sense made use of so often in the tribune. “My mother -is seventy years old, and I have brought her to Paris; I -brought my children yesterday. If the Prussians are to -come in, I hope it may be into a Paris burnt down with -torches.” Then he turned round to Roland in person and -threw out a fatal sentence, necessary, perhaps, but one -of many that dug the great gulf between him and the -Girondins. “Take care, Roland, and do not talk too much -about flight; the people might hear you.”<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a></p> - -<p>I know of no anecdote that tells more about Danton, -or explains with greater clearness his attitude during the -crisis that brought on the massacres. For these over-vigorous -words, full of excess, were uttered by a man -whose character was all for material results—results -obtained, as a rule, by compromise. This same Danton, -who talked of “torches” and “Paris en cendres,” was -the only man in France who had the self-control to -negotiate for the retreat of the Prussians after Valmy. -His “mother of seventy years” had indeed been brought -to Paris, but from Arcis, which every one knew to be -right in the track of the invasion. What we have to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span> -discover in this speech, as in every phrase he uttered, is -the motive; for with any other of the great Revolutionaries -words were the whole of the idea, and sometimes more -than the idea, but with Danton alone words were the -means to a tangible end.</p> - -<p>He desired to prevent that fatal breach with Paris -which he had foreseen to be a risk from the beginning, -and which Mirabeau in his time had thought so near as -to be necessary. He was determined to keep this shadow—the -national executive—in reach of the one thing that -was alive and vigorous and defending the nation. It is -of the greatest importance in appreciating his attitude -to know that he dreaded the Commune. Later, no one -of the deputies of Paris in the Convention saw as he saw -the necessity of amalgamation with the Departments. -Marat he thoroughly despised. Most of the men of the -Commune had sat in one room with him; Panis and -Sergent had even desks under him. He knew them, -and he contemned them all. He did not know to what -crimes they were about to commit themselves, or perhaps -he would have interfered, but he knew they were worthless.</p> - -<p>Behind them, however, he saw Paris, and in Paris he -ardently believed, in its position and in its necessity. He -was entirely right. Once let the ministers leave the city, -and civil war would begin—a civil war waged within -ten days’ march of the enemy, and between what forces? -An imbecile, a man like one of our moderns, who thinks -in maps and numbers, would have said, “Between eighty-three -departments and one.” But Danton knew better. -He had that appreciation which is common to all the -masters; he knew the meaning of potential and of the -word ‘quality.’ It would have been a fight between the -members and the brain, and the brain would have died -fighting, leaving a body dead because the brain had -died.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span></p> - -<p>Thus while the Assembly and the Commune fight -their sharp battle of the last days of August, while the -Parliament commands new municipal elections, breaks the -municipality, then flatters it, then yields and permits it -to be practically reinforced under the form of a fresh -vote from the Sections,<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> Danton acts as though both -Parliament and Commune had dropped from the world. -There are two speeches of his, one of the 28th of -August, one of the 2nd of September, and between -them they mark his attitude and form also the origins -of that full year of action and rhetoric which define -him in history.</p> - -<p>In the first, he proposes and carries the measure -which has been made an excuse for laying upon his -shoulders the responsibility of the massacres. The speech -was made for a very different purpose. He authorised -the domiciliary visits, but his object was to obtain arms. -One thought only occupied him: to counteract the intense -individualism of the Moderates, to force despotic measures -through a Parliament that hated them, and to force these -measures because without them the situation was lost. -He got his arms, and just afterwards his mass of volunteers, -but the other measure which he had introduced -to pacify the Commune, the domiciliary visits, have -marked more deeply in the memories of the time, because -in the troubled days that followed these visits seemed to -be a beginning.</p> - -<p>It was Sunday morning, the 2nd of September. Verdun -(though no one knew it yet in Paris) had just fallen; -Beaurepaire was dead. The “Comité de Surveillance” -of the Commune had admitted Marat illegally,<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> and for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span> -a sinister reason. For three days the prisons had been -marked, and those whom the Comité wished to save -had been withdrawn; and though the movement was -spontaneous, though the most of the Sections spoke before -Marat,<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> yet there was an executive and a directory, and -that madman was its chief. The moment that the -massacres were beginning at the Carmes, Danton was -making the last effort to turn the anger of the moment -into an enthusiasm for the Champ de Mars and for the -volunteers. If ever there was an attempt to influence by -rhetoric a popular emotion which could not be checked, -and to direct energy from a destructive to a fruitful -object, it is to be found in this his most famous speech—the -speech that even the children know to-day in France, -the closing words of which are engraved upon his -pedestal. For the only time in his life he turned and -leant upon the mere power of words: there is something -in their extraordinary force which savours of despair, and -they rise at the close to an untranslatable phrase in which -you hear rhythm for the first and last time in his appeals: -“De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace—et -la France est sauvée.”<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p> - -<p>He did not wholly fail. When he had rung the great -bell of the Hotel de Ville and had gone to the Champ de -Mars, he looked over a great and growing crowd of young -men running to the enlistment. But for four days—days -in which he doggedly turned his back to the Commune -which called him—the killing went on in the prisons. He -and his volunteers, his silence, were most like this: a man -in a mutiny on ship-board, in a storm at night, keeping -the helm, saving what could be saved and careless whether<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span> -the morning should make him seem a traitor on the one -hand or a mutineer upon the other. For the tragedy of -those five days—the days of Sedan—always seems to be -passing in a thick night. We read records of action at -this or that hour in the daylight, but we cannot believe -the sun shone. Maillard, tall and pale in his close black -serge and belt, is a figure for candles on the Abbaye table -and for torches in the cloisters and the vaults. There never -was a horror more germane to darkness.</p> - -<p>But why did Danton not save the prisoners? I know -that question is usually answered by saying that he was -indifferent. So much (it seems to me) survives of a -legend. For history no longer pretends that he organised or -directed the crime. Indeed, history finds it daily more difficult, -as the details accumulate, to fix it upon any one man. -But the fact that he persistently defended the extremists -in the following month, that he made himself (for the -purposes of reunion) an advocate for many men who were -blameworthy, and tried to reconcile the pure minds of -the Girondins with such terrible memories—in a word, -the fact that for months he sacrificed himself in the -Convention, that he demanded union, has condemned him -to every suspicion. <i>Que mon nom soit flétri et que la France -soit libre.</i></p> - -<p>He might, indeed, have spoken. Popular, the one -vigorous and healthy personality in the face of Paris, he -might have bent his energy to the single aim of preventing -an outbreak. I will not deny that in his mind, over -which we have seen passionate anger falling suddenly in -October 1789 and in June 1792, there may have arisen -some such feeling as that which restrained the vast mass -of the Parisians from interfering with the little band of -murderers—a feeling of violent hatred, a memory of the -manifesto and a disgust which made the partisans of Brunswick -seem like vermin. There is something of that deplorable -temper in the anecdote which Madame Roland<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span> -gives of him, striding through the rooms on the second -day and saying that the prisoners “could save themselves.” -But this anecdote is not history; it is an accusation, and -one made by a partisan and an enemy.<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> There is another -and better reason for his action, which must, I think, have -made the greater part of his motive. To have spoken -would have been to play a very heavy stake. If he spoke -and failed to prevent the rising, he ceased to be Danton. -His influence fell, he became a Moderate, and himself, the -one man left to direct affairs, entered the confused ranks -of opposition—un-Parisian, rejected of either party, while -France beneath him fell into mere anarchy.</p> - -<p>It would have been gambling with all that he most -desired: the English neutrality, the union of the coming -Parliament, the rapid organisation of the armies, all this -staked to win something that was not precious to him at -all—the lives of a mass of men the bulk of whom had -demanded the success of the invasion.</p> - -<p>Why did he not act? Because nobody could act. -Remember the phrase which he delivered while Louis -was being executed four months later: “Nulle puissance -humaine.”<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> We are so accustomed to an aristocratic and -orderly society that a title of office implies power. The -Home Secretary or some other man “does this,” but the -man who really does it—does it with his hands—is the -policeman or the soldier. Now these did not exist at the -moment in Paris. It explains a hundred things in the -Revolution to remember that every successive step reduced -society to powder, to a mere number of men. Rousseau -had said that this compact, this thing based on voluntary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span> -union, was not made for the cities. Paris gave us in -September an awful proof. Roland, a man whom Marat -had put upon his list and whom Danton had saved, talked -on the Monday of the “just anger of the people.” Yet -Roland was a just man, and brave in matters that affected -himself alone, and the massacres chiefly concerned him. -He was Minister of the Interior, that is, responsible for -order, but there was nothing with which to work. On the -Tuesday he sent to Santerre and said, “Call out the -National Guard.” Santerre answered that he could not -gather them. He was right. Again, Pétion was an -honest man, a Moderate, the mayor of Paris; all he could -do was to sit at a useless committee of the Sections and talk -of the “National Defence;” that utter disintegration which -the theories of the Revolution had produced—that purely -voluntary condition of the soldier, the official, the police -(a mere anarchy)—was irresistible when there was spontaneity -of action; it was useless where the conditions -demanded organisation and initiative. It withstood the -cannonade at Valmy, it stormed the height of Jemappes, -but it fled in rout when the spring had melted enthusiasm. -So here police, the function that most requires discipline, was -lacking in the State. And the whole situation is summed -up in the sharp picture we have of Manuel pushing his -way though the crowd with “two policemen” who had -“volunteered,” and trying in vain to stop the lynching at -the Carmes. It was to this anarchy that Danton, after -six months of struggle, succeeded in giving government -during 1793.</p> - -<p>Danton himself, after four months of vain effort to -reconcile his enemies, put the whole matter in the last -phrase of his defence: “No human power” could have -stopped the massacres;<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> all that could be done was to -work, from that moment forward, against the extreme<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span> -theories of a voluntary state, and towards the establishment -of a strong government.<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a></p> - -<p>When, on the Thursday, September 6, the wave receded, -and when on the morrow Pétion was able to -interfere, the people and the Assembly looked round them -and saw that a thing had happened which was to hurt -the future of the Revolution more than all the armies. -It was like the breaking of day after that moral night, a -daybreak in which the wind goes down and you see the -wreckage.</p> - -<p>Paris was very silent; the accusations had not yet -begun; the Assembly was dying. The electoral council -of Paris had met during the very days of the massacre, -and had proceeded to choose the members who were to -represent the capital in the Convention that was about to -meet. It also voted in silence, and sat in the mingled panic -and remorse that oppressed the whole city. The names -came out in the balloting. On the 5th (the murderers -were still growling in the streets) Robespierre was elected in -a small meeting of 525; on the 6th Danton was elected -second, but with a much larger attendance and with a -much greater majority—638 votes out of an attendance -of 700, a curious result. Danton’s name forced itself -upon them, was acclaimed beyond any other; yet his -attitude of conciliation, his attempt to have all Paris -represented, was set aside. The man and his reputation -succeeded, his policy failed. They elected also Marat, -Panis, Sergent—those who had directed the crime. Danton -and Manuel alone of all the twenty-four had any -touch of the Moderate about them. The long list ends -with the name of Egalité, elected by a majority of one.<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a></p> - -<p>There came, therefore, into the Convention an apparently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span> -united body of men from Paris—the Mountain. -Up on the benches of the extreme left, in the grey, dark -theatre of the Tuilleries, there were to sit, in a compact -group, these extremists; and across the floor the Departments, -the pure Republicans of the south, who despised -the city and them, who feared them terribly, and who -hated with the force of a religion, were to single them -out as tyrants. And in this Mountain, this body of -Reds, Danton was to find himself imbedded, bound up, -falsified. He had determined to prevent such parties. -He had tried hard to make Paris elect not only Robespierre -but Pétion also as a mark of unity: he had failed.</p> - -<p>When the country members came up to the capital, -September had grown to be an awful legend. The -number of those killed was multiplied ten times,<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> twenty -times—number lost meaning. Paris seemed a city of -blood. Guides volunteered story after story. “Here, in -the Abbaye, the blood had risen so high”—they made -a mark in the wall; “there, under that tree, the massacres -were planned by such and such a one”—any name -suited, sometimes it was Robespierre, sometimes Danton. -The deputies came from their little towns and from the -fields, over seven hundred—pilgrims from places where -the pure enthusiasms of 1790 still lingered, where even -1792 had brought no passion. They came, many of -them for the first time, bewildered in the enormous -city; its noise confused them, its crowds, its anger—“Yes; -that was where the massacres were committed a -fortnight ago—we can believe it.” The Convention from -its first day seemed a battlefield—Paris defiant in the -Mountain, and the Departments silent with an angry fear -in the plain and on the benches of the right. And when -the newcomers asked to be shown the group of deputies -for Paris, as men would ask to be shown lurking enemies<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span> -or wild beasts, they would have their gaze directed to that -high place on the left where sat the names that had -terrified and fascinated them in the prints of their -country-sides.</p> - -<p>There were no windows; the skylight, high above -that deep well of a room, sent an insufficient light downwards -upon the foreheads, making the features sharp -and yet lending them a false gloom. That man with -the small squat body and the frog’s face was Marat; you -could just see his great vain mouth in the dim light. -Those small, keen features, well barbered and set up, the -high forehead, the pointed bones of the cheek and chin, -stood for Robespierre. The light fell chiefly on the white -of his careful wig; his thin smile was in shadow. And -who was that huge figure, made larger by the darkness -and carrying a head like Mirabeau? They saw it moving -when the others were fixed. He would speak to his -neighbours with heavy, sweeping gestures. They grew -accustomed to the half-light, and they could distinguish -his face—the strong jaw, the powerful movement of the -lips, torn and misshapen though they were; the rough, -pitted skin, the small, direct, and deep-set eyes. Who -was he? He seemed to them the very incarnation of -all the bloodshed and unreason which they hated in -Paris, a master of anarchy. It was Danton.</p> - -<p>Against that impression all policy and wisdom broke. -He demanded unity; he checked the growing attack on -the rich; he said things that were like France speaking. -But the voice was harsh and loud; they heard it in their -minds at the head of mobs; they fled from him to the -Girondins; they forced him back upon the Mountain, and -he had to do his work alone in spite of those orators -whom he would have befriended and whose genius he -loved—in spite of those madmen who surrounded him, -and who later killed him and the Republic with one -axe.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span></p> - -<p>It was on the 25th of September, a Thursday, that -the Convention met in the Tuilleries; on the Friday, in -the same place, with doors shut and with the galleries -empty, they declared the Republic, and moved off to the -Manège, where their predecessors had sat. In those two -days the violent quarrel between Paris and France was -hushed for a moment. Danton, in the lull, said all he -could to define his own position and to prevent that -quarrel from ever reaching a head. He went out to -meet the Moderates. He declared, with the common -sense of the peasant, that property must first be declared -inviolable; and it is curious that the Convention, the -majority that misunderstood him and broke with him, -was yet less moderate than he; it passed the resolution, -but in the form, “property is under the safeguard of the -nation.” In order to calm opinion he resigned the -Ministry of Justice on the spot;<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> he did everything to -make his position clear and true, and to save the unity -of the Parliament.</p> - -<p>But the attack came from the others. Within a -week Lasource had proposed a guard for the Convention, -“drawn from the departments;” and in the face of this -proposition, that was almost civil war, Danton found -himself able to speak once more for unity. The Girondins -had elected one of themselves for president, and had -chosen from among their own members the secretaries of -the Assembly; they had wittingly ostracised the left, and -they desired to make it dumb. Danton still attempted -union. “I myself come from the Departments, from a -place to which I always turn my eyes. But Paris is -made of the Departments, and we are not here as members -of this place or that, but as members for France.” He -continually presented the idea of France united; the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span> -Girondins as continually rejected it. He knew that they -thought him a shield for Marat; he rejected Marat openly -from the tribune. But all this intense and personal -action had but an effect upon individuals. Two especially -it moved—Vergniaud, the young orator, sincere and brave -beyond all his colleagues, and more far-seeing than any -of the dreamers around him; Condorcet, to whom a year -before Danton had seemed so repulsive, but whose calm -and just mind had arrived at the truth; who had said, -“Danton has that rare faculty of neither hating nor envying -genius in others;” who had voted and spoken for his -appointment as Minister of Justice, and who, up to the -catastrophe of the following June, continued to understand -and to support him.</p> - -<p>But, for the mass of the Girondins, he remained an -outcast. He used words that one could not use before -Roland’s wife, and the great group that surrounded her -(men over-full of utopias, but heroic, men whom Danton -himself regretted bitterly) made him an outcast. He -replied often with passion, and once with insult, but as -we shall see he did not abandon them entirely till the -insurrection destroyed them in ’93.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, while they voted the Republic in Paris, -under Argonne a battle among the most curious in -history was making a momentary security—that is, a -momentary union of good feeling throughout France, -and even in Paris itself. The Prussian army had been -checked on the little rise of Valmy. As you stand upon -the field in that same season of the year to-day, in the -mist of the early morning, as the volunteers and the -battered remnants of the line stood then; as you look -from that standpoint at the open road, at the great plain -of Champagne, so well suited to maintain an army; as -you see to the east the long wall of the Argonne, and -remember that Dumouriez had been outflanked in his -Thermopylæ, a confusion seizes the mind. Why on earth<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span> -was Valmy so important a victory? It is a common-place -to say that Valmy was a cannonade, but what was a -cannonade in 1792? If indeed to-day a line of guns -were drawn up and served, as I have seen them served in -the manœuvres within sight of these same hills, and if a -force should be discovered capable of withstanding the -shrapnel of twelve batteries of artillery, sure of their -range, turning the mark into a ploughed field—then that -force would merit peculiar names, for it would be immortal. -But in the eighteenth century guns were not -the arbiters of battles. Infantry could charge the batteries -then. France, which was crushed yesterday and -will succeed to-morrow solely through artillery, had not -a hundred years ago to dread the random solid shot of -smooth bores; what she had to dread was the bayonet -charge of that superb infantry which the great Frederick -had trained, and on which the monstrous scaffolding of -Prussia still reposes. All we can say of Valmy is this, -that men quite ignorant of warfare, badly held together, -managed to stand firm under an ill-directed, at times -a desultory and distant cannon fire.</p> - -<p>Valmy was not a victory. The results of Valmy -have changed the world, but no one could have seen it -then. Goethe, in the course of a long life, discovered it, -and put it beautifully into his own mouth over one of -the bivouac fires: “We entered on a new world then;” -but there were better prophets than Goethe, and not one -perceived it. For days the Prussian army hesitated. -Dumouriez did not dare to meet them. A pitched battle -in the last days of September might have changed all -history.</p> - -<p>Why then did the King of Prussia retreat? No -force compelled, but two arguments convinced him. The -peasantry, and Danton, the man who through the whole -year is, as it were, a peasant trained and illumined. The -resistance of the peasantry had taught the King that to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span> -reach Paris it required not a war of the dynasties, such -as had filled the eighteenth century—wars in which -armies passed like visiting caravans; the invasion of -France would need a crusade. He was no crusader. -He had undertaken the war with only half a heart, -and at this slight check he hesitated. The second -argument came from Danton. He bargained like a -peasant secretly for the purchasable and obvious good, -while the Parliament was talking as might talk a -conqueror who was something of a poet and well -read in the classics. When there was a talk of -negotiations just after the battle, it launched the great -words, “That the Republic does not discuss till its territory -is evacuated.” That was on Tuesday; the Republic -was young to discuss anything—it was four days old. On -Wednesday night, Westermann, Danton’s man of the -10th of August, and his companion at the scaffold, -started off secretly to diplomatise. That foolish man -D’Eglantine followed him, but his folly was swallowed up -in the wisdom of Danton, who sent him, a secretary and -a mouthpiece, to do that which, had he done it himself, -would have produced some violent and ill-considered vote. -Between them this clique settled the matter, and the -invaders passed back through the Argonne heavily, in -wet roads and through drenched woods, with Kellermann -following, impatient, above the valleys, but bound by -Danton’s policy not to harass the retreat; till at last, -more than a month after Valmy,<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> he fired the salute -from Longwy, and the territory was free.</p> - -<p>Did Danton know, as he was pursuing these plans, -why Dumouriez helped him? Did he understand thoroughly -that vain, talented, and unprincipled soldier? I -think it certain. It is among those things which cannot -be proved; one does not base such convictions upon documents, -but rather on the general appreciation of character.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span> -Thus Danton undoubtedly helped and used Talleyrand -at another time in England, and Talleyrand was patently -false. But Talleyrand was, as patently, the cleverest -diplomatist he could find. Dumouriez wished the King -of Prussia to be left unmolested for a number of very -mixed reasons, in which patriotism played a small part; -Danton wished it for the sake of France, and for that -only; but if Dumouriez at the head of an army was to -hand, so much the better. Danton supported Dumouriez, -his policy, even his retreats up to the disaster of March. -To say “he sympathised with a traitor” is one of those -follies which men can only make when they forget that -contemporaries cannot have known what we know. With -all his time-serving and his separate plans, no one dreamt -that in six months the general would join the Austrians; -it was a sudden blow even to those who sat in his tent.</p> - -<p>October was a month of reconciliation. When the -man broad awake succeeds, the dreamer is ready to build -a new dream on that result. The Gironde was almost -silent, the Mountain was afraid. In the short visit that -Dumouriez paid, between a victory and a victory, to Paris, -Danton appears for a moment a partner in the mental -ease, the brilliant expression, and the Republican faith of -the Girondins. He might perhaps have ended there, and -with his great arms and shoulders have held apart the men -whose mutual hatred killed the Republic. In his success—and -every one bore him gratitude after Valmy—that -which he most desired almost happened, and the alliance -between the opposing Girondist and the Mountain was -half realised.</p> - -<p>Michelet gives us two pictures<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> which, like the revelation -of lightning, show us that rapid drama standing -still. In the first it is Madame Roland, in the second -Marat, who makes the tragedy. In the first Dumouriez -and Danton sat in the same box at the theatre, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span> -Vergniaud was coming in with the soul of the Girondins. -The door opened and promised this spectacle: Danton -and the general and the orator of the pure Republicans, -and the woman most identified with the Right. It would -have been such a picture for all the people there as Danton -would have prayed or paid for. The door was ajar, -and, as she came near, Madame Roland saw Danton sitting -in the box; she put out her hand from Vergniaud’s -arm and shut the door. There is in her memoirs a kind -of apology,“des femmes de mauvaise tournure.” Utter -nonsense; it was Roland’s box, and his wife was expected. -Danton and Dumouriez were not of the gutter. No, it -was the narrow feminine hatred, so closely allied to her -intense devotion, that made Madame Roland thrust Danton -at arm’s length. The same spirit that made her -vilify the Left like a fury made her the calm saint of the -Girondins. For she lived entirely in the Idea.</p> - -<p>The second scene is a reception. I will not repeat -Michelet’s description; its spirit is contained in an admirable -phrase: “France civilised appealed therein against -France political.” Danton was surrounded with those -whom he would have taught, as he taught all who ever -knew him closely, to respect or to love him. Marat -heard that he was there—Marat, whom he had repudiated -in public a few days before. He heard that Danton was -there, surrounded by the soldiers, and the women, and -the orators. He called at the door, and shouted in the -hall, “I want to see Danton,” and at the sound of his -voice everybody grew troubled, and Danton was left -alone. On the 29th of October Danton attempted -openly to break with Marat: “I declare to you and to -France,” he said in the Convention, “that I have tried -Marat’s temperament, and I am no friend of his.” But -the attempt came too late.</p> - -<p>The discussions broke out again in November. On -the 10th, the victory of Jemappes was heard in Paris.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span> -This book, dealing only with a man, cannot detail those -famous charges; it was a victory won by men singing -the new songs; it is the inspiration of “La victoire en -chantant.” But the security it gave only went further -to destroy what was left of union. Danton found himself -more and more alone. He who had been named on -a committee with Thomas Paine, with Condorcet, with -Pétion, on the very day after his election to the presidency -of the Jacobins,<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> who had in his own temporary success -seemed to realise his policy of union, found himself after -a month once more pushed back towards the Mountain. -The growing sense of security had destroyed the chances -of union. He remained silent. One would say that the -time passed him by untouched, because the one thing he -cared for had failed, and because the inevitable civil dissensions -of the next spring covered his mind with clouds. -France was irretrievably divided. The arraignment of -the King, the discovery of the secret papers, all the -movement of November leaves him, as it were, stranded, -waiting his mission to Belgium.</p> - -<p>There belongs to this period only one considerable -speech. It is the only thing in all his public acts in -which you can discover beauty. You may find in this -speech the pity and the tenderness which his intimates -loved, the memory which they for sixty years defended, -but which no document or letter remains to perpetuate.</p> - -<p>Cambon, careless of anything but his exchequer, had -thought the new era come. That cold and inflexible -head determined, seeing the steep fall towards bankruptcy -that France was making, to save a hundred millions, -but to save it at an expense. He proposed to separate -the State from what was left of the Church, to break -the vow of 1790. In almost the last speech before he -went off to the armies, Danton opposed him and gave -this passage—a passage better fitted to the defence of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span> -an older and stronger thing than the wretched constitutional -priesthood:—</p> - -<p>“... It is treason against the nation to take away -its dreams. For my part, I admit I have known but -one God. The God of all the world and of justice. The -man in the fields adds to this conception that of a man -who works, whom he makes sacred because his youth, -his manhood, and his old age owe to the priest then: -little moments of happiness. When a man is poor and -wretched, his soul grows tender, and he clings especially -to whatever seems majestic: leave him his illusions—teach -him if you will ... but do not let the poor fear -that they may lose the one thing that binds them to -earth, since wealth cannot bind them.”</p> - -<p>Before he left on the mission to the armies there -occurred a scene which has always been, since Michelet described -it, the most striking passage of his relations with -the Girondins. He, the man who saw safety for France -only in diplomacy, had, for the sake of unity, held his -tongue when the Girondins passed the decree of the -19th November, which was to sustain a revolutionary -crusade against Europe. I say that November is full -of Danton’s attempt to maintain the unity of the Parliament. -After all these efforts he was worsted, because -the Girondins were possessed by a dream which admitted -of no compromise and of no realities.</p> - -<p>The scene of his last attempt was this:—He made a -rendezvous with their party. They were to meet secretly -at night and away from Paris in a house in the woods of -Sceaux at the very end of November. The whole life -of this man was a tragedy, and we see in this sad journey -that kind of dramatic presentiment of his death and of -theirs, the “foreknowledge” with which the tragedies -of the world are filled.</p> - -<p>He went through the desolate bare woods of November, -under the hurrying sky, that recalls to our minds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span> -in France to-day the charges of Jemappes. The night -was as wild as the time, and as dark as his forebodings, -when he came on to the little group of men in the -candlelight, and argued with them, and against them, -and alone. Michelet gives to Danton’s mind a sentiment -of coercion. He shows us Danton dragged by -necessity. But I can see no necessity except the supreme -desire to unite the parties and make the government real. -They would not receive his alliance, and he went away -from that meeting at midnight, pushed back upon Paris, -thrown into the comradeship of violence. Guadet rejected -him with an especial fervour. Danton as he left -turned upon him with this phrase: “Guadet, Guadet, -you cannot understand and you do not know how to -forgive; you are headstrong, and it will be your doom.” -The next day he started on his mission to the army.</p> - -<p>During the arraignment and during the trial of the -King the opinions that divided the Left and the Right -fought it out in his absence.<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> He was not there to -attempt such a movement as his character demanded. -No one in all the Assembly dared hold out a hand as -he would have done and see whether after all Vergniaud -might not perhaps be right on the one hand, and the -Mountain perhaps be patriots on the other.</p> - -<p>There was in this debate upon one man’s life an -element to which Danton’s nature was well suited. -There had to be kept in view for the French nation the -effect upon Europe which would follow from the determination -as to the death or life of the King, and Danton’s -great voice has so strongly and so rightly affected the -historians of the period that he thrusts his personality -forward into their narrative, and in at least one notable -place Danton appears, in history, and in one of the greatest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span> -pages of history, by no right, and figures upon scenes which -do not possess the advantage of his voice. He has been -made to defend Louis’s life, to plead for a respite, and then -by a violent change to vote for his death.</p> - -<p>Let me now explain how this error passed into the -mind of Michelet and of other men. Danton returned -from Belgium on the night of the 14th January. On -that same day a certain Dannon, apparently an honest -man,<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> rose late in the evening and demanded respite for -Louis. When Gallois reprinted the <i>Moniteur</i>, he saw this -obscure name coupled with a politic demand; he read it -again, and said, “This Dannon must be a misprint for -Danton.” He corrected it so. On this chance venture -there fell the eye of Michelet, the eye that from a glance -or a word could bring back the colours and the movements -of living men. In him also the tragedy of Danton -powerfully worked; he moulded a figure from these few -words in the <i>Moniteur</i>, and made of them an admirable -anti-climax. Here was Danton (Dannon) hot from the -armies, knowing in what peril France stood, having seen -with his own eyes how momentary had been the effects -of Jemappes. He comes from his travelling coach to -the Assembly, and with the mud of the road yet upon -him, gives his expression as an ally to the Girondins and -to the Moderates. Then some rebuff, some unrecorded -insult throws him back again as he had been so often -thrown back into the arms of the Extremists. On the -next day, the 15th of January, we are asked to watch him -sitting by the side of his dying wife, sullen and despairing. -On the 16th he comes back furious, and votes for the death -of the King.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span></p> - -<p>There are those for whom detail in history is pedantic, -yet here upon three letters and their order hangs the -interpretation not only of an individual character but -of a policy whose effects we are still feeling. Michelet’s -great picture is false from beginning to end. Danton had -returned on the 14th, and came jaded with his journey to -the bedside of her who had been his young wife of five -years, who was now near to childbirth and to death. He -had his own drama as well as that of the historian’s, and -our own dramas are acted upon a stage where the results -are real. All that night of the 14th and all the 15th -he was watching in his flat of the Passage du Commerce -a fate which was coming upon him, and certainly for -whose thirty-six hours the Revolution was a little thing -to him. He came back wearily to his position and to his -duties on the 16th; he remembered there was such a thing -as the Revolution—that Louis was after all on trial, and -descended from his home into the hall of the Parliament to -give the short angry sentence in which we seem to read less -moderation and less of diplomacy than was his by nature. -The scene in the home had made him not only bitter but -weak, for there is surely weakness in saying, “I am not a -statesman,” in borrowing, that is, the vulgar acrimony of -Marat, or in talking of “the tyrant,” and in repeating the -phrases of the Mountain.</p> - -<p>But in the days that followed Michelet finds a good -excuse. Certainly one would say, if one knew nothing -about him except his action of January 1793, that Danton -was the Mountain and nothing else. This error would be -supported by the unreasoning vehemence, the almost -brutal anger, into which he allows himself to fall.</p> - -<p>They asked whether the King could be condemned to -death by a mere majority, and whether that majority was -decisive. Danton threw back at them: “You decided -the Republic by a mere majority, you changed the whole -history of the nation by a mere majority, and now you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span> -think the life of one man too great for a mere majority; -you say such a vote could not be decisive enough to make -blood flow. When I was on the frontier the blood flowed -decisively enough.”</p> - -<p>So naturally was he at that moment the Danton of -unreason, so much had his character yielded to its persistent -temptation of violent words, that there could be heard -a voice once calling out to him as he rushed to the -tribune without leave from the Speaker, “You are not a -king yet, Danton.” And yet this was the man who had -saved France from any folly of defiance after Valmy, who -was determined upon saving her in the future by keeping -upon the helm a quiet and unswerving hand. Vergniaud’s -great simile, “That France might become, if she did not -take care, like the statues of Egypt; they astonish by their -greatness, and yet are enigmas to all who see them, because -the living spirit that made them has died,” passed him by -without effect. He was one of those who voted in the -fatal majority, and he threw down as gage of battle the -head of a king.<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></p> - -<p class="tb">The word had become reality, and Louis had stood at -mid-day trying to be heard beyond the ring of soldiers, -had cried out that he was innocent, and had died in the -noon of that cold January day. This act was destined to -produce the one thing that Danton had most ardently -desired to avoid—it put an end once and for all to the -neutrality of England.</p> - -<p>Another people, then in their infancy, now old, whom -Louis had been persuaded to help against his will, received -the death of Louis like a kind of blow in the face. -The people of the United States in their simplicity had -imagined the French king to be their saviour; they did<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span> -not know Louis’s phrase, “I was dragged into that unhappy -affair of America; advantage was taken of my -youth.” They regarded his crown with a certain superstition, -as they still regard what is left of baubles in -Europe; and when the axe fell upon him, France lost -not only the calculating hypocrisy of Pitt, but the genuine -sympathy of the American people.</p> - -<p>In the days that followed (they were only ten) between -the 21st of January and the end of the month, it is still -plain that the shock which most affected Danton’s vigorous -and independent judgment was that return after seven -weeks to the wife whom he had passionately loved, and -whom this ugly Orpheus felt slipping from his arms back -into the shades. After her death, as we shall see, he did -not reel so heavily, but in that fortnight of January, which -was of such supreme importance, he permitted misfortune -to rouse mere passion in his mind; and he who might -have led the Moderates, who might have played with the -life of Louis like a card, chose to remember his rebuff in -the winter and threw his trump away.</p> - -<p>Many have tried to explain Vergniaud’s vote. Is it -not probable that he was drawn by the example of a man -whom he did not understand, and whose opinion attracted -an orator not unappreciative of energy? Vergniaud has -always before history a doubting and a hesitating face, -and it seems more than possible that the wrath of Danton -carried him and many others into the vote for death.</p> - -<p>Ever since the 10th of August had thrust him into -unexpected power, Danton had held in one way or another -the threads of a certain diplomacy. It was as follows:—To -rely upon all the elements in Europe which admired -or were indifferent to the Revolution, and to combine them -in a kind of resistant body; to use, as it were, their inertia -against those who were setting out as crusaders against -France. On this account the foolish war of propaganda -was most distasteful to him. On this account England’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span> -neutrality haunted his mind. He knew that in this -country there existed a body strong in its influence -though not in its numbers, a body which would have -supported the French. Priestley had written to him before -his exile. Talleyrand was working for him at the -moment, and opposing as an informal Dantonist the -Girondin acerbity of Chauvelin.<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> Danton was even willing -to use Dumouriez, mainly because Dumouriez was about -to compromise with England. To this policy of observation, -a policy which took advantage of England as the -lover of individual liberty and of England as the merchant, -the death of the King put a sudden stop. It was -Danton that killed his own intrigue.</p> - -<p>Before he left on his second mission to the armies on -the 31st January 1793, he shows that new face in which -he attempts to retrieve, as far as possible, the errors of -which he had been largely the author. In a speech -which shows once again all his old power of party political -action, he demands the annexation of Belgium. He -has seen that general war is inevitable, and harking back -again to that unique French conception of which he was -the heir, the <i>raison d’état</i>, he determines to save the State, -and to do it by an action which opposed every theory of -the Revolution. He asked “everything of their reason, -nothing of their enthusiasm,” and he demanded the -annexation of Belgium with France. It was pure opportunism—the -determination to get hold of a revenue by -force of arms; and the next day, after having painfully -come back to his old policy of the real and objective, -burdened by a past error, and having broken with all that -he valued in French opinion, he went off again to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span> -army. While his chaise was yet rolling on the flat roads -of Flanders, Chauvelin returned with Pitt’s scrawl in his -hand, and France was at war with the whole world.</p> - -<p>This next voyage to Belgium occupied but a very -short time. He did not get there until the 3rd February, -and he started to come back on the 15th. But the -moment, which is necessarily a silent one in his biography, -would be one of capital importance to us had he remained -in Paris to speak, and to leave us by his speeches some -clue as to the revolution through which his mind had -passed.</p> - -<p>Consider these contrasting pictures: Danton, up to -the death of the King, seems uniquely occupied in pursuing -the threads of a very careful diplomacy, and in -welding as far as possible the opposing factions of the -Parliament. Of course, his general theories in politics -remain unaltered, but something has happened which -makes him, on returning from Belgium for the second -time, pursue this different policy: the immediate construction -of a strong central government, and the providing -of it with exceptional and terrible machinery. He -works this as absolutely the unique policy. He seems to -have forgotten all questions of diplomacy, nearly to have -despaired of settling the quarrel between Paris and the -Girondins. In fine, Danton, when first in power, had -been a man so representative of France as to have many -different objects, and to attempt their co-ordination. We -see him the brief fortnight of Louis’s execution violent, -angry, unreasoning; we see him again in less than a -month transformed into a man with a single object, pursued -and succeeded in with the tenacity common to -minds much narrower than his own.</p> - -<p>I know that events will largely account for the change. -The Girondins had repelled him; diplomacy had no further -object when once the universal war was declared; the -grave perils, and later the disasters of the French armies,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span> -which he had seen with his own eyes, called imperatively -for a dictatorship. Nevertheless events will not of themselves -account for the very great transformation in all -that he says and does. I believe that we must look to -another cause—one of those causes which historians -neglect, but which in the lives of individuals are of far -more importance than their political surroundings. By -nature he had great tendencies to indolence as well as -to violence. He was capable of temporising to a dangerous -extent, and this, I think, was largely the cause of his -action in the autumn. But such natures are also of the -kind which disaster spurs to action. As we have seen, the -return in January to his household, ruined by an impending -fate, made him the violent and bitter speaker who -spoiled his own plans by his own speeches. But returning -from Belgium in February, not a menace but a definite -disaster awoke in him a much more useful energy.</p> - -<p>Coming from fields in which he had seen the whole -force of the early battles breaking up in confusion and -retreat, he had suddenly to meet the news of his wife’s -death. He bought a light carriage for himself in order -to travel with greater speed, and arrived at the city in -time, they say, to have her coffin taken out of the grave -and opened, so that he might look once more upon her -face. The home was entirely empty. The two little children, -one of whom was in arms, the other of whom was -just beginning to talk, had been taken away to their grandmother’s. -The seals were on the furniture and on the -doors. One servant only remained. The house had been -without a fire for a week when he entered. It was an opportunity -and a command for another origin in his political -life. Coming and going from these rooms, he found them -intolerable; he took refuge in direct and determined -action, calling to his aid all that vast reserve of energy -which he was accustomed to expend at the cost of so -much future exhaustion.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span></p> - -<p>Here was the first thing to be done—to construct at -once that strong and simple government which he had -talked of so long. The report which he and the other -commissioners had prepared on the state of the army<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> -was one deliberately intended to make such a government -voted. The Commune of Paris immediately after the -preparation of the report made its vigorous appeal for a -further levy, and on the 8th of March Danton made the -first of those speeches which riveted the armour all round -France.<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p> - -<p>In the first phrase of this speech he strikes the note -upon which depended so much of his power. He reads -his own character into that of the nation. “We have -often discovered before now that this is the temper of -the French people—namely, that it needs dangers to -discover all its energy.” Then he strikes the other note, -the appeal to Paris which had marked so much of his -career. “Paris, which has been given so ill a fame” (a -stroke at the Girondins), “I say is called once more to -give France the impulse which last year produced all -our triumphs. We promised the army in Belgium 30,000 -men on the 1st of February. None have reached them. -And I demand that commissioners be named to raise a -force in the forty-eight Sections of Paris.”</p> - -<p>If there was some talk at that moment of making -him Minister of War after Beurnonville’s resignation, it -was because no one but Danton himself understood -how much his energy could do. He rejected the proposal, -but he had the desire to replace the ministers -themselves by a power more formidable and more direct.</p> - -<p>In these days one disaster after another came to help -his scheme. More than one of his enemies had suspected -in a vague fashion that he was framing a new power,<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> but -they could not imagine in Danton anything higher than<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span> -ambition, and they lent him the ridiculous project of -forcing a new ministry upon the Assembly. What he -was really preparing, and what he produced on the 10th -of March, was the weapon which history has called the -Revolutionary Tribunal.</p> - -<p>It was the moment when the mutterings against the -Girondins seemed about to take the form of an insurrection, -when their printing presses were broken, and -when, in the vague panic that always followed any popular -movement since September, men feared a renewal of the -massacres. The proposal is put forward with ability of -argument rather than with passion; but, in the teeth of -the majority and a ministry to which such methods were -detestable, in the teeth, that is, of the Girondin idealism -which was ruining the country, he affirmed the necessity -of his scheme, and he passed it.<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> He had given the -Revolutionary Government its first great weapon, a weapon -that was later to be turned against himself; his second -move was to put it into vigorous hands.</p> - -<p>This next proposition, which, combined with the establishment -of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was to change -the history of France, did not proceed from Danton alone, -but it was based upon Danton’s suggestion; it sprang -largely from the vivid impression he had given of the -peril in which France lay and of the necessity of forming -something central and strong, of providing a hand which -could use the dictatorship of the Terror. The Committee -of Public Safety, in a word, could not have been declared -but for the interpretation which Danton had given to the -disasters of March.</p> - -<p>The crowning defeat of Neerwinden, which at the -time must almost have seemed the death of the Republic, -gave the first impulse. The old Committee of General -Defence was renewed. But though this committee was -far too large and far too feeble, we owe it to Danton that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span> -it contained a vigorous minority from the Left. The -final blow that replaced it by an institution round which -the rest of this book will turn was the treason of -Dumouriez.</p> - -<p>Let us consider what the situation was at this moment. -The Republic had lost every man upon whose ability she -could rely in the leadership of armies. Of all the school -of generals who had grown up under the old regime, -Lafayette alone in his weak way had loved freedom, and -Dumouriez alone had remained on the side of the French. -Spain, England, the German Powers—nine allies—were -threatening the territory of the Republic and the very -existence of the new regime; the civil war, which was -soon to take such gigantic proportions, had already made -its successful beginning at Machecoul. Between the -Convention and immediate disaster there lay only the -personality of Dumouriez. When the news of his desertion, -following on the news of his defeat, reached Paris, -the Girondins were hopelessly discredited, and the line of -their political retreat, the pursuit of their enemies, ran in -a direction that Danton’s speeches had prepared.</p> - -<p>For several days he had himself been the object of -the most violent attacks, especially for his friendship with -Dumouriez and on the question of the Belgian accounts. -For he had just returned from a third mission to the -army, and had been close to the general. On the 1st -of April practically the whole sitting was devoted to an -attack upon him and to his defence. Had you been -sitting in the house that night, you would have said that -a violent demagogue, surrounded by a little group of yet -more violent friends, was resisting with some difficulty -the attacks of an honest and loyal majority. But this -demagogue was so far-seeing, was so much the greatest -of all those in the hall, that when three days afterwards -the Parliament was brought face to face with the reality, -Danton’s method becomes the only solution. They hear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span> -of Dumouriez’ treason, and on the night of the 4th of -April, Isnard, himself a Girondin, proposed the creation of -the Committee. Danton supported him at midnight with -a definite speech such as no Girondin would have dared -to make. He said practically, “This Committee is precisely -what we want, a hand to grasp the weapon of the -Revolutionary Tribunal.”</p> - -<p>It was Isnard that formulated the idea, but it was -Danton that baptised it “A Dictator.” It was at midnight -that he spoke, and he closed his short speech just on the -turn of the morning of the 5th of April. That very day a -year later the Dictator seized him, and his own Tribunal -put him to death.</p> - -<p>On the 5th of April, the next day, in the evening, we -begin to get those large measures and rapid which came -with the new organ of power. And Danton speaks with -a kind of joy, and demands at once such measures as -only a dictatorship can produce—calling all the people to -the defence, fixing a maximum upon the price of bread, -even the first mention of a levée <i>en masse</i>. The air is -full of such a spirit as you get in an army, the certitude -that with discipline and unity and authority all things can -be done. On the following day, the 6th, the Committee -was chosen, and on the 7th the names were read out, -which showed that the power had finally passed from the -Girondins to those whom they had rejected at the moment -when France was forgiving everything for the sake of -Jemappes. The Convention, in need of men of action, -had been forced to abandon its own leaders and to turn -to Danton.</p> - -<p>The names that they heard read out were Barrère, -Delmas, Bréard, Debry, Morvaux, Cambon, Treilhard, Lacroix, -and Danton.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE TERROR</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>From the 6th April 1793, from the act which was described -at the end of the last chapter, we have something -new in the course of the Revolution. We have at last an -Institution.</p> - -<p>It is in the nature of the French people (for reasons -which might to some extent be determined, but whose -discussion has no place in this book) that their history -should present itself in a peculiarly dramatic fashion. -Their adventures, their illusions, their violence, their despair, -their achievements, seem upon a hundred occasions -to centre round particular men or certain conspicuous -actions, in such a fashion that those men and these actions -fit themselves into a story, the plot and interest of which -absorb the reader. But if we attempt to connect the -whole into a series, even if we attempt to give the causes -or the meaning of a few years’ events, the dramatic aspect -fails. This quality, which has fascinated so many, has -also mistaught us and confused us, and, in the desire to -“throw the limelight” upon the centre of action, one -historian after another has left in obscurity that impersonal -blind force which directs the whole.</p> - -<p>This force in France is the Institution. Understand -the character and methods of her central power, and you -find yourself possessed of this great key to the understanding -of her history, namely, that events follow each -other in the order that the Institution requires, and the -nation moves along the lines which the Institution determines.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span> -The Institution provides a standpoint from which -all falls into perspective, even the details of personality no -longer remain in confusion. You find, in a little while, -that you are dealing with an organism more simple and -of far greater vitality than any man, as truly a living, and -much more truly a permanent, force than a monarch or a -great minister can be.</p> - -<p>The consideration of half-a-dozen examples will make -this clear. What is all that marvellously dramatic action -between Pepin le Bref and the coronation of Hugh but -confusion? It ceases to be so when we follow with Fustel -de Coulanges the transformation of the Imperial system. -You can make nothing of the tenth and eleventh centuries, -for all their personal interest, until you have grasped Feudalism, -and it is a common-place that the six hundred -years that follow are but the development of the Capetian -method. It is not in Louis the XI., or in Mazarin, or in -Louis XIV. that we find the Force—it is in the French -monarchy. Look about you at the present day, ask yourself -what has recreated the prosperity of modern France, -and you will certainly not be able to find a special man. -It is the System that has done the work.</p> - -<p>Now it is the note of all the Revolution, as we have -followed it up to this point, that the Institution was lacking. -France without it was France without herself: she -dissolved. The cause of this lack was as follows: The -monarchy, round which everything had centred, was dying, -and the social theories of the time—the great Philosophy -on which France was fed—neglected and despised the -Institution, relying as it did upon the vague force of -general opinion. It was the chief—I had almost said the -only—fault of the Jeffersonians in America and the idealist -Republicans in France, that they could see neither the -necessity of formulæ nor the just power of systems. Nevertheless -it was the instinct which remained in the French -mind, the “sub-conscious” sense of what the Institution<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span> -was to France, that made half the violence of the time. I -do not mean that the speeches recognised this character -openly—on the contrary, the enmities and the divisions -seem to turn entirely upon personal hatreds; but I mean -that the underlying fear, unexpressed but real, was that -such and such a proposition would create a permanent -tendency, and that Girondin or Jacobin success meant the -deflection of the torrent into one or the other of two -divergent channels. Here in England, living under an -order which is well established and old, we wonder at the -intensity of passion which some abstract resolution could -arouse in the Convention. We should wonder no longer -were we to comprehend that in the extreme rapidity with -which all France was being remoulded, a few words agreed -upon, a mere principle, might add a quality to all the -future history of the nation.</p> - -<p>Two men in the Revolutionary period rose higher -than the flood, Mirabeau and Danton. Each was able -to perceive what the permanent character of the nation -was, and each gave all his efforts to the uniting or welding -round some stable centre the new order to which -both were attached. In a word, each understood what -the Institution was to France, and desired to lend it -force and endurance. With Mirabeau it was the monarchy. -Would he have saved, recreated, and restored that declining -power which had once been the framework of the -nation? We cannot tell. Had he lived, ’92 would have -shown us; only we know that if the monarchy had -seemed to him at last beyond repair, he would have -proposed at once some similar power to replace it. Now -Danton had survived; doubtful in 1791, “more monarchist -than you, M. de Lafayette,” he was determined in 1792 -that the crown and France were separate for ever. He -overthrew the palace, but from that very moment all his -policy was directed to the construction of a governing -power. It is here that he and the Girondins, for all his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span> -personal attempts at unity, were hopelessly divided. The -Girondins were bent upon that local autonomy and that -extreme individual liberty in which the central power -disappears. With the growing danger, with his own -experience of Belgium, Danton, during the early part of -1793, becomes set upon the idea of government and of -nothing else. He gave it a weapon before it existed, for -he made the Revolutionary Tribunal, and though Isnard -first proposed it, it is known that Danton led the movement -which ended in the establishment of the Committee.</p> - -<p>All government since that time in France has been -its heir. It was the Committee that forged the centralised -system, that showed how the administration might -radiate from Paris, that gave precedent for the conscription -and for all determined action. That dictatorship so -plainly saved the country in its worst peril that under -many different names the French people have often recalled -it, and rarely without success.</p> - -<p>All the remaining year with which this chapter must -deal is the story of the Committee. The Committee -explains and gives us the clue to every action. Its -changes, the men who dominated it, the reasons it had -for violence or for clemency, its main object of throwing -back the invasions—these are the central part of 1793 -and 1794.</p> - -<p>Had we an accurate account of what passed in that -secret council, almost every event could be referred to it. -But such an account is lacking. Barrère, always inconsistent, -wrote a rigmarole in his old age which has -anecdotes of interest, but which is almost valueless for -our purpose. Here and there we have a disconnected -anecdote or a lame confession, but the doors of the room -are as closed to us as they were to the contemporaries -who stood in the outer hall and received the official -nothings of Barrère, or later of St. Just. Nevertheless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span> -what we can reconstruct of its spirit and action, imperfect -as our effort may be, does more to explain the -time than any descriptions of the orators or of the -crowd.</p> - -<p class="tb">The action of this new executive, as it touches Danton, -changes rapidly during the year. In the first Committee -of nine Danton is everything. He made it and he directs -it. Towards the close, however, of its short existence, he -is beginning to feel the pressure of the Jacobins, and of -Robespierre and of St. Just, the victory of the Mountain. -This loss of power on his part ends with the dissolution -of the old Committee, and when the new one is formed—with -the 10th of July—another period begins. The -members are increased to twelve; then enter the Robespierrians. -Danton, for motives which we shall discuss -later, resigns, and there are two doubtful summer months -when he still maintains, from without, the power of the -Committee, but first begins to check so far as is possible -the tyranny upon which it has embarked. He retires -in a kind of despair to Arcis, and with his return a new -phase is entered. The Committee is striking furiously; -the Terror has taken root; and by an action of generosity, -or perhaps of wisdom, Danton sets himself against his -own creation. These few months—the winter of 1793-1794—give -us that side of Danton which at the time was -least explicable, but which best defines him for posterity. -He puts his whole weight as an orator, and, through the -genius of his friends, he puts the journals also against the -Terror. Knowing (as he must have known) how strong -was the engine he had made, he yet withstands it, and -attempts by a purely personal force, without an organisation -and without executive power, to reduce the action -of the Committee. So great was he that for some weeks -his success hung in the balance. France, we must presume, -was with him. Paris doubted, but might have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span> -been won. When the violent and unscrupulous Hébertists -were executed he seemed to have succeeded, and the -Terror appeared to be closed. But the Committee had -a deeper policy; in the same week that saw the fall of -Hébert, Danton was himself suddenly arrested with his -friends. How far Robespierre permitted and how far -directed the action will never be fully known. The -Committee struck the one great force opposed to it, and -the Dantonists were executed on the anniversary of its -creation.</p> - -<p class="tb">The first part of the story of the Committee in its -relation to Danton is the period between April the 6th -and July the 10th 1793. It is the period of the fall of -the Girondins; and to make clear the importance of the -new power I shall adopt this method:—</p> - -<p>To give first in their order the events that led to the -attack on the Parliament and the expulsion of the twenty-two; -to show in what confusion the whole story lies, and -how difficult (or impossible) it is to follow the motives -of the deputies, or to say why they acted as they did. -Then to give, as a parallel account, the position and -action of the Committee, and to show how fully (in my -opinion) its motive determines the history of the time; -to look at the insurrection of June 2 from the room -where the nine members debated in secret, and to point -out how, from that standpoint (which was Danton’s own), -the confusion falls into order.</p> - -<p>First, then, what was the exterior history of the movement -that destroyed the Gironde? It will be remembered -that when the Convention first met in September, -the great majority of its numbers inclined to a certain -spirit. That spirit was best represented by a small group -of men, idealists and orators—and of these a number, -the most powerful perhaps, had come from the vineyards -of the peaceable southern river. The warmth, the calm,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span> -the fruitfulness of the Valley of the Gironde, appeared -in Vergniaud’s accents. To this devoted band of men, -whose whole career was justice and virtue, no one has -dared to be contemptuous, and history on every side has -left them heroes. They were own brothers to the immortal -group that framed the American Constitution, -the true heirs of Rousseau, and worthy to defend and -at last to give their lives for the Republican idea. They -hated the shedding of blood; they tested every action -by the purest standard of their creed; and from the first -speeches in which they demanded the war, to the day -when they sang the Marseillaise on the scaffold, they did -not swerve an inch from the path which they had set -before themselves.</p> - -<p>What led such men into conflict with Paris, and perhaps -with France? This fault: that the pure theory which -they justly maintained to be the one right government -could not meet Europe in arms. What a few millions lost -on the littoral of the American continent could do, without -frontiers and without memories, that France could not -do with civil war raging, and with the world invading -her frontiers. A modification was imperative, a compromise -with necessary evil. The men who felt reality -knew that well. Danton had forced on a dictatorship, -and gave it the method of the Terror. But the Girondins, -though they had been compelled to give up so much, yet -refused to follow the necessary path. They refused the -conscription; a volunteer army was the only one tolerable -to free men. They refused diplomacy; it involved a secret -method, and was of its nature based on compromise. -They refused the requisitions to the armies, the forced -taxes, the hegemony of Paris, the preponderance of -talent or genius in the committees—in a word, they -refused to sanction anything, however necessary, in that -crisis, which they would not have sanctioned in a time -of order and of a pure republic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span></p> - -<p>The result of this sublime obstinacy was the ruin -of France and of themselves. The Royalists saw it, and -called themselves “Girondins;” the great name became -a label for every reaction, and in every new disaster Paris -saw with increasing clearness the restraining hand of the -Gironde. For it was Paris and its Commune that took -the leadership in the attempt to depose or expel the men -who led the Parliament. Already before the Committee -had been formed, the Commune on April the 2nd had -begun to correspond with the municipalities of France—the -fatal step that had so often preceded insurrection. -To Paris as a centre, to Paris radical, and especially to -Paris violent and unreasoning, the Girondins had grown -detestable. Paris for a thousand years had stood for unity—the -Girondins were autonomist and federal. Paris was -passionate—the Girondins as calm as light. To all this -enmity the Gironde answered by no force, but only by -an assertion of their inviolable right. All April and May -is consumed in the tale of great disasters without, and -of the acute battle between the Right and the deputation -from Paris within.</p> - -<p>It is when we turn to this struggle within the Convention -that the confusion arises which can only be made -clear by considering the Committee. Especially is this -the case with regard to Danton’s action. Thus, on the -10th of April, he opposes the prosecution of those who -sent a petition from the Halle aux Blés for the resignation -of Roland; on the 13th there is the famous speech -in favour of diplomatic action as opposed to the violence -of the Mountain. Yet the day before he also opposed in a -formal and well-reasoned speech the arrest and trial of -Marat. When that madman, with whom his name had -been so often linked, came back in triumph from his -acquittal, Danton took a yet more inexplicable attitude. -While all the Mountain were shouting for joy, and while -Paris welcomed the verdict as the first wound of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span> -Gironde (which, indeed, it was), Danton merely said, -“Paris, we see, so loves the Convention as to applaud -the acquittal of one of its members”—a very transparent -speech. On the 1st of May Danton is the only -man to speak with sobriety and good sense against the -petition of the Faubourg St. Antoine, which attacked -the rights of property; yet on the 10th he turns against -Isnard, that is, against the Gironde and the Moderates, -and causes the proposal of what was practically a popular -referendum on the constitution to be rejected. We see, -therefore, even when we look at the action of Danton -alone, the apparent confusion that was indicated above. -Were we to turn to almost any other of the Committee -the same would be apparent. Barrère, the chief spokesman, -seems to take now one side, now the other. At one -moment he attacks the Girondins purposely; at another -the petitions from Paris; at every point, in the action -of every prominent speaker outside the two opposing -groups, there appears this inextricable tangle.</p> - -<p>With the 10th of May the battle between Paris and -the Gironde entered into its last phase. It was upon this -date that the Convention began to sit permanently in -the little theatre of the Tuilleries, where they had first -met. The news that met them was the death of Dampierre -and the taking of Thouars by the Vendeans. Every -rumour of disaster (and the rumours were being confirmed -with fatal rapidity) was like oil spilt from the lamp of -the Gironde. Their own followers were shaken, the great -mass of the Convention who put their trust in these pure -doctrines grew afraid and doubtful. Within a week (on -the 17th) the Commune took a further step; they made -their own law, and put Boulanger at the head of the -armed force of the town—a force that was not theirs to -govern. Later they gave Henriot the place. The Convention -answered by electing Isnard their president; and -Guadet, the headstrong, proposed to break the Commune,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span> -and to call the “suppliants” to Bourges. By this proposal -a kind of Parliament in reserve would have existed -to take up the work if the Parliament in Paris should be -mutilated. Had the motion passed, the civil war, which -was muttering in Lyons and had broken into open flame -in Vendée, would have embraced all France.</p> - -<p>But at this juncture Danton’s Committee comes in -again with its curiously mixed action. By the mouth of -Barrère it pleads against the motion, and proposes instead -the appointment of twelve members, as Girondin as they -pleased, to judge the Commune, to “inquire.” The commission -was named, and acted on thorough principle and -with haste, and without judgment, as any one might have -foretold; for such was the Girondin weakness. Against the -army that the Commune was gathering, all it could propose -was to double the sergeant’s guard at the Tuilleries, -while it exasperated its enemy by ordering the arrest of -Hébert.</p> - -<p>Hébert was the one man in the Revolution of whom -the truth has certainly been told by enemies. There was -something of the pickpocket in Hébert, but not of the -pickpocket only. He was also a blasphemer, an atheist, -a man delighting in the foulest words, and in the most -cowardly or ferocious of actions. His prominence was -due to two things. First, he was the pamphleteer of the -time, the “Père Duchesne.” France had not yet discovered -the danger of a free press. Secondly, in the -Parisian exasperation against “the Moderates,” the most -extreme and the least rational became of necessity a -kind of symbol, an accentuated type, and was thrust -forward as a defiance. It is not too much to say that -the Girondins themselves, by their lack of all measure, -pushed Hébert to the front.</p> - -<p>Such measures as those which “the twelve” had -decreed were but fuel for the insurrectionary flame. -Once more Danton appears, this time against the Gironde.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span> -To the demand for a large guard drawn from the Departments -he said, “You are decreeing that you are afraid!” -Whereupon a voice from the right cried with some humour, -“I am.” Danton had his way, the guard was not formed, -and on the following day (the 25th of May) Isnard’s -imprudence brought on the catastrophe.</p> - -<p>It was in the matter of the petition for the release of -Hébert. Isnard rose in the chair, lifted his hand, and pronounced -in his hollow voice the words that have enriched -history at the expense of his country: “If such a thing -should happen as an attempt upon the representatives of -the nation, I say to you, in the name of all France, that -very soon men would search upon the banks of the Seine -for proofs that Paris had once been there.” Danton -intervened, but he could do nothing. The glove had -been thrown down. He asked for the withdrawal of -those words; the Girondin majority reaffirmed them. -Two days later he obtained the freedom of Hébert; but -though for a moment he was promised the dissolution of -the “Commission of the Twelve,” his effort failed, for -they were immediately reinstated. In the night between -the 30th and the 31st of May the Sections named a new -and insurrectionary Commune; for one day the danger -was warded off, and you may see Danton, still so difficult -to understand, urging the Committee, while Barrère is proposing -the conciliatory message to France, a document -which blamed neither the Girondins nor Paris, and the -twelve were dissolved. But the final blow was not to -be avoided. On the 2nd of June the news of the counter-revolution -in Lyons reached Paris. The Convention was -surrounded; Henriot, at the head of the city militia, -guarded its approaches, lined the corridors. Even in -that moment, when Isnard proposed to retire, and made -his superb apology, the Gironde, as a whole, stood firm. -The inflexible Jansenist, Lanjuinais, proposed, with heroic -folly, “a decree dissolving the authorities of Paris,” at a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span> -moment when these very authorities were holding the -doors with fixed bayonets; but in spite of Barrère’s demand -for Henriot’s condemnation, in spite of Danton’s -demand for “a signal punishment,” the Convention -yielded, voted the arrest not only of the twenty-two, -whom the Commune had demanded, but of twenty-nine, -and Vergniaud, Barbaroux, Guadet; Le Brun, and Clavière -(who were nominally ministers); Roland (who had fled, -and whose wife was imprisoned by the Commune)—in -fine, the whole body of those great orators who had made -the Republic—were thrust out of the Assembly, some to -be held in the honourable confinement of their own -houses, some to fly and raise civil war in the Departments. -The Commune offered hostages in equal number, -but they were refused; and before the day was over the -Parliament was mutilated, and the obstacle to the dictatorship -and to the Terror had been swept away.</p> - -<p>Such is a rapid summary of the fall of the Girondins—a -story of contradictions and of inextricable cross-purposes, -in which for two months men seem (especially -the men of the new Committee) to change sides, to -hesitate, and to falter, in which the majority passes over -to the Jacobins with a startling rapidity, and in which -(apparently) the only two fixed points are the immovable -figures of the Gironde and their opponents of the -Commune.</p> - -<p>I know that this confusion has commonly led writers -to adopt an equal confusion in their explanation of the -insurrection and of its motives. To disentangle such a -skein it was apparently necessary to make Robespierre a -prophet, Isnard for once a coward, Barrère a skilful diplomatist, -Danton a vacillator. Such a method appears to -me false. If, to explain a difficult passage in history, we -make men behave in a way which contradicts all their -lives, we must (it seems to me) be in error. These special -theories are mechanical, and do not satisfy the mind.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span></p> - -<p>The question is this: Somewhere a power existed; -why was not that power in evidence either on one side -or on the other? And why do we not see it acting? I -believe the answer is as follows:—</p> - -<p>The power was in the Committee. The Committee -believed it necessary to be rid of the Girondins. -But the Committee was part of the Convention—the -existence and the authority of the Convention was necessary -to it. It saw on the one hand a set of Parliamentary -leaders who would not permit it to act with vigour, on the -other it noted the angry spirit of Paris. The Committee -permitted that spirit to act, but gave it its measure and -its direction unknown to itself, desiring to eliminate the -Moderates, but anxious to avoid their proscription, exile, or -death. With this clue the maze seems to me resolved. -It was the Committee that expelled the Gironde, using -Paris for its arm.</p> - -<p>Now to prove this certain steps are necessary. In -the first place, why can we say that the Committee was -the centre of power? Because it alone had access to a -complete knowledge of France, it alone debated in secret, -and it alone existed for the express purpose of dictatorship. -When once the generals, the deputies in mission, -and the police became familiar with the new organ, they -referred to the Committee as naturally as the corresponding -men to-day would refer to a cabinet or to a monarch. -If the reader will glance at any portion of the document -which is printed as <a href="#APPENDIX_XI">Appendix XI.</a> of this book, and to which -I shall continually refer in this passage, he will at once -perceive that the men who drew it up had in their hands -every lever of public machinery. I would not maintain -that this power sprang at once into existence on the 6th -of April, but the two months that produced such a report -was ample time to have developed a corresponding grasp -upon the armies, upon the diplomacy, and upon the -internal resources of Revolutionary France. Where else<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span> -will you find such a document in all the offices of the -time? Compared with it the decisions of the ministry -are vague abstractions, the reports of the Commune -puerilities or ravings. Revolutionary France, until the -formation of the Committee, may be compared to a marsh -in which the water tends to flow to no one centre; the -information, the revenue, the public forces stood incoherent -and stagnant. The creation of this secret body may be -compared to a pit dug in its centre, to which the waters -would immediately flow. It may be objected that they -had not the control of finance. No; but they had -Cambon. In an assembly of men new to government -this very difficult province fell of itself into the hands of -a man whose genius all admitted, and whose probity -no one of his enemies would deny. Long before the -insurrection took place, any man with information, with -authority, or with a special duty to perform, had learnt -to regard the Committee as his chief, for the simple reason -that no other centre of authority existed. Add to this -the incalculable force of secrecy, the power by which the -most glaring failures of our cabinets can be hidden by -merely saying, “We know what all the rest ignore,” and -it will appear reasonable to say that by June the Committee -could almost, had it wished, have summoned an -army to Paris. The Committee then held the power.</p> - -<p>In the second place, we must establish, as far as is -possible, the aims of the Committee and their method of -guiding the insurrection. As was said earlier in this -chapter, those aims and methods can only be arrived at -by inference; the very nature of a body that deliberates -in secret makes this method of inquiry necessary. There -is no direct evidence, unless the contradictory anecdotes -of a much later period can be given that name. Now -we can infer with some accuracy what went on in their -deliberations. There should be noted at the outset the -document to which I have already referred, and which, if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span> -I am not mistaken, is printed for the first time in this -book. It was the first of those general Rapports which were -delivered by Barrère to the Convention for the next sixteen -months, and which so profoundly affected the course -of the Revolution. It sums up the result of two months -of astonishing labour; everything—all the weakness of -France—has been noted with the accuracy of a topographical -survey. It gives the equipment, the provisioning, -the local difficulties of each army, the detailed -condition of the fleet (a most deplorable picture), the -result of what is evidently an elaborate spy-system in the -department of foreign intrigue, and everywhere the indictment -is obvious—“whatever has governed France hitherto -has hopelessly failed.” There are, indeed, polite references -to the ineptitude of the old regime, but side by -side with these there is a direct attack on the Girondin -Ministers of War, and on the diplomatic, or rather non-diplomatic, -methods which had been pursued abroad; -indeed, many parts of this report would not be out of -place had they appeared in a Compte Rendu drawn up -by the victorious insurrection, instead of preceding, as -they did, the fall of the Gironde.</p> - -<p>Again, there is the date of its appearance. It was -not by a coincidence that Barrère was given it to read on -the 29th of May. Note this sequence. Isnard made -his fatal speech on Saturday the 25th. Monday the -27th was the date of Danton’s attempt to dissolve “the -twelve;” and his failure followed on Tuesday the 28th, -when, by the blindness or firmness of the Gironde, they -were reinstated. It is on Wednesday the 29th that -Barrère rises at the end of a long and stormy discussion, -and, late in the afternoon, presents his report. The vague -phrases on the importance of unity which it contains have -made some imagine that it was an attempt at conciliation, -rapidly devised and thrown out at that critical moment. -That opinion is surely erroneous. It is long (some 17,000<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span> -words) and carefully prepared; it must have taken some -time to draw up, and it has all the appearance of a -weapon framed at leisure and held in reserve; it comes -at that moment with some such force as this, saying -from the Committee, from Danton, to the Gironde—“You -have refused to do what France absolutely needed. You -have rejected my attempts to save you, the avenues -which I opened for your escape; you were given the -commission of twelve; you have fatally abused the gift. -Will you be convinced at the last moment by this -picture of the terrible straits to which you have brought -the nation?”</p> - -<p>Finally, we can draw a fairly conclusive set of proofs -from our knowledge of the men in the Committee and -of the public action they took. Of all the nine, Danton -was the one commanding personality. Cambon was a -specialist, and but for him and Lindet, honest but not an -orator, there were Danton and his men only. Barrère, -it may be urged, was not a Dantonist; but he was -pliant to a degree; his pliancy is notorious, and has -ignorantly been given a still worse name. Moreover, -Barrère was closeted with Danton day after day; they -undertook the same department in the Committee (that -of foreign affairs), and they follow exactly the same -course in the tribune. In the Department of War was -Delacroix, Danton’s friend and right hand. Of the report -itself, all the last part, and possibly some paragraphs in -the middle, were drawn up by Danton. Later we shall -see that his preponderance was notorious and a danger -to him.</p> - -<p>Well, Danton and the Committee being so nearly -identical, can we make a description of the motive that -urged him? I think we can. Desmoulin’s “Histoire des -Brissottins” was certainly not of Danton’s inspiration. -Camille wrote that deadly pamphlet under the eye of -Robespierre. But Fabre d’Eglantine at the Jacobins, on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span> -May the 1st, calling on the Girondins “to go, and return -when all is settled,” is almost using Danton’s own phrase—“Qu’ils -s’en aillent, et qu’ils revennent profiter de notre -victoire.” All that he and Barrère say, from then to the -day of June the 2nd, seems to fall under this formula. He -permits the attack of the Commune, while he does everything -to moderate its force. He speaks continually for -the defence, but he and his Committee refuse to act, and -if ever he has spoken a little too strongly, has given the -Girondins a little too much power, he retreats somewhat -towards the Commune. He resembles a man who is -opening a sluice in a dyke of the fen country: behind -him is the sea; he admits and plays with its power, but -unless his calculation is just it may rush in and overwhelm -him. He permitted Paris to strike, and he created -a tyranny; both the mob of the capital and the dictatorship -were destined to break from his hands.</p> - -<p>These are, as I read them, the causes of the fall of -the Girondins. I have dealt with them at this length -because the passage from the 31st of May to the 2nd of -June 1793 is not only one of the most fiercely debated, -but also one of the most important in the history of the -Revolution. I have not given it too much space, for upon -the understanding of what led to and what permitted the -insurrection depends, without any question, our final judgment -on Danton’s position.</p> - -<p>Here, then, the Committee, even in its infancy, -furnishes the clue to a difficult passage in the Revolution. -It is becoming more and more necessary as research progresses -to refer the mysteries of the period to that central -body; and, as it seems to me, we have in its first general -report the first explanation of that most complex movement, -the insurrection of the 2nd of June.</p> - -<p>The Gironde having disappeared, there was left before -Danton a task of extreme difficulty. He was about to -attempt the management of men whom he deliberately<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span> -permitted to engage in battle. It is of the very first -importance in our study of his career to appreciate the -conditions of this task. Consider for a moment what he -has done. He has by arguments, by threats, and finally -by the use of the mob, made the Revolutionary Government -a reality. It is in this last ally that we find the -cause of his future failure. Hitherto he has been battling -with particular men, preventing a small group of politicians -from obstructing the Revolutionary measures, cajoling -on the other hand the extreme members of the Convention -by calculated outbursts of sympathy. Such a task no -one would find impossible, did he possess at once a clear -object and the genius to approach it. But after the 2nd -of June it was another matter. He had let loose the -storm, and with the pride of a man who felt his strength -inwards and outwards (for scheming and for haranguing), -he had determined deliberately to ride it. It was a miscalculation. -Something resembling a natural force, something -like an earthquake or a lava stream, opposed itself -to his mere individual will; and Danton, who among the -politicians had been like a man among boys, became in -the presence of these new forces like a lonely traveller -struggling at evening against a growing tempest in the -mountains. From this moment we shall see him using -in vain against the passions of 1793 the ability, the ruse, -the eloquence, the energy which had so long succeeded -among the statesmen. They will be swept down like -driftwood upon the current of popular madness which he -himself has let loose. The Committee will be formed of -new members, the Terror will grow from day to day, the -Revolution will begin to take on that character of fanaticism -which was directly opposed to Danton’s plan, and he -will retire disappointed and beaten. He will return -frankly out of sympathy with the excesses, and in expiation -of that fault of sanity he will die.</p> - -<p>The months in which he fights this losing battle are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span> -the hot months of 1793. I will not deny that during -this summer his name is more conspicuous than at any -period of his life. I will admit that if we deal with -history as a spectacle, the climax of 1793 should be distinguished -by his voice and presence. But it is this -fascination of the picturesque which has made his life -inexplicable, and a biographer dares not leave it so. -Although June, July, and August are full of his speeches, -his warning, and even his energy, yet I say that he -was day after day losing his hold and slipping. He -is conspicuous because in the face of such disaster he -redoubled his energy; but even that redoubled energy is -dwarfed in the face of the spirit that animated the Terror.</p> - -<p>First with regard to June: it was still a period of -hope, and he still thought himself the master. He had -added to the Committee, not thinking them dangerous, -but as a kind of sop, five members of the Mountain. -Among them were two who were to prove the ruin of his -whole system—Couthon and St. Just. Perhaps to temper -their action, perhaps merely because he was a friend, -he included Hérault de Séchelles. The names were -typical of what was to happen in 1794, when, by the -power of St. Just, Hérault was to be thrust out of the -Committee and sent to die with Danton himself.</p> - -<p>Unconscious of what this addition would lead to, unconscious -also of what echoes the 2nd of June might -arouse in the provinces, Danton pursued his path as -though the insurrection had been but one event of many. -The minister Le Brun was brought by his guards day -after day to aid in the discussions, and taken back to the -custody of his own house. One might have thought that -the “moral insurrection” of which Robespierre had talked -had led only to a “moral suppression” of the Girondins. -Moreover, the whole of these days of June are full of -Danton’s yet remaining supremacy. He goes on with his -two principal methods, namely, a strong secret government<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span> -and moderation in the application of its tyranny, -as though the situation was his to mould at his will. -Thus, on the 8th, he says with regard to the decree -against foreigners: “I will show you such and such an -alien established in France who is much more of a patriot -than many Frenchmen. I say to you, therefore, that -while the principle of watching foreigners is good, you -should send this proposal to the Committee and let it be -discussed there.” Again, two days later, he refuses to -admit the violent attitude of the Mountain towards Bordeaux. -He even praises that city at a time when it was -practically in rebellion, to defend its proscribed members. -Within the same week he continues to talk of La Vendée -as the only centre of insurrection. He continues to be -the Danton of old, although the Girondins are raising the -standard of civil war on every side, and he maintains that -continuous effort and compromise which had saved so much -in the autumn of 1792, and which could do so little now.</p> - -<p>Within the Committee they framed the Constitution -of 1793—that great monument of democracy, which -never took its place in history, nor ever affected the lives -of men. It stands like an idol of great beauty which -travellers find in a desert place; its religion has disappeared -from the earth; no ruins surround it; in the day -when it was put up the men who raised it were driven -from what should have been the centre of their adoration. -That Danton was still in power when the result was debated -in the Parliament during the third week of the -month is evident from two things: first, that the Constitution, -with its broad guarantees of individual liberty and -of local autonomy, with its liberal spirit, so nearly approaching -the great dream of Condorcet, so opposed to -the narrow fanaticism of the Jacobins, was definitely -intended to appease the growing passions of civil war. -Two-thirds of France, of the country-sides at least, was -arming because Paris had dared to touch the representatives<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span> -of the nation. The Constitution was thrown like -a hostage; the men who saw the necessity for a dictatorship -said virtually, “The violence that offends you is only -for a moment. Here is what we desire with the return -of peace.” And the document so responded to the heart -of France that it succeeded.</p> - -<p>The second proof that Danton had still hold of the -reins is to be found in this: that the advice which he -gives during the discussions on the Constitution is not -that of violence, nor of flattery, but of moderate common-sense; -and of such advice which the Convention accepts -the best example is to be found in the speech on the -power of making war. It was a difficult thing to -convince the Assembly, in those days of abstractions, -that the nation, as a whole, could not exercise such -a right without hopeless confusion. Yet Danton had his -way. This month of June, then, which was so full of -terrible internal danger, during which Buzot had raised -a Girondin army sixty miles from Paris, during which -Normandy was in full revolt, during which Lyons had -attacked the Republic, and during which the counter-Revolution -seemed on the point of breaking out—this -month was still Danton’s own. He was secure in his -public position, for the very conquerors of the 2nd of -June, the violent extremists, could not prevent him from -exercising his diplomacy abroad and his pacificatory -compromise in domestic affairs.</p> - -<p>He was also secure in that which mattered so much -more to him—I mean in his home. His mind had -sufficiently steadied after the shock that had maddened -him in February for him to follow the advice which -his dead wife had left him. On the 17th of June he -re-married. The woman was not suited to Danton. She -did not love him, nor probably did he love her. There -were two young children, whom, in the winter, his first -wife, finding herself to be dying, felt she was leaving<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span> -orphans. The eldest was only three years old. This -good woman, Catholic and devout, knowing her husband, -and the sheer necessity for a home which his character -had shown, determined on a religious education for her -sons, and determined on a Catholic woman to be about -her husband. She urged him to marry her younger friend, -Mdlle. Gély. An incident, which is doubtful, but which, -on the whole, I accept, does not seem to me to prove -the violence of an uncontrolled affection, but, on the -contrary, to show a kind of indifference, as though -Danton said to himself, “The thing must be done, and -had better be done so as to offend the family as little as -possible.” I mean the story of his marriage before a -non-juring priest. At any rate, that marriage shows an -element of determination and security. He was still -master of his fortunes and of himself.</p> - -<p>But he had called up a spirit too strong for him. -July was to prove it.</p> - -<p>June, which had seen the rise of the Girondin insurrection, -had also seen its partial appeasement and -suppression. It was, as we have said, the Constitution, -hurriedly improvised for this purpose, that had been the -main cause of such a success, but there remained for -July, more dangerous than ever, the foreign invasion and -the three outstanding strongholds of the civil war—Lyons, -Toulon, and La Vendée. It was against them -and their growing success, against the rebels and the -invaders, that the Terror was serviceable, and it was on -account of their continual progress that the Terror -assumed such fearful proportions.</p> - -<p>I said earlier in this chapter that Danton inaugurating -and strengthening the dictatorship of the Revolutionary -Government was like a man deliberately opening a sluice -behind which was the whole sea. There was an element -of uncertainty upon the chances of which he had staked -the success of his effort, and, with the reverses, he soon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span> -discovered that the forces which he had let loose were -going beyond him. It may be that he thought the -results of the 2nd of June would be more immediate -than they were. As a fact, it took many months to -recover the position which the supineness of the Girondins -had lost. In those months the Revolutionary Government -crystallised, as it were, became permanent, and fell -into the hands of the extremists.</p> - -<p>On the very day that the Norman insurrection was -crushed at Vernon, a Norman girl stabbed Marat. It is -not within the scope of this book to deal at any great -length with the fate of the man whom Danton had called -“l’individu.” That most striking and picturesque episode -concerns us only in this matter, that it was a powerful -impetus to the system of the Terror, and such an one -as Danton, with all his judgment, could not possibly have -foreseen. Moreover, on the very day that Marat was -killed, the allied forces entered Warsaw, and there can -be no doubt that the success of this infamy gave them -a freer hand morally, at least upon the French frontier. -Mayence fell, and its fall cost the life of Josephine’s first -husband. The Allies had crossed the Rhine. Five days -later, on the 28th of July, Valenciennes fell. At the same -moment the Spaniards were pouring in east and west -of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese had crossed the -Alps. From a little press in Newcastle (the family -of the printer yet remain to tell the tale), Pitt was -drawing the thousands of forged assignats to ruin the -Republic. Five foreign armies were occupying the territory -of France, and late in the following month the -Spanish and English fleets were admitted to the harbour -and arsenal of Toulon. Let it then be granted that, with -the possible exception of the Roman power after Cannæ, -no power in history was ever so near destruction as was -Revolutionary France in that summer.</p> - -<p>Let us see how the misfortunes of the country<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span> -reacted upon the position of Danton. Already, with early -July, he felt himself pressed and constrained by the -growing power of the Jacobin doctrine and of its high -priest. His system of conciliation, his attempts (in large -part successful) to coax rather than to defeat the insurrection, -were violently criticised in the debate of the 4th. -The anger against the Girondins, which the death of -Marat was to increase to so violent a degree, produced -the report of St. Just upon the 8th of July, which, though -history has called it moderate, yet mentions the accusation -of Vergniaud and of Gaudet, and to this Danton was -forced reluctantly to put his name. Two days afterwards -the old Committee to which he had belonged was dissolved -and a new one was elected.</p> - -<p>It would be an error to regard this as a mere resignation -on the part of Danton; it would be equally an -error to regard it as a violent censure on the part of the -Convention. It is certain that he chose to withdraw -because the fatal necessity of things was giving power to -men of whom he had no opinion. Thus Robespierre -joined the Committee on the 27th of July—Robespierre, -of whom Danton could say in private, “The man has not -wits enough to cook an egg.” Yet this was the man who -was so worshipped by the crowd, that, once within the -Committee, he was destined to become the master of -France. It may be remarked in passing that something -fatal seemed to attach to the date on which a man -entered and began to lead the Committee. On the day -that Danton entered in ’93, on that day was he guillotined -in ’94. On the day that Robespierre entered in ’93, on -that day in ’94 he fell.</p> - -<p>Danton remained, for a little longer than a month, -more and more separate from the management of affairs, -more and more out of sympathy with the men who -were conducting the government. Nevertheless, he stands -almost as an adviser and certainly with pure disinterestedness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span> -throughout the month of August. He was alone. -Desmoulins was more with Robespierre than with him -at that moment. Westermann, his great friend and ally -on the 10th of August 1792, was under censure for his -defeat in Vendée. But standing thus untrammelled, -Danton for the moment appears with an especial brilliancy. -Indeed there is no act of his public life so clear, so -typical of his method, or so successful as his great speech -on the 1st of August. It was as though, divorced from -the pre-occupations of political intrigue and free from -the responsibility of executive power, he was able for the -first time in his whole life to speak his mind fully and -clearly. The speech is a précis, as it were, of all his -pronouncements on the necessity for a dictatorship and -the methods it should employ. It turns round this -sentence, “I demand that the Committee of Public -Safety should be erected into a Provisional Government.” -He said openly that while he asked for absolute powers -for the Committee, he refused ever to join it again. He -pointed out to them the necessity of uniting all power -in the hands of one body, of making a unique command -for a nation at war. To men who had been lost for so -long in the discussion of constitutional checks and guarantees, -he talked of the necessities as a general would -to his staff. If you will read this speech through, you -will find it to be the clearest exposition in existence of -the causes and of the methods of the action of France -in all her dangers from that day to our own. This speech, -which is the climax of his career, and which stands at -the fountain-head of so much in the modern nation, was -followed throughout the month by many a piece of -practical and detailed advice. He talks always quietly, -and always with a specific object in view, on the educational -proposals, on the great conscription (14th of -August), on the enforcement of an absolute military -discipline (15th of August), and so forth. But while<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span> -he is still in this position, of which the brilliancy and -success have deceived some into thinking that it was -the centre of his career, two things were at work which -were to lead to the strange crisis in which he lost his -life. First, the Terror was beginning to be used for purposes -other than those of the National Defence. Secondly, -there was coming upon him lethargy and illness. He -seems to have remained for a whole month, from the -middle of September till the middle of October, without -debating. There had come a sudden necessity for repose -into his life, and until it was satisfied he gave an impression -of weakness and of breaking down.</p> - -<p>This was emphasised by a kind of despair, as he saw -the diplomatic methods abandoned in dealing with foreign -nations and the personal aims of the mystics, the private -vengeance of the bloodthirsty, or the ravings of the rank -madmen capturing the absolute system which he had -designed and forged at the expense of his titanic powers. -It was during this period that Garat saw him, and has -left us the picture of his great body bowed by illness, -and his small deep eyes filled with tears, as he spoke -of the fate that was following the Girondins, and of -how he could not save them. It was then also that, -walking slowly with Desmoulins at sunset by the Seine, -he said with a shudder that had never taken him before, -“The river is running blood.”</p> - -<p>With October the Terror weighed on all France by -the decree of the month before. The suspects were -arrested right and left, and the country had entered into -one of those periods which blacken history and leave -gaps which many men dare not bridge by reading. He -broke down and fled for quiet to his native place. From -thence the Great Mother, of whom in all the Revolution -he had been the truest son, sent him back to fulfil the -mercy and the sanity of Nature as he had up till then -fulfilled her energies.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span></p> - -<p>This book is the life of a man, and a man is his -mind. Danton, who has left no memoirs, no letters even—of -whose life we know so little outside the field of -politics—can only be interpreted, like any other man, by -the mind. We must seek the origin, though we have -but a phrase or two to guide us. What was that meditation -at Arcis out of which proceeded the forlorn hope -of the “Vieux Cordelier” and of the “Committee of -Indulgence”?</p> - -<p>He was ill already; the great energies which had been -poured out recklessly in a torrent had suddenly run dry. -Garat saw him weak, uncertain, refusing to leave his -study, troubled in the eyes. The reins were out of his -hands; all that he thought, or rather knew, to be fatal to -the Republic was succeeding, and every just conception, -all balance, was in danger. This, though it was not the -cause of his weariness, coincided with it, and made his -sadness take on something of despair. There had always -been in his spirit a recurrent desire for the fields and -rivers; it is common to all those whom Nature has blessed -with her supreme gift of energy. He had at this moment -a hunger for his native place, for the Champagne after -the harvest, and for the autumn mists upon the Aube. -It was in this attitude, weary, despairing, ill, and needing -the country as a parched man needs water, that he asked -and obtained permission to leave the Convention. It -was upon the 12th of October, just as the worst phase of -the Terror was beginning, that he left the violence and -noise of the city and turned his face eastward to the cool -valley of the Marne.</p> - -<p>Starting from this point, his weariness and his longing -for home, we can trace the movement of his mind during -the six weeks of his repose. He recovered health with -the rapidity that so often characterises men of his stamp; -he found about him the peaceable affection, the cessation -of argument and of self-defence which his soul had not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span> -known since the first days of 1789. His old mother -was with him, and his children also, the memories of his -own childhood. The place refreshed him like sleep; he -became again the active and merry companion of four -years before, sitting long at his meals, laughing with his -friends. The window of the ground-floor room opened -on to the Grande Place, and there are still stories of him -in Arcis making that window a kind of little rendezvous -for men passing and repassing whom he knew, his chatting -and his questions, his interests on every point except that -political turmoil in which the giant had worn himself out. -The garden was a great care of his, and he was concerned -for the farm in which he had invested the reimbursement -of his pre-revolutionary office. He delighted to meet his -father’s old friends, the mayor, the functionaries of the -place. This man, whom we find so typical of his fellow-countrymen, -is never more French than in his home. -The little provincial town, the <i>amour du clocher</i>, the prospect -of retirement in the province where one was born—the -whole scene is one that repeats itself upon every -side to-day in the class from which Danton sprang.</p> - -<p>Moreover, as quiet took back its old place in his soul, -he saw, no longer troubled, but with calmness and certainty, -the course that lay before the Republic. The -necessity of restraint, which had irritated and pursued -him in his days of fever in Paris, was growing into a -settled and deliberate policy; he began to study the position -of France like a map; no noise nor calumny was -present to confuse him, and his method of action on -his return developed itself with the clearness that had -marked his first attitude in the elections of Paris. How -rapidly his mind was working even his friends could not -tell. One of them thought to bring him good news, and -told him of the death of the Girondins. Danton was in -his garden talking of local affairs, and when this was told -him, the vague reputation which he bore, the “terrible<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span> -Danton,” and the fear he had inspired, led them to -expect some praise. He turned as though he had been -stabbed, and cried sharply, “Say nothing. Do you call -that good news? It is a terrible misfortune.... It -menaces us all.” And no one understood what was passing -in his mind. It was the note that Garat had heard, -and later Desmoulins: “I did my best to save them; I -wish to God I could have saved them!”</p> - -<p>Whatever other news reached Arcis in those terrible -months served only to confirm him more strongly in his -new attitude. Had he been tinged in the slightest -degree with the mysticism that was common to so many -in that time he would have felt a mission. But he was -a Champenois, the very opposite of a mystic, and he only -saw a task, a thing to be planned and executed by the -reason. Perhaps if he had had more of the exaltation of -the men he was about to oppose he might have succeeded.</p> - -<p>It was upon the 21st of November that he returned -to Paris. His health had come back, his full vigour, and -with the first days of his reappearance in politics the -demand for which the whole nation was waiting is heard. -And what had not the fanatics done during the weeks of -his silence! Lyons, the Queen, the Girondins, Roland’s -wife—the very terms of politics had run mad, and he -returned to wrestle with furies.</p> - -<p>Let me describe the confusion of parties through -which Danton had to wade in his progress towards the -re-establishment of liberty and of order. As for the -Convention itself, nominally the master, it was practically -of no power. It chose to follow now one now another -tendency or man; to be influenced by fear at this -moment, by policy at that, and continually by the Revolutionary -formulæ. In a word, it was led. Like every -large assembly, it lacked initiative. Above it and struggling -for power were these: First, the committees, that of -Public Safety, and its servant, that of General Security—the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span> -Government and the police. It was Danton, as we -know, who desired to make the committees supreme, who -had raised them as the institution, the central government. -But by this time they were a despotism beyond -the reach of the checks which Danton had always desired. -To save so mighty an engine from the dangers of ambition, -he had resigned in July. His sacrifice or lethargy -did not suffice. The Committee which had once been -Danton was now the Triumvirate—Robespierre, Couthon, -St. Just. It pursued their personal objects, it maintained -by the Terror their personal creed. Still Danton did not -desire to destroy it as a system. He wished to modify -its methods and to change its personnel, to let it merge -gradually into the peaceable and orderly government for -which the Revolution and the Republic had been made. -By a strange necessity, the workers, the men who were -most like Danton in spirit, the practical organisers on the -Committee, such as Carnot, Prieur, and Lindet, could not -help defending it in every particular. They knew the -necessity of staying at their post, and they feared, with -some justice, that if the Robespierrian faction was eliminated -their work might be suddenly checked. It was -because they were practical and short-sighted that they -were opposed to the practical but far-sighted policy of -Danton. They feared that with the cessation of the -Terror the armies would lack recruits, the commissariat -provisions, the treasury its taxes.</p> - -<p>Against the Committee was the Commune. Hébert -at its worst; Clootz at its most ideal; Pache at its most -honest. This singular body represented a spirit very -close indeed to anarchy. It preached atheism as a kind -of dogma; it was intolerant of everything; it was as mad -as Clootz, as filthy as Hébert. It possessed a curious -mixture of two rages—the rage for the unity and defence -of France, the rage for the autonomy of Paris. In the -apathy that had taken the voters this small and insane<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span> -group held command of the city. But the Committees -were not what the Girondins had been. You could not -bully or proscribe Carnot, St. Just, Cambon, Jean Bon. -With the fatal pressure of the stronger wrestler the Committee -was pressing the Commune down. The Terror -remained in either case. But with the Committee supreme -it was a Terror of system striking to maintain a tyranny, -a pure despotism working for definite ends. Had the -Commune succeeded, it would have meant the Terror -run mad, the guillotine killing for the sake of killing—and -for ever.</p> - -<p>The third party in the struggle was Robespierre. He -also desired the Terror, but he intended to use it, as he -did every power in France, towards a definite end—a certain -perfect state, of which he had received a revelation, -and of which he was the prophet. Of his aims and character -I shall treat when I come to his action after the fall -of Danton. It suffices to point out here that of the three -forces at work Robespierre alone had personality to aid him. -He had a guard, a group of defenders. They were inside, -and led the Committee itself; they were the mystics in a -moment of strong exaltation, and unreal as was the dream -of their chief, the Robespierrians were bound to succeed -unless the force of the real, the “cold water” that came -with Danton’s return, should destroy their hopes. Therefore, -as a fact, though no one, though Danton himself, did -not see it, it was between him and Robespierre that the -battle would ultimately be fought out.</p> - -<p>For what was Danton’s plan? He put into his new -task the ability, the ruse, the suppleness that he had only -lost for a moment in the summer. First, Hébert and the -“enragés” must go—they were the vilest form of the -spirit that he perceived to be destroying the Republic. -Then the Committee must be very gradually weakened. -In that task he hoped, vainly enough, to make Robespierre -his ally. And finally, the end of all his scheme was the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span> -cessation of the Terror. He had created a dictatorship -for a specific purpose; that purpose was attained. Wattignies -had been won, Lyons captured; soon La Vendée -was to be destroyed, and even Toulon to fall. It was intolerable -that a system abnormal and extreme, designed -to save the State, should be continued for the profit of a -few theorists or of a few madmen. How much had not -his engine already done?—this machine which, to the -horror of its creator, had found a life of its own! It had -killed the Queen after a shocking trial; it had alienated -what was left of European sympathy; it had struck the -Girondins, and Danton was haunted by the inspired voice -of Vergniaud singing the “Marseillaise” upon the scaffold; -it had run to massacre in the provinces. He feared (and -later his fears proved true at Nantes) that September might -be repeated with the added horror of legal forms. The -Terror finally had reopened the question that of all others -might most easily destroy the State. A handful of men -had pretended to uproot Catholicism for ever, and what -Danton cursed as the “Masque Anti-Religieuse” had -defiled Notre Dame. This flood he was determined to turn -back into the channels of reason; he was going, without -government or police or system, merely by his voice and -his ability, to realise the Revolution, to end the dictatorship, -and to begin the era of prosperity and of content.</p> - -<p>The first steps taken were successful. On the very -night of his return, Robespierre was perorating at the -Jacobins against atheism and on the great idea of God, -but within twelve hours, on the morrow, Danton’s voice -gave the new note. It was in the discussion upon the -pension to be paid to the priests whom the last decree had -thrust out of their regular office and of its salary. Danton -spoke with the greatest decision on this plain matter, -and the Convention heard with delight the fresh phrases to -which it had so long been a stranger. He says virtually, -“If you do not pay this sum you are persecutors.” There<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span> -are in this speech such sentences as these: “You must -appreciate this, that politics can only achieve when they -are accompanied by some reason.... I insist upon your -sparing the blood of men; and I beg the Convention to -be, above all, just to all men except those who are the -declared and open enemies of the Republic.” Four days -later he went a little further, and the Convention still -followed him. On the question which he had most at -heart he spoke plainly. Richard complained of Tours. -He said that the municipality of that town were arresting -“suspects” right and left, and had even attacked himself. -Danton said in a speech of ten lines: “It is high time -the Convention should learn the art of government. Send -these complaints to the Committee. It is chosen, or at -least supposed to be chosen, from the élite of the Convention.” -Later in the same day he spoke on a ridiculous -procession such as the violence of the time had made -fashionable. It was a deputation of Hébertists bringing -from a Parisian church the ornaments of the altar. Already, -it will be remembered, the Commune had ordered -the churches in Paris to be closed, and the attempt to -enforce such scenes were being copied in all the large -towns of France. He said: “Let there be no more of -these mascarades in the Convention.... If people here -and there wish to prove their abjuration of Catholicism, -we are not here to prevent them ... neither are we -here to defend them.... The Terror is still necessary, -the Revolutionary Government is still necessary, but the -people does not demand this indiscriminate action. We -have no business save with the conspirators and with -those who are treating with the enemy.” There was a -protest from Fayan, who cried, “You have talked of -clemency!” for all the world as though such talk was -blasphemy. But Danton was getting back his old position -and was leading the Convention. His success seemed -certain. On the 3rd of December (14th Frimaire) he was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span> -violently attacked at the Jacobins, but he managed to -hold his own. Robespierre defended him in a speech -which has been interpreted as a piece of able treachery, -but which may with equal justice be regarded as an -attempt to hold himself between the opposing parties; -and within a fortnight after his return Danton, who had -in him a directness of purpose and a rapidity of action -that prefigured Napoleon, had gained every strategic point -in his attack.</p> - -<p>Events helped him, or rather he had foreseen them. -The Vendeans, moving more like a mob than an army, -were caught at Le Mans on the 13th of December. On -the 7th of December the genius of Bonaparte had driven -the English and Spanish from Toulon. On the 26th the -news came to the army of which Hoche had just been -given the command, and, as though the name Bonaparte -brought a fate with it, the lines of Wissembourg were carried, -Landau was relieved, the Austrians passed the Rhine.</p> - -<p>All these victories were the allies of the party of indulgence. -The men who said, “The Terror has no <i>raison -d’être</i> save that of the national defence,” found themselves -expressing what all France felt. After such successes it -only remained to add, “The nation is safe; the Terror -may end.” Already Danton had called up a reserve, so -to speak, in the shape of the genius of Desmoulins. The -first issue of “Vieux Cordelier” had appeared, and the -journal was read by all Paris.</p> - -<p>That club, in which we saw the origin of Danton’s -fame, was now the Hébertists, and nothing more. The -pamphlets which Camille issued under the leadership of -Danton were given a name that might recall its position -and its politics of the old days. And indeed the two -men most concerned in the new policy of clemency had -been, from their house in the Cour du Commerce, the -heart of the “République des Cordeliers.” There are not -in the history of the Revolution, in all the passages of its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span> -eloquence and genius, any words that strike us to-day as -do the words of these six pamphlets which spread over -the winter of the year II. It is a proof of Danton’s clear -vision, of his strong influence, that a distant posterity, far -removed from the passions of 1793, should find its own -expression in the appeals which his friend wrote, and -which form the Testament of the Indulgents.</p> - -<p>The first two numbers were an attack upon the -Hébertists alone. Robespierre, from his position in the -Committee of Public Safety, from the spur of his own -ambition, was willing to agree. He himself corrected the -proofs. But on the 15th of December appeared the -famous Numero III., which ran through Paris like a -herald’s message, which did for reaction something of -what the great speeches had done for liberty in clubs -during the early days of the Revolution. Few men cared -to vote, but every man read the “Vieux Cordelier.” To -those who had never so much as heard of Tacitus the -pen of Tacitus carried conviction. A crowd of women -passed before the Parliament crying for the brothers and -husbands who filled the prisons; the “Committee of -Clemency” was within an ace of being formed; and, -coinciding with the victories and with Danton’s reappearance, -the demand of Desmoulins was dragging after it, not -France only (for France was already convinced), but even -the capital. It was then that the Committee, who alone -were the government, grew afraid. Robespierre still -hesitated. He could only succeed through the committees; -but Desmoulins was his friend; there was an appeal -to “the old college friend” in the “Vieux Cordelier” -that touched his heart and his vanity; they had sat -together on the benches of the Louis le Grand, and -Robespierre seems to have made an honest attempt to aid -him then. A fourth number had appeared on the 20th, a -fifth (written on Christmas Day) appeared on January 8th.</p> - -<p>The Jacobins denounced Camille, and Robespierre, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span> -eyes of whose mind looked as closely and were as short-sighted -as the eyes of his body, grew afraid. The men -determined on rigour had warned him in the Committee; -now when he tried to defend Camille he saw the Jacobins -raging: what he did not see was France. Perhaps, had -his sight been longer, he would not have been dragged six -months later to the guillotine. He attempted a compromise -and said: “We will not expel Camille, but we will -burn his journal, punishing his act but not himself.” -Camille answered with Rousseau, “<i>Brûler n’est pas repondre</i>.” -He would not be defended.</p> - -<p>The battle was closely joined. Desmoulins was pushing -forward his attack with the audacious infantry of -pamphlets; Danton, from the Convention, was giving from -time to time the heavy blows of the artillery; the advance -was continuous; when there was felt a check that proved -the prelude to disaster and that showed, behind the opposing -lines, the force of the Committees. In the middle of -January, just after Desmoulins’s defence at the Jacobins, -Fabre D’Eglantine, the friend and old secretary of Danton, -was arrested. It was in vain that Danton put into his -defence all the new energy which he had discovered in -himself. It was in vain even that he called for “the -right of the deputy to defend himself at the bar of the -house.” Like all organised governments, the Committee -could give reasons of State for this silent action. Danton -was overborne, and the Convention for the first time since -his return deserted him.</p> - -<p>He had yet seven weeks to live. Desmoulins still -attacked, but Danton knew that the action was lost. He -knew the strength of that powerful council whose first -efforts he himself had moulded, and when he saw it arise -in support of continuing the Terror, when he saw it and -Robespierre allied, he lost hope. The policy of the -Committee grew more and more definite. One member -of it, (Hérault de Séchelles) was Danton’s friend: they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span> -expelled him. Silently, but with all their strength, they -disengaged the government from either side. The Committee -and Robespierre determined to strike at once, -when the occasion should arise, both those in the Commune -who desired to turn the Terror to their own ends -and those of the Convention—the Dantonists, who desired -to end it altogether.</p> - -<p>Danton still speaks in the tribune, but the attack is -no longer there. He defends modestly and well the practical -propositions that appear before the Parliament on -education, on the abolition of slavery, on the provisions -for the giving of bail under the new judiciary system, and -so forth. But there is in his attitude something of expectancy. -He is waiting for a sudden attack that must come -and that he cannot prevent. He holds himself ready, but -the Committee is working in the dark, and he does not -know on which side to guard himself. A last personal -interview with Robespierre failed, and there was nothing -left to do but to wait and see whether they feared him -so much as to dare his arrest. It was with Ventose, that -is, with the first days of March, that the blow fell.</p> - -<p>The Hébertists, chafing under three months of growing -insults—insults which their old ally the Committee -refused to avenge—broke out into open revolt. Carrier was -back from his truly Hébertist slaughtering at Nantes, and -it was felt at the Cordeliers that the public execration -would destroy them unless they rose. In the autumn -they would have had the Committees on their side, but -the strong action of the Indulgents had broken the -alliance. They determined on insurrection. The Commune -this time was, once and for all, to conquer the -government. The decision was taken at the Cordeliers -on the 4th of March—within ten days they were arrested. -The Committee pushed them through the form of a trial. -Less than three weeks after the first talk of revolt, Hébert, -Clootz, and the rest were guillotined.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span></p> - -<p>There were many among the Dantonists who thought -this the triumph of their policy. “The violent, the enragés -are dead. It is we who did it.” But Danton was -wiser than his followers. He knew that the Committee -were waiting for such an opportunity, and that a blow -to the right would follow that blow to the left. Both -oppositions were doomed. Only one chance remained to -him—they might not dare.</p> - -<p>On the occasion of the arrest of the Hébertists he -made a noble speech on the great lines of conciliation and -unity, which had been his constant policy—a speech which -was all for Paris, in spite of the faction.</p> - -<p>But that week they determined on his arrest and that -of his friends. Panis heard of it, and sent at once to warn -him. He found him in the night of the last day of March -1794 sitting in his study with his young nephew, moody -and silent. His wife was asleep in the next room. On -the flat above him Camille and Lucille were watching -late. The house was silent. Panis entered and told him -what the Committee had resolved. “Well, what then?” -said Danton. “You must resist.” “That means the -shedding of blood, and I am sick of it. I would rather -be guillotined than guillotine.” “Then,” said Panis, “you -must fly, and at once.” But Danton shook his head still -moodily. “One does not take one’s country with one on -the soles of one’s boots.” But he muttered again to himself, -“They will not dare—they will not dare.” Panis left -him, and he sat down again to wait, for he knew in his -heart that the terrible machine which he himself had -made, and which he had fought so heroically, could dare -what it chose. They left him silent in the dark room. -From time to time he stirred the logs of the fire; the -sudden flame threw a light on the ugly strength of his -face: he bent over the warmth motionless, and with the -memories of seven years in his heart.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE DEATH OF DANTON</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>In the night the armed police came round to the Passage -du Commerce; one part of the patrol grounded their -muskets and halted at the exits of the street, the other -entered the house.</p> - -<p>Desmoulins heard the butts falling together on the -flagstones, and the little clink of metal which announces -soldiery; he turned to his wife and said, “They have -come to arrest me.” And she held to him till she -fainted and was carried away. Danton, in his study -alone, met the arrest without words. There is hardly -a step in the tragedy that follows which is not marked -by his comment, always just, sometimes violent; but -the actual falling of the blow led to no word. Words -were weapons with him, and he was not one to strike -before he had put up his guard.</p> - -<p>They were taken to the Luxembourg, very close by, -a little up the hill. We have the story of how Danton -came with his ample, firm presence into the hall of the -prison, and met, almost the first of his fellow-prisoners, -Thomas Paine. The author of “The Rights of Man” -stepped up to him, doubtless to address him in bad -French.<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> Danton forestalled him in the English of which -he was a fair master.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Paine,” he said, “you have had the happiness -of pleading in your country a cause which I shall no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span> -longer plead in mine.” He remembered Paine’s sane -and moderate view on the occasion of the king’s trial, -and he envied one whose private freedom had remained -untrammelled with the bonds of office; who had never -been forced to a 2nd of June, nor had to keep to an -intimate conversation his fears for the Girondins. Then -he added that if they sent him to the scaffold he would -go gaily. And he did. There was the Frenchman contrasted -with his English friend.</p> - -<p>Beaulieu, who heard him, tells us that he also turned -to the prisoners about him and said, “Gentlemen, I had -hoped to have you out of this, and here I am myself; I -can see no issue.”</p> - -<p>So the prisoners came in, anxiously watched by reactionaries, -to whom, as to many of our modern scribblers, -one leader of the Revolution is as good as another—Lacroix, -Westermann (the strong soldier with his huge -frame overtopping even Danton’s), and Desmoulins. As -they passed to their separate cells, for it was determined -to prevent their communication, a little spirit of the old -evil<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> used the powerful venom of aristocracy, the unanswerable -repartee of rank, and looking Lacroix up and -down, said, “I could make a fine coachman of that -fellow.” He and his like would have ruined France for -the sake of turning those words into action.</p> - -<p>Till the dawn of the 11th Germinal broke, they were -kept in their separate rooms. But the place was not -built for a prison. Lacroix and Danton in neighbouring -rooms could talk by raising their voices, and we have of -their conversation this fragment. Lacroix said, “Had I -ever dreamt of this I could have forestalled it.” And -Danton’s reply, with just that point of fatalism which -had forbidden him to be ambitious, answered, “I knew -it;” he had known it all that night.</p> - -<p>There was a force stronger than love—private and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span> -public fear. It is a folly to ridicule, or even to misunderstand -that fear. The possessions, the families of many, -the newly-acquired dignity of all, above everything, the -new nation had been jeopardised how many times by a -popular idol turned untrue. The songs of 1790 were all -for Louis, many praised Bailly; what a place once had -Lafayette! Who had a word to say against Dumouriez -eighteen months before? The victories had just begun—barely -enough to make men hesitate about the Terror. -The “Vieux Cordelier” had led, not followed opinion, as it -was just that the great centre of energy should lead and -not follow the time. And, men would say, how do we -know why he has been arrested, or at whose voice? -How can we tell where the sure compass of right, our -Robespierre, stands in the matter? and so forth. Nothing -then was done; but Paris very nearly moved.</p> - -<p>There were thus two gathering forces; one vague and -large, one small but ordered, and on the result of their -shock hung the life of Danton—may one say (knowing -the future) the life of the Republic?</p> - -<p>Now the struggle with Europe had taught the Committee -a principal lesson. Perhaps one should add that -the exuberant fighting power of the nation and of the -age had forced the Committee to a certain method, -apparent in the armies, in the measures, in the speeches: -it was the method of detecting at once the weakest spot -in the opposing line, and of abandoning everything for -the purpose of concentrating all its strength and charging -home. So their descendants to-day in their new army -practise the marvellous massing of artillery which you -may watch at autumn in the manœuvres.</p> - -<p>What was the opposing line? A vague ill-ordered -crowd—Paris; the undisciplined Convention, lacking -leaders, ignorant of party rule. Where was its weakness? -In the want of initiative, in the fact that, till -some one spoke, no one could be sure of the strength of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span> -the corporate feeling. Also, on account of the public -doubt, during that time men were grains of dust; but the -dust was like powder, and speech was always the spark -which permitted the affinities of that powder to meet in -fierce unity and power. A sudden blow had to be struck -and the fire stamped out before it had gathered power; -this is how the check was given.</p> - -<p class="tb">In the morning of the 12th Germinal the Convention -met, and each man looked at his neighbour, and then, as -though afraid, let his eyes wander to see if others thought -as he did. At last one man dared to speak. It was -Legendre the butcher;<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> he vacillated later before a mixture -of deceit in others and of doubt in himself, but it -should be remembered to his honour that he nearly saved -the Revolution by an honest word. “Let Danton be heard -at the bar of the Convention,” was his frank demand; -common-sense enough, but it fatally opened his guard, -and gave an opportunity to the thrusts most dangerous -in the year II.—an accusation of desiring privilege, and -an accusation of weakening that government which was -visibly saving the state on the frontiers.</p> - -<p>Tallien was President that day, and he gave the reply -to Robespierre. Now Robespierre was no good fencer. -The supreme feint, the final disarming of opinion, was left -to an abler man. He had gone home from the Committee -to Duplay’s house in the early morning; a monomaniac -hardly needing sleep, he reappeared at the early meeting -of the Convention. But, poor debater as he was, he could<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span> -take advantage of so easy an opportunity. In a speech -which was twice applauded, he asserted that Legendre had -demanded a privilege. He struck the note which above -all others dominated those minds. “Are we here to defend -principles or men? Give the right of speech to -Danton, and you give rein to an extraordinary talent, you -confuse the issue with a hundred memories, you permit -the bias of friendship. Let the man defend himself by -proofs and witnesses, not by eloquence and sentiment.” -Yet he did not add—perhaps he hardly knew—that -the memories and friendship would but have balanced -a direct enmity, and that witnesses and proofs would be -denied. Again he used that argument of government—had -not they saved France? were they not the head of -the police? did not they know in the past what they were -doing? He assured them that a little waiting would produce -conviction in them also. It did not, but time was -gained; already half the Convention doubted.</p> - -<p>Legendre, bewildered, faltered a reply; he admitted -error, and begged Robespierre not to misunderstand. He -could have answered for Danton as for himself, but the -tribunal was of course to be trusted. It was almost an -apology.</p> - -<p>On that changing, doubtful opinion came with the -force of a steel mould the hard, high voice of St. Just.</p> - -<p>St. Just spoke rarely. There has been mention in an -earlier part of this book of the speech against the Girondins. -There will be mention again of a vigorous and a -nearly successful attempt to save Robespierre. That he -should have been given the task of defending the Committee’s -action that day is a singular proof of the grip -which they had of the circumstances. Barrère could never -have convinced an unsympathetic public opinion. Robespierre -could meet a rising enthusiasm with nothing but dry -and accurate phrases. But St. Just had the flame of his -youth and of his energy, and his soul lived in his mouth.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span></p> - -<p>The report, even as we read it, has eloquence. -Coming from him then, with his extreme beauty, his -upright and determined bearing, it turned the scale. -The note of the argument was as ably chosen as could -be; moreover it represented without question the attitude -of his own mind: it was this. “The last of the factions -has to be destroyed; only one obstacle stands between -you and the appreciation of the Republic.<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> Time and -again we have acted suddenly, but time and again we -have acted well and on sufficient reasons—so it is now. -If you save Danton you save a personality—something -you have known and admired; you pay respect to individual -talent, but you ruin the attempt in which you -have so nearly succeeded. For the sake of a man you -will sacrifice all the new liberty which you are giving to -the whole world.” There follows a passionate apostrophe -in which he speaks to Danton as though he stood before -him, as striking as the parallel passage in the fourth -Catiline Oration.<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> Had Danton been present he would -have been a man against a boy: a loud and strong voice, -not violent in utterance, but powerful in phrase and in -delivery, a character impressing itself by sheer force of -self upon vacillating opinion. Had Danton spoken in -reply, his hearers would have said with that moral conviction -which is stronger than proof, “This man is the -chief lover of France.”</p> - -<p>But such is rhetoric, its falsity and its success—the -gaps of silence grew to a convincing power. The -accusations met with no reply; they remained the echo of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span> -a living voice; the answers to them could be framed only -in the silent minds of the audience. The living voice -won.</p> - -<p>And there was, as we have said, intense conviction -to aid St. Just. He was a man who would forget and -would exaggerate with all the faults of passion, but he -believed the facts he gave. Not so Robespierre. Robespierre -had furnished the notes of St. Just’s report,<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> and -Robespierre must have known that he had twisted all to -one end. Robespierre was a man who was virtuous and -true only to his ideal, not to his fellow-men. Robespierre -had not deceived himself as he wrote, but he had deceived -St. Just, and therefore the young “Archangel of Death” -spoke with the added strength of faith, than which nothing -leaps more readily from the lips to the ears. Can we -doubt it? There is a phrase which convinces. When -he ends by telling them what it is they save by sacrificing -one idol, when he describes the Republic, he uses the -phrase common to all apostolates, the superb “les -mots que nous avons dits ne seront jamais perdus sur la -terre”—the things which they had said would never be -lost on earth.</p> - -<p>It ended. No one voted; the demand of the Committee -passed without a murmur. The Convention was -never again its own mistress; it had silenced and condemned -itself.<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p> - -<p>Meanwhile at the Luxembourg the magistrate Dénizot -was making the preparations for the trial. Each prisoner -was asked the formal question of his guilt, and each<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span> -replied in a single negative, but Danton added that he -would die a Republican, and to the question of their -defence replied that he would plead his own cause. -Then, at half-past eleven they were transferred to the -Conciergerie.</p> - -<p>From that moment his position becomes the attitude -of the man fighting, as we have known it in the crisis of -August 1792 and of the calling up of the armies. Ready -as he had always been to see the real rather than the -imaginary conditions, he recognised death with one chance -only of escape. He knew far better than did poor Desmoulins -the power of a State’s machinery; he felt its -grasp and doubted of any issue. The people, for Desmoulins, -were the delegators of power; for Danton the -people were those who should, but who did not rule. -To live again and enter the arena and save the life -of the Republic the people must hear his voice, or else -the fact of government would be more strong than all -the rights and written justice in the world.</p> - -<p>He was like a man whose enemy stands before him, -and who sees at his own side, passive and bewildered, a -strong but foolish ally. His ally was the people, his -enemy was Death.</p> - -<p>Therefore we have of his words and actions for the -next four days two kinds: those addressed to death -and those to his ally. Where he desires to touch -the spirit of the crowd—in what was for their ears—we -have the just, practical, and eloquent man apologising -for over-vehemence, saying what should strike hardest -home—an orator, but an orator who certainly uses -legitimate weapons.</p> - -<p>But there is another side. In much that he said in -prison, in all that he said on his way to the scaffold, he -is simply speaking to Death and defying him. The -inmost thing in a man, the stock of the race, appears -without restraint; he becomes the Gaul. That most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span> -un-northern habit of defiance, especially of defiance to -the inevitable and to the strongest, the custom of his -race and their salvation, grows on his lips.</p> - -<p>He insults Death, he jests; his language, never chaste -or self-conscious, takes on the laughter of the Rabelaisian, -and (true Rabelaisian again) he wraps up in half-a-dozen -words the whole of a situation.</p> - -<p>Thus we see him leaning against the window of his -prison and calling to Westermann in the next cell, “Oh! -if I could leave my legs to Couthon<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> and my virility to -Robespierre, things might still go on.” And again when -Lacroix said, “I will cut my own hair at the neck, so -that Sanson the executioner shall not meddle with it,” -Danton replied, “Yet will Sanson intermeddle with the -vertebræ of your neck.” So he meets death with a broad -torrent of words; and that a civilisation accustomed -rather to reticence should know what this meant in him, -my readers must note his powerful asides to Desmoulins -and to Hérault, coinciding with the fearful pun in which -he tried to raise the drooping courage of D’Eglantine.</p> - -<p>Also in his prison this direct growth of the soil of -France “talked often of the fields and of rivers.” Shakespeare -should have given us the death scenes of so -much energy, defiance, coarseness, affection, and great -courage.</p> - -<p>In the Conciergerie they spent the rest of the day -waiting for the trial, and this time Danton was next to -Westermann, to whom and to Desmoulins he said, “We -must say nothing save before the Committees or at the -trial.” It was his plan to move the people by a public -defence, but his enemies in power had formed a counter-plan, -and, as we shall see, forestalled him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span></p> - -<p>Desmoulins, “the flower that grew on Danton,” was -still bewildered. So he remained to the end; at the foot -of the scaffold he could not understand. “If I could only -have written a No. VII. I would have turned the tables.”<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> -“It is a duel of Commodus; they have the lance and I -have not even a reed.” To that man, his equal in years,<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> -but a boy compared with him in spirit, Danton had -always shown, and now continued to show, a peculiar -affection. He treated him like a younger brother, and -never made him suffer those violent truths with which -all France and most of his friends were familiar in his -mouth. So now, and in the trial, and on the way to the -scaffold, his one attempt was to calm the bitter violence -and outburst of Camille.</p> - -<p>There are two phrases of Danton’s which have been -noted on this first day passed at the Conciergerie, and -which cannot be omitted, though in form they have not -his diction, yet in spirit they might be his; they are -recollections presumably of something of greater length -called to Westermann.</p> - -<p>The first: “On such a day<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> I demanded the institution -of the Revolutionary tribunal. I ask pardon of God -and of man.”</p> - -<p>The second: “I am leaving everything at sixes and -sevens; one had better be a poor fisherman than meddle -with the art of governing men.” There you have the -real Danton—a reminiscence of some strong and passionate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span> -utterance put into this undantonesque and proverbial -form. A real sentiment of his—all of him; careless -of life, intense upon the interests of life, above all upon -the future of the Revolution and of France, knowing the -helpless inferiority of the men he left behind. And in -the close of the phrase it is also he; it is the spirit of -great weariness which had twice touched him, as sleep -an athlete after a day of games. It was soon to take -the form of a noble sentence: “Nous avons assez servi—allons -dormir.”</p> - -<p>On the 13th (April 2, 1794), about ten in the morning, -they were led before the tribunal.</p> - -<p>The trial began.</p> - -<p>It must not be imagined that the Dantonists alone -came before the tribunal to answer for their particular -policy. There had originated under Robespierre (and later -when he alone was the master it was to be terribly abused) -the practice of confusing the issues. Three groups at least -were tried together, and the Moderates sat between two -thieves—for D’Eglantine on a charge of embezzlement -alone, Guzman, the Freys as common thieves and spies to -the Republic, were associated on the same bench. Fourteen -in all, they sat in the following order:—Chabot, -Bazire, Fabre, Lacroix, Danton, Delaunay, Hérault, Desmoulins, -Guzman, Diederichsen, Phillippeaux, D’Espagnac, -and the two Freys. D’Eglantine occupied “the armchair,” -and it will be seen that the <i>five</i>—the Moderates—were -carefully scattered.</p> - -<p>The policy was a deliberate one; it was undertaken -with the object of prejudicing public opinion against the -accused. Nor was it permitted to each group to be -separate in accusation and in its method of defence. They -were carefully linked to each other by men accused of -two out of the three crimes.</p> - -<p>Herman was president of the tribunal, and sat facing -the prisoners; on either side of him were Masson-Denizot,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span> -Foucault and Bravé, the assistant-judges. They say that -Voullaud and Vadier, of the lower committee, appeared -behind the bench to watch the enemies whom they had -caught in the net. Seven jurors were in the box to the -judges’ left, by name Renaudin (whom Desmoulins challenged -in vain), Desboisseaux, Trinchard, Dix-Aout, Lumière, -Ganney, Souberbielle,<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> and to these we must add -Topino-Lebrun, whose notes form by far the most vivid -fragment by which we may reconstruct the scene. The -jury of course was packed.<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> It was part of the theory of -the Revolutionary Government that no chance element -should mar its absolute dictatorship. It was practically -a court of judges, absolute, and without division of -powers.</p> - -<p>At a table between the President and the prisoners sat -Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor; and finally, on -the judges’ right was the open part of the court and the -door to the witnesses’ room.</p> - -<p>Here was a new trial with a great and definite chance -of acquittal, a scene the like of which had not been seen -for a year, nor would be seen again in that room. The -men on the prisoners’ bench had been the masters, one of -them the creator, of the court which tried them; they -were evidently greater and more powerful than their -judges, and had behind them an immense though informal -weight of popularity. They were public men of the -first rank; their judges and the public prosecutor were -known to be merely the creatures of a small committee. -More than this, it was common talk that the Convention -might yet change its mind, and even among the jury it -was certain that discussion would arise.</p> - -<p>By the evidence of a curious relic we know that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span> -Committee actually feared a decree or a coup-de-main -which would have destroyed their power. This note -remains in the archives, a memorandum of a decision -arrived at in the Committee on the early morning of the -13th or late in the night of the 12th.</p> - -<p>“<i>Henriot to be written to, to tell him to issue an order that -the President and the Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary -Tribunal are not to be arrested.</i>”</p> - -<p>Then in another hand:</p> - -<p>“<i>Get four members to sign this.</i>”</p> - -<p>Finally, the memorandum is endorsed in yet another -hand:</p> - -<p>“<i>13th Germinal.—A policeman took this the same -day.</i>”<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p> - -<p>It will thus be seen that the Committee was by no -means sure of its ground. It had indeed procured through -St. Just the decree preventing Danton from pleading at -the bar of the Convention and permitting his trial, but it -would require the most careful manœuvring upon their -part to carry through such an affair. As we shall see, -they just—and only just—succeeded.</p> - -<p>The whole of the first day (the 13th Germinal, 2nd -of April 1794) was passed in the formal questions and in -the reading of accusations. Camille, on being asked his -age and dwelling, made the blasphemous and striking -answer which satisfied the dramatic sense, but was not a -true reply to the main question.</p> - -<p>Danton gave the reply so often quoted: “I am Danton, -not unknown among the revolutionaries. I shall be -living nowhere soon, but you will find my name in Walhalla.” -The other answers, save that of Hérault, attempted -no phrases.</p> - -<p>Yet Guzman would have made more point of his -assertion if he had chosen that moment to say, “I am -Guzman, a grandee of Spain, who came to France to taste<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span> -liberty, but was arrested for theft;” while the two Freys -missed an historic occasion in not replying, “We are -Julius and Emanuel Frey, sometime nobles of the Empire -under the title of Von Schönfeld, now plain Jews employed -by the Emperor as spies.”</p> - -<p>The public prosecutor read the indictment. First at -great length Amar’s report on the India Company. The -details of the accusations which cost Fabre his life need -not be entered into here. Suffice it to say that it was an -indictment for corruption, for having suppressed or altered -for money the decree of the Convention in the autumn -before, and being accomplice in the extra gains which this -had made possible—one of those wretched businesses with -which Panama and South Africa have deluged modern -France and England. It is an example of the methods of -the tribunal that Fouquier managed to drag in Desmoulins’s -name because he had once said, “People complain -of not being able to make money now, yet I make it -easily enough.”</p> - -<p>The second group, the Freys, Guzman, the unfrocked -priest D’Espagnac, and Diederichsen the Dane, were -accused of being foreigners working against the success -of the French armies, and at the same time lining their -pockets. In the case of three of them the accusation was -probably true. It was the more readily believed from the -foreign origins of the accused, for France was full of spies, -while the name of a certain contumacious Baron de Bartz -made this list sound the more probable.</p> - -<p>Finally, the small group at which they were really aiming -(whose members they had already mixed up with the -thieves) was indicted on nothing more particular than the -report of St. Just—virtually, that is, on Robespierre’s notes. -Danton had served the King, had drawn the people into the -place where they were massacred in July 1791, did not -do his duty on the 10th of August, and so forth—a vapid -useless summary of impossible things in which no one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span> -but perhaps St. Just and a group of fanatics believed. -With that the day ended, and they were taken back to -prison.</p> - -<p>On the next day, the 14th Germinal (3rd of April -1794), Westermann, who, though already arrested, had -only been voted upon in Parliament the day before, -appeared on the prisoners’ bench, and sat at the end after -Emanuel Frey. He was the last and not the least noble -of the Dantonists, with his great stature, his clumsy intellect, -and his loyal Teutonic blood.</p> - -<p>“Who are you?” they said. “I am Westermann. -Show me to the people. I was a soldier at sixteen, and -have been a councillor of Strasbourg. I have seven -wounds in front, and I was never stabbed in the back -till now.”</p> - -<p>This was the man who had led the 10th of August, -and who had dared, in his bluff nature, to parley with the -Swiss who spoke his language.</p> - -<p>It was after some little time passed in the interrogation -of the prisoners who had been arrested for fraud, especially -of D’Espagnac, that the judge turned to Danton.</p> - -<p>In the debate and cross-questioning that followed we -must depend mainly upon the notes of Lebrun,<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> for they -are more living, although they are more disconnected, than -the official report. We discover in them the passionate -series of outbursts, but a series which one must believe to -have had a definite purpose. There was neither hope of -convincing the tribunal nor of presenting a legal argument -with effect. What Danton was trying to do in this court, -which was not occupied with a trial, but merely in a -process of condemnation, was to use it as a rostrum from -which he could address the people, the general public,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span> -upon whose insurrection he depended. He perhaps depended -also on the jury, for, carefully chosen as they were, -they yet might be moved by a man who had never failed -to convince by his extraordinary power of language. He -carries himself exactly as though he were technically what -he is in fact—a prisoner before an informal group of executioners, -who appeals for justice to the crowd.</p> - -<p>He pointed at Cambon, who had sat by him on the -Committee, and said, “Come now, Cambon, do you think -we are conspirators? Look, he is laughing; he believes -no such thing.” Then he turned, laughing himself, to -the jury and said, “Write down in your notes that he -laughed.”</p> - -<p>Again, he uses phrases like these: “We are here for -a form, but if we are to have full liberty to speak, and if -the French people is what it should be, it will be my -business later to ask their pardon for my accusers.” To -which Camille answered, “Oh, we shall be allowed to -speak, and that is all we want,” and the group of Indulgents -laughed heartily.</p> - -<p>It was just after this that he began that great harangue -in answer to the questions of the judge, an effort whose -tone reaches to this day. It is, perhaps, the most striking -example of a personal appeal that can be discovered. The -opportunities for such are rare, for in the vast majority of -historical cases where a man has pleaded for his life, it -has either been before a well-organised court, or before a -small number of determined enemies, or by the lips of -one who was paid for his work and who ignored the art -of political oratory. The unique conditions of the French -Revolution made such a scene possible, perhaps for the -only time in history.</p> - -<p>The day, early as was the season, was warm, the -windows of the court, that looked upon the Seine, were -open, and through the wide doors pressed the head of a -great crowd. This crowd stretched out along the corridor,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span> -along the quays, across the Pont Neuf, and even to the -other side of the river. Every sentence that told was -repeated from mouth to mouth, and the murmurs of the -crowd proved how closely the great tribune was followed. -In the attitude which had commanded the attention of -his opponents when he presented the first deputation -from Paris three years before, and that had made him -so striking a figure during the stormy months of 1793, -he launched the phrases that were destined for Paris -and not for his judges. His loud voice (the thing appears -incredible, but it is true) vibrating through the -hall and lifted to the tones that had made him the -orator of the open spaces, rang out and was heard beyond -the river.</p> - -<p>“You say that I have been paid, but I tell you that -men made as I am cannot be paid. And I put against -your accusation—of which you cannot furnish a proof nor -the hint of a proof, nor the shadow nor the beginning of -a witness—the whole of my revolutionary career. It was -I who from the Jacobins kept Mirabeau at Paris. I have -served long enough, and my life is a burden to me, but I -will defend myself by telling you what I have done. It was -I who made the pikes rise suddenly on the 20th of June -and prevented the King’s voyage to St. Cloud. The day -after the massacre of the Champ de Mars a warrant was -out for my arrest. Men were sent to kill me at Arcis, -but my people came and defended me. I had to fly to -London, and I came back, as you all know, the moment -Garran was elected. Do you not remember me at the -Jacobins, and how I asked for the Republic? It was I -who knew that the court was eager for war. It was I, -among others, who denounced the policy of the war.”</p> - -<p>Here a sentence was heard: “What did you do against -the Brissotins?”</p> - -<p>Now Danton had, as we know, done all in his power -to save the men who hated him, but whom he admired.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span> -It was no time for him to defend himself by an explanation -of this in the ears of the people who had never understood, -as he had, the height of the men who followed -Vergnaud; but he said what was quite true: “I told -them that they were going to the scaffold. When I -was a minister I said it to Brissot before the whole -cabinet.”</p> - -<p>He might have added that he had said to Guadet in -the November woods on the night before he left for the -army, “You are headstrong, and it will be your doom.”<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a></p> - -<p>Then he went back again to the list of his services. -“It was I who prepared the 10th of August. You say I -went to Arcis. I admit it, and I am proud of it. I went -there to pass three days, to say good-bye to my mother, -and to arrange my affairs, because I was shortly to be in -peril. I hardly slept that night. It was I that had Mandat -killed, because he had given the order to fire on the -people.... You are reproaching me with the friendship -of Fabre D’Eglantine. He is still my friend, and I still -say that he is a good citizen as he sits here with me. -You have told me that my defence has been too violent, -you have recalled to me the revolutionary names, and you -have told me that Marat when he appeared before the -tribunal might have served as my model. Well, with -regard to those names who were once my friends, I will -tell you this: Marat had a character on fire and unstable; -Robespierre I have known as a man, above all, tenacious; -but I—I have served in my own fashion, and I would -embrace my worst enemy for the sake of the country, and -I will give her my body if she needs the sacrifice.”</p> - -<p>This short and violent speech, which I have attempted -to reproduce from the short, disjointed, ill-spelt notes of -Lebrun, hit the mark. The crowd, the unstable crowd, -which he contemned as he passed to the guillotine, moved -like water under a strong wind; and his second object also<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span> -was reached, for the tribunal grew afraid. These phrases -would soon be repeated in the Convention, and no means -had been taken to silence that terrible voice. The President -of the court said to him that it was the part of an -accused man to defend himself with proofs and not with -rhetoric. He parried that also with remarkable skill, saying -in a much quieter tone which all his friends (they -were now growing in number) immediately noted: “That -a man should be violent is wrong in him I know, unless -it is for the public good, and such a violence has often -been mine. If I exceeded now, it was because I found -myself accused with such intolerable injustice.” He raised -his voice somewhat again with the words, “But as for -you, St. Just, you will have to answer to posterity,” and -then was silent.</p> - -<p>When the unhappy man who had taken upon his -shoulders the vile duty of the political work that day, -when Herman was himself upon his trial, he said, “Remember -that this affair was out of the ordinary, and was -a political trial,” when a voice rose from the court, -“There are no political trials under a Republic.” He -would have done well, obscure as he is before history, to -have saved his own soul by refusing a task which he -knew to involve injustice from beginning to end.</p> - -<p>It was at the close of that day that three short notes -passed between Herman and the public prosecutor, -Fouquier-Tinville. Herman wrote, “In half an hour I -shall stop Danton’s defence. You must spin out some of -the rest in detail.” Tinville answered, “I have something -more to say to Danton about Belgium;” and Herman -replied, “Do not bring it in with regard to any of -the others.” This little proof of villany, which has survived -by so curious an accident (it is in the Archives to-day),<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> -closed the proceedings of that hearing.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span></p> - -<p>The next day, the 15th of Germinal (4th April), -Danton himself said little. It was given over mainly to -the examination of Desmoulins; and as with Danton it -had been rumours or opinions, so with Desmoulins only -the vague sense of things he had written were brought in -to serve as evidence in this tragic farce.</p> - -<p>Fouquier, the distant cousin of Camille, to whom he -owed the post in which he was earning his bread by -crime,<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> tried to put something of complaint against the -nation and of hatred to the Republic into his reading -of the Old Cordelier. Even in his thin unpleasant voice -there was only heard the noble phrase of Tacitus, and—it -is a singular example of what the tribunal had become—they -dared not continue the quotation because every -word roused the people in the court. But Camille, so -great with the pen, had nothing of the majesty or the -strength of Danton. His defence was a weak, disconnected -excuse, and, like all men who are insufficient to themselves, -he was inconsistent.</p> - -<p>Hérault made on that same day a far finer reply. -Noble by birth, holding by his traditions and memories to -that society which he himself had helped to destroy, and -of which Talleyrand has said, “Those who have not known -it have not lived;” accustomed from his very first youth -to prominence in his profession and to the favour of the -court, he remained to the last full of contempt for so -much squalor, and he veiled his eyes with pride.</p> - -<p>“I understand nothing of this topsy-turvydom. I -was a diplomat, and I made the neutrality of Switzerland, -so saving 60,000 men to the Republic. As for the priest -you talk about, who was guillotined in my absence at -Troyes, I knew him well. He was a Canon, if I remember,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span> -and by no means a reactionary. You are probably joking -about it. It is true he had not taken the oath, but he -was a good man; he helped me, and I am not ashamed -of my friendship. I will tell you something more. On -the 14th of July two men were killed, one on either side -of me.” He might have added, “I was the second man -to scale the Towers.”</p> - -<p>It was not until the day’s proceedings had been drawn -out for a considerable time that a sentence was spoken, -the full import of which was not understood at the time, -but which was, as a fact, the first step in those four -months of irresponsibility and crime which are associated -with the name of Robespierre, and which hang like a -weight around the neck of the French nation. Lacroix -had just said with a touch of legal phraseology, “I must -insist that the witnesses whom I have demanded should -be subpœnaed, and if there is any difficulty about this, I -formally demand that the Convention shall be consulted -in the matter;” when the public prosecutor answered, -“It is high time that this part of the trial, which has become -a mere struggle, and which is a public scandal, -should cease. I am about to write to the Convention -to hear what it has to say, and its advice shall be exactly -followed.”</p> - -<p>Both the public prosecutor and the judge signed the -letter. The first draft which Fouquier had drawn up was -thought too strong, and it appears that Herman revised -it.<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> “Citoyens Représentants,—There has been a storm -in the hall since this day’s proceedings began. The -accused are calling for witnesses who are among your -deputies.... They are appealing to the people, saying -that they will be refused. In spite of the firmness of the -president and of all the tribunal, they continue to protest -that they will not be silent until their witnesses are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span> -heard, unless by your passing a special decree.” [This was -false, and was the only part of the letter calculated to -impress the Parliament.] “We wish to hear your orders -as to what we shall do in the face of this demand; the -procedure gives us no way by which we can refuse -them.”</p> - -<p>But note the way in which the letter was presented to -a Parliament in which there yet remained so much sympathy -for the accused, and the way in which it was -received. St. Just appeared in the tribune with the letter -in his hands, and, instead of reading it, held it up before -them and made this speech:—</p> - -<p>“The public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal -has sent to tell you that the prisoners are in full revolt, -and have interrupted the hearing, saying they will not -allow it to continue until the Convention has taken -measures. You have barely escaped from the greatest -danger which has yet menaced our new liberty, and this -revolt in the very seat of justice, of men panic-stricken -by the law, shows what is in their minds. Their despair -and their fury are a plain proof of the hypocrisy which -they showed in keeping a good face before you. Innocent -men do not revolt. Dillon, who ordered his army to -march on Paris, has told us that Desmoulins’s wife received -money to help the plot. Our thanks are due to you for -having put us in the difficult and dangerous post that we -occupy. Your Committees will answer you by the most -careful watching,” and so forth. When the Convention -had had laid before them every argument and every -flattery which could falsify their point of view, he proposed -the decree that any prisoner who should attempt to -interrupt the course of justice by threats or revolt should -be outlawed.</p> - -<p>As they were about to vote, Billaud Varennes added -his word, “I beg the Convention to listen to a letter -which the Committees have received from the police concerning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span> -the conspirators, and their connection with the -prisoners.” The letter is not genuine. Even if it were, -it depends entirely upon the word of one obscure and untrustworthy -man (Laflotte), but it did the work. The -Committees, as we know, were names to conjure with. -Their secret debates, their evident success, the fact that -their members had been chosen for the very purpose of -guarding the interests of the Republic, all fatally told -against the prisoners. The decree passed without a vote. -Robespierre asked that the letter might be read in full -court, and his demand was granted. It was from that -letter, from this obscure and uncertain origin, that there -dated the legend of the “conspiracy in the prisons” -which was to cost the lives of so many hundreds.</p> - -<p>It was at the very close of this day, the 4th of April, -that the decree of the Convention was brought back to -the tribunal. Amar brought it and gave it to Fouquier, -saying, “Here is what you wanted.” Fouquier smiled and -said, “We were in great need of it.” It was read in the -tribunal. When Camille heard the name of his wife -mentioned in connection with St. Just’s demand he cried -out, “Will they kill her too?” and David, who was sitting -behind the judges, said, “We hold them at last.”<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></p> - -<p>The fourth day, the 16th Germinal (5th April), the -court met at half-past eight in the morning, instead of at -the ordinary hour of ten. Almost at once, before the -accused had time to begin their tactics of the day before, -the decree was read. The judge, relying on the law which -had already been in operation against others, and which -gave the jury the right to say after three days whether -they were satisfied, turned to them, and they asked leave -to deliberate.</p> - -<p>Before the prisoners had passed into the prison Desmoulins -had found time to tear the defence which he had -written into small pieces, and to throw them at the feet<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span> -of the judge. Danton cried out, and checked himself in -the middle of his sentence. All save poor Camille had -kept their self-control. He, however, clung to the dock, -determined on making some appeal to the people, or to -the judges, or to posterity. Danton, who calmed him a -few hours later at the foot of the scaffold, could do nothing -with him then, and it was in the midst of a terrible -violence that the fifteen disappeared.</p> - -<p>The prisoners were taken back to the Conciergerie, -but in their absence occurred a scene which is among the -most instructive of the close of the Revolution. One of -the jury could not bring himself to declare the guilt of -men whom he knew to be innocent. Another said to -him, “This is not a trial; it is a sacrifice. Danton and -Robespierre cannot exist together; which do you think -most necessary to the Republic?” The unhappy man, -full of the infatuation of the time, stammered out, “Why, -Robespierre is necessary, of course, but——” “It is -enough; in saying that you have passed judgment.” -And it came about in this way that the unanimous -verdict condemned the Indulgents. Lhuillier alone was -acquitted.</p> - -<p>Of what passed in the prison we only know from the -lips of an enemy,<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> but I can see Danton talking still -courageously of a thousand things; sitting in his chair -of green damask and drinking his bottle of Burgundy -opposite the silver and the traps of D’Eglantine.<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> They -were not taken back to hear their sentence; it was read -to them, as a matter of form, in the Conciergerie itself. -Ducray read it to them one by one as they were brought -into his office. Danton refused to hear it in patience; -he hated the technicality and the form, and he knew -that he was condemned long ago. He committed himself -to a last burst of passion before summoning his strength<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span> -to meet the ordeal of the streets, and followed his anger -by the insults which for days he had levelled at death. -Then for a few hours they kept a silence not undignified, -save only Camille, unfitted for such trials, and moaning -to himself in a corner of the room, whom Danton continually -tried to console, a task in which at the very end -of their sad journey he succeeded. It was part of his -broad mind to understand even a writer and an artist, he -who had never written and had only done.</p> - -<p>It was between half-past four and five o’clock in the -evening of the same day, the 5th of April 1794, that the -prisoners reappeared. Two carts were waiting for them -at the great gate in the court of the Palais—the gate -which is the inner entrance to the Conciergerie to-day.<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> -About the carts were a numerous escort mounted and -with drawn swords, but the victims took their seats as -they chose, and of the fifteen the Dantonists remained -together. Hérault, Camille, Lacroix, Westermann, Fabre, -Danton went up the last into the second cart, and the -procession moved out of the courtyard and turned to the -left under the shadow of the Palais, and then to the left -again round the Tour de l’Horloge, and so on to the quay. -They passed the window of the tribunal, the window from -which Danton’s loud voice had been heard across the -river; they went creaking slowly past the old Mairie, past -the rooms that had been Roland’s lodgings, till they -came to the corner of the Pont Neuf; and as the carts -turned from the trees of the Place Dauphine on to the -open bridge, they left the shade and passed into the full -blaze of the westering sun within an hour of its setting.</p> - -<p>Early as was the season, the air was warm and -pleasant, the leaves and the buds were out on the few -trees, the sky was unclouded. All that fatal spring was -summerlike, and this day was the calmest and most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span> -beautiful that it had known. The light, already tinged -with evening, came flooding the houses of the north bank -till their glass shone in the eyes. There it caught the -Café de l’École where Danton had sat a young lawyer -seven years before, and had seen the beauty of his first -wife in her father’s house; to the right the corner of the -old Hotel de Ville caught the glow, to the left the Louvre -flamed with a hundred windows.</p> - -<p>Where the light poured up the river and came reflected -from the Seine on to the bridge, it marked out the -terrible column that was moving ponderously forward to -death. A great crowd, foolish, unstable, varied, of whom -some sang, some ran to catch a near sight of the “Indulgents,” -some pitied, and a few understood and despaired -of the Republic—all these surging and jostling as a -crowd will that is forced to a slow pace and confined by -the narrowness of an old thoroughfare, stretched from -one end of the bridge to the other, and you would have -seen them in the sunlight, brilliant in the colours that -men wore in those days, while here and there a red cap -of liberty marked the line of heads.</p> - -<p>But in the centre of this crowd and showing above it, -could be seen the group of men who were about to die. -The carts hidden by the people, the horses’ heads just -showing above the mob, surrounded by the sharp gleams -that only come from swords, there rose distinguished the -figures of the Dantonists. There stood Hérault de -Séchelles upright, his face contemptuous, his colour high, -“as though he had just risen from a feast.” There on -the far side of the cart sat Fabre D’Eglantine, bound, ill, -collapsed, his head resting on his chest, muttering and -complaining. There on the left side, opposite Fabre, -is Camille, bound but still frenzied, calling loudly to the -people, raving, “Peuple, pauvre Peuple!” He still kept -in his poet’s head the dream of the People! They had -been deceived, but they were just, they would save him.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span> -He wrestled with his ropes and tore his shirt open at the -bosom, clenching his bound hands—clutched in his -fingers through all the struggle shone the bright hair of -Lucille. Danton stood up immense and quiet between -them. One of those broad shoulders touched D’Eglantine, -the other Desmoulins; their souls leant upon his body. -And such comfort as there was or control in the central -group came out like warmth from the chief of these -friends.</p> - -<p>He had been their leader and their strength for five -years; they were round him now like younger brothers -orphaned. The weakness of one, the vices of another, -came leaning for support on the great rock of his form. -For these were not the Girondins, the admirable stoics, of -whom each was a sufficient strength to his own soul: -they were the Dantonists, who had been moulded and -framed by the strength and genius of one man. He did -not fail them a moment in the journey, and he died last -to give them courage.</p> - -<p>As they passed on and left the river, they lost the -light again and plunged into shadow; the cool air was -about them in the deep narrow streets. They could see -the light far above them only, as they turned into the -gulf of the Rue St. Honoré, down which the lives of men -poured like a stream to be lost and wasted in the Place de -la Revolution. Up its steep sides echoed and re-echoed -the noise of the mob like waves. They could see as they -rolled slowly along the people at the windows, the men -sitting in the cafés or standing up to watch them go by. -One especially Danton saw suddenly and for a moment. -He was standing with a drawing-book in his hand and -sketching rapidly with short interrupted glances. It was -David, an enemy.</p> - -<p>Then there appeared upon their left another sight; -it was the only one in that long hour which drove -Danton out of his control: it was the house of Duplay.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span> -There, hidden somewhere behind the close shutters, was -Robespierre. They all turned to it loudly, and the -sentence was pronounced which some say God has -executed—that it should disappear and not be known -again, and be hidden by high walls and destroyed.</p> - -<p>The house was silent, shut, blockaded. It was like a -thing which is besieged and which turns its least sentient -outer part to its enemies. It was beleaguered by the -silent and unseen forces which we feel pressing everywhere -upon the living. For it contained the man who -had sent that cartload of his friends to death. Their -fault had been to preach the permanent sentiments of -mankind, to talk of mercy, and to recall in 1794 the -great emotions of the early Revolution—the desire for -the Republic where every kind of man could sit and -laugh at the same table, the Republic of the Commensales. -They were the true heirs of the spirit of the Federations, -and it was for this that they were condemned. Even at -this last moment there radiated from them the warmth -of heart that proceeds from a group of friends and lovers -till it blesses the whole of a nation with an equal affection. -Theirs had been the instinct of and the faith in the happy -life of the world. It was for this that the Puritan had -struck them down; and yet it is the one spirit that -runs through any enduring reform, the only spirit that -can lead us at last to the Republic.</p> - -<p>In a remote room, where the noise of the wheels -could not reach him, sat the man who, by some fatal -natural lack or some sin of ambition unrepented, had -become the Inquisitor—the mad, narrow enemy of mercy -and of all good things.</p> - -<p>For a moment he and his error had the power to -condemn, repeating a tragedy of which the world is never -weary—the mean thing was killing the great.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, if you will consider the men in the -tumbril, you will find them not to be pitied except for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span> -two things, that they were loved by women whom they -could not see, and that they were dying in the best and -latest time of their powerful youth. All these young -men were loved, and in other things they should be -counted fortunate. They had with their own persons -already transformed the world. Here the writer knew -that his talent, the words he had so carefully chosen and -with such delight in his power, had not been wasted -upon praise or fortune, but had achieved the very object. -There the orator knew and could remember how his -great voice had called up the armies and thrown back -the kings.</p> - -<p>But if the scene was a tragedy, it was a tragedy of -the real that refused to follow the unities. All nature -was at work, crowded into the Revolutionary time, and -the element that Shakespeare knew came in of itself—the -eternal comedy that seems to us, according to our mood, -the irony, the madness, or the cruelty of things, was -fatally present to make the day complete; and the -grotesque, like a discordant note, contrasted with and -emphasised the terrible.</p> - -<p>Fabre, who had best known how omnipresent is this -complexity—Fabre, who had said, “Between the giving -and taking of snuff there is a comedy”—furnished the -example now. Danton hearing so much weakness and -so many groans from the sick man said, “What is your -complaint?” He answered, “I have written a play -called ‘The Maltese Orange,’ and I fear the police have -taken it, and that some one will steal it and get the -fame.” Poor Fabre! It is lost, and no one has the -ridicule of his little folly. Danton answered him with a -phrase to turn the blood: “Tais toi! Dans une semaine -tu feras assez de vers,” and imposed silence. Nor did -this satisfy Fate; there were other points in the framework -of the incongruous which she loves to throw round -terror. A play was running in the opera called the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span> -“10th of August;” in this the Dantonists were represented -on the stage. When the Dantonists were hardly -buried it was played again that very night, and actors -made up for Hérault and the rest passed before a public -that ignored or had forgotten what the afternoon had -seen. More than this, there was already set in type a -verse which the street-hawkers cried and sold that very -night. For the sake of its coincidence I will take the -liberty of translating it into rhymed heroics:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“When Danton, Desmoulins, and D’Eglantine</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were ferried over to the world unseen,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Charon, that equitable citizen,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Handed their change to these distinguished men.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">‘Pray keep the change,’ they cried; ‘we pay the fare</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For Couthon, and St. Just, and Robespierre.’”<a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Danton spared only Camille, and as he did not stop -appealing to the people, told him gently to cease. “Leave -the rabble there,” he said, “leave them alone.” But for -himself he kept on throwing angry jests at death. “May -I sing?” he said to the executioner. Sanson thought -he might, for all he knew. Then Danton said to him, -“I have made some verses, and I will sing them.” He -sang loudly a verse of the fall of Robespierre, and then -laughed as though he had been at the old café with -his friends.</p> - -<p>There was a man (Arnault of the Academy) who -lived afterwards to a great age, and who happened to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span> -crossing the Rue St. Honoré as the carts went past. In -a Paris that had all its business to do, many such men -came and went, almost forgetting that politics existed -even then. But this batch of prisoners haunted him. -He had seen Danton standing singing with laughter, he -hurried on to the Rue de la Monnaie, had his say with -Michael, who was awaiting him, and then, full of the -scene, ran back across the Tuilleries gardens, and pressing -his face to the railings looked over the great Place de la -Révolution. The convoy had arrived, the carts stood at -the foot of the guillotine, and his memory of the scene is -the basis of its history.</p> - -<p>It was close on six, and the sun was nearly set behind -the trees of the Étoile; it reddened the great plaster -statue of Liberty which stood in the middle of the Place, -where the obelisk is now, and to which Madame Roland -delivered her last phrase. It sent a level beam upon the -vast crowd that filled the square, and cast long shadows, -sending behind the guillotine a dark lane over the people. -The day had remained serene and beautiful to the last, -the sky was stainless, and the west shone like a forge. -Against it, one by one, appeared the figures of the condemned. -Hérault de Séchelles, straight and generous in -his bearing, first showed against the light, standing on -the high scaffold conspicuous. He looked at the Garde -Meuble, and from one of its high windows a woman’s hand -found it possible to wave a farewell. Lacroix next, -equally alone; Camille, grown easy and self-controlled, -was the third. One by one they came up the few steps, -stood clearly for a moment in the fierce light, black or -framed in scarlet, and went down.</p> - -<p>Danton was the last. He had stood unmoved at the -foot of the steps as his friends died. Trying to embrace -Hérault before he went up, roughly rebuking the executioner -who tore them asunder, waiting his turn without -passion, he heard the repeated fall of the knife in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span> -silence of the crowd. His great figure, more majestic -than in the days of his triumph, came against the sunset. -The man who watched it from the Tuilleries gate grew -half afraid, and tells us that he understood for a moment -what kind of things Dante himself had seen. By an -accident he had to wait some seconds longer than the -rest; the executioner heard him muttering, “I shall never -see her again ... no weakness,” but his only movement -was to gaze over the crowd. They say that a face met -his, and that a sacramental hand was raised in absolution.<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></p> - -<p>He stood thus conspicuous for a moment over the -people whom he had so often swayed. In that attitude -he remains for history. When death suddenly strikes a -friend, the picture which we carry of him in our minds is -that of vigorous life. His last laughter, his last tones of -health, his rapid step, or his animated gesture reproduce -his image for ever. So it is with Danton; there is no -mask of Danton dead, nor can you complete his story -with the sense of repose. We cannot see his face in the -calm either of triumph or of sleep—the brows grown level, -the lips satisfied, the eyelids closed. He will stand -through whatever centuries the story of the Revolution -may be told as he stood on the scaffold looking westward -and transfigured by the red sun, still courageous, -still powerful in his words, and still instinct with that -peculiar energy, self-forming, self-governing, and whole. -He has in his final moment the bearing of the tribune, -the glance that had mastered the danger in Belgium, the -force that had nailed Roland to his post in September, -and that had commanded the first Committee. The -Republic that he desired, and that will come, was proved -in his carriage, and passed from him into the crowd.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span></p> - -<p>When Sanson put a hand upon his shoulder the -ghost of Mirabeau stood by his side and inspired him -with the pride that had brightened the death-chamber -of three years before. He said, “Show my head to the -people; it is well worth the while.” Then they did what -they had to do, and without any kind of fear, his great -soul went down the turning in the road.</p> - -<p>They showed his head to the people, and the sun set. -There rose at once the confused noise of a thousand -voices that rejoiced, or questioned, or despaired, and -in the gathering darkness the Parisians returned through -the narrow streets eastward to their homes.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br /> -<span class="smaller">ROBESPIERRE</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>I desire in this additional chapter to show what place -Danton filled in the Revolution by describing the madness -and the reaction that followed his loss; and the -extent to which his influence, in spite of these, was permanent.</p> - -<p>When Danton disappeared, one man remained the -master of the terrible machine which he had created. It -remains to show what were the fortunes of his work when -death had come to complete the results of his abdication.</p> - -<p>The genius of the dead man had foreseen a necessity, -had met it with an institution, and that institution had -proved his wisdom by its immense success. France was -one within, and was beginning on her frontiers the war -whose success was not to end until it had rebuilt all -Europe. This unprecedented power dominated a country -long used to centralisation, and was strengthened by the -accidents of the time, by the even play of the government -over a surface where all local obstacles had broken down, -by the tacit acquiescence of every patriotic man (for it -was the thing that saved the nation), by the very abuse -of punitive measures. This power was destined to change -from a machine to a toy.</p> - -<p>They say the children of that time had little models -of the guillotine to play with. The statement is picturesque -and presumably false, but it will serve well for a -simile. A man unused to action, dreaming of a perfect -state which was but a reflection of his own intensely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span> -concentrated mind, acquired the control of the guillotine. -Unfortunately the model was of full size.</p> - -<p>The punishment of death had hitherto been inflicted, -for the most part, with a clear and definite, though often -with an immoral, object. In the hands of Robespierre it -was used to defend a theory and a whim. The men of -the time loved their country ardently, and believed with -the firmness of a large and generous faith in those principles -upon which all our civilisation is at present based. -France and the Republic were, in their minds, one thing, -and a thing which they spared no means to make survive -the most terrible struggle into which any nation has ever -dared to enter. They killed that they might be obeyed -in a time which verged on anarchy, and they desired to -be obeyed because, but for obedience to government, -France and all her liberties would have perished. Such -a motive for punishment is just, and its execution is -honest.</p> - -<p>By the side of this and beyond it were the excesses, -those excesses in protest against which Danton himself -had died. Execrable as were these, infamous as will ever -remain their most conspicuous actors, Hébert and Carrier, -they were prompted by a motive which is of the commonest -and the most easily understood in human affairs. -They were actions of revenge. Danton had said once -and sincerely, “I can find no use for hate.” It was the -key to his successful effort, by far the most creative in a -time when all was energy, that no part of his strength -was lost in personal attack, hardly any in personal defence. -This could no more be said of his contemporaries than it -can be said of the bulk of men in any nation, even in -times of order and of peace. And everywhere, in Nantes, -in Lyons, in the Vendée, in the accusation of Marie -Antoinette, from the very beginning of the Terror, this -hate had surged and broken. The Girondins were put to -death on a charge full of the spirit of revenge; and as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span> -autumn grew into winter, in the very crisis of that oppression -by which the nation had been saved, the accusations -became trivial, the process of justice more and more of a -personal act, depending in the provinces on the temper of -an emissary, in Paris upon the summary judgment of the -Committee and the Tribunal.</p> - -<p>But all this had so far been comprehensible. With -the advent of Robespierre to full power we have to deal -with a phase of history which will hardly be understood -in happier times. Danton, who saw straight, who understood, -and who, when the victories began, found leisure to -pity, is a type whose extremes are the romance, whose -moderation is the groundwork of history. We have to -deal in him with an enthusiast who is also a statesman, in -whom the mind has sufficient power to know itself even -in its violence, and to return deliberately within its usual -boundaries after never so fantastic an excursion. With -Hébert again we know the type. Those are not rare in -whom passions purely personal dominate all abstract conceptions, -and whose natures desire the horrible in literature -during times of peace, and satisfy their desire by -action during their moments of power.</p> - -<p>But with Robespierre an absolutely different feature -is presented: the man who could laugh and the man -who could hate, the right and the left wing have disappeared, -and there is left standing alone a personality -which had gradually become the idol of the city. He -could neither laugh nor hate; the love of country itself, -which illuminates so much in the Revolution, and which -explains so many follies in the smaller men, even that was -practically absent in the mind of Robespierre. His character -would have fitted well with the absence of the -human senses, and should some further document discover -to historians that he lacked the sense of taste, that he was -colour-blind, or that he could not distinguish the notes of -music, these details would do much to complete the imperfect<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span> -and troubling picture. For in the sphere that is -above, but co-ordinate with, physical life, all those avenues -by which our fellow-beings touch us more nearly than -ideas were closed to him.</p> - -<p>It is possible that he may take, centuries hence, the -appearance of majesty. He had the reserve, the dignity, -the intense idealism, the perfect belief in himself, the -certitude that others were in sympathy—all the characteristics, -in fine, which distinguish the Absolutists and the -great Reformers. In his iron code of theory we seem to -hear the ghost of a Calvin, in his reiterated morals and -his perpetual application of them there is the occasional -sharp reminiscence of a Hildebrand. The famous death -cry, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I -die in exile,” is not so far distant from “... <i>de mourir -pour le peuple et d’en être abhorré</i>.”</p> - -<p>We are accustomed to clothe such figures with a -solemn drapery, and to lend them, at great distances of -time, a certain terrible grandeur. Robespierre is too near -us, he is too well known, and his reforms failed too utterly, -for this to be now the case with him. Yet it may well -happen that some one else treading in the same path, -and succeeding, will see fit to build a legend round his -name.</p> - -<p>What then was the ideal which he pursued—this -“one idea,” which stood so perpetually before him as to -exclude the sight of all human things, of sufferings, of -memories, of patriotism itself? It was the civic ideal of -Rousseau, in so far as he conformed to it, and nothing -more.</p> - -<p>The ideas of the great reformers must of their nature -be simple—unworkably simple. But Robespierre’s idea -was less than simple—it was thin. Now and again in -the history of upheavals a type has been defined with -special formulæ, which in its original shape could never -have survived the conditions of active existence, but which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span> -was real enough to receive accretions, and robust enough -to bear moulding until at length it became the living -nucleus of a new society, changed, transformed in a -thousand details, yet in its main lines the ideal of the -founder. With all the great reforms of the world some -such type has been present; the Puritan, the knight of -chivalry, were at first but a faint figure realised in a few -phrases.</p> - -<p>Rousseau himself had created such a type, and it has -survived; for what permanent fortunes a century is insufficient -to show. The Republican citizen of Jean-Jacques -stood in the generation which succeeded him the centre -of a new society; in a thousand shapes he really lived. -Thomas Jefferson, William Cobbett, were living men to -whom this ideal stood for model; not in its details, but in -its main lines. Such noble men are to be met to-day on -every side.</p> - -<p>But Robespierre saw reflected in his mind a figure at -once more detailed and less human, and one too sharply -defined to be capable of any moulding or of any transference -into the real world. For him this ideal citizen -was nevertheless the one good thing, the one sound basis -of a State. This ideal citizen existed (did men only -know it) in each individual; all men could be made to -approach the type; only a very few were opposed to its -success, and it was a sacred duty to break their criminal -effort. The figure stood ever before him, it dominated -his every thought, it was the sacred thing before which -his essentially mystical mind was perpetually at worship. -But he could see nothing beyond or on either side of it; -concrete impressions faded on the unhealthy retina of -his mind. For there was a mirror held up before his -eyes, and the figure on which he dwelt was himself.</p> - -<p>Thus intensely concentrated upon a certain individual -type, it was in his nature to forget the reactions of a -community. He saw in society a few evils prominent,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span> -authority without warrant, arbitrary rule (that hateful -thing), servility in the oppressed (the main impediment to -any reform). He was blind to the interplay, the organic -quality in a State, which our own time so ridiculously -exaggerates, but which the eighteenth century as a whole -neglected. Rousseau had put admirably the metaphor of -contract as explaining the bond of society. Robespierre, -interpreting him, conceived of contract as the simple and -all-sufficient machinery of a State. The error gave his -attempt a mechanical and an inhuman appearance over -and above its rigidity of dogma. Rousseau, like all the -great writers, gave continual glimpses of the insufficiency -of language; he let his audience see in a hundred phrases, -in a recurrence of qualifications, that his words were no -more than the words of others, hints at realities, at the -best metaphors brought as near as possible to be the true -reflection of ideas. Robespierre read him, and has remained -among the words entangled and satisfied. Rousseau -was perpetually insisting upon a point of view, calling -out, “Come and see.” He had discovered a position from -which (as he thought) the bewildering complexity of -human affairs appeared in a just and simple perspective. -But Rousseau never asserts that such a view will have the -same colouring to all men; on the contrary, at his best -he denies it. He trusts to the main aspect of his theory -for a main result in the State, to an agreement among -men of good-will for the harmonising of conflicting details. -Robespierre, as the high-priest of that gospel, had come -and had seen, but the perfect citizen and the perfect state -of his vision must be realised in every tittle as he had -observed them. Once again a great message was destined -to be sterilised and almost lost through the functionary -of its creed.</p> - -<p>Such was the man who had slowly supplanted Danton. -A mind whose type of aberration is common to all nations -had supplanted the typical Frenchman who had organised<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span> -the defence of France, and in the place of one whom his -enemies perpetually reproach with an excess of vigour -and manhood, a theorist of hardly any but intellectual -emotions was master.</p> - -<p>What gave him his great ascendancy, his practically -absolute power? It was due, in the first place, to the -popularity whose growth was the feature of the later -Revolution. That popularity was real in the number -of his followers and in the sincerity of their profession. -It must be remembered that hitherto he had stood on -the side of leniency in public action, while in words he -had expressed always accurately, sometimes nobly, the -ideals upon which the nation was bent. He had, from a -constitutional incapacity for real work, been only in the -background of those crises which had left behind them -an increasing crowd of malcontents. Not he, but Danton, -had made the 10th of August. No one had connected -his name with the massacres of September. The necessity -of government was not <i>his</i> interpretation of the -defeats in Belgium; the creation of that government was -another’s; its latent benefits reflect no merit upon him -now; its immediate rigours exposed him to no special -vengeance at the time. Not he, but Marat, is the obvious -demagogue whom the visionary Girondin girl marks out -as the enemy. To Carnot would turn the hatred of those -whom the great conscription oppressed. The Christian -foundation of France had others than Robespierre to -curse for the Masque of Reason and for the suppression -of public worship. He had stood behind Desmoulins -when the reaction of Nivose and Frimaire was at work; -he had approved and was thought the author of that trial -and execution in which Hébert had suffered the sentence -already pronounced upon him by the best of France. In -fact, he had stood in nothing as the extremist or as the -tyrant till the day when he permitted the arrest of -Danton. He had been rather the voice of a strong public<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span> -opinion than the arm which, when it acts at the orders of -unreason, becomes hated by its own furious master. Thus -upon the negative side there was nothing to prevent his -sudden attainment of power.</p> - -<p>In the second place, his name had been the most present -and the most familiar from the earliest days of the -Revolution. He had sat in the Assembly of the Commons -five years before, a notable though hardly a noted -figure, with some stories surrounding him, with quite a -reputation in his provincial centre; he had been, since -first the Jacobin Club became the mouthpiece of the pure -Republicans, the conspicuous leader of the Society. The -force of continuity and tradition counts for little in the -history of this whirlwind, but such as it is it explains to -a great degree the ascendancy of Robespierre. He alone -was never absent, he alone remained to chant a ceaseless -chorus to the action of the drama. His name was familiar -to excess; but it was hardly an epoch at which men grew -weary of hearing a politician called “the just.” Besides -this familiarity with his name, certain virtues—and those -the most cherished of the time—were in fact or by reputation -his. None could accuse him of venality; his sincerity -was obvious—indeed, it was the necessary fruit of -his narrow mind. The ambition from which we cannot -divorce his name was apparent to but few of his contemporaries, -and was not fully seized even by his enemies -till he had started on that short career of absolute power -which has stamped itself for ever upon the fortunes of -his country. Thus habit, the strongest of forces, was -his ally.</p> - -<p>In the third place, circumstances quite as much as -his own action had left him (as far as one can follow the -mysteries of the Committee) sole director of an exceptional -executive. On account of the illusions and necessities -of the people such a position was not immediately -recognised as tyrannical. The machine was theirs, working<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span> -for them and made by them; all the better if an idol -of theirs held the levers; he would make the most trusty -of servants. Robespierre was not master in theory. Even -committees were not the masters in theory. Theory was -everything to France in the year II., and in theory the -Convention was master. Nay, even the Convention was -only master because—in theory again—the sovereign, -the nation, was behind it. The majority of the Convention, -and it alone, is the technical authority. Robespierre’s -name was not to be discovered at the foot of those lists -of the condemned which his monstrous policy constructed, -and at the end of his four months he fell because the -theoretical master, the Convention, acted as it chose, and -no sufficient force dared to deny its right.</p> - -<p>He starts then upon the closing act of the play, the -one figure whom all regard, and into whose hands the -police, the committees, the juries, and (by their own disorder) -the majority of the Convention itself have fallen.</p> - -<p>The new reign began on the 6th of April, exactly a -year to a day since the Committee of Public Safety had -been established. It was Germinal, the month of -seeds that grow under ground, the most significant and -the most terrible of the new names. M. Zola has chosen -it for the title of his greatest work; it was the other day -on the dying lips of a poor wretch in Spain whose madness -also turned upon social injustice.</p> - -<p>The following of Robespierre did not hesitate to show -at once its tendencies and even its dogmas—for it held a -religion. That same day, the 6th of April—17th Germinal -of the year II.—Couthon came from the Committee -with a proposition for the Parliament to discuss the -establishment of a national worship of God. A new note -had been heard in the clamour; soon in the clear silence -of suspense it is to be the only sound, saving the dull -accompaniment of the two guillotines. This or that -occasional freak of theory or dramatised ribaldry the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span> -Terror had already known; unlimited power defended by -inexorable severity had developed many strange decrees, -dissociated from the general life and dying as they rose—absurdities -whose chief purpose would seem to be the -interest they have afforded to foreigners. But in these -there had been no system. The Mass was being said on -all sides when the churches were supposed to be closed. -Even as the Feast of Reason was being held at Notre -Dame, vespers were chanted at St. Germains. One thing -alone had been the purpose and had given the motive -force to nine months of agony endured—the salvation -of Revolutionary France. But when Couthon spoke it -was not France, nor common rights and liberties which -were proposed as the object of the defence—it was -Robespierrian Rousseau. In two months we shall have -the worship of the Supreme Being, in three the reaction; -in less than four the high-priest of this impossible system -is to fall; yet his dream and his power will be almost -enough in their fall to drag down the Republic.</p> - -<p>Five days more saw “the rest of the factions” sacrificed -to this new personal terror. Gobel, who had always -been afraid, and whose conscience had been turned like a -weathercock away from the nearest pike; the wives of -Desmoulins and of Hébert (for women, as the Terror -increased, were suspected, sometimes rightly, of being the -best at plotting); Chaumette, who had helped Hébert to -put up his theatricals in Notre Dame—they were all -tried, and in this trial it is again not the Revolution, but -Robespierre pure and simple whom we hear arguing and -condemning through the mouths of the court.</p> - -<p>One of the accused “has wished to efface the idea of -the divinity.” Another has “interfered with the worship -of his fellow-citizens” (this was said to Chaumette, who -must have thought it even at that moment something -of a platitude). To a third the reproach is made of -“changing the mode of worship without authority.” We<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span> -are on the highroad to those last six weeks in which -trial of any kind and definite accusation itself was absent. -The details of one man’s opinion are become the numberless -dogmas of a creed, and of a creed that kills -unmercifully. And yet even as he asserted his creed its -mechanical impotence appeared in violent contrast with -the humanity that the Puritan was persecuting. For -Lucille lighted her face radiantly when she was condemned, -and said, “I shall see him in a few hours.”</p> - -<p>Three days more—the 17th of April—and the -machinery was further centralised. St. Just demanded -that the political prisoners should be taken from every -part of France to be judged in Paris. The popular commissions—mere -gatherings to denounce without proofs -and without forms—were actively used all over the -Republic. In Paris the commission was to be the feeler -for the central machine. And such was the incapacity -of the Dreamer, “who had not wits enough to cook an -egg,” that this new feature in the machinery was not even -organised: it was a government of mere rigid absolutism -resting on bases that were rapidly becoming mere anarchy. -But even as the system, such as it was, developed, as the -central power grew more rigid, and the thing to be -governed more decayed, Danton, who had been killed -that it might exist, pursued it. It was due to his work -that the wrestling on the frontier was showing a definite -issue. The advance had begun.</p> - -<p>With his death the diplomacy of France had ceased. -The phrase of Robespierre’s, which he had so successfully -combated, had reappeared in vigour: the “nation would -not treat with her enemies.” But the organisation of her -armies, the levies, the rigid discipline, the arms were telling. -That aspect of the national energy had grown more -healthy as the central brain grew more diseased and vain. -Robespierre was threatening Carnot vaguely in the Committee, -but Carnot was at work and was saving France.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span> -St. Just himself, when he is upon the frontier, appears in -a capacity worthy of admiration, for he has there to deal -with a thing in action. His energy is as fierce as ever, -but its object is victory over a national enemy, and not -the triumph of a jejune idea. He had better have remained -with the soldiers.</p> - -<p>In Paris the Commune had been seized. The enemy -whom all had feared, whom even Danton had to the last -conciliated, was fearlessly grasped. The mayor was broken -simply, and replaced by a servant of the rulers; the -Sections protested with the last of their vitality, but the -Club denounced them, and they disappeared—even an -attempt at martyrdom is to give the idol yet more gilt. -Then the news of Turcoing came to Paris. It was little -more than a happy rumour, a battle whose importance -seems greater to us now than it did to contemporaries. -But Pichegru, the peasant, had prepared a good road for -Jourdan, and Fleurus was the direct result of Turcoing. -Barrère long after called these victories “the Furies,” which -swept upon and destroyed the fanatic in power.</p> - -<p>With every point of good news the Terror was less -necessary, yet Robespierre’s action grew as the national -danger disappeared. Even Lord Howe’s great victory of -the 1st of June did little to check the sentiment of relief. -The <i>Vengeur</i> went down and left a force of many -ships to the French navy for ever. The food reached -port, and the eyes of Frenchmen were not directed to the -sea, whose command they knew themselves to have gained -and lost before then with but little resulting change; they -turned, as they have always and will ever turn, to the -frontier of the north-east, the wrestling-ring upon whose -fair level was to be decided the fate of all their sacrifice -and of all their ideals, and Paris every day grew more -hopeful of the result, Robespierre more blind to everything -except his vision. On the 8th of June—the 20th -Prairial—he capped the edifice of his national religion<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span> -with the Feast of the Supreme Being; on the 10th he -forged the last piece of the machinery which was to make -that religion the moral order of the new era by force.</p> - -<p>In the connection of these dates we see the whole -man and the time. Three weeks pass from the first -definite victory against the allies to the law of the 22nd -Prairial. That short time widened the breach between -the armies and the government till it became an impassable -gulf. The fruit of that schism was to appear much -later, but already its elements were clear. Of the two -parts of Danton’s work one had become national, healthy, -representative; the other, which had been designed for -similar action, had finally become a thing of personalities -and of theories. The armies were in full success, the -Terror was menaced, and was doomed.</p> - -<p>In this feast of the Almighty, Robespierre was insanely -himself. He wore his bright-blue coat, perhaps to typify -the bright sky which we have all worshipped for so many -thousand years. In his little white hand, that never had -been nor could be put to a man’s work, he held the typical -offerings of fruit and corn. His head was bent forward -a little, and he looked at the ground. The men who stood -up boldly in the attitudes of Mirabeau and of the Tribunes -were dead or in the armies.</p> - -<p>Remove the scene by hundreds of years, and tell it -of a primitive people in some mountain valley, it assumes -a simplicity and a grandeur as legend. Their old traditions -(let us say) have been lost or stolen from them. -They are casting about for a lawgiver and for a starting-point. -A pure idealist is found, draconian in his method, -but ascetic and sincere in his life, laying down as necessary -for the state a clear and simple morality, basing all -ethics on the recognition and the worship of God. If we -make that picture we have some idea of what passed -through the mind of the little clique which still surrounded -Robespierre, some conception of the picture which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span> -still half-fascinated the crowd. For Robespierre himself -it was intensely true; he lived æons and myriads of -leagues away in time and space from humanity, intent -upon his dream.</p> - -<p>But in sight of the mummery stood Notre Dame. -Not a man there but had been baptized in the Christian -faith; a history more complex and more eventful than -that of perhaps any other nation was the inheritance and -the future of that crowd. And even as the game was -being played, the real France on the Sambre and in the -plains of Valenciennes was carrying out the oldest of -struggles in defence of the first of rights. The scene has -been laughed at and despised sufficiently by aliens within -and without the French nation; let it suffice for this book -to insist upon its unreality, and to assert that its principal -actor was genuine because he lived in the unreal.</p> - -<p>The law of the 22nd of Prairial followed this feast. -It was the establishment of a pure despotism, arbitrary, -absolute, personal. Already the trials were centralised in -Paris since the demand of St. Just had been made. The -Commune had been captured, the popular commissions -used, even the Presidency of the Convention had become -the appanage of one man and his associates. This -new law proposed the final step. After it was passed the -trials were to be conducted without proofs, and without -witness or pleading, for they were to be nothing more -than a formal process. The Committee once satisfied of -guilt, the tribunal was merely to condemn. To be upon -the lists was virtually to be dead. It was the end of civil -government, the declaration of a state of siege. And that -at the moment when the armies sent every day better and -better news. The Convention debated with Robespierre -in the chair; it hesitated and it nearly condemned the -proposal. There was a conflict in the minds of some -between the admiration—almost the adoration—of a man; -in the minds of others, between fear and the necessity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span> -apparent to all of relaxing the machinery which only the -national danger had called into being.</p> - -<p>Robespierre came down from the chair and spoke. -The even, certain voice which carried away his admirers, -which terrified his opponents, succeeded, and the law was -passed. Those who find it easy to judge the time, who -think it may all be explained by the baseness or the -pusillanimity of the Parliament, should note the appeal -which he made to the <i>Moderates</i> even then—an appeal -which had always been successful, which, when his death -drew near, he made at last (and for the first time) in -vain.</p> - -<p>For the Moderates, the Plain, the “Marsh,” saw in him -a kind of saviour, the just man, the slayer of the Mountain, -the master who would be terrible only for a little -time, and would soon restore peace when he had established -a dogma of moral order. Were Moderates ever -slow to give full power for the sake of order?</p> - -<p>The next day some one saw that the new law touched -the Parliament itself. Self-defence, the most sacred, perhaps -the only, right of a prince, occurred to them, and -they protested. They passed a resolution that no member -could be taken before the Revolutionary Tribunal without -their consent. The following day Robespierre again -appears, again appeals to the “Marsh.” The men of -order saw at once that no danger applied to them, that -the disorderly fellows up on the benches of the Left alone -were in danger. The resolution was repealed. On that -day, the 24th of Prairial of the year II.—12th of June -1794—the whole of France was at his feet, save the -armies.</p> - -<p>The France which had made the Revolution, and -which Danton had loved, defended, and saved, was in the -Ardennes and before Ypres. There were two main bodies. -One, on the left, in the plains by the frontier towns, was -opposed to a united force of English and Austrians; the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span> -other, on the right, in the woods and deep ravines of the -Ardennes, was opposed to a strong series of Austrian posts. -These armies were not separated, but the enemy held the -angle between them. Away on the extreme right Jourdan -held the Moselle valley. Pichegru had come back to the -army of the left, which in his absence had won Turcoing, -and at whose head Soudham, Moreau, and Macdonald had -fought and succeeded. On the right St. Just was throwing -into the attack upon the Sambre all the energy which -had saved, before this, the army of Alsace. Five times -the attempt had been made to pierce the Austrian lines, -and five times it had failed. Coburg lay on both sides -of the river; Charleroy, on the right bank, was his -strong place. The Deputies on mission, St. Just and -Lebas, the same whom we shall see standing by Robespierre -at the end, were present at the last decisive check -before Charleroy itself. With the Sambre thus held, the -southern army was immobilised; the successes of the -army of the north seemed almost valueless, for Coburg -held the angle between the two. Nevertheless, Turcoing -bore great fruit, for it convinced the Austrians that -reinforcements were needed to meet the French advance -in the north. The allies were like a man fighting with a -sword in each hand against two opponents. Wounded in -the right hand, he must cross rapidly with the sword in -his left, and so expose his left side. Thus Coburg left -the Sambre a little more exposed in order to provide temporary -reinforcements against the army that had just -won Turcoing. St. Just and Carnot were enemies; the -young Robespierrian was planned to replace the organiser -whom Danton had recognised; nevertheless, they agreed -at this supreme moment upon the necessary action. St. -Just from the army, Carnot from the Ministry of War at -Paris, called up Jourdan from the Moselle with over forty -thousand men.</p> - -<p>They are wrong who imagine that Napoleon invented<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span> -the attack by concentration on the weakest point; so far -as the large lines of a campaign go he inherited it from -the early Republican generals. Leaving strong places unoccupied, -careless of holding (for example) this position -on the Moselle, the hurried march northward was determined -on, and a supreme effort against the Austrian -lines.</p> - -<p>By this junction was formed that “Army of the -Sambre-et-Meuse” which to this day gives a theme for -one of the noblest marching-songs of the French soldiery. -Under Jourdan were men whose names alone have something -of the quality of bugle-calls. Ney, and Kleber, and -Marceau were leading them. There ran through this new -army a kind of prescience, the foreknowledge of victory, -an unaccustomed feeling of expansion and of hope. Soult -speaks of it as his awakening; and there is a fine phrase -in the memoir of a contemporary which gives us some -echo of its enthusiasm: “We always seemed to be marching -into the dawn;” they felt in every rank that the -balance was turning, and that France was to be saved.</p> - -<p>A sixth attempt was for a sixth time foiled. The -seventh succeeded. The Austrian line was broken and -Charleroy surrounded; in a week it fell. The capitulation -was hardly achieved when the army of Coburg -appeared to the north-east upon the heights that command -the left bank of the river, a plateau called that of -Fleurus.</p> - -<p>It was upon the 25th of June that the armies met -and fought with blazing hay about them and ripe harvest -that had caught fire. Kleber recovered the left wing, as -Cromwell at Naseby, after it had given way. Marceau -obstinately held the right in front of Fleurus, as Davoust -did at Austerlitz ten years later. And towards evening -the watchers in the balloon above the French ranks saw -in regular and stiff retreat the last army of the old world. -By the end of Messidor the English were in Holland, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span> -Austrians upon the Rhine, the whole of Belgium was in -the hands of the Republic.</p> - -<p>The sun which set upon the death of Danton had -risen again.</p> - -<p>So in Robespierre’s own country his fall was prepared -by circumstances. At Arras, his birthplace, one could -almost hear the guns of Fleurus; he and his thin soul -belonged to those plains of the north where the Norman -and the Burgundian, and the Provençal and the Gascon, -born in more generous places, were driving the enemy -before them.</p> - -<p>St. Just came back from the front. He at least had -seen on what Revolutionary France was really bent, and -in what she was vigorous. With the superb courage that -belonged to his energy and his youth he had led the -charges. Living with the soldiers, he had seen more -closely, and with more accuracy than is common in -visionaries, the needs of an army. Why did he come -back to continue the insane drama whose seven weeks of -action count more with the enemies of France than all -her centuries?</p> - -<p>Because the armies and their victories, though affording -proof of what the nation was and of what it required, -could afford that proof only to a just and even mind. The -soldiers themselves did not express a political opinion; -their whole mind was bent upon the breaking of the line, -the attempt in which they had succeeded. Of Paris, Revolutionary -in the last few months, they knew little. They -judged it as our contemporaries do—on hearsay; and it -seemed to them that there stood in the capital a powerful -Committee full of patriots, who had by an intense, an -almost furious energy, saved them—the soldiers. Men -who risk their lives every day and see death constantly -are not likely to be horror-stricken at an excess of rigour -in government. In their eyes a number of men had -fallen, places had changed, the central power was surrounded<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span> -by a tumult, but <i>they</i> had been clothed and fed -almost by a miracle—their battles had been made possible. -The year since the great conscription had drawn them -from their homes had been for them a struggle of continual -promise, ending in a great achievement. Already -the soldier was half-professional; the eager volunteer of -1792, full of his politics, had given place to a type which -the wanton policy of the old regime was forging to its -own destruction. For it was forging the veterans who -cared more and more for the Revolutionary thing, and -less and less for the discussions and the theories, till at -last they produced the Empire.</p> - -<p>St. Just therefore could not warn Robespierre. St. -Just himself had learnt no lesson. His ideal was still -in his eyes the salvation of France, and even of the -world; the victory of Fleurus only made it the more -possible to carry his ideal out in action. He had seen -the emigrants who were taken in that battle spared for -the first time by the French soldiery, but he did not -recognise the tremendous import of this, nor appreciate -what our own time has thoroughly learnt, that it is the -success or the failure of the national defence which rules -the temper of a nation.</p> - -<p>When the news of Fleurus became known in Paris -the law of Prairial had been in action for nearly three -weeks. By the time the victory and its meaning had -fully sunk into the mind of the capital half the short -period of Robespierre had expired. How much was due -to fear upon his part, how much to mere blindness, we -cannot tell, but the very moment when the necessity for -the Terror patently disappeared was the moment chosen -by him for the aggravation of his system.</p> - -<p>He attacked the Mountain.</p> - -<p>It will be remembered that the Convention had feared -for itself when it gave the full power into his hands. On -the 11th of June Bourdon from the Oise had carried a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span> -motion which would have defended the deputies, but -which Robespierre had caused to be cancelled upon the -following day.</p> - -<p>With an attack, however, appearing as a reality -instead of remaining as a threat, even the “Marsh” grew -afraid. He put into his speech an excellent maxim, that -“not success of armies abroad or on the frontier are the -greatness of a nation, but the virtue of its private citizens -within” (21st Messidor)—a truth appearing perhaps at -the very worst moment, for it translated itself at once -in the minds of his audience into “the victories mean -nothing to me; the guillotine is for the defence not of the -nation but of my dogmas.” And his faith went on sacrificing -its innumerable victims.</p> - -<p>Another and a final element was added to the forces -against him. The Committee began to refuse his leadership. -It must be remembered that Robespierre was not -absolute master in the sense in which (for example) an -English general would be master of an Indian province -after the suppression of a mutiny. Circumstances, immense -popularity, above all the kind of men who composed -the great Committee, are the explanation of his -power. His power was a fact, but a fact based on no -theoretical right, and therefore possessed of no elements -of endurance. Even the Committee was in the eyes of -all the governed, and of some of its own members, only -the servant of the national welfare. Two men upon it -were Robespierrians—Couthon and St. Just; one was a -turncoat by nature—Barrère; two more were men of the -Hébertian type, most unreliable for an idealist to deal -with—Billaud and Collot. Finally there remains Carnot, -the worker, and four others—the two Prieurs, Lindet -and St. André.</p> - -<p>Robespierre could be virtually a master, but a master -only on the tolerance of superior though latent force. -He could inspire terror by the common knowledge that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span> -the machinery was in his hands, that its terrible punishment -was practically his to inflict at pleasure. But -something put it into his hand, and something could -take it away. It cannot be too often repeated, if we -wish to understand the Revolution, that from the fall -of Lafayette to the 13th of October 1795 there was no -disciplined armed force at the service of the Government, -there was nobody better armed or better drilled -than the man in the street—not even gunners, the first -necessity of modern masters, for the very artillery was -amateur; above all, there was no armed body whose -members obeyed without question, who were, as a good -army must be, a rigid instrument of government framed -upon a device which multiplies a hundredfold the strength -of each man in the public service. The “strong men” -of history, whom our reactionaries delight to honour, -have always had such an instrument at their disposition, -but when there is no one to fire at a command, your -strong man is like any other, save that he is a little -weaker for shouting.</p> - -<p>What then was the ultimate master which permitted -Robespierre to rule? It was composed of several forces, -and in its division is to be found the secret of its -inertia.</p> - -<p>Firstly, the Convention, mutilated as it was, was -granted by all to be the nearest representative of the -nation. What the majority voted was done. It exercised -a very great moral influence, and if it had shown that -influence so slightly, it was because its organisation was -contemptible—a mass of individuals, with no traditions -of action or of grouping, a crowd in which the fear -of each that another might be his enemy caused the -sum of its individual cries to be anything but the integrate -expression of its corporate will. Well, this crowd -had had one formidable enemy. The <i>right</i> of the Convention -had been combated by the <i>force</i> of the well-organised<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span> -Commune. The Commune used to be a mirror -of at least half of Paris; it had lost this character. It -was nothing now but a group of Robespierrians, and the -Convention was the stronger for the change.</p> - -<p>Secondly, there was the material force—the populace -of Paris. They had not risen hitherto save for one or -two motives—the establishment of the national defence, -the prevention of a political reaction; and they had been -more turbulent and more dangerous where the first than -where the second was their cause for action.</p> - -<p>Thirdly, the regular initiative was in the hands of -a majority of the Committee of Public Safety.</p> - -<p>The moment therefore that the majority of the Committee -refused to follow Robespierre’s lead, he would have -had to ascend the tribune of the Convention, and in one -of those speeches which carried to some such genuine -conviction, but to many others such still more genuine -fear, he would have had to obtain a majority for the -reconstruction of the great Committee.</p> - -<p>Now a deliberative Assembly which is not strictly -organised upon party lines, which has no aristocratic -quality and no great (because traditional) corporate pride, -is very strongly influenced by what we call “Public -Opinion.” It hears reports from the whole nation, is -composed of every kind of man, regards itself moreover -as in duty bound to listen to the voices outside, meets -in its lobbies and during its recesses every species of -expression.</p> - -<p>Such a jury is therefore the very worst before which -a popular idol could present itself when some strong -adverse action had just shown his reputation to be falling. -Outvoted in Committee, condemned in Parliament, the -man who had but just now been supreme would have -to turn to whatever he could find of physical force to -support him.</p> - -<p>But that physical force in the case of Robespierre<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span> -was only the populace of Paris, and a populace moreover -whose one organising centre—the Commune—had been -weakened by himself. Once suppose him forced to -depend upon a rising of the people, and the weakness of -his position is apparent; even were he still the politician -of the majority, it would be a long step from approving -of his policy to risking one’s life in a civil tumult, conscious -that one was attacking every form of constituted -authority, and presumably the opinion of the whole -nation, for no principle, from no necessity, but to save -a man. As we shall see, the rising to defend him comprised -but a small knot of men, and totally failed.</p> - -<p>The man who had not the wits to cook an egg -prepared his own ruin. Carnot, whose one idea was to -work and save the frontier, he openly menaced. Robespierre -meditated the inconceivable folly of replacing -Carnot’s science by the blind activity of St. Just. In -alienating Carnot and losing that possible ally, Robespierre -lost five of his colleagues on the Committee. The end of -Messidor saw him in a kind of voluntary isolation, letting the -fatal machine work on, while he stood off from the levers.</p> - -<p>He seems to have just felt two doubts disturbing the -serenity of his fanatical complacency. First, whether -after all he was going down to posterity as he saw himself -to be—the maker of a new France, “the terror of -oppressors and the refuge of the oppressed.” (One day -his eyes filled when the noise of the tumbrils reached -him, and he said, “I shall be remembered only as a slayer -of men.” So wrapped up in himself, he had not yet -heard an echo of what all men were saying.) Secondly, -he wondered whether his perfect state was so near as he -had thought. The killing went on, and he got no nearer. -The “anti-patriots,” the “anti-revolutionaries,” the “anti-Robespierres” -(though he did not think of them so) -passed perpetually eastward and westward daily from -the prisons to the two guillotines.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span></p> - -<p>By the irony of whatever rules and laughs at men, -events caused the first mutterings to rise among the -Extremists. The Terror was too mild, and above all the -men with hearts of beasts—the remainder of the Hébertists—hated -a policy which included, however fantastically, -the ideal and the worship of God. They hated his half-alliance -with whatever was Christian in the Convention, -and his perpetual appeals to the Moderates.</p> - -<p>The Lower Committee had a partially independent life. -It was known to be the policy of Robespierre to submit -this body, as he had submitted all the other organs of -government, to the great Committee of Public Safety. -Hence it was in this Lower Committee of General Security—menaced -as a function and as individuals, thoroughly -in touch, by its position, with the police—that the conspiracy -arose. The majority of its members joined it, and -from the Higher Committee Billaud and Collot adhered. -On the 7th of Thermidor (25th of July 1794) the storm -burst. Barrère read his report to the Convention, and it -was an open menace to Robespierre.</p> - -<p>The origins of that report merit a certain discussion. -We have seen that from the first the reports, directed by -the Committee, were usually written by Barrère, and were -read to the Convention by him. On the other hand, we -can discover usually in the style, and always in the -opinions of the reports, the action of whoever led in the -councils of the Committee. Thus, in the document of -this nature of which so much mention is made in chapter -vi., the spirit, and evidently many of the actual phrases, -are the work of Danton.</p> - -<p>Who drew up Barrère’s report, whether (possibly) it -was his own work, when he saw opinion shifting away from -Robespierre, or whether, as is more probable, it was inspired -by Billaud and Collot, and permitted by the five -neutrals, we cannot tell. The main fact is this, that the -Committee had at least permitted to be made in its name<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span> -a public declaration hostile to the man who, through the -Committee, had ruled France.</p> - -<p>The report repudiated in detail the policy of the past -seven weeks; it insisted on the importance of the victories, -on the iniquity of further lists of victims. For -the first time in four months the Convention acted -freely; it ordered the report to be printed and to be sent -to all the Communes of France.</p> - -<p>On the next day Robespierre came for the last time -into his accustomed place. He gave his last speech to -the Parliament. He was to appear once more, but never -again as the orator and the leader. Reading, as was his -wont, not declaiming, in the slow even voice that had -compelled such attention, such enthusiasm, and such fear, -he made the last of his declarations. This speech, if no -other, should be read to understand the man. Here -a theory stated with power and with precision; there a -description of those without whose condemnation the -theory could not be realised. A noble ideal based upon -the scaffold; a dogma and a detailed persecution side by -side. He read it slowly from end to end, proving to -himself, and, as he thought, to his audience, the perfection -of his ideal, and the necessity of the terrible road towards -it. But his audience heard nothing of the ideal; they -heard only the description of themselves.</p> - -<p>Men of all kinds, the mere demagogues, were in that -summary, the personal enemies, the financiers. It seems -that on the manuscript from which he read even Cambon’s -name was written. But in this extreme crisis, when he -was denouncing the first men in order to save his -own position, he was no longer Robespierre. It made -no difference to his fate, yet we judge him with more -accuracy when we know that he omitted the name of -Cambon, and that he did not pronounce that of Carnot, -whom he had threatened in private. It was an attempt -at compromise.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span></p> - -<p>The Convention heard him and his threat. Of his -theories they had heard enough for years. Yet such was -the power of his slow clear utterance, of the reverence -which his following commanded, and of the idea which he -expressed so well, and in which all at heart believed, that -they voted the printing and the dissemination of the -speech. Cambon and Billaud-Varennes rose to demand -the repeal of the vote. The great unwieldy assembly, or -rather its great unwieldy neutral faction, hesitated, conferred, -and yielded to the demand. Then Robespierre -was doomed.</p> - -<p>As he was reading, as the distribution of the speech -and then its repeal were being voted, there hung above his -head and that of the Parliament the flags taken in -the new victories from the English and Austrians at Turcoing, -at Landrecies, at Quesnoy, at Condé, at Valenciennes, -at Fleurus, and it was they that turned the scale.</p> - -<p>When the evening came the Club met, the little -society of the Jacobins, which was still the most independent -and the most vital force in Paris. It had dared to -elect a president for its debates whose whole policy was -antagonistic to Robespierre; yet now it heard him and -remembered its old idol. He re-read, in the same tone, -but in a more familiar surrounding and with ampler -diction, the speech of the morning, and his hearers grew -wild with enthusiasm. They hissed and they turned out -Billaud and Collot, who had dared to be present; they -cried out to Robespierre that they would follow him -always towards the perfect Republic; and David, an excellent -artist and a bad man, cried to him from the back, -“I will drink the hemlock with you!” but he was afraid -even to acknowledge his master when Robespierre came -to die.</p> - -<p>The Jacobins that night were ready to rise for Robespierre. -As so many minorities have been in that city of -convictions and of intense enthusiasms, they were ready to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span> -impose themselves and their creed upon the capital and -upon France; but they did not know to what a handful -they had been reduced in the last seven weeks. All night -the conspiracy against Robespierre worked hard. Boissy -D’Anglas, the leader of the “Marsh,” was brought over. To -him and his followers Robespierre was pointed out as -the tyrant; to what was left of the Mountain he was -denounced as the moderate and the compromiser. But, -above all, he was, to the great bulk of the Convention, the -enemy who had destroyed all civil order in pursuit of his -mad theories, and who had even held the victories of no -account.</p> - -<p>The Parliament met the next morning, on the 9th of -Thermidor (27th of July). It was a year to a day since -Robespierre had joined the great Committee; but it was -for the condemnation of Robespierre that they met. The -great hall waited for a coming tumult. First into the -tribune went St. Just, with his beautiful face and strong -bearing, determined in oratory as in the battles to strike -at once and lead a charge. He was eloquent, for he was -trying to save his friend; he boldly attempted argument, -a compromise, anything; called it “saving the Republic.” -“Let us end his domination if you will, but let the -government still be that of the Revolution, and let -us draw up such rules as shall save us from arbitrary -power without destroying the motive force of the national -demand.” The sentiment was precisely that of the Convention, -but the speaker was known to be merely the -young bodyguard of their enemy.</p> - -<p>Tallien called out from the right, “Pull back the -curtain,” and, though the fellow was an actor, he -had struck the right note. St. Just could never defend -Robespierre; it would have been a cloak for continuing -the Terror. The Convention applauded, and from applause -turned to crying down St. Just in a public roar of -fear and hatred.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span></p> - -<p>Then twice Robespierre tried to speak; the hubbub -silenced him. During a lull in the storm they voted -the arrest of Henriot. It meant the transference of such -pitiful armed force as he commanded from the hand of -a friend to that of an enemy. Robespierre made a last -effort to rescind that order. He was not heard.</p> - -<p>Tallien was given the tribune by the Speaker (Collot -was Speaker that day, and Collot had been turned out by -the Jacobins the night before). Tallien spoke theatrically, -as he always did, but to the point. Robespierre, he -said, had plotted to destroy the assembly for his purposes; -he quoted the speech of the day before. While -Barrère, the turncoat, stood looking this way and that, -not knowing how things would turn. Once more Robespierre -attempted a reply; he only raised a storm that -drowned his voice.</p> - -<p>When he saw that full speech was denied him, he -turned from the place where he stood towards the -“Marsh,” the Moderates, and said, “I appeal to you who -are just and who are not conspiring with these assassins;” -but the “Marsh” was lost to him—they also cried him -down.</p> - -<p>A little silence followed. They saw Robespierre -attempting for a fifth time to speak, but the agony of -the night and the fearful struggle of the morning had -overcome him at last: his voice could not be heard -though he tried to articulate. Garnier of the Aube -called to him across the floor of the hall, “The blood -of Danton chokes you.” It was the truest thing said in -that wild meeting.</p> - -<p>Before the silence was broken, Louchet, an unknown -man, rose and proposed the arrest, saying openly what -all thought: “No one will deny that Robespierre has -played the master; let us vote his arrest.” Then Robespierre -found his voice. He went up four steps above -his usual seat, to a place where, high up and from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span> -left, from the summit of what had been the Mountain in -the old days, he could see the whole of that multitudinous -assembly, with whose aid he had hoped to regenerate -France and to save mankind. Beneath him as a -host, like the dim pictures of Martin’s Milton, rank on -rank, he saw so many heads that it must have seemed -to him a nation. He remembered all his dreams of a -perfect state, of men living in equality, with no one -oppressed and no one oppressing, of a government based -upon the clear will of all, and upon the civic virtues -which he had preached, till there should rise the perfect -Republic, an exemplar for all the nations. He saw that -he was doomed, and with him all his dreams. Perhaps, -also, he saw the armed despotism which he had twice -prophesied coming in his place. To the last he did not -understand his folly, and he replied to the demand of -Louchet, “Vote for my death.”</p> - -<p>Le Bas, who had been with St. Just in the Ardennes, -who had helped to make the great army of Sambre-et-Meuse, -and Robespierre the younger, another honest man, -came and did what David failed to do—they said they -would die with him, and took his hands in theirs. The -Committee passed to the vote, and the three were taken -away with St. Just and with Couthon. The scene that -follows is the end of the Revolution in Paris.</p> - -<p>Twice at least in the course of the preceding five -years Paris had risen against the law and had removed -an obstacle or a man for the sake of the Revolution. -The random Municipality of 1789 (which for all its disorder -was the parent of the puissant modern system of -Communes) is an example in point; the 2nd of June is -another. Ultimately the people of Paris were the only -force on which government rested, and it was to them -that the final appeal was made.</p> - -<p>The Commune possessed the initiative in this matter—it -was the sole centre of Paris in theory; and now that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span> -the clubs were all in decay (save the Jacobins), now that -the great orators were exiled or dead, and that the Sections -themselves did not meet, the Commune was also -the only centre in fact. But the Commune, it will be -remembered, had become a Robespierrian thing. It -determined to rise against the Convention.</p> - -<p>The Convention had ordered the arrest of Henriot, -who was commander of the armed force (such as it was) -of the town. It sent his successor, Hesmart to do the -work. But the head of a number of pikes and guns -would not submit to a man who represented only the -law, and instead of Hesmart arresting Henriot, it was -Henriot who arrested Hesmart.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the other officers of the Commune displayed -the same energy, the same rapidity of execution -and design which under better leaders and for a better -cause had hitherto succeeded. Lescot-Payot (the Robespierrian -mayor who had been put into the place of Pache -on the 21st of Floréal), and Payan the national agent, -were at the head of the movement. They sent orders to -the prisons to refuse the arrested deputies, they gave -Henriot the formal order to employ his full force and -act. They raised the Jacobins. They formed a committee -of nine who were to take over the government; -they ordered the arrest of their principal enemies in the -Convention, and most important of all, they convened the -Sections.</p> - -<p>They had only a night to work in—the 9th Thermidor -to the 10th—and <i>their</i> work had the energy of a -fever; but the greatest factor of all was lacking—the fever -did not spread. The inertia of the people, even their -disapproval, was evident as they proceeded; the majority -of such Sections as did meet stood aloof from or condemned -the cause of Robespierre.</p> - -<p>While it was still just light, between eight and nine in -the evening, Robespierre, whom the keepers of the Luxemburg<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span> -prison had refused, was brought to the Mairie, and -there one after the other all the arrested deputies came, -profiting by the official routine; for the Mairie was the -“right place” officially for prisoners when a difficulty -arose as to imprisonment within Paris. But official -routine had a strange bedfellow that night, for while the -officials took the prisoners there, the small band of rebels, -who knew of no place more friendly, brought there also -those whom they had delivered by force. Robespierre -was again with the strongest of his friends—his brother, -St. Just, Couthon; he was surrounded by an organised -and legal body, the Commune, which had risen in his -defence; they passed to the Hotel de Ville, and outside, -on the Place de Grève, there gathered between ten o’clock -and eleven a fairly large group of the National Guard. -But there was no order among them, nor any accurate -knowledge among their officers as to what was to be done. -From the windows of the room where Robespierre and -his companions sat, there could be dimly seen a moving -crowd of mingled citizens and guards, discussing rather -than preparing for action.</p> - -<p>Robespierre refused to put himself at the head of the -movement; at least it is only thus that we can explain -the delay and the confusion. He was to the last the -strange mixture of lawyer and pedant and idealist. He -would not act without the legal right, for his pedantry -forbade it, nor move with an armed minority, because, -judged by his theories, it would have been a crime. Perhaps -at the very last he decided to move: there exists a -document authorising a march on the Convention, and at -its base the first three letters of his name—the signature -unfinished, interrupted.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the Convention had found a new energy -and a power of corporate action to which it had been long -a stranger—each man there was defending his life. Legendre, -with a small force, went and closed the Jacobins.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span> -Barras was given the command of such armed men as -could be gathered; the two committees sent emissaries -who appealed with success to the Sections. The Convention -was the law which had always meant so much -to the people; it was the authority of the constitution. -Its majority, obeyed when it was in lethargy, -could not but be successful when it awoke. All Paris -defended it.</p> - -<p>At midnight one of the sudden thunder-showers which -are common in the Seine valley at that season cleared -what was left of the crowd before the Hotel de Ville. -They had discussed both sides, and they had not decided—hardly -an army for rebellion; they had doubted what -business they had there, and with the rain they went -home. Yet it was not till two hours after, in the early -morning, that the little band of the Convention came into -the square. They found it almost empty, with here and -there a small group standing on the wet cobble-stones, -sleepy but curious.</p> - -<p>Bourdon and a few policemen went into the Hotel de -Ville and found no defenders. They went up to the room -where the conspirators sat.</p> - -<p>Robespierre was on the ground with his jaw broken by -a pistol-shot.</p> - -<p>At half-past seven in the evening of that day (the -10th Thermidor) twenty-two of the Robespierrians were -taken in three carts to the guillotine. Robespierre himself, -half-unconscious from his wound, stood propped -against the side of the cart, his head bandaged, his arms -bound, his chin upon his breast. Ropes also bound his -body to the sides of the tumbril. He passed the house -where Duplay had sheltered him, and where he had hidden -himself, so as not to hear the noise of the executioners’ -carts. Now beneath him the heavy wheels were making -the same sound on the ruts of the Rue St. Honoré. At -a cross-street the cart stopped to let pass the funeral of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span> -Madame Aigué, who had killed herself the day before from -fear of Robespierre.</p> - -<p>As they neared the Place of the Revolution, where -Louis and Danton had suffered, probably at the turning -of the Rue St. Honoré, where the guillotine came in sight -and where Danton had sung his song, a woman came forward -from the crowd—doubtless some one whom his -tyranny had directly bereaved—and struck Robespierre a -blow. For sixteen hours he had not spoken nor made a -sign, but when he felt through this blow the popular -hatred, he made a gesture of contempt and of despair; -he shrugged his shoulders, but kept his innumerable -thoughts within the bandages. “<i>De mourir pour le peuple -et d’en être abhorré</i>.”</p> - -<p class="tb">Then—so the greatest of French historians tell us—France -marched down a broad road to the tomb where -she has left two millions of men.</p> - -<p>But the armies of the great twenty years cannot be -stated in the terms of one man’s ambition, nor summed -up in any of the simple formulæ which a just hatred of -Cæsarism has framed to explain them. At the root of -every battle of the Empire was the organisation and the -enthusiasm of 1793. The tactics of Austerlitz and of -Jena were learned in Flanders; the enthusiasm of the -Guard itself came in clear descent from the exaltation of -the Sambre-et-Meuse.</p> - -<p>In this book we have attempted to judge the first man -of a great crisis in relation to his time; it is still more -essential that, when we consider the after-effects of his -action, a whole nation under arms should stand in the -right historical framework, its gigantic effort part and -parcel of a supreme necessity.</p> - -<p>We can understand, we can speak rationally, and therefore -truly, of Danton, when we show him above all loving -and defending France and the Revolutionary Thing: that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span> -same appreciation will make us follow clearly the continuous -development of his action. It is hardly too much -to say that, until Tilsit, the French had to advance or be -crushed—nation, creed, and men.</p> - -<p>The men and the armies must be for us the men and -the armies that gave a new vigour to Europe; the details -of their action should not be the matter of our judgment, -but their relation to the whole community—its needs, its -defence, its faith.</p> - -<p>As the time grows greater between that period and our -own, a just proportion imposes itself. The flame which, -close at hand, burnt in a formless furnace is beginning to -assume a certain shape. From a standpoint so distant -that no living memory bridges the gulf, we can measure -the light, the heat, and even the fuel of that flame.</p> - -<p>As to its final meaning in our society, every day makes -that clearer; and, to change the metaphor, this much becomes -more and more apparent, that through whatever -crises the Western civilisation is to pass, and whatever form -its edifice will finally take, when the noise of the building -is over, the corner-stone, with its immense strength and its -precision of line, was planned by the philosophy and was -hewn by the force of the Revolution. Civilisations die, and -ours was dying before that wind swept across Europe.</p> - -<p>It would have been a poor excuse for leaving unremoved -the rubble, the dust, and the putrescence of the old -world to have pleaded that the decay was the action of -centuries, and that old things alone were worthy of reverence. -Old things alone are worthy of reverence, but old -things which have grown old upon just and sure foundations, -to which time has added ornament and the satisfaction -of harmonious colour, without destroying the main -lines, and without sapping the strength by which they -live.</p> - -<p>The new foundations alone stand at the present day. -They are crude, they satisfy nothing in us permanently,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span> -they are very far from affording that sentiment of content -which is the first requisite of a happy civilisation. But -time will do in this case, as it has always done in every -other, the work of harmony and of completion. The final -society will not be without its innumerable complexity of -detail, its humour, and its inner life. Certainly it will not -long remain a stranger to the unseen; but it will be built -upon 1793.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the light grows on the origins. The personal -bitterness which the struggle produced has passed. -It is a pious memory in this or that family in France to -give itself still the name of a Revolutionary faction; but -the hatred that has produced confusion in honest critics, -and that has furnished such ample material for false history, -that hatred is disappearing in France. The vendettas -have ceased, and the grosser of the calumnies are -no longer heard. The history of the Revolution began to -be possible when Louis Blanc sat down to curse the upheaval -that had killed his father, and ended by producing -the work which more than any other exalted the extreme -Revolutionary ideal.</p> - -<p>The story of that time is now like a photographic -negative, which a man fixes, washing away the white -cloud from the clean detail of the film. Point after -point, then more rapidly whole spaces, stand out precise -and true. And the certitude which he feels that the -underlying picture is an accurate reminiscence of Nature -comes to us also when we make out and fix some passage in -the Revolution, cleared of its mass of hearsay, of vituperation, -of ignorance, and of mere sound.</p> - -<p>We are beginning to see a great picture, consonant in -its details, and consecutive in its action. The necessity of -reform; the light of the ideal striking men’s minds after a -long sleep, the hills first and afterwards the plains; privilege -and all the interests of the few alarmed and militant; -the menace of attack and the preparation of defence; the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span> -opposition of extremes on either side of the frontier, growing -at an increasing speed, till at last, each opposite -principle mutually exciting the other, as armatories their -magnets, from a little current of opinion rose a force that -none could resist. The governments of the whole world -were for the destruction of the French people, and the -French people were for the rooting out of everything, -good and evil, which was attached, however faintly, to the -old regime.</p> - -<p>The rhetoricians passed in the smoke of the fire, unsubstantial, -full of words that could lead and inspire, but -empty of acts that could govern the storm. From their -passing, which is as vague as a vision, we hear faintly the -“Marseillaise” of the Girondins.</p> - -<p>The men of action and of the crisis passed. They -burnt in the heat they themselves had kindled, but in -that furnace the nation was run, and forged, and made. -Then came the armies: France grown cold from the casting-pit, -but bent upon action, and able to do.</p> - -<p>Wherever France went by, the Revolutionary Thing -remained the legacy of her conviction and of her power. -It remains with a kind of iron laughter for those who -judge the idea as a passing madness. The philosophers -have decided upon a new philosophy; the lawyers have -clearly proved that there has been no change; the rhetoric -has been thoroughly laughed down, enthusiasm has grown -ridiculous, and the men of action are cursed. But in the -wake of the French march citizens are found who own the -soil and are judged by an equal code of laws; nationalities -have been welded, patriotism has risen at the call of the -new patriotic creed; Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, -Italy have known themselves as something more than the -delimitations of sovereigns. Nor was there any abomination -of the old decay, its tortures, its ignominies, its -privileges, its licensed insults, or its slaveries, but she -utterly stamped them out. In Germany, in Austria, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span> -Italy, they disappeared. Only in one dark corner they -remained—the great Northern field, where France herself -grew powerless from cold, and from whence an unknown -rule and the advance of relentless things menaces Europe -now.</p> - -<p>But with the mention of that frozen place there comes -a thought older than all our theories—the mourning for -the dead. Danton helped to make us, and was killed: -his effort has succeeded, but the tragedy remains. The -army at whose source he stood, the captain who inherited -his action, were worn out in forging a new world. And I -will end this book by that last duty of mourning, as we -who hold to immortality yet break our hearts for the -dead.</p> - -<p>There is a legend among the peasants in Russia of a -certain sombre, mounted figure, unreal, only an outline -and a cloud, that passed away to Asia, to the east and to -the north. They saw him move along their snows -through the long mysterious twilights of the northern -autumn in silence, with the head bent and the reins in -the left hand loose, following some enduring purpose, -reaching towards an ancient solitude and repose. They -say it was Napoleon. After him there trailed for days -the shadows of the soldiery, vague mists bearing faintly -the forms of companies of men. It was as though the -cannon-smoke of Waterloo, borne on the light west wind -of that June day, had received the spirits of twenty years -of combat, and had drifted farther and farther during the -fall of the year over the endless plains.</p> - -<p>But there was no voice and no order. The terrible -tramp of the Guard and the sound that Heine loved, the -dance of the French drums, was extinguished; there was -no echo of their songs, for the army was of ghosts and -was defeated. They passed in the silence which we can -never pierce, and somewhere remote from men they sleep -in bivouac round the most splendid of human swords.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX</h2> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">NOTE ON THE CORDELIERS</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The spot once occupied by the Cordeliers is among the most interesting -in Paris, and it is of some importance to sketch its -history and to reconstruct its appearance at greater length than -was possible in the text.</p> - -<p>All the land from St. Germains des Près up northwards along -the hillside had belonged to that abbey since its foundation, -when the first dynasty of Frankish kings had endowed the -foundation with a great estate carved out of what had once been -the Roman fiscal lands on the south bank. Round the abbey -itself a few houses had gathered, forming the “Faubourg” (or -suburb) of “St. Germains”; but the greater part of the estate was -open field and meadow. When Philip Augustus built his great -wall round Paris it cut through the estate, leaving the Church -and Abbey of St. Germains outside the city, but enclosing a small -part of the fields within its boundary.</p> - -<p>You may trace the line of the wall at this day by noting the -street “Rue de Monsieur le Prince,” once called “Rue des Fossés -Monsieur le Prince,” and running on the line of the outer ditch. -The wall ran not twenty yards east of the modern street and -exactly parallel to it. A portion of it may yet be seen in that -neighbourhood, a great hollow round built into the wall of one -of the houses, a cobbler’s shop in the Cour du Commerce; it is -one (the last, I believe) of the half-towers which flanked Philip -Augustus’s wall.</p> - -<p>In the beginning of the thirteenth century, very shortly after -the death of St. Francis, the first preachers of the new Order<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span> -which he had founded came to Paris. It was the moment when -the University was climbing up the hill, building its colleges, -having possessed its charter for some years, and already a strong, -organised, wealthy, and therefore conservative body. This order -of preachers, wandering, intensely new, and founded by a mystic -whose place in Christendom was not yet finally determined, were -bound to come into collision with the spirit of the place. It -must be remembered that the thirteenth century was not transitional, -but, on the contrary, a time of settled order. For a -century it had known the Roman law; it had everywhere the -Gothic architecture; it had systemised and made legal the rough -accidents of feudal custom; it was wealthy, proud, and successful. -On it there falls one of those creations which are only possible in -a time of energy, and yet which almost invariably quarrel with -the period that has produced them. An Order devoted to simplicity, -making of holy poverty the foundation of the inner life, -specially created for the poor (whom the growing differentiation -of society was beginning to debase), the early Franciscans were -essentially revolutionary, because they built on the great foundations -of all active and permanent reform—I mean the appetite for -primitive conditions, and the determination to break through the -net of complexity which the long growths of time weave about a -conservative society.</p> - -<p>The rich Abbey of St. Germains gave them asylum. It was -proud to possess dependants, it was great enough to afford benevolent -experiments, and it took pleasure in offending the University, -which was an upstart in its eyes, and was beginning to show -as a powerful rival in the affairs of the south side of Paris. The -Franciscans, therefore—whom the populace already called the -“Cordeliers” from the girdle of rope about their habit—were -permitted to settle in that little corner of their estate which had -been cut off by the building of the town wall, and they occupied -a triangle of which the wall formed the south-western, a lane -(afterwards called “Rue des Cordeliers”) the northern, and an -irregular line bounding one of the University estates the south-eastern -side.</p> - -<p>This was in 1230. St. Louis was still a boy of fifteen. The -little foundation was, for the University, nothing but an unwelcome -neighbour whom it could not oust, and for the Abbey of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span> -St. Germains nothing but a guest. Their provisional tenure did -not permit them a peal of bells nor a public cemetery.</p> - -<p>St. Louis, however, grew into a manhood which, for all its -piety, had a wonderful grasp of the society around it. The saint -who was never clerical, and the Capetian who in all things was -rather for the spirit than the letter, became their principal support. -The Papacy, having once (though reluctantly) recognised -the Franciscan movement in the interview between Innocent III. -and its founder, continued in the succeeding generation to protect -it. From a distance, where the quarrels of the University affected -it little, the Holy See decided more than one dispute in favour of -the new-comers, and the Franciscans of Paris flourished exceedingly. -By 1240 the full privileges of an independent foundation -were granted. They have their public service, their cemetery, -and their bells. St. Louis helps them to build a new chapel by -giving them, in 1267, part of the great fine which he levied on -Enguerrand de Coucy. They succeed at last in obtaining the -recognition of the University; they are permitted to teach; they -number among their lecturers Duns Scotus and St. Bonaventure; -and they become one of the most famous of the colleges.</p> - -<p>During the Middle Ages (apart from certain minor structures -and a few private houses which had been permitted to rise on -their land, and which were technically known as the “dépendances”), -three principal groups of buildings marked the foundations. -First, the monastery itself, a somewhat irregular mass, -running (as a whole) north and south, and separated from the -Rue des Cordeliers by a little court or garden. Secondly, running -from the northern end of this convent, and forming, as it were, a -letter L with the main building, was the chapel, lying, of course, -east and west, and forming the southern side of the Rue des -Cordeliers, upon which was the principal porch. Thirdly, running -also east and west, but separated from the other buildings by -a short space, was the hall.</p> - -<p>This famous monument, the only part of the college that has -been preserved, stood well back from the street, and in the middle -of the convent grounds. It was on the eastern side of the monastery, -and hence in the ground plan balanced (so to speak) the -church, which lay to the west of that main building; this was so -designed that its western end faced about the middle of the college.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span></p> - -<p>I have called it a hall because its use exactly corresponded to -that of our college halls in the English universities. I mean, it -was at once a refectory and lecture-room. It was approached by -a little lane running up through the grounds under the side of the -convent, later hemmed in with houses.</p> - -<p>Here not only were the voices of the great scholars heard and -the subtleties of the fourteenth century, but also Etienne Marcel -called the States General of 1357. From hence that Danton of -the mediæval invasion sent out his messengers to the Feudality. -Here the District gathered for the elections of 1789; here the -Club met in 1791 and urged the debate that finally produced the -Republic of the next year. It was here also that the three watchwords -of the Republic were devised; here Hérbert veiled the -Declaration; and here the last few words of 1794 were spoken. -Here the century, which owes more perhaps to that site than to -any place in France, has collected a museum of surgery, where you -may see anomalies preserved in spirits, skeletons hung on wires, -and other objects, interesting rather than sublime.</p> - -<p>As for the college and its estate, they continued for some three -hundred years—that is, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth -centuries—to increase in importance. It is a matter of -common knowledge how soon the pure ideals of St. Francis had -to compromise with the world. This Order, like all others, became -wealthy, rooted, and traditional. The Cordeliers, as Paris grew, -found themselves possessed of a most valuable plot, whose ground-value -continually increased. They reserved the garden to the -west, but for the rest—and especially around the buildings and -along the lanes—houses were built. When the wall of Philip -Augustus was first embedded by the growth of the city, and -afterwards in part destroyed, the Cordeliers bought an extension -to their estate, so that it stretched a little beyond the new street -of “the Fossés,” which had been built on the site of the ditch. -In 1580 their old thirteenth-century chapel (which must have -been one of the best bits of early Gothic in Paris) was burnt -down, and a larger one in the style of the time was put up by the -piety of Henry IV. Throughout the seventeenth century the -house seems to have suffered from a decay which continued -throughout the succeeding hundred years, and culminated in the -disasters of the Revolutionary period. They permitted the alienation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span> -of a strip to the west of their grounds, through which the -municipality drove in 1673 the new street which, in compliment -to the Order, they called “Rue de l’Observance,” after the name -of their rule.</p> - -<p>With this exception no important change occurred to change -the aspect of the quarter until the Revolutionary period with -which we have to deal.</p> - -<p class="tb">We are, after this general description, in a position to recognise -the site of the Cordeliers in modern Paris. As you go down -the Boulevard St. Germains, just before you reach the Boulevard -St. Michel (going east), you see a street leading off at a slight -angle to the right. It is the Rue de l’École de Médecine, the -college after which it is named facing both on this street and on -the Boulevard. This street is merely the Rue des Cordeliers -broadened and modernised. As you go a few yards up this street, -you see on your left the great court of the college, and if you -stand at its gate and look at the opposite side of the street, at -the new buildings which are now the lecture-rooms and theatres -of the Faculty, you are looking at the site of the old church, -which has disappeared during this century. The street has been -broadened by taking down the southern side, so that the church -would actually have overlapped the modern street. Continuing, -you pass on your right the open yard leading up to what was -the hall of the Cordeliers, and is now the museum of surgery -(the Musée Dupuytren), and a few yards farther brings you into -the Boulevard St. Michel. Following this very broad avenue for -twenty yards at the most, you may note a new street, the “Rue -Racine,” turning off to the right. This did not exist in Danton’s -time, but it lies <i>nearly</i> on the line that separated the Cordeliers -from the Collège d’Harcourt (at present the Lycée St. Louis). As -a fact, the line was a trifle to the south of the Rue Racine, and of -course more irregular. The Rue Racine in its turn leads you into -that old street the “Rue de Monsieur le Prince.” If you turn -again to the right and go down this some hundred yards, you are -still following the boundary of the Cordeliers, till you reach the -“Rue Antoine Dubois.” This is identical with the old “Rue -de l’Observance,” spoken of above, and a few steps down this -short street leads you to the starting-point in the “Rue de l’École<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span> -de Médecine.” Such a modern itinerary would describe as nearly -as is now possible the circumference of the college and estate of -the Cordeliers. The quadrilateral comprised by these four streets, -the Rue de l’École de Médecine, the Rue Racine, the Rue M. de -le Prince, and the Rue Antoine Dubois, is the site of the famous -convent and its grounds.</p> - -<p>To reproduce the quarter in 1788 we have to imagine the -following changes:—The Rue de l’École de Médecine, very narrow, -flanked for the greater part of its southern side with the -church and old wall of the convent. It leads into a little narrow -street called the “Rue de la Harpe,” which went right up the -hill, and would correspond to a strip taken in the exact centre of -the present Boulevard St. Michel. The first few buildings here, -notably the Church of St. Come, were still on the Cordeliers’ -estate. Just above them, however, began the grounds and buildings -of the “College d’Harcourt.” As we have observed, the Rue -Racine did not exist, nor anything corresponding to it. To follow -the boundaries of the estate you would have had to let yourself in -by a side-door, and then you might have followed a long, irregular -wall which separated their land from the College d’Harcourt. -This wall, after passing through a great garden, came out on the -Rue Monsieur le Prince, and the rest of one’s circuit would be -much what it is to-day.</p> - -<p>Finally, to see the building as Danton saw it, you must -imagine a half-deserted place, rich, but somewhat unfrequented, -like certain old legal Inns that once stood in London, old walls -appearing here and there from between houses of a century’s date; -a mass of irregular buildings, of garden and of private house -hopelessly intermingled; while up a narrow and dark passage -stood the Hall, which was still the best preserved part of the -college, and with which alone his name is associated.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">NOTE ON CERTAIN SITES MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>It may be of interest to those who desire to study with some particularity -the personal history of Danton to know where are to be -found in modern Paris the places with which we have found him -personally connected in this book.</p> - -<p>His first offices were in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles. This -street has disappeared in the improvements which included the -prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli. This office in the Rue des -Mauvaises Paroles occupied almost exactly the same spot, which -can be recognised to-day in the following manner. As you go -along the northern side of the Rue de Rivoli going east, you come -to a point 500 yards or so from the Louvre, from whence you begin -to see the Tour St. Jacques just peering round the southern -side of the street. The shops which are then upon your left hand -and the pavement upon which you stand correspond to the position -of the old mansard house in which Danton served his apprenticeship. -It was here that he had his first offices; it was from this -that he bought the business of Monsieur M. de Paisy in the Rue -de la Tissanderie.</p> - -<p>Concerning the position of these offices in the Rue de la Tissanderie, -which he moved into, I have been able to learn nothing. -There is a curious little record in the police archives of Paris—Danton -complaining that he could not work on account of the -noise that a saddle-maker made in the exercise of his trade in the -same house. In this little document, which is quoted by Monsieur -Clarétie in his “Life of Camille Desmoulins,” the house is mentioned -as being “just opposite the Rue des Deux Portes”; but as -an inference to be drawn from the same record is that he left -immediately after for some other lodging in the same street, this -does not help us much.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span></p> - -<p>I have said in the text that Danton lived, during the six years -which were those of his active political life, in a house of the -Passage du Commerce. I have also mentioned in the text the -fact that Dr. Robinet mentions a short residence in the Rue -des Fossés Saint Germains. I have given, moreover, in the -same passage my reasons for following M. Aulard in rejecting -this first address. It seems proved that, after he left the Rue de -la Tissanderie, he moved with his wife to the corner house of the -Passage du Commerce. This was his home during the whole of -the Revolution, and it is worth while to describe its position and -character with some care.</p> - -<p>In the first place, it has disappeared; the construction of the -Boulevard St. Germains destroyed all that end of the Cour du -Commerce. If you are going along the Boulevard St. Germains -from the west towards the University, you pass on the right the -statue of Danton. It is erected on an open triangle of ground, -formed by the junction of the Boulevard and of the Rue de l’École -de Médecine. The apex of this triangle, not twenty yards from -the statue, marks the site of the old house in which Danton and -Desmoulins lived, and in which they were arrested before their -trial.</p> - -<p>The old quarter was a network of narrow streets, and where -the Boulevard St. Germain now stands, an intricate block of -houses, with courtyards and passages, not unlike the similar -intricate masses which you will find in the City of London, -formed the northern side of the Rue des Cordeliers (that is to -say, the modern Rue de l’École de Médecine). A narrow alley, -known as the Cour de Commerce, joined this Rue des Cordeliers -by a still narrower passage. Danton’s house was the corner house, -as is proved by the mention in the inventory that some rooms -looked upon this passage and some upon the Rue des Cordeliers.</p> - -<p>Of course he did not occupy the whole of it, but, in the Parisian -custom, which had already obtained for more than a century, he -took a flat, and two rooms (used as a lumber and as a servant’s -bedroom) were added from the entresole below. This flat was -just such an apartment as a similar bourgeois householder would -have in Paris to-day: a dining-room, two bedrooms, a study, a -little library, a drawing-room, a kitchen, and offices, built round -the staircase and courtyard or well of the house.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span></p> - -<p>I have been unable to find any mention of the rental which -was paid, but a guess at something like £150 a year in that -quarter at that time for such a flat would, I think, not be -extravagant. The corresponding flat above, Desmoulins took -after his romantic marriage in December 1790, but he did not -begin to occupy the house until the early part of 1791. It was -here that his little Horace was born; it was here that his wife -and Danton’s passed the terrible night of the 10th of August, and -it was here, in the great bedroom overlooking the Rue des Cordeliers, -that Danton’s wife died in February 1793.</p> - -<p>As to the furniture of the little apartment, it may be described -as follows:—The drawing-room was not very large, but there had -been spent upon it the most considerable sum in the furnishing -of the house. It figures for very nearly a third in the valuation, -which may be read in <a href="#APPENDIX_VII">Appendix VII.</a> The white furniture, which -was the mark of the eighteenth century, was its principal note; it -is also worth observing that the household was sufficiently cramped -for room to use the cupboards in the drawing-room as wardrobes. -The principal bedroom was well furnished, but, as you will find -to be the case in such houses in Paris, the study, the dining-room, -and the spare room to the side of the study were very bare. It -is also remarkable that the lumber-room held nothing but two -trunks and an old double bedstead. It was the household of a -man who made every effort to maintain his position before his -wife’s friends, but who was not wealthy, and who had evidently -arranged the scale of his expenditure considerably below the -probable receipts which an office such as his would have brought -in. I should much doubt whether as much as £500 a year would -go out on such an establishment, though he was certainly receiving -£1000. We know the reason of this; he had to pay off by every -means in his power the debt which he had incurred in buying the -practice. While he lived in this house, and until the office was -suppressed in 1790, he continued to keep his business rooms in -the Rue de la Tissanderie. It may be worthy of mention that -he kept two servants, and that his apartment was on the first, -whilst that of Desmoulins was on the second floor of the house.</p> - -<p>As to the Cordeliers, on which the preceding note is written, -the hall in which their meetings were first held still exists (as -we have said in the text) under the title of Musée Dupuytren.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span> -The Church of the Cordeliers, into which they afterwards moved, has -disappeared, but the last locale of the club (when the Municipality -had turned them out of the church in 1791) still remains, and is -to be discovered at No. 105 Rue Thionville. Danton’s father-in-law -had been master of a café on the Quai de l’École. This house -still remains. If I am not mistaken, it was altered slightly during -the restorations of the Second Empire. It is the house which now -stands at the south-western corner of the Place de l’École, and -which faces the quai on one side and the square on the other. -The street and quay outside M. Charpentier’s café was, however, -somewhat oblique to the modern street, and ran less east than -west, more south-east than north-west, than it does to-day.</p> - -<p>The quay has been raised and the old fountain in the Place -de l’École destroyed. Otherwise the quarter is much the same. -The café became famous later for its draught players, a reputation -that still continues.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">NOTE ON THE SUPPOSED VENALITY OF DANTON</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>I will not go in this note into any of the general considerations -which have led the greater part of modern historians to reject the -legend of Danton’s venality. These general considerations are by -far the strongest arguments upon which we can rely in this matter, -but I trust that the character which I have attempted to draw in -the text of the book will furnish them in sufficiency.</p> - -<p>Neither do I desire to insist in this note upon the unquestionable -value of the two principal modern authorities in England and -in France (Mr. Morse Stephens and M. Aulard), who both of -them regard the question as finally settled in Danton’s favour. I -have insisted sufficiently upon this in the text. What I shall -attempt to do is to quote the contemporary accusations, to determine -how much reliance can be placed upon them, to show their -character, and to describe in what way and to what extent they -are explained by documents which have since come to light.</p> - -<p class="tb">First of all, a list of those contemporaries who took his venality -for certain. It is very formidable.</p> - -<p>Mirabeau (letter to Lamarck, Thursday, 10th March 1791).—... -“Montmorin has told me ... of particular schemes ... -for instance, that Beaumetz and ... D’Andrée dined yesterday -alone and got Danton’s confidence ... and then proposed to -demolish Vincennes in order to make themselves popular. Danton -got 30,000 livres yesterday, and I have the proof that Danton -inspired the last number of Desmoulins’ paper.... If it is -possible I intend to risk 6000 livres, but at any rate they will -be more innocently distributed than the 30,000 livres of Danton.” -Here is a categorical statement in which a man says what the -court had often said (and Mirabeau was then an agent of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span> -court), “I have managed Danton at such and such a price,” and -the passage gives us indirectly the name of Montmorin. The date -should be noted.</p> - -<p>Bertrand de Molleville, a far less practical and a far less -careful man than Mirabeau, also a singularly untrustworthy -authority, has the following:—Memoirs Particuliers, i. 354.—“By -the hands of this man Durand, under the ministry of De Montmorin, -Danton received more than 50,000 francs to propose certain -motions of the Jacobins. He was fairly faithful in keeping this -contract, but stipulated that he should be left free as to the means -he employed.” ... Again ... “In the first debates upon the -king’s trial the infamous Danton, whose services had been so dearly -paid <i>out of the Civil List</i>, was one of those who displayed the -greatest violence. I was the more alarmed as this scoundrel was -at the moment (Autumn 1792) a most powerful and dangerous man -in the Assembly. The ardent zeal which I felt for the safety of the -king, and which would have made me think all means legitimate, -suggested this means against Danton to neutralise the rage of the -monster; and though the method I took required a lie, I did not -hesitate to employ it without the least scruple. I wrote to him -on the 11th December:—‘I must not leave you ignorant, Sir, of -the fact that I have found in the papers of the late Monsieur -Montmorin notes of the dates of the sums which have been paid -out of the secret service money, including a receipt in your handwriting. -Hitherto I have made no use of this document, but I -warn you that I have enclosed them in a letter which I am writing -to the President of the Convention, and I will have them printed -and placarded on the corners of the streets if you do not conduct -yourself well in the trial of the king.’ As a fact, Montmorin had -shown me these papers a year before, though he had not given -them to me. But Danton knew they existed, and knew how -intimate had been my relations with Montmorin. He did not -reply to the letter, but I saw in the published prints that he had -got himself named deputy in a mission to the army of the North. -He only returned at the end of the king’s trial, and contented -himself with voting for death without giving any opinion.” -(Particular Memoirs, ii. 288-291.) I would have the reader to -specially mark this extract, to which I shall return at the end of -my note, as it can be easily proved by internal evidence to be a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span> -falsehood. It is, indeed, of more value to any one who desires to -write a life of Bertrand himself, than it is to one who is writing -the life of Danton.</p> - -<p>Thirdly, Lafayette says (Memoirs, iii. 83-85): “Danton, whose -receipt for 100,000 francs was in the hands of Montmorin, -asked for Lafayette’s head; that was running a great risk, but he -depended on the discretion of Lafayette and on his keeping a -secret. For Lafayette to have spoken would have been to have -signed the death-warrant of Montmorin, who had paid Danton in -order to moderate his anarchic fury.” And again (iv. 328-330), -he says of Danton: “He was a vulgar tribune and incapable of -turning the masses from evil by persuasion or by respect, but he -knew how to flatter their passions, &c. &c.... I knew him -from the first week of the Revolution in the district of Cordeliers, -whither I had been attracted. After the 6th October he took -money from Montmorin, whom he caused in consequence to be -assassinated on the 2nd September. In connection with this -secret he said to me once, ‘General, I know you do not know me, -I am more of a Monarchist than you.’... I have learnt since -from the person to whom Madame Elizabeth told it that he had -received, about the 10th August, a considerable sum to give the -movement a direction in the king’s favour, and, indeed, he got the -royal family sent to the Temple. He said to a friend of the king, -‘It is I who will save him or kill him.’”</p> - -<p>Fourthly, there is Brissot (iv. 193-194). “Among the stipendiaries -of Orleans was ... Danton. I have seen the receipt for -500,000 francs which were paid him by Montmorin. He was -sold to the court in order to thrust the Revolution into the -excesses which would make it odious to the great bulk of Frenchmen.”</p> - -<p>Fifthly, Madame Roland (who has so much to say against a -character so profoundly antipathetic to her) has this special -passage on his corruption (Dauban’s edition, 1864, pp. 254-255): -“He went to Belgium to augment his wealth, and dared to -admit a fortune of 1,400,000 francs, to assume luxury,” &c. &c.</p> - -<p>Sixthly (if it is worth quoting), among the papers that -Robespierre left, in the notes that formed the basis of St. Just’s -report, are the words—“Danton owed an obligation to Mirabeau; -it was Mirabeau who got him repaid the price of his practice. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span> -has even been said that he was paid twice. I heard him admit -to Fabre certain thefts of shoes belonging to the army.”</p> - -<p>Such are the contemporary accusations. There are the following -points to be noted with regard to them. No one says that he -himself paid money; the sums of money are very various. They -are paid, according to some, on a few definite occasions; according -to others, upon all occasions. Finally, every accusation that has -any definite basis at all pivots round the name of Montmorin. -“Montmorin held the receipt,” “Montmorin told me,” and so -forth. Now, if we remember that Montmorin held the receipt for -a legitimate and open reimbursement (see <a href="#APPENDIX_VI">Appendix VI.</a>), and then -compare the accusations with what we know of the men and of -the time, if we then proceed to check these merely general conclusions -by matters of absolute knowledge drawn from the valuations -upon Danton’s estate at various moments of his life, we shall agree -with the more modern authorities who have worked with the -documents before them, that Danton is innocent of actions to -the charge of which his uncertain temper and his lack of solid -social surroundings laid him open.</p> - -<p>In the first place, let us consider the words of the accusations -which appear above, and which include all those of any importance.</p> - -<p>That of Mirabeau is what you would expect from such a man; -it is quiet, contemptuous, treating of Danton as something on the -very last level of the time. But if we take the specific accusation -and separate it from all general points of view, we find this much: -that Montmorin has been talking to him with regard to what -“those fellows” were doing. “In connection with this,” says -Mirabeau, “Danton got 30,000 yesterday” to work such and such -a political move. The grave feature in the quotation is the way -in which Mirabeau, who understood men and who had a good -grasp of Paris, treats Danton’s venality as being something well -known, gives a particular example of it, and passes at once to -other things. But the specific accusation is hearsay from Montmorin, -and, as I have said, it is always Montmorin’s name which -crops up when this gossip is on foot.</p> - -<p>I would, therefore, sum up the value of Mirabeau’s accusation -somewhat as follows:—If we could prove that Danton was a -spendthrift, and that large sums of money passed through his -hands for his personal pleasures, then Mirabeau’s chance remark,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span> -while it would be worthless in a court of law, ought to have some -small weight before history. Mirabeau was (on a higher plane) a -<i>bon viveur</i> such as Danton was reputed to be, and the circles in -which the men moved touched each other especially in the point -of their good living; but if we can find that Danton did not, as a -fact, spend nor invest great sums of money, then the accusation -is simply a common error based upon a remark of Montmorin’s, -suited to the current impression of Danton’s character, but disproved -by the known facts of Danton’s life.</p> - -<p>Bertrand de Molleville’s accusation is of particular value to -any one who is concerned, as I am, in attempting to get to the truth -in this matter. It is the only one which is perfectly categorical -and detailed. In proportion as it is categorical and detailed it is -untrue. If you wish to know whether a man has committed a -certain crime, and you hear a number of witnesses against him, one -of whom only gives careful evidence with dates, details, and so -forth, and if you can then prove that this witness has lied upon -all the points which supported his principal accusation, you are -in a fair way to winning your case.</p> - -<p>De Molleville begins by making the sum 500,000 francs. It -seems enormous. It is a sum which no man could receive and -spend in a few days’ debauch without attracting the attention of -the whole city, which no man could invest without leaving some -obvious accession of property, and he puts the receipt of this sum -as coming under Montmorin’s ministry—that is, at a time when -public order was secured, when the course of the registries, the -transmission of property and so forth, were in the fullest light.</p> - -<p>He gives the name of the man who handed him the sum, and -calls him Durand. On this point it is impossible to say yes or no, -but we can say with absolute certitude that the incident of the -letter upon which Bertrand de Molleville makes the whole matter -turn, is an untruth added to an untruth. In the first place, he -makes Danton “violent in his demands against the king.” This -accusation is absolutely false.</p> - -<p>When the trial of the king was mooted, Danton did speak -(notably on the 6th of September), with some decision in favour -of the king’s being brought to trial upon particular points. He -expressed himself in that speech with very great energy upon -this particular feature of the trial, that the king merited condemnation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span> -because he had obviously and openly betrayed the -nation,—a thing which nobody doubted, which nobody denied, -and which Louis himself and his advisers would simply have -met by saying (at a later epoch of course), “We called in the -foreigner as a necessary police in the time of anarchy; we -desired to save France by its betrayal.” So far, however, from -Danton being a leader of the attack on Louis or of the demand -for his trial, that attack and that demand were as spontaneous as -anything the Convention ever did; and Danton followed rather -than led, as a glance at the <i>Moniteur</i> can prove.</p> - -<p>In the much more important debates wherein the life of Louis -was first implicitly and then explicitly at stake, Danton was -absent, and in the days of November there is no question at all -but that Danton’s one preoccupation was to reconcile the Mountain -with the Girondins.</p> - -<p>De Molleville goes on to give his letter a date—such things -are done on purpose, as a rule, in order to give a special character -of legal evidence to one’s accusations. He says that he wrote the -letter on the 11th of December, that Danton on receiving the -letter was frightened, and without replying to it got himself put -upon the mission to the army of the North.</p> - -<p>Now Danton left for the army of the North on the 1st of -December, and if the letter was written at all (which I doubt), -it was written at a time when Danton, being absent, could not -possibly have acted as De Molleville said he did. He could not -have “asked” to go on a mission (he did not ask, but was sent), -and have started on the 1st in consequence of a letter written on -the 11th.</p> - -<p>Finally, De Molleville says he came back to vote on the -punishment of the king, but had been coerced by the letter into -merely voting for death without giving his opinion. This again -is a lie. If there is anything remarkable to the historian in the -vote Danton gave on the 16th January 1793, and in the speech -which he made before his vote, it is that he, by nature so wary, -should have discovered in this crisis a violent manifestation of -opinion and motive. I have amply shown in the text that we -could only reconcile those abnormal days in Danton’s life by some -extreme shock to the emotions. Some represent him as suffering -a violent rebuff from his political opponents; some consider the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span> -scene of misery and impending death which he found in his home -on returning from his long journey. He demanded a simple -majority vote; he spoke violently against the appeal to the people; -and when he voted for the death of the king he turned to the -Right and said, “I am not a statesman; I am not one of those -who are ignorant of the duty of not compromising with tyrants, -and who do not know that kings can only be struck on the head, -who do not know that we can expect nothing from the kings of -Europe save by force and by arms. I vote for the death of the -tyrant.”</p> - -<p>If these are the words, and if that is the action of a man -terrorised by a letter into a silent and furtive vote, then evidence -has no meaning.</p> - -<p>De Molleville, I think, can in this, as in nearly all his historical -evidence (with the exception of that which turns upon the -personal habits of the king, where he has the details of a valet), -be dismissed.</p> - -<p>With Lafayette, again, we have that half-truth and half-lie -which runs through all his accusations. “The receipt for 100,000 -francs was in the hands of Montmorin.” This was true. The -sum was not quite 100,000, it was 61,000 (Appendix VI.); but -the receipt did exist, and to any one who did not know that all -the men occupying positions on the Council had been reimbursed, -it might look like a receipt for a bribe, or might be twisted into -meaning such. It is impossible for us to discover whether Lafayette -meant to tell an untruth, as we can prove De Molleville -did; he may in this matter have been perfectly loyal, for there -was a note found among his papers after his death (Memoirs, iii. -84-85), saying that “a position on the Councils was only worth -10,000, and had been reimbursed at 100,000 as a bribe.” We -now know from the discovery of so many receipts that from -60,000 to 80,000 was the regular price of reimbursements, but -Lafayette might easily have been ignorant of this, and have -jumped to a false conclusion.</p> - -<p>As to his mention of Madame Elizabeth’s having told the man -who told him that Danton had been paid before the 10th August, -the old man’s memory is certainly turning to the remark which -many witnesses heard from the lips of that saintly woman just -before the attack on the Tuilleries, when she said with simplicity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span> -(she knew nothing at all of the characters of the Revolution save -what she might hear from the courtiers), “Well, we can count on -Danton; he has been paid.” That is not evidence. If Danton -was paid to make the 10th of August turn in favour of the -monarchy, and if, as Lafayette hints, he had attempted to make it -so turn, he certainly took the most extraordinary way of defending -his employers. One might as well say that Lord Chatham’s -principal object in the taking of Quebec was the defence of the -French power in Canada. For the 10th of August was openly -and directly an attack upon the ancient crown of France, to overthrow -it and to substitute in its place a new regime, and Danton -worked at it as indefatigably as a general before a battle would -work.</p> - -<p>The remark, “General, I am more monarchist than you,” reads -to me like truth; it is exactly what Danton would have said. -He despised Lafayette as much as any one man can despise -another. He believed right up to the moment of the war that -the existing fact of the monarchy was worth all the theories in -the world as a nucleus for the new regime, and he saw the -emptiness of Lafayette’s vanity. He may quite probably have -met it upon some occasion as direct as that which Lafayette has -given us, and Lafayette, in the abundance of his folly, may quite -easily have misunderstood the meaning of his criticism.</p> - -<p>Brissot is an admirable example of how the false rumours -arose. He says: “I have myself seen the receipts which Montmorin -held from Danton.”</p> - -<p>Now, as we have seen, that receipt (to any one who did not -know the details of the transaction) might quite honestly appear -a damning piece of evidence, and it is without question the -document round which the great mass of accusations have been -built.</p> - -<p>As to Madame Roland, I cannot imagine what flight of feminine -inaccuracy made her put down a fortune of £60,000 to her enemy’s -name. If a witness in any other circumstances than revolution -should tell one that a young lawyer and politician had secretly and -suddenly become possessed of this sum, he would be reputed mad. -In such a time, however, anything seems possible to an enemy, -and we must rely upon the simple fact that Danton can be definitely -proved neither to have spent, invested, nor left a tenth of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span> -such a sum. It seems to me that this accusation of Madame -Roland’s is on a par with that other extreme remark that she had -known “the Dantons living on 16s. a week, which they borrowed -regularly from their father-in-law,” and this “at the opening of the -Revolution,” a time when we know him positively to have been -defending cases involving half a million pounds in the issue of the -trial, and when we know him to have had for clients some of the -richest men in France.</p> - -<p>Now, the papers that prove Danton’s financial position are -quite simple. He was cut off suddenly; they were all seized, and -they all remain. Unless he spent huge sums in debauch (sums -like those of Orleans), or unless he buried the money, he cannot -have received much more than what openly appears. He entered -his married life with a debt of £2500 secured on his office. He -enjoyed a good practice for four years; he was reimbursed to somewhat -less than the value of his office, and on his death the sum -sequestrated by the State, and later refunded to his sons, tallies with -this small fortune.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_IV">IV<br /> -<span class="smaller">NOTE ON DANTON’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The arguments for and against Danton’s responsibility in this -matter must necessarily be of a more general order than those -which can be advanced for and against his character in regard to -money matters. There are but one or two really definite facts -upon either side, and, as the purport of these notes is to deal -with actualities, I will treat of these known facts only.</p> - -<p>In the first place, it must be clearly understood that Danton -did not shrink from, and was not unsympathetic with, the extreme -measures of the Revolution. His position with regard to them is -perfectly clear in history, and is simply this—his violence was -persuaded that an exceptional time required, almost as a method -of government, the most exceptional terrors.</p> - -<p>But, on the other hand, Danton was a man to whom not only -a useless massacre but a useless anything was detestable. Death -in itself, the infliction of death on others, even the death to -which he himself was led, never seemed to him a matter of vast -moment. It is a common fault in courageous men to have this -disregard for the life of others and of oneself, but I deny that -you will ever discover Danton causing the death of a single -human being unless it is in the furtherance of his policy.</p> - -<p>In the second place, consider what is actually known to have -proceeded from his mouth. (1) Quite early in the Revolution (in -June 1791) he demanded the head of Lafayette, and he probably -meant it; (2) he boasted of, or confessed to, being the -author of Mandat’s death; (3) in the course of speeches which -led up to the establishment of the Revolutionary tribunal he -speaks in favour of the extreme penalties and of the terror that -they would inspire, always as a means to an end, and as a means -to be employed without hesitation. Let me quote but one sentence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span> -from the speech of the 10th March 1793 to illustrate what -I mean:—“I feel to what a degree it is necessary to take judicial -measures by which we may punish the counter-revolutionaries. -This tribunal should be erected in order to replace for them the -supreme tribunal of popular vengeance. It is very difficult to -define a political crime, but if a man of the common people for -his sort of misdeed gets punished at once, is it not necessary that -extreme laws, something out of the common running of our social -machinery, should be passed to terrify rebels and to strike the -guilty? In this matter the safety of the people demands from -you extreme methods and the measures of terror.”</p> - -<p>Finally, we know that Danton was, on the whole, the guide of -that earlier part of the Terror between May and August 1793, in -which (as he thought) the system was doing necessary work -without which the nation could not have been saved.</p> - -<p>Now, let us set against these what we definitely know of -Danton’s character which would lead us to a conclusion that he -would not have countenanced massacre.</p> - -<p>No one questions the fact that the leading motive in Danton’s -mind was the establishment of a strong government around or -in the place of a weak monarchy. He was a true descendant of -the lawyers of the Code. The massacres of September took place -at a moment when he was using the whole of his personal energy -in trying as well as may be to supply that Government. He -guides the ministry in Paris; he dominates Roland as a man -might dominate a woman. It was of supreme importance to such -a scheme that the thin ice between government and anarchy in -the days that preceded Valmy should not be broken. The massacre -of September broke it; there was a week of anarchy in -Paris. There is the first great argument against Danton’s complicity -with the massacres.</p> - -<p>It must, however, be remembered that a theory exists, by no -means untenable, which would make Danton argue something in -this fashion: “Once let the popular fury have full rein against -what it regards as the internal enemy, and I shall have the disappearance -of that disturbing factor of royalist reaction in Paris, -while on the part of the mob I shall have the lassitude and shame -that follow excess; they are not difficult to govern.” It is only a -personal opinion, but it seems to me that in a mind of Danton’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span> -type, downright and practical to excess, such a far-reaching and -subtle idea as the last would hardly occur, and that the massacres -must have produced on him an especial annoyance, because they -were the breakdown of a system the support of which occupied -his every effort.</p> - -<p>Secondly, Danton’s allusions to the massacres of September -were always of a more definite and more reasonable nature than -those of his colleagues. The attitude which he adopts with -regard to them after their occurrence is this: “There was no -public force, none of that disciplined government which I postulate -as the first necessity of the Revolution; nothing on earth -could prevent them, and they occurred in spite of every governing -power.” So much for generalities.</p> - -<p>Now let us turn to one or two points which have been made -the basis of a definite accusation against Danton in this matter.</p> - -<p>Firstly: that he knew that the massacres were coming, and -withdrew from prison more than one of his friends on the eve of -the uprising. This I take to be true, or rather I am certain of it; -but one would have to be very ignorant of the time not to know -that all Paris expected the massacres, and that those who were at -all in touch with the Commune knew two or three days before -that anything illegal might be done. To have worked to prevent -them, in which Danton might have employed his energy, would, -as I have said in the text, have been to risk that which he -most desired, and to risk it for the sake of saving the prisoners. -Certainly he did not desire to save them as passionately as he -desired to remain at the helm and build up a government; he -preferred to keep his influence over the city. That accusation -is just.</p> - -<p>Secondly, it is affirmed with justice that Danton, from the -peculiar position of the ministry which he occupied, filled the -prisons, which were afterwards gutted. It is true that on Danton, -as Minister of Justice, and above all as a general power in the -Cabinet, the responsibility of arresting the prisoners rests; but -was this action taken with a knowledge of what the consequences -would be nearly a month later? Certainly not. It would show -a complete ignorance of what happened in the last fortnight of -August to say that an action taken just after the 10th was taken -with a view to something that would occur on the 2nd of September.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_343"></a>[343]</span> -The state of public feeling in those four weeks went -through a most violent crisis, and one might say that the intensity -of the feeling against the Royalists and the foreigners was not -only a hundred-fold greater when Verdun was actually falling -than it had been just after the success against the Tuilleries, but -different in quality as well.</p> - -<p>Thirdly, there is one detailed accusation—the circular which -Marat sent out to the Departments. If it can be proved that this -circular was approved of, that its distribution was aided by Danton, -then we shall have a definite piece of evidence which cannot be -overridden. Now let me describe what that circular was, and -see how far we must blame circumstances, how far the carelessness, -and how far the deliberate act of the minister. All the accounts -are much the same. Madame Roland says, “Sent out above the -signature of the Minister of Justice.” Bertrand de Molleville is -also perfectly definite (Memoirs, ix. 310)—“Sent by the minister -Danton.”</p> - -<p>The examination of the documents seventy years later has -given more accurate results to history than the memoirs of contemporaries, -whether they are truthful and enthusiastic like -Madame Roland, or frankly dishonest like Bertrand de Molleville. -Bougeart was at the pains of looking up the original -documents at the archives of the police. What appears in this -document (Bougeart, pp. 121-122) is a series of signatures, -Panis, Sergent, Marat, &c., that is, the Committee of Surveillance -appointed by the Commune. There is no trace of any ministerial -signature, and even the stamp which was used in the office by the -clerks for everything that passed officially through the Ministry -of Justice is not attached to the sheet. What did happen was -this. The circulars were sent out in envelopes which bore the -official mark of the Ministry. It is as though some act of a body -in London, let us say, should be distributed to the provinces -in the blue envelopes of Her Majesty’s Service. That is all, -either for or against Danton, that remains of the incident of the -circular.</p> - -<p>Now it is certain that Danton had not at that time openly -broken with Marat. Moreover, Danton had not actually quarrelled -with the Commune, though he certainly treated it with -contempt. But Danton had no conceivable object in helping<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_344"></a>[344]</span> -Marat to distribute the circulars unless he himself was openly on -Marat’s side. A man of his character would either have signed, -or else, had he known that the circulars were going out, he would -have forbidden their distribution; he would have taken some -definite line. Why? Because the distribution of the circular -was bound to condemn him to a very definite position—here is a -man who has stood aloof from a very violent conspiracy, a conspiracy -whose authors came out at last in the open day and -gloried in what they had done. They wrote the most violent -of all their manifestoes, containing such phrases as “the -ferocious prisoners have been put to death by the people;” “it -was an act of justice indispensable to our Committee,” and so -forth. It would be quite impossible to send out unwittingly such -a circular as that without knowing that one was compromising -oneself and definitely entering the most extreme party of the -Parisians. It is inconceivable, therefore, that he would have lent -official envelopes for the purpose, and have said, “So far I will -help you, but I will not help you more than that.” You might -as well suppose an English official in India, of the stronger kind, -saying, “I will allow you, an unofficial personage, to send out the -order for an illegal execution from this office, but I will not put -my name to it.”</p> - -<p>Again, how comes it that this document alone, of all those -sent from the Minister of Justice at the time, goes out in the -official envelope, but bears in itself no mark whatsoever of the -Ministry of Justice? How was it that the officials in the country -towns, among the mass of papers that they received from the -Ministry in Paris, should receive this single one without any -stamp or signature, and should then discover that it had proceeded -from a body which had nothing on earth to do with the -Ministry of Justice? There are but two replies possible to this -question—either that the envelopes were taken from the Ministry -by one of the clerks (several of whom we know to have been -intimately linked with the Commune), or that Danton timidly -lent envelopes but refused to do anything further. Of these two -replies, the second appears to me absolutely at variance not only -with Danton’s own character but also with the general routine of -a great office. I cannot conceive the Cabinet Minister offering, in -the very gravest conditions, a few blue envelopes, when a whole<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_345"></a>[345]</span> -political party desire from him a definite pronouncement on one -side or the other.</p> - -<p>Finally, it may be asked, could these envelopes go out without -his knowledge? To that I answer that such a thing might be -done from any government office to-day. It was, moreover, a -time of revolution; the whole complicated organism had been -shaken and partly transformed; there was confusion in every -department of the building, and even under these conditions -Danton was doing far more work than depended upon his office. -I think, therefore, that it is eminently possible that the circulars -should have been sent out by one of the clerks without his knowledge; -and the fact that no signature was used, and that the -documents did not even pass through one of the many hands -whose duty it was to affix the formal stamp, still further corroborates -the view that the circulation of the appeal was surreptitious.</p> - -<p>As to the accusations such as that of Lafayette (Memoirs, -iv. 139, 140), “He commanded the massacre of September and -paid the murderers, who went all covered with blood to get their -money from Roland,” I attach no importance to them at all. -Even the phrase in which Danton is supposed to have saluted the -return of the murderers from Versailles is very doubtful. It does -not occur in any contemporary account; it is not in the <i>Moniteur</i>; -it is not in the “Révolutions de Paris;” Madame Roland -does not quote it, even on hearsay; it is not one of Peltier’s -inventions, and I have some difficulty in tracing it to its origin.</p> - -<p>I think, then, that the general position of Danton during the -days of September may be summed up as follows. He did not -regard the lives of the prisoners as being of the first importance; -he did not use what would have been to his certain knowledge a -useless energy in protesting; he did not (as he might conceivably -have done) form a special and vigorous tribunal to replace that -which was on the point of acquitting L. de Montmorin. By all -those, therefore, who would regard public order and a security for -life as being more important than the success of a political idea, -or the integrity and defence of a nation, he can be accused of a -criminal negligence in the matter of the massacres of September. -He certainly cannot be accused of having designed them; he -cannot be accused on any definite proof of having approved them,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_346"></a>[346]</span> -and he cannot be accused of having failed to share in the regret -and misery which that terrible blunder caused. If we may judge -the attitude of his mind by comparing it with that of contemporaries, -rather than by comparing it with our own attitude in a -time of security and order, we may say that the massacres taught -him a more definite lesson than they taught to Roland, for they -caused him to pursue a policy of conciliation and to strengthen -the government; that, on the other hand, he did less to stop -them than Manuel did; and that in a comparison with men whom -we know to have been honest, such as Roland himself, or by a -contrast with men whom we know to have been evil, such as -Hébert, or whom we know to have been frenzied, such as Marat—judged -in the midst of all this, Danton will appear responsible to -history for having been guilty of indifference at a moment when -he might have saved his reputation by protesting, though perhaps -his protest would not have saved a single life.</p> - -<p class="tb">The object of the remainder of this Appendix is to provide -for the reader certain documents that illustrate the -statements and the line of argument in the text. Of -these documents but few have been translated, because -only a few appeal to any one but a special student of the -Revolution, or are necessary to the understanding of this -book.</p> - -<p>By far the most important of the documents here -printed is the last, Barrère’s report of the 29th of May -1793. Hitherto unpublished, it furnishes (to my mind) -the most complete explanation of the somewhat complicated -manœuvres pursued by the Committee, manœuvres -which permitted the revolution of May 31st and June 2nd.</p> - -<p>To each document a short preface has been attached -for the purpose of explaining its origin and of mentioning -the authorities (if any) in which it can be found.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_347"></a>[347]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_V">V<br /> -<span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">SHORT MEMOIR by A. R. C. de St. ALBIN</span></span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>This memoir was published for the first time as an article -in the <i>Critique Française</i> of the 15th of March 1864. -It was so published by the author himself, and, though -appearing seventy years after Danton’s death, is not without -importance. De St. Albin, who is better known by his -first name of Rousselin, had some personal acquaintance -with Danton (though he was but a boy at the time) and he -lived to a great age. He had, moreover, an acquaintance -with the family after the Revolutionary period. These -circumstances make his testimony decisive on all non-controversial -points and valuable on many others.</p> - -<p>The criticisms to be made against his account are -obvious. It is too florid; it errs also in giving an amiable -and somewhat mediocre character to the statesman himself -and to all his relatives and surroundings. We have -in it but a poor expression of the energy that was Danton’s -chief character, and which the writer’s own mind cannot -reflect. It was, moreover, written so very long after the -events which it describes that in more than one place an -error of date or number has been committed; especially -in the incident of Barentin at the close of the memoir, -with which M. Aulard finds so much fault, and in the -amount of his wife’s dowry, which was not 40,000 but only -20,000 livres. On the other hand, it is fresh, full of personal -recollections, written by a trustworthy man, and -gives many interesting details on the earlier and less -known part of Danton’s life.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_348"></a>[348]</span></p> - -<p>“La famille de Danton n’a point à se prévaloir d’une antique -noblesse. Le nom de Danton est commun dans la contrée -d’Arcis-sur-Aube, il est apparu avec un certain bruit, en 1740, -dans les querelles du jansénisme. Parmi les pièces de théâtre -destinées à populariser ces discussions théologiques, il en est une -intitulée <i>La Banqueroute des marchands de miracles</i>, qui est -signée du P. Danton. On a supposé, non sans raison, qui cet -ecclésiastique était un grand-oncle du conventionnel.</p> - -<p>“Georges-Jacques Danton naquit à Arcis-sur-Aube le 26 octobre -1759. Il était fils de Jacques Danton, procureur au bailliage -d’Arcis, qui avait épousé, en 1754, Jeanne-Madeleine Camut. -Le père mourut le 24 février 1762, âgé d’environ quarante ans, -laissant sa femme enceinte et quatre enfants en bas âge, deux -filles et deux garçons, Georges-Jacques Danton resta sous la tutelle -de sa mère, femme douée de toutes les qualités qui commandent -l’estime. C’est par la sensibilité et la douceur du caractère que -la mère de Danton élevait et gouvernait sa jeune famille. Georges, -celui de ses enfants dont l’extérieur indiquait le plus de force et -de volonté, était le plus docile envers elle. Se jeune indépendance -était bien vite soumise quand sa mère parlait à son cœur. La -tendresse obtenait ce que la crainte aurait vainement tenté -d’arracher. Madame veuve Danton eut un heureux auxiliaire -pour le soutien de sa maison dans son père, entrepreneur des -ponts et chaussées de la province de Champagne. Celui-ci donna -les premières leçons à son petit-fils: il voyait avec joie ses mâles -dispositions.</p> - -<p>“Il est intéressant de noter quel fut le milieu dans lequel -Danton passa ainsi ses premières années, et nous avons trouvé, dans -un auteur contemporain, le passage suivant qui nous semble curieux:</p> - -<p>“‘La ville d’Arcis-sur-Aube est composée d’hommes indépendants; -l’air y est vif, les hommes sont robustes; la rivière de -l’Aube, qui traverse le pays, est navigable en tout temps, le -commerce maritime occupe les natifs; quand les marins ne sont -pas occupés à l’eau, ils font des bas; ils sont laborieux, industrieux. -Arcis n’est comparable à aucune partie de la Champagne; les lois -y sont observées comme si elles n’existaient pas, par le seul sentiment -de l’ordre; les seigneurs de l’ancien régime avaient toujours -rencontré des opposants dans des hommes chez qui l’amour de la -liberté est inné.’</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_349"></a>[349]</span></p> - -<p>“L’enfance de Danton n’eut rien de remarquable; il fut élevé, -suivant l’usage du pays, à peu près comme un enfant de la nature.</p> - -<p>“Il avait été nourri par une vache, ce qui est usité en Champagne, -quand les mères ne sont pas assez fortes pour allaiter leurs -enfants. La vache nourrice de Danton fut un jour aperçue par -un taureau échappé, qui se précipita sur elle et donna au pauvre -enfant un coup de corne qui lui arracha la lèvre. C’est à cette -cicatrice que tenait la difformité de sa lèvre supérieure.</p> - -<p>“En grandissant, Danton, comme tous les êtres doués d’une -force extraordinaire, éprouvait le besoin de l’exercer. Il voulut -un jour faire preuve de vigueur, prendre sa revanche et lutter -contre un taureau. Il était difficile qu’il sortit vainqueur de la -lutte. Un coup de corne lui écrasa le nez.</p> - -<p>“Ces accidents auraient dû le rendre prudent, mais il n’y a -guère de prudence là où il y a grande surabondance de vie. Un -jour le robuste enfant croit pouvoir faire marcher devant lui les -porcs de la ferme qui obstruaient l’entrée de la maison. Il les -attaque à coups de fouet; mais son pied glisse, il tombe, et les -porcs devenus furieux, se ruent sur lui et lui font une terrible -blessure, assez semblable à celle dont Boileau fut victime dans -son enfance, au dire d’Helvétius, qui attribuait à cette blessure la -disette de sentiment qu’il prétendait remarquer dans les ouvrages -du poète. Quel que soit le mérite de cette appréciation, elle ne -serait pas applicable à Danton. Sa virilité avait été compromise, -non perdue, et il conserva toute son énergie et toute sa hardiesse. -Rien ne l’arrêtait: chaque jour il donnait de nouvelles preuves -de témérité. A peine fut-il rétabli de ce malheureux accident, -qu’entraîné par sa passion pour la natation, il faillit se noyer et -fut atteint d’une fièvre maligne, à laquelle vint se joindre une -petite vérole très grave, accompagnée du pourpre. Tout semblait -ainsi se réunir pour le défigurer.</p> - -<p>“Pour faire contracter à son enfant quelques habitudes de -discipline, la mère de Danton le remit d’abord à la surveillance -d’une maîtresse d’école; celle-ci n’avait pas le temps ou la volonté -d’user avec lui d’indulgence. Danton trouva quelque différence -dans la comparaison de ce nouveau régime avec les tendresses de -sa mère et de son aïeul: non moins sévère que la demoiselle -Lambercier de J.-J. Rousseau, la maîtresse d’école croyait ne -pouvoir se passer de verges pour diriger les enfants, et Danton<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_350"></a>[350]</span> -lui avait paru avoir les premiers droits à ses corrections. Tous -ses contemporains se souvenaient de l’avoir vu faire trop souvent -l’école buissonnière et employer les heures de classe à barboter -dans l’Aube. Il préférait la liberté de vivre à l’ennui de répéter -les caractères de l’alphabet. Il avait cependant d’heureuses aptitudes -et apprenait rapidement; mais toute habitude réglée était -antipathique à sa nature.</p> - -<p>“A huit ans, il fut débarrassé de la rigoureuse maîtresse, et -<i>transvasé</i>, comme il le dit lui-même, dans une institution supérieure. -Le chef de cette institution croyait savoir assez de latin pour en -enseigner les éléments. Quand les premiers principes de la grammaire -ne sont pas montrés avec une habile méthode aux jeunes -intelligences, elle leur offre peu d’attrait.</p> - -<p>“Danton en avait peu-être un peu moins pour <i>Lhomond</i> que -pour le jeu de cartes. A peine le devoir terminé, en hâte il courait -avec quelques camarades dans un coin pour faire sa partie. Des -billes ou des gâteaux étaient le bénéfice du gagnant. Souvent -vainqueur, il partageait toujours avec le vaincu. Quand il se -trouvait seul, il lisait ou allait se promener ans les bois ou dans -les champs.</p> - -<p>“Pour modifier cette humeur un peu sauvage, les parents de -Danton crurent devoir le mettre dans une maison religieuse.</p> - -<p>“Quoiqu’il ne fût point destiné à l’état ecclésiastique, on le -plaça d’abord au petit séminaire de <i>Troyes</i>; mais la monotonie de -cette maison lui devint bientôt pénible. Pendant tout le temps -qu’il y resta, il observa la règle, mais il ne pouvait souffrir que -sa récréation fût subitement interrompue par un coup de cloche. -<i>Cette cloche</i>, disait-il, <i>si je suis encore forcé de l’entendre longtemps, -finira par sonner mon enterrement</i>.</p> - -<p>“Un reproche mal fondé et reçu publiquement du supérieur -décida Danton à solliciter sa sortie du séminaire.</p> - -<p>“Le fait suivant peut être raconté comme trait de caractère: -La pension, dans cette maison, était modique. Les élèves n’avaient -de vin qu’en le payant séparément à la fin de chaque année. Tous -les dimanches on distribuait des cartes, qui étaient une espèce de -billet au porteur. En présentant cette carte au distributeur, on -recevait une mesure de vin appelée <i>roquille</i>. Danton était généreux, -et un de ses grands plaisirs alors était de régaler ses camarades -en leur passant des cartes de <i>roquilles</i>, surtout à ceux qu’il savait<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_351"></a>[351]</span> -n’avoir pas la bourse bien garnie. Sa générosité alla si loin, que, -lorsqu’on fit le compté général et la proclamation publique de tous -ceux qui avaient bu du vin, il se trouva être celui qui avait fait -une plus grande consommation de <i>roquilles</i>. La veille du départ -pour les vacances, le supérieur du petit séminaire adressa ces -paroles à Danton: <i>Mon ami, vous pouvez vous flatter d’être le plus -grand buveur de la communauté</i>. A ces mots, tous les rires -d’éclater sur lui; il ne répondit pas, mais il se promit bien de ne -plus boire de roquilles au petit séminaire. Malgré une véritable -bonté, Danton était peu endurant, et on l’avait surnommé <i>l’anti-supérieur</i>, -et même <i>le républicain</i>.</p> - -<p>“A peine revenu à Arcis-sur-Aube, il déclara à sa mère qu’il -ne rentrerait plus au petit séminaire: “Il y a là, dit-il, des habitudes -qui ne me vont pas, et que je ne pourrai jamais comprendre.” -L’année suivante, on le mit dans une pension laïque. Ses études -n’y perdirent rien, car il eut depuis des succès qu’il n’avait pas -obtenus auparavant. Il fit ainsi sa seconde, et y remporta la -presque totalité des prix....</p> - -<p>“Nous arrivons au mois de juin 1775. On apprend que le -sacre de Louis XVI. va s’accomplir à Reims. Danton avait déjà -plus d’une fois entendu les imprécations dont toute la France -couvrait la mémoire de Louis XV. A l’âge de seize ans il en -savait assez pour abhorrer l’emploi des lettres de cachet, qui -étaient si prodiguées sous ce règne scandaleux. Le professeur -avait annoncé qu’il donnerait l’événement du sacre du nouveau -monarque comme texte d’amplification: <i>Pour bien se pénétrer de -son sujet</i>, dit Danton d’un ton décidé, <i>il faut se servir de ses yeux. -Je suis curieux de voir comment se fait un roi</i>.</p> - -<p>“Son projet n’est confié qu’à quelques fidèles camarades qui -lui prêtent de l’argent pour sa route. Il part sans prévenir son -maître; il traverse son pays d’Arcis sans voir ses parents, dans -la crainte de les trouver opposés à son pèlerinage. Après avoir -franchi vingt-huit lieues sans encombre, il arrive à Reims, se -glisse partout; il suit attentivement toutes les cérémonies du sacre, -et il entend le jeune monarque, la main sur l’Évangile, prononcer -le serment <i>de régner par les lois et pour le bonheur de la nation</i>. -Que des réflexions fait naître un pareil spectacle dans un cerveau -ardent, déjà prompt à concevoir de rapprochements!</p> - -<p>“A son retour de Reims, les amis de Danton étaient impatients<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_352"></a>[352]</span> -de l’entendre raconter tout ce qu’il avait vu. Cet appareil ne -l’avait pas émerveillé, la richesse des décors de la cathédrale ne -l’avait pas séduit. Il raisonnait assez déjà pour sentir que ce -n’était guère plus qu’une pompe vaine, encore dispendieuse pour -la France déjà si obérée. Le jeune voyageur s’égayait en parlant -de ce nombreux essaim d’oiseaux de toute espèce auxquels on avait -donné la volée dans l’église: “<i>Plaisante liberté</i>, disait-il, <i>que de -voltiger entre quatre murs, sans avoir de quoi manger ni poser son -nid</i>!” Il comparait aussi les oiseaux babillards aux courtisans -qui entouraient déjà le nouveau roi, par continuation de leur -dévouement pour le défunt. A l’entendre débiter avec autant -de simplicité que de malice ses réflexions sur le luxe, on peut -entrevoir que l’écolier moraliste, devenu grand, ne sera pas sans -quelque exigence envers la royauté, et sans quelque sévérité envers -les agents qui vivent des abus.</p> - -<p>“Danton, revenu à Troyes, éprouva des difficultés pour rentrer -à sa pension. Sa sortie, à l’insu du maître, avait indisposé celui-ci. -Le voyageur, soumis et repentant, proteste <i>qu’il na été à -Reims que pour se mettre en mesure de faire en connaissance de -cause son devoir d’amplification sur le sacre</i>. Il produit effectivement -un morceau des plus brillants, mais où il se défend d’introduire -les observations hardies échappées dans la familiarité de -conversation, qui ne peuvent se présenter dans une narration -écrite, dont les convenances sont la première règle. Le maître, -satisfait et surpris du mérite de l’œuvre, en fait lecture à ses -élèves. Il dit <i>qu’il aurait donné la première place à l’auteur s’il -n’avait fait l’école buissonnière</i>. Les camarades de Danton s’unissent -avec enthousiasme à l’appréciation du maître; ils admirent -comment l’enfant prodigue, leur ayant fait un récit aussi piquant, -aussi jovial de son voyage, avait pu en même temps mettre dans -son style autant de réserve et de noblesse. C’est ainsi que Danton -fait admettre ses excuses, et sa grâce est devenue une espèce de -triomphe. Il reprend sa classe, dont les travaux allaient bientôt -se terminer. L’époque des compositions pour les prix annuels -approchait; se fiant à sa facilité, Danton ne semble pas se préparer -au concours. Mais dès que les sujets de composition sont -donnés, il rassemble tous les efforts de son intelligence et obtient -toutes les couronnes. Il déploie d’admirables moyens dans le -discours français, la narration latine et la poésie. Imagination,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_353"></a>[353]</span> -jugement, exactitude, saillie dans la pensée, force, élégance, -originalité dans l’expression, rien ne lui manque, et le 18 août -1775 fut peut-être le plus beau jour de sa vie. Le nom de -<i>Danton-Camut</i> (qui était celui de sa mère pour le distinguer d’un -homonyme son condisciple) fut répété au bruit des fanfares. Si -le lauréat fut heureux, ce fut surtout en apportant ses lauriers à -sa mère, objet de son culte et de son amour; cette piété filiale, -dès lors le plus vif de ses sentiments, demeurera la même dans -son cœur pendant tout le cours de sa vie, quelles qu’en soient -les violences ou les distractions; plus tard, il la montra mieux -encore, et l’homme auquel il voua la haine la plus tenace fut -un misérable soupçonné d’avoir manqué de respect à Madame -Danton.</p> - -<p>“Lorsqu’un écolier se distinguait au collège, on songeait à la -carrière que lui ouvriraient ses talents. <i>Il faut en faire un prêtre -ou un procureur.</i> Le curé de Barberey, près Troyes, désignait -déjà Danton pour qu’il lui succédât dans son presbytère; mais le -moment de séjour que Danton avait fait au séminaire ne lui avait -pas inspiré la vocation ecclésiastique. Il avait besoin de liberté, -il lui fallait les franches allures, l’indépendance. Il demandait -une profession libérale, il désirait être avocat.... Démosthènes -et Cicéron, qu’il venait de commencer à connaître n’étaient-ils pas -des avocats? La famille réunie ayant déféré au vœu de Danton, -il fut décidé qu’il irait à Paris et qu’il travaillerait chez un procureur -pour y apprendre la procédure en même temps qu’il ferait -ses études de droit, pour se préparer au barreau.</p> - -<p>“Ici vient se placer une circonstance intéressante qui fait -honneur à Danton et qui fournit une nouvelle preuve de sa -tendresse pour ses parents. Madame veuve Danton, demeurée -seule avec sa nombreuse famille, s’était remariée pour lui donner -un soutien. Elle avait épousé M. Recordin, estimable négociant, -dont la bonté est restée proverbiale dans le pays: <i>bon et brave -comme Recordin</i>. Par suite de sa facilité dans ses relations, les -affaires de la maison Recordin se trouvèrent embarrassées. Danton, -loin d’exiger les comptes qu’il avait droit de demander de la -fortune qui lui revenait de son père, fut le premier à offrir des -secours à son beau-père; il mit à sa disposition tout ce qui lui -appartenait; il alla jusqu’à engager la portion du bien de ses -tantes qui devait lui échoir un jour, ne craignant pas d’aliéner<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_354"></a>[354]</span> -son présent en son avenir. <i>Il faut mettre ses affaires en règle,</i> -disait-il, <i>quand on fait un grand voyage</i>.</p> - -<p>“Tels furent les préparatifs du départ.</p> - -<p>“Tous les témoignages de ses camarades, parents et amis, -déposent de la délicatesse de Danton sous tous les rapports; à -l’exception du prêt de quelques écus qui lui furent offerts par -ses camarades pour le voyage de Reims, il n’a jamais demandé -d’argent à qui que ce soit, dans les moments où, soit comme -écolier, soit comme clerc de procureur, il a pu éprouver de ces -gênes de jeune homme qui rendent hardi aux emprunts.</p> - -<p>“Danton arrive à Paris en 1780 dans la voiture du messager -d’Arcis-sur-Aube, qui était l’ami de sa famille, et qui voulut lui -faire la conduite gratuitement. Il se logea à l’auberge du <i>Cheval -noir</i>, tenue rue Geoffroy-Lasnier par un nommé Layron, qui était -l’hôte le plus fréquenté par les Champenois. Danton avait très -peu de fonds, et il dut se mettre immédiatement au travail: il -entra chez un procureur appelé Vinot. Ce procureur commença par -lui demander un modèle de son écriture, qu’il ne trouva pas belle. -Les procureurs de ce temps-là voulaient de ces écritures promptes -et faciles, propres à produire de larges grosses, de longues requêtes. -Le jeune Champenois déclara franchement <i>qu’il n’était pas venu -pour être copiste</i>. Ce ton d’assurance imposa au procureur Vinot. -Il dit: <i>J’aime l’aplomb, il en faut dans notre état</i>.</p> - -<p>“Danton fut admis comme clerc, avec la nourriture et le logement. -Il étudia la procédure non sans quelque dégoût; il fut -chargé, comme on dit dans le métier, <i>de faire le palais</i>. C’est -la première initiation des jeunes clercs aux affaires. Elle commence -à les mettre en relation avec les choses et les personnes du -monde judiciaire, et leur donne les éléments de la pratique par de -petits plaidoyers sommaires et des explications contradictoires qui -leur ouvrent les idées et leur apprennent à se conduire dans le labyrinthe -où ils sont destinés à vivre.</p> - -<p>“Danton remplissait sa fonction de clerc avec intelligence et -exactitude; ses récréations les plus habituelles étaient toujours -l’escrime, la paume et la natation, sa passion favorite! dont il -usait fréquemment; c’était le besoin même de son tempérament. -Il était assez habile à cet exercice pour être cité au premier rang; -il y trouva un encouragement digne de son émulation. Il sauva -plusieurs fois de la mort des camarades qui auraient péri s’il n’était<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_355"></a>[355]</span> -venu au secours de leur imprudence et de leur faiblesse. Quelques-uns -d’entre eux ont raconté les tours de force véritables que -Danton exécutait dans les courants les plus difficiles de la rivière. -De l’endroit même où ils prenaient leurs ébats, on voyait les tours -de la Bastille, et plus d’une fois les baigneurs ont entendu Danton, -dressant sa tête comme un triton, jeter une menace du côté de la -prison d’État et s’écrier de sa voix vibrante: <i>Ce chateau fort -suspendu sur notre tête m’offusque et me gêne. Quand le verrons-nous -abattu? Pour moi, ca jour là, j’y donnerais un fier coup de -pioche!</i></p> - -<p>“Les constitutions les plus robustes sont souvent les plus -exposées, parce que cette exubérance de force donne plus de -sécurité. Danton, à la suite d’une double partie de natation et -d’escrime, fut encore atteint d’une grave maladie. Longtemps -retenu au lit, alors que son corps était réduit à l’inaction, il ne -pouvait se livrer à ses exercices habituels, mais son imagination -ne restait point inactive. Avec son infatigable ardeur de lecture, -il s’obstina à lire <i>l’Encyclopédie</i> tout entière, et il avait achevé ce -labeur si considérable avant que la convalescence fût terminée. -Il trouvait encore le temps de lire les grands publicistes dont les -principes et la morale politique commençaient à devenir les guides -du siècle. Montesquieu qu’il devait souvent citer, fut de sa part -l’objet d’une étude tout particulière, et, après avoir lu <i>l’Esprit des -lois</i>, il disait: <i>Quel horizon nouveau s’ouvre devant moi! Je n’ai -qu’un regret, c’est de retrouver dans l’écrivain qui vous porte si loin -et si haut, le président d’un parlement.</i> De Montesquieu, Danton -passa bientôt à Voltaire, à J.-J. Rousseau, puis à Beccaria, qui -apparaissait alors. Danton ne tarda pas à savoir par cœur l’admirable -petit ouvrage de cet auteur, le traité <i>Des délits et des peines</i>, -qui allait réformer la législation criminelle du monde; afin de se -préparer des couleurs de style pour le jour où il aurait à parler -aux foules, afin d’apprendre, à revêtir les questions sociales des -belles images de la nature, Danton étudia particulièrement l’<i>Histoire -naturelle</i> de Buffon: au moyen de sa puissante mémoire il -en retenait et récitait des pages entières. Voilà d’amples provisions -d’instruction qui pourront trouver un jour un utile emploi -dans la carrière de l’homme public! Tout en dédaignant la littérature -frivole et n’ayant jamais lu de romans que les chefs-d’œuvre -consacrés qui sont des peintures de mœurs, Danton apprit en<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_356"></a>[356]</span> -même temps la langue italienne assez pour lire le Tasse, l’Arioste -et même le Dante. Il faisait aussi des vers avec facilité, quelques-uns -même adressés, en tout bien et tout honneur, à une personne -qui n’était pas indigne de les lui inspirer, à la femme de son -procureur.</p> - -<p>“Mais tous ces délassements littéraires étaient en dehors de la -profession qu’il voulait exercer. Ils ne lui firent point négliger -l’apprentissage de la procedure et du droit.</p> - -<p>“Il lui restait maintenant à devenir de licencié avocat, et -comme il avait gardé un bon souvenir de la ville de Reims, il alla -se faire recevoir avocat dans cette ville. Champenois de cœur, il -était heureux de contribuer de tous ses moyens à l’honneur de son -pays natal. Il avait toujours de bonnes saillies à son service, et -ne manquait pas une occasion de citer des hommes distingués -dans les lettres et les arts de diverses époques qui appartenaient -à la province de Champagne. Parmi les contemporains, Danton -pouvait du reste trouver plus d’un exemple à l’appui de son -patriotique enthousiasme: c’est ainsi qu’il parlait souvent de -quelques notabilités qu’il connaissait, tels que le savant <i>Grosley</i>, -l’avocat <i>Linguet</i>.</p> - -<p>“De retour de Reims à Paris, Danton, après avoir achevé son -stage, s’essaya au barreau de la capitale pendant quelque temps. -Chargé d’une affaire, entre autres, pour un berger contre le -seigneur de son village, il eut l’occasion de produire, en cette -circonstance, quelques-uns des sentiments qu’il devait plus tard -développer davantage sur un grand théâtre. Il réclama avec -autant de vigueur que d’adresse les principes de l’égalité devant -la loi. Il gagna sa cause devant la cour de parlement qui, comme -on se le rappelle, n’était alors composée que de nobles et de privilégiés. -Nous ne sommes encore qu’en 1785. Le factum de Danton -fut imprimé: il était concis, substantiel, énergique—nous n’avons -pu en retrouver la trace.—Cette première lutte soutenue par -Danton fit sensation au palais et valut au jeune avocat des -témoignages d’estime de Gerbier, Debonnière, Hardouin et -toutes les sommités du barreau de cette époque. Linguet, qui se -connaissait en style, et qui, nous l’avons vu, était de Reims, lui -adressa à ce sujet de vifs encouragements.</p> - -<p>“Mais les témoignages de ces hommes éminents, qui assuraient -à Danton un succès d’honneur, ne le menaient point à la fortune;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_357"></a>[357]</span> -il s’en éloignait même à mesure que son talent aurait dû l’en -rapprocher davantage, car il recherchait la clientèle du pauvre -autant que d’autres recherchaient la clientèle du riche. Il pensait -qu’en thèse générale le pauvre est le plus souvent l’opprimé, -qu’ainsi il a le droit de priorité à la défense. D’après ce principe -de conduite, ceux qui ont dit que Danton n’avait point fait fortune -au barreau, pouvaient ajouter qu’il ne l’y aurait jamais faite....</p> - -<p>“S’ennuyant peut-être un peu, comme on a pu l’entrevoir, dans -sa profession d’avocat, Danton ne demandait point de distraction -à des plaisirs qui auraient pu prendre sur les ressources nécessaires -à son existence. Gagnant fort peu dans ses travaux de palais, il -n’aurait pas voulu ajouter à la gêne de sa position en contractant -des dettes; il était fort rangé, toujours avec une petite réserve -d’économies qui lui permettait de rendre des services sans en -demander lui-même. Après son frugal repas chez un traiteur, -dont la maison était nommée l’<i>Hôtel de la Modestie</i>, il prenait une -demi-tasse de café et jouait quelques parties de dominos. Ajoutez, -de temps en temps, le spectacle d’une tragédie classique au -Théâtre-Français, voilà toute la defense et tous les amusements -du jeune avocat.</p> - -<p>“Un café où se rendait le plus habituellement Danton s’appelait -<i>Café de l’École</i>, parce qu’il était situé sur ce quai, presque au -coin de la place qui a conservé ce nom. C’était un rendez-vous -très fréquenté par les hommes de loi qui se trouvaient rapprochés -du Châtelet et du Palais de Justice. La rigueur du costume et -de la coiffure, espèce de signalement perpétuel, avait cet avantage -qu’on n’était pas tenté de se commettre.</p> - -<p>“Les maîtres des cafés, alors peu nombreux dans Paris, étaient -eux-mêmes des bourgeois d’honnête allure. Ils maintenaient le -bon ton de leur maison par leur civilité. Ils faisaient rarement -fortune, à l’exception de deux ou trois qui étaient de premier -rang. Le <i>Café de l’École</i> n’était pas précisément à ce niveau; mais -il était l’un de ceux qui avaient la meilleure réputation. Nous -croyons voir encore le maître de la maison avec sa petite perruque -ronde, son habit gris et sa serviette sous le bras. Il était rempli -de prévenances pour ses clients, et il en était traité avec une considération -cordiale. Une femme des plus recommandables et fille -de la maison, aussi douce que gracieuse, tenait le comptoir. -Parmi les habitués, qui paraissaient s’arrêter avec un intérêt<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_358"></a>[358]</span> -particulier à ce comptoir, on put remarquer un jeune avocat qui, -d’abord fort gai et jovial, parut quelque temps après plus sérieux. -Ce jeune avocat était Danton; il avait cru d’abord ne causer que -généralement et sans conséquence avec les dames du comptoir; -son cœur s’y était pris, et Danton était amoureux. Mademoiselle -Gabrielle Charpentier n’avait pas songé à se défier des assiduités -de Danton; elle se trouva bientôt, à son insu, préoccupée du -même sentiment. Sans être dans le secret de cette inclination, le -père et la mère Charpentier ne furent pas très surpris quand la -main de leur fille leur fut demandée par le jeune avocat. La -vivacité de son caractère leur fit craindre un moment de consentir -à cette union; mais il avait su toucher le cœur de Gabrielle. -Lorsqu’on disait: <i>Qu’il est laid!</i> elle répétait, presque comme -l’avait dit une femme au sujet de Lekain: <i>Qu’il est beau!</i> Elle -admirait son esprit, que l’on trouvait trop piquant; son âme, que -l’on trouvait trop ardente; sa voix, que l’on trouvait forte et -terrible, et qu’elle trouvait douce.</p> - -<p>“Il fallait cependant prendre des renseignements sur ce prétendant. -M. Charpentier visita particulièrement les procureurs -chez qui Danton avait travaillé, et les avocats avec lesquels il -avait été en rapport au barreau. Il n’y eut qu’une voix en sa -faveur. D’après des renseignements aussi satisfaisants, les bons -parents ne s’informèrent point de sa fortune; ils y tenaient peu, -quoique en ayant eux-mêmes une assez modeste. Pourtant, ils -donnaient en mariage à leur fille une somme de 40,000 francs, ce -qui était pour l’époque une dot considérable. Ils imposaient à -leur gendre une seule condition, c’est qu’il exerçât un état; c’est -qu’il fût <i>occupé</i>. La profession d’avocat au parlement était sans -doute une profession honorable et libre, mais trop libre peut-être, -et qui ne commandait pas un travail assez assidu. Danton promit -de remplir les vœux de son beau-père; il s’exprima dans des -termes si chaleureux, que le père et la mère Charpentier se mirent -à aimer Danton presque autant que leur fille.</p> - -<p>“Des amis de Danton lui conseillèrent d’acheter une charge -d’avocat aux conseils. M. et Madame Charpentier offrirent généreusement -la dot de leur fille; mais ce n’était que 40,000 francs, -et il en fallait 80,000! Des Champenois dévoués proposèrent -de compléter ce qui manquait pour le payement de la charge.</p> - -<p>“Ils s’en rapportaient tous à la délicatesse et à la probité de<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_359"></a>[359]</span> -Danton; sa bonne conduite était sa caution. Le mariage n’ayant -plus de cause de retard, les bans publiés, le consentement de sa -mère arrivé d’Arcis-sur-Aube, Georges-Jacques Danton et Gabrielle -Charpentier furent unis, et le même jour il entra, comme il le -disait gaiement, <i>en puissance de femme et en charge d’officier ministériel; -le même jour, mari et avocat aux conseils</i>.</p> - -<p>“Les avocats aux conseils réunissaient les doubles fonctions -d’avocats et de procureurs; ayant peu de procédure à faire, ils -avaient l’avantage de rester maîtres de leurs affaires et de ne pas -subir, comme les avocats des autres cours, la loi d’un procureur -préoccupé du désir d’attirer à lui tous les bénéfices. Les fonctions -des avocats aux conseils avaient aussi quelque chose d’éminemment -propre à élever l’âme des jeunes gens; leur mission consistait -souvent à redresser les torts du parlement et des cours supérieures. -Ils communiquaient journellement avec les maîtres des requêtes, -avec les conseillers d’État, avec les hommes du plus haut rang, qui -étaient obligés de recourir à leur ministère pour lutter contre les -usurpations dont ils avaient à se plaindre.</p> - -<p>“Les avocats aux conseils avaient ainsi l’occasion, en discutant -avec les ministres eux-mêmes, soit pour les attaquer, soit pour les -défendre, d’apprendre à connaître les rapports des autorités entre -elles, la vraie distinction des pouvoirs, l’organisation civile dans -toute son étendue, l’ordre social dans son ensemble: c’était une -excellente école pour créer des économistes, des politiques, des -législateurs.</p> - -<p>“En exposant le rôle et la mission des avocats aux conseils, -nous aurions peut-être dû expliquer que tels étaient au moins la -pensée et le droit de l’institution. Faut-il constater maintenant -ce qu’était en fait l’institution? Sur le nombre de soixante -membres composant l’honorable confrérie, on voyait plusieurs -hommes distingués qui sentaient la dignité de leurs fonctions, -traitaient leurs clients avec générosité et délicatesse, les affaires avec -science, application et courage. Mais tous, il faut bien le dire, -n’avaient pas un sentiment aussi élevé de leurs devoirs, et il en était -quelques-uns dont l’émulation consistait à faire beaucoup de <i>grosses</i>.</p> - -<p>“Au moment où Danton fut reçu avocat aux conseils, c’était -en 1787; il avait vingt-huit ans, sa femme en avait vingt-cinq. -Dans ce moment, l’Ordre était divisé en trois partis plus ou moins -actifs.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_360"></a>[360]</span></p> - -<p>“Les anciens voulaient créer un <i>syndicat</i>, à la tête duquel ils -auraient été tout naturellement placés.</p> - -<p>“Les jeunes arrivants appartenaient aux idées nouvelles, et ne -voulaient être ni conduits ni éconduits.</p> - -<p>“Un troisième parti se composait des hommes modérés et -pacifiques qui, aimant le repos avant tout, et, comme on a dit -depuis, <i>la paix partout et toujours</i>, ne voulaient se mêler à aucune -action et préféraient laisser faire le mal à leur détriment plutôt -que de se mouvoir en aucun sens et se laisser déranger même par -un progrès qui leur eût été utile, mais qui aurait pu les <i>désheurer</i>.</p> - -<p>“On a déjà pressenti à quel parti Danton avait dû se rallier. -Il ne méconnaissait pas la discipline qui doit présider à la bonne -organisation d’une compagnie judiciaire; mais il croyait que la -force et la puissance réelles des compagnies sont dans leur indépendance, -comme le talent même des membres de ces corporations -ne peut se passer de la dignité du caractère.</p> - -<p>“L’homme qui, en entrant dans une compagnie, dessine ses -opinions avec une énergique rudesse, peut s’attendre à rencontrer -bien des luttes et bien des hostilités.</p> - -<p>“Voulant juger la valeur du nouvel arrivant, les avocats, sous -prétexte de bienvenue, et sans l’avoir averti à l’avance, lui firent -subir une épreuve en latin. On lui imposa pour sujet l’exposé de -la situation morale et politique du pays dans ses rapports avec la -justice. C’était, comme Danton l’a dit depuis, <i>lui proposer de -marcher sur des rasoirs</i>.... Il ne recula point. Saisissant -même comme une bonne fortune la difficulté inattendue dans -laquelle on croyait l’enlacer, il s’en tira avec éclat, et laissa ses -auditeurs dans l’étonnement de sa présence d’esprit et de la -décision de son caractère. Il ne craignit point d’aborder la -politique qui commençait a pénétrer en toute affaire, et qui était -peut-être ici une cause secrète du piège qui lui était tendu. On -espérait surprendre en défaut un jeune avocat qui levait la tête et -annonçait des principes d’indépendance. Danton, en homme de -talent habile à triompher des plus grandes difficultés, osa parler -des choses les plus actuelles; il dit que, comme citoyen ami de -son pays, autant que comme membre d’une corporation consacrée -à la défense des intérêts privés et publics de la société, il désirait -que le gouvernement sentît assez la gravité de la situation pour y -porter remède par des moyens simples, naturels et tirés de son<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_361"></a>[361]</span> -autorité; qu’en présence des besoins impérieux du pays, il fallait -se résigner à se sacrifier; que la noblesse et le clergé, qui étaient -en possession des richesses de la France, devaient donner l’exemple; -que, quant a lui, il ne pouvait voir dans la lutte du parlement, qui -éclatait alors, que l’intérêt de quelques particuliers puissants qui -combattaient les ministres, mais sans rien stipuler au profit du -peuple. Il déclarait qu’à ses yeux l’horizon apparaissait sinistre, -et qu’il sentait venir une révolution terrible. Si seulement on -pouvait la reculer de trente années, elle se ferait amiablement par -la force des choses et le progrès des lumières. Il répéta dans ce -discours, qui ressemblait au cri prophétique de Cassandre: <i>Malheur -à ceux qui provoquent les révolutions, malheur à ceux qui les font!</i></p> - -<p>“Plusieurs fois les vieux avocats qui avaient tendu ce piège à -Danton voulurent interrompre son improvisation. Ils avaient cru -entendre des mots qui les effrayaient, tels que <i>motus populorum, -ira gentium, salus populi suprema lex</i>.... Les jeunes gens qui, -récemment sortis des collèges, avaient le droit de comprendre le -latin mieux que les anciens, qui l’avaient oublié ou ne l’avaient -jamais su, répondaient à leurs vieux confrères qu’ils avaient mal -entendu, que le récipiendaire était resté dans une mesure parfaite, -irréprochable.</p> - -<p>“Espérant constater plus facilement dans le texte d’une rédaction -écrite les pensées imprudentes qu’ils avaient cru saisir en -écoutant ses paroles, les anciens demandèrent que Danton déposât -son discours de réception sur la table de la chambre du conseil. -Danton répondit qu’il n’avait rien écrit. Il avait déjà pour système -d’écrire le moins possible. Ainsi qu’il l’a dit depuis, on n’écrit -point en révolution. Il ajouta d’ailleurs que si l’on désirait porter -un jugement sur les paroles qu’il avait prononcées, il ne prétendait -pas s’y opposer. Il était assez certain de sa pensée et de sa -mémoire pour répéter avec fidélité toute son improvisation.... -Le reméde eût été pire que le mal. L’aréopage trouva que c’était -déjà bien assez de ce qu’on avait entendu, et la majorité s’opposa -avec vivacité à la récidive.</p> - -<p>“Le cabinet acheté par Danton était loin, au moment où il en -devint titulaire, de posséder une clientèle nombreuse. Il n’en fut -pas moins toujours d’un grand désintéressement vis-à-vis de ses -clients.</p> - -<p>“Il se montrait peu exigeant dans la question des honoraires,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_362"></a>[362]</span> -même lorsqu’il avait gagné sa cause. Lorsque son client venait -s’acquitter envers lui, il lui arrivait souvent de dire: <i>c’est trop</i>, et -de rendre ce qu’il appelait <i>le trop</i>. Dans certaines affaires perdues, -il refusait toute rémunération. ‘Je n’ai point de déboursés, -disait-il, puisque je n’ai point fait d’écritures, et que j’ai laissé à -la régie son papier timbré.’ Il lui arrivait, bien qu’il ne fût pas -riche, de donner lui-même des secours d’argent à des clients -malheureux.</p> - -<p>“Une pareille conduite ne mène pas rapidement à la fortune. -Cependant le cabinet de Danton s’améliora en très peu de temps. -En dirigeant dignement ses affaires, il gagnait de vingt à vingt-cinq -mille francs par an; son sort de père de famille était assuré.</p> - -<p>“Dans ce temps où la France était encore divisée en provinces, -les classes inférieures pouvaient se réclamer des grands seigneurs -de leur pays, et ceux-ci aimaient souvent par vanité autant que -par humanité à protéger leurs vassaux. La maison de Brienne -était de Champagne, près Arcis-sur-Aube. Danton était connu du -comte de Brienne, ancien ministre de la guerre, et de l’archevêque -de Sens, alors premier ministre. Il comptait parmi ses clients M. -de Barentin. Il avait des conférences avec lui pour ses affaires -particulières, et plusieurs fois, après les avoir traitées, M. de -Barentin s’entretenait avec son avocat des affaires publiques. La -manière supérieure dont Danton voyait les choses avait frappé -M. de Barentin et lui avait laissé une vive impression de sa -capacité.</p> - -<p>“Devenu garde des sceaux, M. de Barentin se souvint aussitôt -de son avocat et lui fit demander s’il voulait être secrétaire de la -chancellerie? Danton, dans un long entretien qu’il eut avec ce -ministre, lui exposa avec détails un plan qu’il croyait pouvoir -éloigner les déchirements que l’opposition des parlements allait -enfanter. Quelques-uns de ces parlements venaient d’être exilés: -Danton pensait que leur rappel n’était pas une chose de la plus -grande urgence. Il fallait avant tout les enlacer dans la participation -aux réformes; ils en étaient autant les adversaires que la -noblesse et le clergé, dont ils faisaient en quelque sorte partie et -dont ils avaient les privilèges. Tous les privilégiés enfin, quels -que fussent leurs costumes, qu’ils eussent un manteau de noblesse, -une soutane de prêtre ou une robe de palais, tous, selon l’opinion -de Danton, devaient contribuer aux charges qui ne pesaient que<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_363"></a>[363]</span> -sur le tiers État, c’est-à-dire sur l’immense majorité; la nation -attendait l’allégement du fardeau intolérable qu’elle ne pouvait -plus supporter, la résignation était épuisée....</p> - -<p>“Si ces idées étaient acceptées, le roi, étant à leur tête, se -trouverait conquérir dans l’intérêt de tous une puissance supérieure -à tous les intérêts particuliers. Il pourrait réaliser les demandes -de la raison et donner, par un progrès réel, toute satisfaction aux -lumières du siècle et à la philosophie, interprète des vrais besoins -de l’humanité.</p> - -<p>“En résumé, le plan conçu par Danton tendait à faire accomplir -par le roi une réforme progressive qui, laissant en place les -pouvoirs établis, les rendit, à leur insu ou malgré eux, les instruments -de cette équité pratique qui aurait fortifié à la fois tous les -organes du mécanisme social. M. de Barentin parla du projet de -Danton à l’archevêque de Sens. On parut l’approuver. Dans -l’intervalle, la cour répudia ce système trop net et trop décisif -pour ses allures. Le parlement fut rappelé. Brienne croyait en -avoir gagné les principaux membres.</p> - -<p>“Mais trois mois après—novembre 1787—lorsque le roi fut -obligé de venir à Paris tenir un lit de justice à ce même parlement -pour obtenir l’enregistrement d’un édit portant création de divers -emprunts jusqu’à concurrence de 450 millions, Louis XVI rencontra -la plus violente opposition dans cette cour qu’on croyait réduite. -Il voulut vaincre l’opposition en exilant les plus récalcitrants, les -conseillers Fréteau, Sabatier, de Cabre et le duc d’Orléans.... -Au mois de mai suivant, 1788, le même parlement rendit un arrêt -qui réclama avec véhémence ‘les lois fondamentales de l’État; le -droit de la nation d’accorder des subsides, le droit des cours du -royaume de vérifier les édits, de vérifier dans chaque province les -volontés du roi, et de n’en accorder l’enregistrement qu’autant -qu’elles seraient conformes aux lois constitutives de la province, -ainsi qu’aux fondamentales de l’État; l’immovabilité et l’indépendance -des magistrats, le droit pour chaque citoyen de n’être -jamais traduit en aucune manière devant d’autres juges que ses -juges naturels désignés par la loi; le droit, sans lequel tous les -autres sont inutiles, de n’être arrêté, par quelque ordre que ce soit, -que pour être remis sans délai entre les mains des juges compétents; -protestant la cour du parlement contre toute atteinte qui -serait portée aux principes exprimés.’</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_364"></a>[364]</span></p> - -<p>“M. de Barentin proposa de nouveau a Danton d’être secrétaire -du sceau. Celui-ci remercia en disant que l’état de la -question politique était changé. ‘Nous n’en sommes plus aux -réformes modestes; ceux qui les ont refusées ont refusé leur -propre salut; nous sommes, dit-il plus nettement que jamais, à -la veille d’une révolution. Eh quoi! ne voyez-vous pas venir -l’avalanche?...</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">A. R. C. de Saint-Albin.</span>”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_365"></a>[365]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_VI">VI<br /> -<span class="smaller">EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS<br /> -<span class="smcap">Showing the Price Paid for Danton’s Place at the Conseils du -Roi, the Sources from which he Derived the Money for -its Payment, and the Compensation Paid on its Suppression -in 1791.</span></span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The three documents from which I quote below are of -the utmost importance to a special study of Danton, because -they give us most of our evidence as to the value of -his post at the Conseils du Roi, and permit us to understand -his financial position during the first years of the -Revolution.</p> - -<p>They are three in number:—</p> - -<p>(<i>a</i>) The deed of sale by which Danton acquired the -post from Me. Huet de Paisy. This deed was discovered -by Dr. Robinet (from whose “Vie Privée de Danton” I -take all the documents quoted) in the offices of a Parisian -solicitor, Me. Faiseau-Jaranne of the Rue Vivienne. This -gentleman was the direct successor in his business of the -M. Dosfant who drew up the deed seventy years before.</p> - -<p>I have quoted only the essential portions of this exceedingly -interesting piece of evidence. They give us the date -of the transaction (March 29, 1787), the price paid, 78,000 -livres, or rather (seeing that Danton acquired the right to -collect a debt of 11,000) 67,000 livres net (say £2600); the -fact that some £2000 of this was paid down out of a -loan raised for him by his relations in Champagne and his -future father-in-law, while some £160 he paid out of his -savings, and the rest remained owing. The receipt of -1789, which I have attached at the end of the extract,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_366"></a>[366]</span> -shows us that by that time the balance had been paid -over to Me. Huet de Paisy, including interest at 5 per -cent. Incidentally there is mention of Danton moving -to the Rue de la Tissanderie, whence we shall find him -drawing up his marriage-contract.</p> - -<p>(<i>b</i>) The marriage-contract between Danton and Antoinette -Charpentier, contains all the customary provisions -of a French marriage-contract, and is witnessed by the -usual host of Mends, such as we find witnessing Desmoulins’ -contract, three or four years later. It tells us, -among other things, the position of his stepfather Recordain -and the well-to-do connections of the Charpentiers; -but the point of principal interest is the dowry—20,000 -livres, that is, some £800—of which the greater -part (£600) went to pay his debt on the place he held -as Avocat ès Conseils, and the fact that he had remaining -a patrimony of some £500.</p> - -<p>(<i>c</i>) The acknowledgment of the sum due as compensation -to Danton when the hereditary and purchasable office -which he had bought was put an end to. All students of -the period know the vast pother that has been raised on -this point, the rumour that Danton was overpaid as a -kind of bribe from the court, &c. &c. All the direct -evidence we have of the transaction is in these few lines. -They are just like all the other forms of reimbursement, -and are perfectly straightforward.</p> - -<p>The amount is somewhat less than we should give in -England under similar circumstances, for (1) the State -does not allow for the entrance-fees (10,000 livres), which -Danton had had to pay, and (2) it taxes him 12 per -cent. for the <i>probable</i> future taxation which would have -fallen by death, transference, &c., on the estate. Finally, -he gets not quite 70,000 livres for a place which cost him -first and last 78,000.</p> - -<p>To recapitulate: the general conclusions which these -documents permit us to draw with regard to Danton’s -financial position are as follows:—The price of the practice<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_367"></a>[367]</span> -he bought was 68,000 livres; of this, 56,000 was paid down, -a sum obtained by borrowing 36,000 from Mdlle. Duhattoir -(a mortgagee discovered by the family solicitor, Millot), and -15,000 from his future father-in-law, Charpentier, the remaining -5000 being paid out of his own pocket.</p> - -<p>He thus remains in debt to Me. Huet de Paisy, the -vendor, in a sum of 12,000 livres at 5 per cent. interest.</p> - -<p>To this must be added a sum of 10,000 livres entrance-fee, -which he presumably pays by recovering a debt of -somewhat larger amount (11,000) which he had bought -along with the practice.</p> - -<p>When he marries, his wife’s dowry cancels his debt to -Charpentier and leaves him 5000 livres over, he possessing -at that time in land and houses at Arcy some 12,000—in -all 17,000 livres or their value are in hand in the summer -of 1787, and his total liabilities at the same date are the -36,000 to Mdlle. Duhattoir and the 12,000 to Me. de Paisy. -He starts his practice, therefore, with 31,000 livres, or about -£1200 of net liability. The practice was lucrative; we -know that he is immediately concerned with three important -chancery cases; he becomes the lawyer of two of -the wealthiest men in the kingdom; he lives modestly. -We know that he pays the 12,000 with interest in -December 1789, and though we do not possess the receipt -for Mdlle. Duhattoir’s repayment, it is eminently probable -that, under such conditions, he could easily have met a -debt of less than £800 out of four years’ successful practice -in a close corporation, which of necessity dealt with the -most lucrative cases in the kingdom. I think, therefore, one -may regard the reimbursement which he received in 1791 -as presumably free from debt, and see him in no financial -difficulty at any period of the Revolution. This opinion -has the advantage of depending upon the support of all -those who have lately investigated the same documents—MM. -Aulard, Robinet, earlier Bougeart (but he is a special -pleader), and finally Mr. Morse Stephens in England.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_368"></a>[368]</span></p> - -<h4>(<i>a</i>) <span class="smcap">From the Deed of Sale between Huet de Paisy and -Danton</span>, <i>29th March 1787</i>.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Par devant les conseillers du Roi, notaires, &c....</p> - -<p>“... Me. Charles-Nicholas Huet de Paisy, écuyer, ancien -avocat au Parlement et ès conseils du Roi, demeurant à Paris, -Rue de la Tissanderie, paroisse de St. Jean en Grève ... a -vendu... a Me. Jacques-Georges Danton, avocat au Parlement, -demeurant à Paris, Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, paroisse St. Germain -l’Auxerrois ... l’état et office héréditaire d’avocat ès conseils -du Roi, faisant un des 70 créés par édit du mois de septembre -1738....</p> - -<p>“Ledit Me. Huet de Paisy vend en outre en dit Me. Danton la -pratique et clientèle attachées au sous dit office, et consistant en -dossiers, liasses, &c....</p> - -<p>“Cette vente est faite... par ledit Me. Danton qui s’y -oblige d’entrer au lieu... dudit Me. Huet de Paisy.... Moyennant -la somme de 78,000 livres... dont 68,000 sont le -prix de la pratique et 10,000 les charges accoutumées....</p> - -<p>“Ledit Me. Huet de Paisy reconnaît avoir reçu sur les 68,000 -livres (prix de la pratique) la somme de 56,000 livres dont autant -quittances. Quant au 12,000 livres de surplus Me. Danton promet -et s’oblige de les payer dans quatre années du jour de sa -reception audit office avec l’intérêt sur le pied du dernier vingt -... (5 per cent.).</p> - -<p>“Déclare en outre une ... somme de 11,000 livres lui être -légitimement due par.... (<i>Then follow the details of this debt to -the office. Danton consents to pay the 68,000 on condition that he -may collect this debt from the client of the office, and specially -mentions the fact that, if he is not given full powers to collect, the -price shall be not 68,000, but only 57,000 livres</i>)....</p> - -<p>“A ces présentes est intervenu Me. François-Jacques Millot, -procureur au Parlement, demeurant à Paris, rue Percée, paroisse -St. Séverin. Fondé de la procuration spéciale pour ce qui suit dû, -Sieur François Lenoir, maître de poste, et dame Marie-Geneviève -Camus, son épouse, de dame Elisabeth Camus, veuve du Sieur -Nicolas Jeannet et de demoiselle Anne Camus, fille majeure, -demeurant tous à Arcy-sur-Aube, passée en brevet devant Morey<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_369"></a>[369]</span> -notaire à Troyes, en présence de témoins, le deux décembre -dernier, l’original de laquelle dûment contrôlé légalisé a été certifié -véritable et déposé pour minute à Me. Dosfant, l’un des notaires -soussignés par acte du vingt-huit du présent mois. Lequel a, par -ces présentes, rendu et constitué lesdits Sieur et dame Lenoir, dame -veuve Jeannet et demoiselle Camus, cautions et répondants solidaires -dudit Me. Danton envers ledit Me. Huet de Paisy, ce faisant -les oblige solidairement avec lui, séparément les uns avec les -autres au payement desdites douze mille livres qui restent dues -sur ladite pratique, intérêts d’icelle, et au payement des dix mille -livres, prix du corps dudit office aux époques ci-dessus fixées, à -quoi ledit Me. Millot, audit nom, affecte, oblige et hypothèque -sous ladite solidarité, généralement tous les biens, meubles et -immeubles, présents et à venir de ses constituants.</p> - -<p>“Ledit M. Danton déclare que dans, les cinquante-six mille -livres par lui ci-dessus payées, il y a trente-six mille livres qui -proviennent des deniers qu’il a empruntés à demoiselle Françoise-Julie -Duhauttoir, demoiselle majeure, et quinze mille livres qu’il -a empruntées du Sieur François-Jérôme Charpentier, contrôleur -des fermes, sous le cautionnement desdits Sieur et dame Lenoir, -dame veuve Jeannet et demoiselle Camus.... (<i>What follows is -the receipt in full, signed by Huet de Paisy in December 1789.</i>)</p> - -<p>“Et le trois décembre mil sept cent quatre-vingt-neuf, est -comparu devant les notaires à Paris, soussignés, ledit Me. Huet de -Paisy, nommé et qualifié en l’acte ci-devant, demeurant à Paris, -rue des Couronnes, près de Belleville,—Lequel a reconnu avoir -reçu dudit Me. Danton aussi ci-devant nommé, qualifié et domicilié, -à ce présent, la somme de treize mille cinq cent livres composée, -1ᵒ des douze mille livres qui, sur le prix du traiteé ci-devant, -avaient été stipulées payables en quatre années du jour de la réception -dudit Me. Danton et sur lesquelles ce dernier devait -exercer l’effet de la garantie contractée par ledit Me. de Paisy, -par le traiteé ci-devant, relativement à l’affaire du Sieur Papillon -de la Grange, de l’effet de laquelle garantie, quoique cette affaire -ne soit pas encore terminée, ledit Me. Danton décharge ledit Me. -de Paisy; 2ᵒ et de quinze cents livres pours les intérêts de ladite -somme de douze mille livres échus jusqu’au premier octobre -dernier qu’ils ont cessé de courir, de convention entre les parties; -de laquelle somme de treize mille cinq cents livres et de toutes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_370"></a>[370]</span> -choses au sujet dudit traité, ledit Me. Huet de Paisy quitte et -décharge Me. Danton;—Dont acte fait et passé à Paris, en l’étude, -lesdits jour et an et ont signé.”</p> - -</div> - -<h4>(<i>b</i>) <span class="smcap">From the Marriage-Contract of Danton and Mdlle. -Charpentier</span>, <i>9th June 1787</i>.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Par devant les conseillers du Roi, &c....</p> - -<p>“Me. Georges-Jacques Danton, avocat ès conseils du Roi, demeurant -à Paris, rue de la Tissanderie, paroisse de Jean en Grève, -fils du defunt Sieur Jacques Danton, bourgeois d’Arcis-sur-Aube, et -dame Jeanne-Madeleine Camus, sa veuve actuellement épouse du -Sieur Jean Reordain négociant audit Arcis-sur-Aube, de présent à -Paris, logée chez ledit sieur, son fils, à ce présent, stipulant le dit -Me. Danton d’une part.</p> - -<p>“Et Sieur François-Jerome Charpentier, controleur des Fermes, -et dame Angelique-Octavie Soldini, son épouse... demeurant à -Paris, quai de l’École, paroisse de St. Germain l’Auxerrois, stipulant -pour... demoiselle Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier leur -fille majeure... d’autre part.</p> - -<p>“... Ont arrêté les conventions civiles dudit mariage ... -à savoir...</p> - -<p>(<i>Then follow the names of the witnesses to the contract; their -only importance is the idea they give us of the social position of the -two bourgeois families concerned. They include Papillon, a surgeon; -Dupont, a lawyer of the Châtelet; Duprat and Gousseau, barristers; -Wislet, a banker; Mme. Tavaval, widow of a painter to the Court, -and so forth.</i>)...</p> - -<p>“... Les biens dudit futur époux consistent:—</p> - -<p>“(1ᵒ) Dans l’office d’avocat aux conseils... acheté à Me. -Huet de Paisy... le 29 mars dernier... moyennant la somme -de 68,000 livres qu’il doit en entier soit audit Me. Huet de -Paisy, soit aux personnes qui lui ont prêté les sommes qu’il a -payées comptant.</p> - -<p>“(2ᵒ) Dans de terres, maisons et heritages situé audit Arcis-sur -Aube et aux environs de valeur de la somme de 12,000 -livres....</p> - -<p>“Les père et mère de ladite demoiselle lui donnent en dot -... une somme de 18,000 livres... pour s’acquitter de cette<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_371"></a>[371]</span> -somme ils... déchargent ledit Me. Danton de celle de 15,000 -livres qu’ils lui ont prêtée, et qui a été employée par lui au payement -de partie du prix... attachée à l’office dudit Me. Huet de -Paisy....</p> - -<p>“Ils ont présentement payé audit Me. Danton les 3000 livres -completant les dix huit milles livres.</p> - -<p>“Enfin ladite demoiselle future épouse apporte ... la somme -de 2000 livres provenant de ses gains et épargnes.”</p> - -<p>(<i>The remainder of the document is a statement of the “community -property” in marriage and the settlements made in case of -decease, the whole regulated by the “custom of Paris.” They have -no interest for this book.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<h4>(<i>c</i>) <span class="smcap">From the Note Liquidating Danton’s Place at the Conseils -du Roi and his Receipt for the Reimbursement</span>, <i>8th -and 11th of October 1791</i>. <span class="smcap">Held by de Montmorin in his -Office.</span></h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Nous, Louis-César-Alexandre-Dufresne Saint-Léon, commissaire -du Roi, directeur général de la liquidation.</p> - -<p>“Attendu la remise à nous faite des titres originels... -concernant l’office d’avocat ès conseils du Roi dont était titulairé -... le Sieur Georges-Jacques Danton.</p> - -<p>“Ledit office liquidé... par décret de l’Assemblée Nationale -... sanctionné par le Roi le deux octobre, à la somme de -69,031 livres 4 sols.... Avons delivré au Sieur Danton... la -présente reconnaissance définitive de la dite somme de 69,031 -livres 4 sols, qui sera payée a la caisse de l’extraordinaire....</p> - -<p>“M. Georges-Jacques Danton, avocat ès conseils, en présence -des soussignés... a reconnu... la liquidation... de l’office -d’avocat ès conseils du Roi dont été titulairé... ledit Georges-Jacques -Danton... savoir.</p> - -<p>“(1ᵒ) 78,000 livres... principale moyennant laquelle il a -acquis l’office le 29 Mars 1787.</p> - -<p>“(2ᵒ) 240 livres pour le remboursement du droit de mutation.</p> - -<p>“(3ᵒ) 416 livres 4 sols pour celui du Marc d’or.</p> - -<p>“(4ᵒ) 125 livres pour celui des frais de Sceau.</p> - -<p>“Deduction faite de 9750 pour le huitième du prix retenu....<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_372"></a>[372]</span> -Au moyen du paisement effectif qui sera fait audit Sieur Danton de -... 69,031 livres 4 sols ... quitte et décharge l’état, M. -Dufresne de Saint-Léon et tous autres de ladite somme de 69,031 -livres 4 sols ... &c.” (<i>The remainder of the document is the -mention of the original deed of sale having been shown to the -liquidator, and the correction of certain clerical errors in a former -document.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_373"></a>[373]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_VII">VII<br /> -<span class="smaller">EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS<br /> -<span class="smcap">Showing the Situation of Danton’s Apartment in the Cour -de Commerce, its Furniture and Value, &c.</span></span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The extracts given below are of a purely personal interest, -and do not add anything material to our knowledge -of the Revolution. On the other hand, they are of value -to those who are chiefly concerned with Danton’s personality, -and with the details of his daily life. They show -what kind of establishment he kept, with its simple furniture, -its two servants, its reserve of money, &c., and enable -us to make an accurate picture of the flat in which he -lived, and of its position. It is from them that I have -drawn the material for my description of the rooms in -Appendix II. on p. 329. Incidentally, they tell us the -profession of M. Charpentier’s brother (a notary), give us a -view of the religious burial practised in the spring of 1793, -show us, as do many of his phrases elsewhere, the entire -absence of anti-clericalism in Danton’s family as in his -own mind, the number of the house, the name of its proprietor, -Danton’s wardrobe, his wine, the horse and carriage -which he bought for his hurried return from Belgium, and -many other petty details which are of such interest in the -study of an historical character.</p> - -<p>Like most of the documents quoted in this Appendix, -they are due to the industry and research of Danton’s -biographer, Dr. Robinet, and will be found in his Memoir -on Danton’s private life. They are three in number:—</p> - -<p>(<i>a</i>) The various declarations of Thuiller, the justice of -the peace for the Section du Théâtre Français. He put<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_374"></a>[374]</span> -seals upon the doors and furniture (as is the French -custom) upon the death of Danton’s first wife. This death -occurred on February 11, 1793, while Danton was away -on mission in Belgium, and the visit of the justice of the -peace is made on the following day, the 12th. Danton -returns at once, and the seals are removed on various -occasions, from the 24th of March to the 5th of April, in -the presence of Danton himself, or of his father-in-law, -Charpentier.</p> - -<p>(<i>b</i>) The inventory which accompanied the sealing and -unsealing of the apartments.</p> - -<p>(<i>c</i>) The raising of the seals which were put upon the -house after Danton’s execution. Interesting chiefly for the -astonishing writing and spelling of the new functionaries.</p> - -<p>All the three were obtained by Dr. Robinet from the -lawyers who have succeeded to, or inherited from, the -original “Etudes” where the documents were deposited.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Cejourd’hui douze février mil sept cent quatre-vingt-treize, -l’an deuxième de la République française, dix heures du matin, -nous, Claude-Louis Thuiller, juge de paix de la section du Théâtre-Français, -dite de Marseille, à Paris, sur ce que nous avons appris -que la citoyenne Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, épouse du citoyen -Georges-Jacques Danton, député à la Convention Nationale, -était décédée le jour d’hier en son appartement, rue des Cordeliers, -cour du Commerce, dans l’étendue de notre section, et attendu -que ledit citoyen Danton est absent par commission nationale, -nous sommes transporté avec le citoyen Antoine-Marie Berthout, -notre secrétaire-greffier ordinaire, en une maison sise à Paris, rue -des Cordeliers, cour du Commerce, et parvenus à l’entrée de l’escalier -qui conduit à l’appartement dudit citoyen Danton, nous avons -trouvé des prêtres de la paroisse de Saint-André-des-Arts et le -cortège qui accompagnait l’enlèvement du corps de la d. Charpentier, -épouse dudit citoyen Danton, et étant montés au premier -étage au-dessus de l’entresol et entrés dans l’appartement dudit -citoyen, dans un salon ayant vue sur la rue des Cordeliers, nous -y avons trouvé et par-devant nous est comparue la citoyenne -Marie Fougerot, fille domestique dudit citoyen Danton.—Laquelle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_375"></a>[375]</span> -nous a dit que ladite citoyenne Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, -épouse dudit citoyen Danton, est décédée dans la nuit du dimanche -au lundi dernier en l’appartement où nous sommes, par suite de -maladie; que ledit Danton est absent par commission de la Convention -Nationale; que la mère de ladite défunte Charpentier a -envoyé chercher hier son fils encore en bas âge, qu’elle comparante, -le citoyen Jacques Fougerot, son frère qui, depuis quinze -jours, habite la maison où nous sommes, et la citoyenne Catherine -Motin, aussi fille domestique dudit citoyen Danton, sont les seuls -qui restent dans l’appartement dudit Danton; que les clefs des -meubles et effets étant dans l’appartement où nous sommes ont -été prises et emportées par la mère de ladite défunte Charpentier -qui était présente à ses derniers moments; qu’elle vient d’envoyer -chercher lesdites clefs chez le citoyen Charpentier, qui demeure -quai de l’École. Et a signé M. Fougerot.</p> - -<p>“A l’instant est comparu le citoyen François-Jérôme Charpentier, -demeurant à Paris, quai de l’École, nᵒ 3, section du Louvre.—Lequel -nous a représenté un paquet de clefs.”</p> - -</div> - -<h4>(<i>a</i>) <span class="smcap">Extracts from the “Apposition des Scellés” by M. Thuiller, -Justice of the Peace, on February 12, 1793, and from the -“Vacations” by the same.</span></h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Surquoy nous, Juge de Paix susdit ... avons apposé nos -scellés comme il suit. Premierment dans le dit salon ayant vu -sur la rue des Cordeliers ... dans un petit salon étant en suite -ayant même vue ... dans la chambre à coucher étant en suite et -ayant même vue....</p> - -<p>“Le citoyen Charpentier a fait observer des louis que ledit -citoyen Danton avait remis à sa femme pour payer aux mandats -de ceux qui viendraient le rejoindre dans la Belgique.—Des -scellés ... sur une porte d’un cabinet noir qui communique avec -une petite chambre à coucher ... sur la porte d’entrée dudit -cabinet noir ... dans une chambre dernière le salon ayant vue -sur la cour du Commerce... dans un anti-chambre près de la -cuisine ayant vue sur la cour du Commerce.... Dans une chambre -de domestiques à l’entresol.... Dans la petite salle audessous.... -Dans la salle a manger ayant vue sur la cour du Commerce.... -Dans une chambre en suite à toilette.... Dans -la cuisine.... Dans la cave....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_376"></a>[376]</span></p> - -<p>“Et le 24 février 1793, l’an deuxième de la République française, -est comparu devant nous le citoyen Georges-Jacques Danton, -député à la Convention ... lequel nous a requis ... de procéder à -la levée des dits scellés ... apposés après le décès de la dite -dame (<i>the word “citoyenne” is evidently still a little unfamiliar</i>) -Antoinette Charpentier....</p> - -<p>“Ensuite à la réquisition des parties nous nous sommes ... -transportés dans une maison, rue du Pæon, Hotel de Tours ... -où il a été procédé à l’estimation d’un cabriolet, d’un cheval, d’une -jument et harnais.... Le C. Antoine-François Charpentier, notaire, -demeurant rue du l’Arbre-Sec, a comparu ... et le C. François-Jerome -Charpentier, nᵒ. 3 Quai de l’École....”</p> - -<p>(<i>The rest of the document is a long account of the raising of the -seals on various occasions, from March 1 to April 5. It contains -nothing of interest.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<h4>(<i>b</i>) <span class="smcap">Summary of the Inventory taken in Danton’s House -after his First Wife’s Death</span>, <i>25th February 1793</i>.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“L’an mil sept cent quatre vingt-treize, le deuxième de la -République française, le vingt-cinq février, huit heures du -matin.</p> - -<p>“A la requête de Georges-Jacques Danton, député a la Convention -Rationale, demeurant, etc. ... il va être par lesdits notaires a -Paris soussignés, procédé à l’inventaire de tous les biens, meubles, -&c.... dans les lieux composant l’appartement du premier étage -d’une maison située a Paris, rue des Cordeliers, passage du Commerce, -appartenant au Sieur Boullenois.”</p> - -<p>(<i>Here follow the details of the Inventory, of which I give a -summary in English.</i>)</p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg">Livres</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In the Cellar.</i>—Three pieces of Burgundy, 62 bottles - of claret, 92 bottles of Burgundy, a small barrel of white wine</td> - <td class="tdpg">600</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In the Kitchen.</i>—The usual <i>batterie de cuisine</i> - of a French household, enumerated in detail, and valued at</td> - <td class="tdpg">208</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In the Pantry and Offices of the Kitchen.</i>—A few chairs, - a pair of scales, cups, saucers, and so forth</td> - <td class="tdpg">98</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In a Bedroom adjoining, and giving on the Cour de - Commerce.</i>—The usual furniture; probably a dressing-room. - Here was the watch found on Danton after his execution, his - <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_377"></a>[377]</span> writing-table, - &c.: the whole, including dishes in the cupboard and a stove</td> - <td class="tdpg">264</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In a larger Bedroom giving on the Rue des Cordeliers.</i>—After - the usual furniture, a small piano, a guitar, two looking-glasses, - and a writing-table</td> - <td class="tdpg">990</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In a little Room opening out of this.</i>—Usual furniture - of a small study or boudoir, furnished in the white wood of the - period</td> - <td class="tdpg">470</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In the Drawing-room.</i>—The furniture, mostly grey and - white, no piece worth any special mention</td> - <td class="tdpg">992</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>A large cupboard near the chimney contained some summer clothes - put away, and the sword which Danton had worn in the old Bataillon - of the Cordeliers. The whole valued at</td> - <td class="tdpg">332</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In a little Room looking on an inner court</i> (evidently - used as a Library, the list of whose books will be found on p. - 380):—Furniture, chiefly bookcases, to the value of</td> - <td class="tdpg">160</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In a little Lumber-room.</i>—Three empty trunks and a bed</td> - <td class="tdpg">16</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><i>In two little Rooms adjoining.</i>—Furniture (mostly put away)</td> - <td class="tdpg">214</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p>The rest of the inventory mentions the household linen, -the clothes, the plate, and the jewels. The summary -is as follows:—</p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td>Household linen, in all</td> - <td class="tdpg">734</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Clothes, including every item</td> - <td class="tdpg">925</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Plate, including several wedding presents, marked with initials</td> - <td class="tdpg">291</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Knives and forks other than plate</td> - <td class="tdpg">20</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Jewellery (including two women’s rings, set with brilliants, - and a wedding-ring)</td> - <td class="tdpg">509</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p>This gives us the whole value of the furniture, clothing, &c., in -the house, and it amounts to a total of just over 9000 livres, -that is, about £360. There was £50 in money in the house, -which he had left with his wife before going off to Belgium.</p> - -</div> - -<h4>(<i>c</i>) <span class="smcap">Extracts from the Raising of the Seals after -Danton’s Death.</span></h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“L’an trois de la République une et indivisible, cejourd’hui -vingt-cinq messidor, neuf heures de matin, à la requête du bureau -du Domaine national du département de Paris et en vertu de son<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_378"></a>[378]</span> -arrêté en <i>datte</i> du seize susdit mois, signé Rennesson et Guillotin, -portant nomination de nous Jourdain, pour en notre qualité de -commissaire dudit bureau, à l’effet de nous transporter, assisté de -deux commissaires civils de la section du Théâtre-Français, et -d’un commissaire de toute autorité constituée qui aurait fait -apposer des scellés dans la demeure de feu Jacques-Georges -Danton, condamné à mort le seize germinal, an deuxième, par le -Tribunal Révolutionnaire établi à Paris, y procéder à la levée -d’iceux, et pareillement à celle de ceux dudit bureau du domaine -national en ladite demeure, sise rue des Cordeliers, nᵒ 24, le tout -en présence du citoyen Charpentier, beau-père dudit feu Danton -et tuteur d’Antoine et François-Georges Danton, enfants mineurs -dudit <i>deffunt</i>, et de la citoyenne feue Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, -fille dudit citoyen Charpentier, ayeul et tuteur desdits -mineurs; faire ensuite concurremment avec ledit tuteur, et en présence -de la citoyenne seconde femme en secondes noces dudit -Danton, ou de son fondé de pouvoir, le recollement des meubles -et effets dudit <i>deffunt</i> sur l’inventaire qui en a été précédemment -fait, ensuite mettre le logement cy-dessus désigné, et pareillement -les titres et papiers, meubles et effets qui se trouveront à la -disposition dudit citoyen Charpentier au nom et qualité qu’il procède, -moyennant décharge valable, destituer le gardien préposé à -la garde des scellés, duquel remise lui sera faite par extrait de -ladite destitution.</p> - -<p>“Nous, Jean-Baptiste Jourdain cy-dessus <i>qualiffié</i>, demeurant -audit Paris, rue de la Liberté, nᵒ 86, section du Théâtre-Français.</p> - -<p>“Étant accompagné des citoyens Beurnier et Leblanc, commissaires -adjoints au comité civil de la susdite section, requis par -nous audit comité civil, sommes ensemble et en vertu de l’arrêté -ci-dessus <i>datté</i>, transporté en la demeure sus <i>ditte</i>, rue des Cordeliers, -<i>ditte</i> de l’<i>Écolle</i> de Santé, audit nᵒ 24, entré de la cour du -Commerce, où étant nous avons requis le citoyen Desgranges, -gardien, de nous faire ouverture lors de l’intervention dudit citoyen -Charpentier et de la citoyenne Gély, seconde femme dudit Danton....</p> - -<p>“Clos le présent à deux heures de relevée dudit jour, vingt-cinq -messidor, an troisième de la République une et indivisible, -et ont lesdits citoyens Charpentier et Gély, ainsi que nos adjoints -et ledit citoyen Desgranges, signés le présent avec nous, après<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_379"></a>[379]</span> -lecture, approuvé trente-neuf mots rayés comme nuls, ainsi signés -Gély, Charpentier Le Blanc, Desgranges, Jourdain et Beurnier. -Plus bas est écrit. Enregistré à Paris, le premier thermidor an -3ᵒ. Reçu quatre livres. Signé Caron. Deux mots rayés nuls à -la présente.</p> - -<p>“Pour <i>coppie</i> conforme, délivrée par nous, membres du bureau -du Domaine national du département de Paris.</p> - -<p>“A Paris, le sept thermidor an troisième de la Republique une -et indivisible.</p> - -<p class="right">Signé <span class="smcap">Renesson</span>, <span class="smcap">Duchatel</span>.</p> - -<p>“Collationné à l’original, déposé aux archives de Seine-et-Oise.</p> - -<p class="right"><i>L’archiviste</i>,<br /> -<span class="smcap">Sainte-Marie Mévil</span>.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>The lack of education in the Robespierrian functionary -is worth noting.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_380"></a>[380]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_VIII">VIII<br /> -<span class="smaller">CATALOGUE OF DANTON’S LIBRARY</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>No part of the very scanty evidence we possess upon -Danton’s personal life and habits is of more value than this -little list. It is the small and carefully chosen bookcase -of a man thoroughly conversant with English and Italian -as well as with his own tongue. He buys a work in the -original almost invariably, and collects, in a set of less than -two hundred works, classic after classic. He has read his -Johnson and his Pope; he knows Adam Smith; he has -been at the pains to study Blackstone. It must be carefully -noted that every book he bought was his own choice. -There were only a few legal summaries at the old home at -Arcis, and Danton was a man who never had a reputation -for learning or for letters, still less had he cause to buy a -single volume for effect. I know of few documents more -touching than this catalogue, coming to the light after -seventy years of silence, and showing us the mind of a man -who was cut off suddenly and passed into calumny. He -had read familiarly in their own tongues Rabelais and -Boccaccio and Shakespeare.</p> - -<p><i>The following volumes are in English</i>:—</p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td>A translation of Plutarch’s Lives</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Dryden’s translation of Virgil</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Shakespeare</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Pope</td> - <td class="tdr">6</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Sussini’s Letters</td> - <td class="tdr">1</td> - <td>vol.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>The Spectator</td> - <td class="tdr">12</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Clarissa Harlowe</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td class="tdc">”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_381"></a>[381]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>A translation of Don Quixote (probably Smollett’s)</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="ditto">”</span> <span class="ditto">”</span> Gil Blas</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Essay on Punctuation</td> - <td class="tdr">1</td> - <td>vol.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Johnson’s Dictionary (in folio)</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Blackstone</td> - <td class="tdr">1</td> - <td>vol.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Life of Johnson</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” (number of<br /> - vols. given as 23, probably an error)</td> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td class="tdc"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Robertson’s History of Scotland</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="ditto">”</span> <span class="ditto">”</span> America</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Works of Dr. Johnson</td> - <td class="tdr">7</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><i>The following are in Italian</i>:—</p> - -<p>(The names are not given in Italian by the lawyer, and I can -only follow his version.)</p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td>Venuti: History of Modern Rome</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Guischardini: History of Italy</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Fontanini: Italian Eloquence</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Denina’s Italian Revolutions</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Caro’s translation of Virgil</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Boccaccio’s Decameron</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Ariosto</td> - <td class="tdr">5</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Boiardi’s edition of the “Orlando Furioso”</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Métastase (?)</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Dalina (?)</td> - <td class="tdr">7</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Reichardet (?)</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Davila: History of the French Civil Wars</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“Letters on Painting and Sculpture”</td> - <td class="tdr">5</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Il Morgante de Pulci, 12 mo</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><i>The remainder (except one or two legal books and classics) -are in French.</i></p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td>Métamorphoses d’Ovide, traduit par Banier, in 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Rousseau, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">16</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Maison Rustique, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Lucrèce, traduit par La Grange, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Amours de Daphnis et Chloé, 4to, Paris, 1745</td> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td class="tdc"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_382"></a>[382]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Lucien, traduit du grec, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">6</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Montesquieu, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">5</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Montaigne, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Malby, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">13</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— Complètes d’Helvétius, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Philosophie de la nature, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">7</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Histoire Philosophique, de l’Abbé Raynal, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">10</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Boulanger, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">5</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Caractères de la Bruyère, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Brantôme, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Rabelais, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Fables de La Fontaine, avec les figures de Fessard, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">6</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Contes de La Fontaine, avec belles figures, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Scarron, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">7</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Piron, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">7</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Voltaire, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">91</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Lettres de Sévigné, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Corneille, 12 mo</td> - <td class="tdr">6</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Racine, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Gresset, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Molière, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Crébillon, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Fiévé (sic), 12 mo</td> - <td class="tdr">5</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— de Regnard, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Traité des Délits, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">1</td> - <td>vol.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Le Sceau Enlevé, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Tableau de la Révolution Française,</td> - <td class="tdr">13</td> - <td>cahiers</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Dictionnaire de Bayle, folio</td> - <td class="tdr">5</td> - <td>vols.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>César de Turpin, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">3</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Pasquier, folio</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Histoire de France de Velly, Villaret et Garnier, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">30</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Histoire du P. Hénault, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">25</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— Ecclésiastique de Fleury, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">25</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— d’Angleterre de Rapin, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">16</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Dictionnaire de l’Académie, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Corpus Doctorum, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">1</td> - <td>vol.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Dictionnaire Historique, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">8</td> - <td>vols.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_383"></a>[383]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Abrégé de l’Histoire des Voyages, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">23</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle de Bomard, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">15</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Virgile de Desfontaines, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Buffon, 12mo, figures</td> - <td class="tdr">58</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Hérodote de Larcher, 8vo</td> - <td class="tdr">7</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Œuvres de Démosthenes et d’Eschyle, par Auger, 4to</td> - <td class="tdr">4</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Histoire Ancienne de Rollin, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">14</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Cours d’Etudes de Condillac, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">16</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Histoire Moderne, 12 mo</td> - <td class="tdr">30</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>— du Bas-Empire, 12mo</td> - <td class="tdr">22</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Corpus Juris Civilis, folio</td> - <td class="tdr">2</td> - <td class="tdc">”</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Encyclopédie par Ordre de Matières, toutes les<br /> - livraisons excepté la dernière (1).</td> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td class="tdc"></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p>The whole is valued at just over a hundred pounds (2800 livres).</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_384"></a>[384]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_IX">IX<br /> -<span class="smaller">EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMOIR WRITTEN IN 1846 BY THE SONS OF DANTON</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>This memoir was written by Danton’s sons. Both survived -him, the one by fifty-five, the other by sixty-four years -(1849, 1858). Their fortune was restored to them by the -Republic two years after their father’s death (13th April -1796). Their guardian, Charpentier (their maternal grandfather), -died in 1804; they then were taken in by Danton’s -mother, Mme. Recordain, who was still living at Arcis. -She died in October 1813, a year in which the youngest -came of age, and they sold out the greater part of the land -in which Danton’s fortune had been invested, and appear -to have put the capital into one of the new factories which -sprang up after the peace. In 1832 we find them partners -and heads of a cotton-spinning establishment at Arcis, -which they maintain till their deaths. They left, unfortunately, -no surviving sons.</p> - -<p>The manuscript was written for Danton’s nephew, the -son of a younger brother. This nephew became inspector -of the University of Paris, and lent the MSS. to several -historians, among others, Michelet and Bougeart. It finally -passed into the possession of the latter, who gave it to Dr. -Robinet. This writer printed it in the appendix of the -“Vie Privée,” from which I take it.</p> - -<p>It is not a precise historical document, such as are the -official reports, receipts, &c., upon which much of this book -depends. Thus, it ignores the dowry of Mdlle. Charpentier -and the exact date of the second marriage; it is weak on -some points, especially dates, but there attaches to it the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_385"></a>[385]</span> -interest due to the very quality from which these errors -proceed—I mean its familiar reminiscences. While the -memory of these men, advanced in life, is at fault in details, -it is more likely to be accurate in the motives and tendencies -it describes than are we of a hundred years later.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Rien au monde ne nous est plus cher que la mémoire de notre -père. Elle a été, elle est encore tous les jours calomniée, outragée -d’une manière affreuse; aussi notre désir le plus ardent a-t-il toujours -été de voir l’histoire lui rendre justice.</p> - -<p>“Georges-Jacques Danton, notre père, se maria deux fois. Il -épousa d’abord en juin 1787, Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, -qui mourut le 10 février 1793. Dans le cours de cette même -année 1793, nous ne pourrions pas indiquer l’époque precise, il -épousa, en secondes noces, Mademoiselle Sophie Gély, qui vivait -encore il y a deux ans (nous ne savons pas si elle est morte depuis). -Notre père en mourant ne laissa que deux fils issus de son premier -mariage. Nous sommes nés l’un le 18 juin 1790, et l’autre le -2 février 1792; notre père mourut le 5 avril 1794; nous n’avons -donc pas pu avoir le bonheur de recevoir ses enseignements, ses -confidences, d’être initiés à ses pensées à ses projets. Au moment -de sa mort tout chez lui a été saisi, confisqué, et plus tard, aucun -de ses papiers, à l’exception de ses titres de propriété, ne nous a -été rendu. Nous avons été élevés par M. François-Jérôme Charpentier, -notre grand-père maternel et notre tuteur. Il ne parlait -jamais sans attendrissement de Danton, son gendre. M. Charpentier, -qui habitait Paris, y mourut en 1804, à une époque où, sans -doute, il nous trouvait encore trop jeunes pour que nous puissions -bien apprécier ce qu’il aurait pu nous raconter de la vie politique -de notre père, car il s’abstint de nous en parler. Du reste, il avait -environ quatre-vingts ans quand il mourut; et, dans ses dernières -années, son esprit paraissait beaucoup plus occupé de son avenir -dans un autre monde que de ce qui s’était passé dans celui-ci. -Après la mort de notre grand-père Charpentier, M. Victor Charpentier, -son fils, fut nommé notre tuteur. Il mourut en 1810. -Quoiqu’il habitât Paris, nous revînmes en 1805 à Arcis, pour ne -plus le quitter. La fin de notre enfance et le commencement de -notre jeunesse s’y écoulèrent auprès de la mère de notre père. Elle -était affaiblie par l’âge, les infirmités et les chagrins. C’était toujours<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_386"></a>[386]</span> -les yeux remplis de larmes qu’elle nous entretenait de son -fils, des innombrables témoignages d’affection qu’il lui avait donnés, -des tendres caresses dont il l’accablait. Elle fit de fréquents voyages -à Paris; il aimait tant à la voir à ses côtés! Il avait en elle une -confiance entière; elle en était digne, et, s’il eût eu des secrets, -elle les eût connus, et nous les eussions connus par elle. Très -souvent elle nous parlait de la Révolution; mais, en embrasser -tout l’ensemble d’un seul coup d’œil, en apprécier les causes, en -suivre la marche, en juger les hommes et les événements, en distinguer -tous les partis, deviner leur but, démêler les fils qui les -faisaient agir, tout cela n’était pas chose facile, on conviendra: -aussi, quoique la mère de Danton eût beaucoup d’intelligence et -d’esprit, on ne sera pas surpris que, d’après ses récits, nous n’ayons -jamais connu la Révolution que d’une manière extrêmement confuse...</p> - -<p>“Sa mère, d’accord avec tous ceux qui nous ont si souvent parlé -de lui pour l’avoir connu, et que notre position sociale ne fera, -certes, pas suspecter de flatterie, sa mère nous l’a toujours dépeint -comme le plus honnête homme que l’on puisse rencontrer, comme -l’homme le plus aimant, le plus franc, le plus loyal, le plus désintéressé, -le plus généreux, le plus dévoué à ses parents, à ses amis, -à son pays natal et à sa patrie. Quoi d’étonnant, nous dira-t-on? -Dans la bouche d’une mère, que prouve un pareil éloge? Rien, -sinon qu’elle adorait son fils. On ajoutera: Est-ce que pour juger -un homme la postérité devra s’en rapporter aux déclarations de la -mère et des fils de cet homme? Non, sans doute, elle ne le devra -pas, nous ne convenons. Mais aussi, pour juger ce même homme -devra-t-elle s’en rapporter aux déclarations de ses ennemis? Elle -ne le devra pas davantage. Et pourtant que ferait-elle si, pour -juger Danton, elle ne consultait que les ‘Mémoires’ de ceux qu’il -a toujours combattus?...</p> - -<p>“On a reproché à Danton d’avoir exploité la Révolution pour -amasser scandaleusement une fortune énorme. Nous allons prouver -d’une manière incontestable que c’est à très grand tort qu’on lui a -adressé ce reproche. Pour atteindre ce but, nous aliens comparer -l’état de sa fortune au commencement de la Révolution avec l’état -de sa fortune au moment de sa mort.</p> - -<p>“Au moment où la Révolution éclata, notre père était avocat -aux conseils du Roi. C’est un fait dont il n’est pas nécessaire de<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_387"></a>[387]</span> -fournir la preuve: ses ennemis eux-mêmes ne le contestent pas. -Nous ne pouvons pas établir d’un manière précise et certaine ce -qu’il possédait à cette époque, cependant nous disons que, s’il ne -possédait rien autre chose (ce qui n’est pas prouvé) <i>il possédait au -moins sa charge</i>, et voici sur ce point notre raisonnement:—</p> - -<p>“(1ᵒ) Quelques notes qui sont en notre possession nous prouvent -que Jacques Danton, notre grand-père, décédé a Arcis, le 24 février -1762, laissa des immeubles sur le finage de Plancy et sur celui -d’Arcis, il est donc présumable que notre père, né le 26 octobre -1759, et par consequent resté mineur en très bas âge, a dû posséder -un patrimoine quelconque, si modique qu’on veuille le supposer.”...</p> - -<p>[Here follow guesses as to how he paid for his place in the -<i>Conseils</i>. They are of no importance now, as we possess the documents -which give us this (p. 365). The only point of interest in -the passage omitted is the phrase, “probably our mother brought -some dowry.” We know its amount (p. 366), but the sentence -is an interesting proof of the complete dislocation which Germinal -produced in the family.]</p> - -<p>“Nous allons établir que ce qu’il possédait au moment de sa -mort n’était que l’équivalent à peu près de sa charge d’avocat aux -conseils. Nous n’avons jamais su s’il a été fait des actes de partage -de son patrimoine et de celui de ses femmes, ni, si, au moment de -la confiscation de ses biens, il en a été dressé inventaire, mais nous -savons très-bien et très-exactement ce que nous avons recueilli de -sa succession, et nous allons le dire, sans rester dans le vague sur -aucun point, car c’est ici que, comme nous l’avons annoncé, nos -arguments vont être basés sur des actes authentiques.</p> - -<p>“Nous ferons observer que l’état que nous allons donner comprend -sans distinction ce qui vient de notre père et de notre mère.</p> - -<p>“Une loi de février 1791 ordonna que le prix des charges et -offices supprimés serait remboursé par l’État aux titulaires. La -charge que Danton possédait était de ce nombre. Nous n’avons -jamais su, pas même approximativement, combien elle lui avait -coûté. Il en reçut le remboursement sans doute, car précisément -vers cette époque, il commença à acheter des immeubles dont voici -le detail:—</p> - -<p>“Le 24 mars 1791, il achète aux enchères, moyennant quarante-huit -mille deux cents livres, un bien national provenant du clergé,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_388"></a>[388]</span> -consistant en une ferme appelée Nuisement, située sur le finage de -Chassericourt, canton de Chavanges, arrondissement d’Arcis, département -de l’Aube, à sept lieues d’Arcis.... Danton avait -acheté cette ferme la somme de quarante-huit mille deux cents, -ci</p> - -<p class="right">48,200 liv.</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="spacer">———</span></p> - -<p class="right"><span class="spacer">A reporter</span> 48,200 liv.</p> - -<p>“12 avril 91.—II achète aux enchères du district -d’Arcis, par l’entremise de maître Jacques Jeannet-Boursier....</p> - -<p>[Then follows a list of purchases made in the month of April -1791, of which the most important is an extension to the house at -Arcis—the total of these is 33,600 livres; and in October 1791 a -few acres of land in the town and a patch of wood for 3160 livres. -Then follows the sum total.]</p> - -<p>“Total du prix de toutes les acquisitions d’immeubles faites -par Danton en mil sept cent quatre-vingt-onze: quatre-vingt-quatre -mille neuf cent soixante livres, ci</p> - -<p class="right">84,960 liv.</p> - -<p>“On doit remarquer qu’il est présumable que la plus grande -partie de ces acquisitions a dû être payée en assignats qui, à cette -époque, perdaient déjà de leur valeur et dont, par conséquent, la -valeur nominale était supérieure à leur valeur réelle en argent, -d’où il résulterait que le prix réel en argent des immeubles ci-dessus -indiqués aurait été inférieur à 84,960 livres.</p> - -<p>“Depuis cette dernière acquisition du 8 novembre 1791 jusqu’à -sa mort, Danton ne fit plus aucune acquisition importante:—...</p> - -<p>[Here then is what Danton left.]</p> - -<p>“(1ᵒ) La ferme de Nuisement (vendue par nous le 23 juillet -1813);</p> - -<p>“(2ᵒ) Sa modeste et vieille maison d’Arcis, avec sa dépendance, -le tout contenant non plus 9 arpents, 3 denrées, 14 carreaux -(ou bien 4 hectares, 23 ares, 24 centiares) seulement, comme au -13 avril 1791, époque où il en fit l’acquisition de Mademoiselle -Piot, mais par suite des additions qu’il y avait faites, 17 arpents, -3 denrées, 52 carreaux (ou bien 786 ares, 23);</p> - -<p>“(3ᵒ) 19 arpents, 1 denrées, 41 carreaux (898 ares, 06) de pré -et saussaie;</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_389"></a>[389]</span></p> - -<p>“(4ᵒ) 8 arpents, 1 denrée, 57 carreaux (369 ares, 96) de bois;</p> - -<p>“(5ᵒ) 2 denrées, 40 carreaux (14 ares, 07) de terre située dans -l’enceinte d’Arcis.</p> - -<p>“Nous déclarons à qui voudra l’entendre et au besoin nous -déclarons <i>sous la foi du serment</i>, que nous n’avons recueilli de la -succession de Georges-Jacques Danton, notre père, et d’Antoinette-Gabrielle -Charpentier, notre mère, rien, absolument rien autre -chose que les immeubles dont nous venons de donner l’état, que -quelques portraits de famille et le buste en plâtre de notre mère, -lesquels, longtemps après la mort de notre second tuteur, nous -furent remis par son épouse, et que quelques effets mobiliers qui -ne méritent pas qu’on en fasse l’énumeration ni la description, -mais que nous n’en avons recueilli aucune somme d’argent, aucune -créance, en un mot rien de ce qu’on appelle valeurs mobilières, à -l’exception pourtant d’une rente de 100 fr. 5 p. 100 dont MM. -Defrance et Détape, receveurs de rentes à Paris, rue Chabannais, -nᵒ 6, ont opéré la vente pour nous le 18 juin 1825, rente qui avait -été achetée pour nous par l’un de nos tuteurs....</p> - -<p>“On pourra nous faire une objection qui mérite une réponse; -on pourra nous dire: Vous n’avez recueilli de la succession de votre -père et de votre mère que les immeubles et les meubles dont vous -venez de faire la déclaration, mais cela ne prouve pas que la fortune -de votre père, au moment de sa mort, ne se composât que de ces -seuls objets; car sa condamnation ayant entraîné la confiscation de -tous ses biens sans exception, la République a pu en vendre et en -a peut-être vendu pour des sommes considérables. Vous n’avez -peut-être recueilli que ce qu’elle n’a pas vendu.</p> - -<p>“Voici notre réponse:—</p> - -<p>“Les meubles et les immeubles confisqués à la mort de notre -père dans le département de l’Aube et non vendus, furent remis -en notre possession par un arrêté de l’administration de ce département, -en date du 24 germinal an IV. (13 avril 1796), arrêté dont -nous avons une copie sous les yeux, arrêté pris en conséquence -d’une pétition présentée par notre tuteur, arrêté basé sur la loi du -14 floréal an III. (3 mai 1795), qui consacre le principe de la -restitution des biens des condamnés par les tribunaux et les commissions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_390"></a>[390]</span> -révolutionnaires, basé sur la loi du 21 prairial an III. (9 -juin 1795), qui lève le séquestre sur ces biens et en règle le mode -de restitution; enfin, arrêté basé sur la loi du 13 thermidor an III. -(31 juillet 1795), dont il ne rappelle pas les dispositions.</p> - -<p>“L’administration du département de l’Aube, dans la même -délibération, arrête que le produit des meubles et des immeubles -qui ont été vendus et des intérêts qui ont été perçus depuis le 14 -floréal an III. (3 mai 1795), montant à la somme de douze mille -quatre cent cinq livres quatre sous quatre deniers, sera restitué à -notre tuteur, en bons au porteur admissibles en payement de -domaines nationaux <i>provenant d’émigrés seulement</i>. Nous ne -savons pas si notre tuteur reçut ces bons au porteur; s’il les reçut, -quel usage il en fit; nous savons seulement qu’il n’acheta pas de -biens d’émigrés. Il résulte évidemment de cet arrêté de l’administration -du département de l’Aube, que dans ce département le -produit des meubles et immeubles provenant de Danton et vendus -au profit de la République, ne s’est pas élevé au-dessus de 12,405 -livres 4 sous 4 deniers. C’était le total de l’état de réclamation -présenté par notre tuteur dans sa pétition, et tout le monde pensera, -comme nous, qu’il n’aura pas manqué de faire valoir tous -nos droits. On peut remarquer que dans cet arrêté il est dit que -ces 12,405 livres sont le montant du produit des meubles et des -immeubles vendus, et des <i>intérêts</i> qui ont été perçus depuis le 14 -floréal an III. (3 mai 1795).... Mais si d’un côté on doit ajouter -12,405 livres, d’un autre côté on doit retrancher 16,065 livres qui -restaient dues aux personnes qui ont vendu à notre père les -immeubles dont nous avons hérité....</p> - -<p>“Il est donc établi d’abord que dans le département de l’Aube, -le prix des meubles et des immeubles qui ont été vendus n’a pas -pu s’élever au-dessus de 12,405 livres; ensuite que notre père, au -moment de sa mort, devait encore 16,065 livres sur le prix d’acquisition -des immeubles qu’il y possédait....</p> - -<p>“Maintenant nous allons citer quelques faits <i>authentiques</i> qui -pourront faire apprécier la bonté de son cœur. Nous avons vu -précédemment que ce fut en mars et en avril 1791 qu’il acheta la -majeure partie, on pourrait même dire la presque totalité des -immeubles qu’il possédait quand il mourut.</p> - -<p>“Voici un des sentiments qui agitaient son cœur en mars et en -avril 1791. Il désirait augmenter la modeste aisance de sa mère,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_391"></a>[391]</span> -de sa bonne mère qu’il adorait. Veut-on savoir ce qu’il s’empressa -de faire à son entrée en jouissance de ces immeubles qu’il venait -d’acheter? Jetons un regard sur l’acte que nous tenons dans les -mains. Il a été passé le 15 avril 1791 (deux jours après la vente -faite à Danton par Mademoiselle Piot) par-devant Mᵉ Odin que en -a gardé la minute, et Mᵉ Étienne son collègue, notaires à Troyes. -Danton y fait donation entre-vifs, pure, simple et irrévocable, à sa -mère de six cents livres de rentes annuelles et viagères, payables -de six mois en six mois, dont les premiers six mois payables au 15 -octobre 1791. Sur cette rente de 600 livres, Danton veut qu’en -cas de décès de sa mère, 400 livres soient reversibles sur M. Jean -Recordain, son mari (M. Recordain était un homme fort aisé -lorsqu’il épousa la mère de Danton; il était extrêmement bon, sa -bonté allait même jusqu’à la faiblesse, puisque, par sa complaisance -pour de prétendus amis dont il avait endossé des billets, il perdit -une grande partie de ce qu’il avait apporté en mariage, néanmoins -c’était un si excellent homme, il avait toujours été si bon pour les -enfants de Jacques Danton, qu’ils le regardaient comme leur -véritable père; aussi Danton, son beau-fils, avait-il pour lui beaucoup -d’affection). Le vif désir que ressent Danton de donner aux -donataires des marques certaines de son amitié pour eux, est la -seule cause de cette donation. Cette rente viagère est à prendre -sur la maison et sur ses dépendances, situées à Arcis, que Danton -vient d’acquérir le 13 avril 1791. Tel fut son premier acte de -prise de possession.</p> - -<p>“On remarquera que cette propriété, au moment où Mademoiselle -Piot la vendit, était louée par elle à plusieurs locataires -qui lui payaient ensemble la somme de 600 livres annuellement. -Si Danton eût été riche et surtout aussi riche que ses ennemis ont -voulu le faire croire, son grande cœur ne se fût pas contenté de -faire à sa mère une pension si modique. Pour faire cette donation -Danton aurait pu attendre qu’il vint à Arcis; mais il était si pressé -d’obéir au sentiment d’amour filial qu’il éprouvait que, dès le 17 -mars 1791, il avait donné à cet effet une procuration spéciale à M. -Jeannet-Bourcier, qui exécuta son mandat deux jours après avoir -acheté pour Danton la propriété de Mademoiselle Piot. Aussitôt -que la maison était devenue vacante et disponible, Danton, qui -aimait tant être entouré de sa famille, avait voulu que sa mère et -son beau-père vinssent l’habiter, ainsi que M. Menuel, sa femme<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_392"></a>[392]</span> -et leurs enfants (M. Menuel avait épousé la sœur aînée de -Danton).</p> - -<p>“Au 6 août 1792 Danton était a Arcis; on était à la veille -d’un grand événement qu’il prévoyait sans doute. Au milieu des -mille pensées qui doivent alors l’agiter, au milieu de l’inquiétude -que doivent lui causer les périls auxquels il va s’exposer, quelle -idée prédomine, quelle crainte vient l’atteindre? Il pense à sa -mère, il craint de n’avoir pas suffisamment assuré son mort et sa -tranquillité; en voici la preuve dans cet acte passé le 6 août 1792 -par-devant Mᵉ Finot, notaire à Arcis. Qu’y lit-on? ‘Danton -voulant donner à sa mère des preuves des sentiments de respect et -de tendresse qu’il a toujours eus pour elle, il lui assure, sa vie -durant, une habitation convenable et commode, lui fait donation -entre-vifs, pure, simple et irrévocable, de l’usufruit de telles parts -et portions qu’elle voudra choisir dans la maison et dépendances -situées à Arcis, rue des Ponts, qu’il a aquise de Mademoiselle Piot -de Courcelles, et dans laquelle maison sa mère fait alors sa demeure, -et de l’usufruit de trois denrées de terrain à prendre dans tel -endroit du terrain qu’elle voudra choisir, pour jouir desdits objets -à compter du jour de la donation. Si M. Jean Recordain survit à -sa femme, donation lui est faite par le même acte de l’usufruit -de la moitié des objets qu’aura choisis et dont aura joui sa -femme....</p> - -<p>“Voici encore une pièce, peu importante en elle-même à la -vérité, mais qui honore Danton et qui prouve sa bonté: c’est un pétition -en date du 30 thermidor an II. (17 août 1794), adressée -aux citoyens administrateurs du département de Paris, par Marguerite -Hariot (veuve de Jacques Geoffroy, charpentier à Arcis), -qui expose que par acte passé devant Mᵉ Finot, notaire à Arcis, le -11 décembre 1791, Danton, dont elle était la nourrice, lui avait -assuré et constitué une rente viagère de cent livres dont elle devait -commencer à jouir à partir du jour du décès de Danton, -ajoutant que, de son vivant, il ne bornerait pas sa générosité à -cette somme. Elle demande, en conséquence, que les administrateurs -du département de Paris, ordonnent que cette rente viagère -lui soit payée à compter du jour du décès et que le principal en -soit prélevé sur ses biens confisqués au profit de la République. -Nous ne savons pas ce qui fut ordonné. Cette brave femme, que -notre père ne manquait jamais d’embrasser avec effusion et à<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_393"></a>[393]</span> -plusieurs reprises chaque fois qu’il venait à Arcis, ne lui survécut -que pendant peu d’années.</p> - -<p>“La recherche que nous avons faite dans les papiers qui nous -sont restés de la succession de notre grand’mère Recordain, papiers -dont nous ne pouvons pas avoir la totalité, ne nous a fourni que -ces trois pièces <i>authentiques</i> qui témoignent en faveur de la bonté -de Danton dans sa vie privée. Quant aux traditions orales que -nous avons pu recueillir, elles sont en petit nombre et trop peu -caractéristiques pour être rapportées. Nous dirons seulement que -Danton aimait beaucoup la vie champêtre et les plaisirs qu’elle -pent procurer. Il ne venait à Arcis que pour y jouir, au milieu -de sa famille et de ses amis, du repos, du calme et des amusements -de la campagne. Il disait dans son langage sans recherche, à -Madame Recordain, en l’embrassant: ‘Ma bonne mère, quand -aurai-je le bonheur de venir demeurer auprès de vous pour ne plus -vous quitter, et n’ayant plus à penser qu’à planter mes choux?’</p> - -<p>“Nous ne savons pas s’il avait des ennemis ici, nous ne lui en -avons jamais connu aucun. On nous a très-souvent parlé de lui -avec éloge; mais nous n’avons jamais entendu prononcer un mot -qui lui fût injurieux, ni même défavorable, pas même quand nous -étions au collège; là pourtant les enfants, incapables de juger la -portée de ce qu’ils disent, n’hésitent pas, dans une querelle -occasionnée par le motif le plus frivole, à s’adresser les reproches -les plus durs et les plus outrageants. Nos condisciples n’avaient -donc jamais entendu attaquer la mémoire de notre pere, il -n’avait donc pas d’ennemis dans son pays.</p> - -<p>“Nous croyons ne pas devoir omettre une anecdote qui se rapporte -à sa vie politique. Nous la tenons d’un de nos amis qui l’a -souvent entendu raconter par son père, M. Doulet, homme très recommandable -et très digne de foi, qui, sous l’Empire, fut longtemps -maire de la ville d’Arcis. Danton était à Arcis dans le -mois de novembre 1793. Un jour, tandis qu’il se promenait dans -son jardin avec M. Doulet, arrive vers eux une troisième personne -marchant à grands pas, tenant un papier à la main (c’était un -journal) et qui, aussitôt qu’elle fut à portée de se faire entendre, -s’écrie: Bonne nouvelle! bonne nouvelle! et elle s’approche.—Quelle -nouvelle? dit Danton.—Tiens, lis! les Girondins sont -condamnés et exécutés, répond la personne qui venait d’arriver.—Et -tu appelles cela une bonne nouvelle, malheureux? s’écrie Danton<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_394"></a>[394]</span> -à son tour, Danton, dont les yeux s’emplissent aussitôt de -larmes. La mort des Girondins une bonne nouvelle? Misérable!—Sans -doute, répond son interlocuteur; n’était-ce pas des factieux?—Des -factieux, dit Danton. Est-ce que nous ne sommes -pas des factieux? Nous méritons tous la mort autant que les -Girondins; nous subirons tous, les uns après les autres, le même -sort qu’eux. Ce fut ainsi que Danton, le Montagnard, accueillit -la personne qui vint annoncer la mort des Girondins, auxquels -tant d’autres, en sa place, n’eussent pas manqué de garder -rancune....</p> - -<p>“La France aujourd’hui si belle, si florissante, te placera alors -au rang qui t’appartient parmi ses enfants généreux, magnanimes, -dont les efforts intrépides, inouïs, sont parvenus à lui ouvrir, au -milieu de difficultés et de dangers innombrables, un chemin à la -liberté, à la gloire, au bonheur. Un jour enfin, Danton, justice -complète sera rendue à ta mémoire! Puissent tes fils avant de -descendre dans la tombe, voir ce beau jour, ce jour tant désiré.”</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Danton.</span></p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_395"></a>[395]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_X">X<br /> -<span class="smaller">NOTES OF TOPINO-LEBRUN, JUROR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The interest of these notes is as follows:—They are the -only verbatim account of the trial which we possess. There -are of course the official accounts (especially that of -Coffinhal), and upon them is largely based the account in -M. Wallon’s <i>Tribunal Révolutionnaire</i>; but these rough -and somewhat disconnected notes, badly spelt and abbreviated, -were taken down without bias, and as the words -fell from the accused. Topino-Lebrun, the painter, was at -that time thirty-one years of age, a strong Montagnard of -course; he hesitated to condemn Danton, but was overborne -by his fellows, especially by his friend and master David.</p> - -<p>These notes were kept at the archives of the Prefecture -of Police until the year of the war. In 1867 M. Labat -made copies, and gave one to Dr. Robinet, and one to M. -Clarétie. Each of these writers has used them in their -works on the Dantonites. The original document was -burnt when, in May 1871, the Commune attempted to -destroy the building in which they were preserved.</p> - -<p>There are given below only those portions which directly -refer to Danton and his friends.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p><i>Au président, qui lui demande ses nom, prénoms, âge et domicile</i>, -il répond: Georges-Jacques Danton, 34 ans, né a Arcis-sur-Aube, -département de l’Aube, avocat, député à la Convention. Bientôt -ma demeure dans le néant et mon nom au Panthéon de l’histoire, -quoi qu’on en puisse dire; ce qui est très sûr et ce qui m’importe -peu. Le peuple respectera ma tête, oui, ma tête guillotinée!</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_396"></a>[396]</span></p> - -<h4><span class="smcap">Seance de 14 Germinal (13 Avril).</span></h4> - -<p>[Westermann having asked to be examined, the judge -said it was “une forme inutile.”]</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p><i>Danton.</i> Nous sommes cependant ici pour la forme.</p> - -<p><i>Vest. insiste.</i> Un juge vas (<i>sic</i>) l’interroger.</p> - -<p><i>Danton dit</i>: Pourvu qu’on nous donne la parole et largement, -je suis sûr de confondre mes accusateurs; et si le peuple français -est ce qu’il doit être, je serai obligé de demander leur grâce.</p> - -<p><i>Camille.</i> Ah! nous aurons la parole, c’est tout ce que nous -demandons (grande et sincère gaieté de tous les députés accusés).</p> - -<p><i>Danton.</i> C’est Barrère qui est patriote à present, n’est-ce-pas? -(Aux jurés)—C’est moi qui ai fait instituer le tribunal, ainsi je -dois m’y connaître.</p> - -<p><i>Vest.</i> Je demanderai à me mettre tout nu devant le peuple, -pour qu’on me voye. J’ai reçu sept blessures, toutes par devant; -je n’en ai reçu qu’une par derrière: mon acte d’accusation.</p> - -<p><i>Danton.</i> Nous respecterons le tribunal, parceque, &c.... -Danton montre Cambon et dit: Nous crois-tu conspirateurs? -Voyez il rit; il ne le croit pas. Écrivez qu’il a rit....</p> - -<p><i>Danton.</i> Moi vendu? un homme de ma trempe est impayable! -La preuve? Me taisais je lorsque j’ai défendu Marat; lorsque -j’ai été décrété deux fois sous Mirabeau; lorsque j’ai lutté contre -La Fayette?—Mon affiche, pour insurger, aux 5 et 6 octobre! -Que l’accusateur (Fouquier-Tinville) qui m’accuse d’après la Convention, -administre la preuve, les semi-preuves, les indices de ma -vénalité! J’ai trop servi; la vie m’est à charges. <i>Je demande -des commissionaires de la Convention pour recevoir ma dénonciation -sur le système de dictature.</i></p> - -<p>J’ai été nommé administrateur par un liste triple, le dernier, -par de bons citoyens en petit nombre [that is, substitute in -December 1790].</p> - -<p>Je forçai Mirabeau, aux Jacobins, de rester à son poste; je l’ai -combattu, lui qui voulait s’en retourner à Marseille.</p> - -<p>Où es ce patriote, qu’il vienne, je demande a être confondu, -qu’il paraisse, j’ai empêché le voyage de Saint-Cloud, j’ai été décrété -de prise de corps pour le Champ de Mars.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_397"></a>[397]</span></p> - -<p>J’offre de prouver le contraire [that is, the contrary of St. -Just’s statement that he was unmolested when he fled to -Arcis] et lisez la feuille de l’orateur: Des assassins furent envoyés -pour m’assassiner à Arcis, l’une a été arrêté.—Un huissier vint -pour mettre le décret à execution, je fuyais done, et le peuple -voulut en faire justice.—J’etais à la maison de mon beau-père; -on l’investit, on maltraita mon beau-frère pour moi, je me sauvais -(<i>sic</i>) à Londres, je suis revenu lorsque Garran fut nommé. On -offirit à Legendre 50,000 écus pour m’égorger. Lorsque les Lameth -... devenu partisans de la cour, Danton les combattit aux -Jacobins, devant le peuple, et demanda la République.</p> - -<p>Sous la législature je dis: la preuve que c’est la cour qui veut -la guerre c’est qu’elle a [a word illegible] l’initiative et la -sanction. Que les patriotes se rallient et alors si nous ne pouvons -vous vaincre nous triompherons de l’Europe (?).</p> - -<p>—Billaud-Varennes ne me pardonne pas d’avoir été mon secrétaire. -Quelle proposition avez-vous faite contre les Brissotins?—La -loi de Publicola! Je portai le cartel à Louvet, qui refusa. Je manquai -d’être assassiné à la Commune.—J’ai dit a Brissot, en plein, -Conseil, tu porteras la tête sur l’echafaud, et je l’ai rappelé ici à -Lebrun.</p> - -<p>—J’avai préparé le 10 août et je fus à Arcis, parce que Danton -est bon fils, passer trois jours, faire mes adieux à ma mere et régler -mes affaires il y a des témoins.—On m’a revu solidement, je ne -me suis point couché. J’étais aux Cordeliers, quoique substitut -de la Commune. Je dis au ministre Clavières, que venait de la -part de la Commune, que nous allions sonner l’insurrection. Après -avoir réglé toutes les opérations et le moment de l’attaque, je me -mis sur le lit comme un soldat, avec ordre de m’avertir. Je sortis -à une heure et je fus à la Commune devenue revolutionnaire. Je -fis l’arrêt de mort contre Mandat, qui avait l’ordre de tirer sur le -peuple. On mit le maire en arrestation et j’y restais (<i>sic</i>) suivant -l’avis des patriotes. Mon discours à l’Assemblée législative.</p> - -<p>—Je faisais la guerre au Conseil; je n’avais que ma voix, -quoique j’eusse de l’influence.</p> - -<p>—Mon parent, qui m’accompagna en Angleterre [Mergez, a -volunteer in 1792, and later a general of Napoleon’s] avait -dix huit ans.</p> - -<p>—Je crois encore Fabre bon citoyen.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_398"></a>[398]</span></p> - -<p>—J’atteste que je n’ai point donné ma voix à d’Orléans, qu’on -prouve que je l’ai fait nommer.</p> - -<p>—J’eûs 400 mille f. sur les 2 millions pour faire la rev., 200 -mille livres pour choses secrêtes. J’ai dépensé devant Marat et -Robespierre pour tous les commissaires des departements. Calomines -de Brissot. J’ai donne 6000 a Billaud pour aller à l’armée. -Les autres 200 mille, j’ai donné ma comptabilité de 130 mille et -le reste je l’ai remis.</p> - -<p>... Fabre la disponibilité de payer les commissaires, parce -que Billaud-Varenne avait de refusé (<i>sic</i>).</p> - -<p>Il n’est pas à ma connaissance que Fabre prêcha la fédéralisme.</p> - -<p>—J’embrasserais mon ennemi pour la patrie, à laquelle je donnerais -mon corps à dévorer.</p> - -<p>Je nie et prouve le contraire. Ce fut Marat qui m’envoya un -porte feuille et les pièces, et j’avais fait arrêter Duport. Se a -été jugé à Melun, d’après une loi. Liu et Lameth out voulu me -faire assassiner. Ministre de la Justice, j’ai fait executer la loi. -Pour mon fait, je n’avais pas de preuves judiciaires.</p> - -<p>—La guerre feinte n’est que depuis quinze jours, et le Brissotins -m’ont pardieu bien attaqué. Lisez le <i>Moniteur</i>. Barbaroux a fait -demander par le bataillon de Marseille ma tête et celles de Marat -et de Robespierre. Marat avait son caractère volcanisé, celui de -Robespierre tenace et ferme, et moi, je servais à ma manière.—Je -n’ai vu qu’une fois Dumourier, qui me tâta pour le ministre: -je repondis que je ne le serais qu’on bruit de canon. Il m’ecrivit -ensuite.—Placé là, Kelerman (<i>sic</i>) voulait passer la Marne et -Dumourier ne le voulait pas; embarrassé et mon dictateur, je -soutins le plan de Dumourier, qui reussit.—Craignant la jalousie -de deux généraux, j’envoyai Fabre, etc.... avait vu Vesterman, -au 10, le sabre à la main.</p> - -<p>—Je talonnai Servan et Laenée; je n’ai connu de plan militaire -que celui de Dumourier et de Kelerman, et Billaud fut nommé -par moi pour surveiller Dumourier; il eu a rendu compte à la -législature et aux Jacobin. Ordre d’examiner ce que c’etait... -cette retraite (<i>sic</i>). La Convention a envoyé trois commissaires.</p> - -<p>—Moi, ministre, j’embrassais la masse et les détails de la Justice.</p> - -<p>—Billaud m’a dit qu’il ne savait pas si Dumourier était un -traître; d’ailleurs c’était une surabondance de patriotisme.</p> - -<p>—Sur, la Belgique, répète son dire aux Jacobins.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_399"></a>[399]</span></p> - -<p>—Le piège des Brissots était de faire croire que nous desorganisions -les armées.</p> - -<p>—On me refuse des temoins, allons je ne me défends plus!</p> - -<p>—Je vous fais d’ailleurs mille excuses de ce qu’il y a de trop -chaud, c’est mon caractère.</p> - -<p>—Le peuple dechirera par morceaux mes ennemis avant trois -mois.</p> - -</div> - -<h4><span class="smcap">Séance du 15 Germinal (4 Avril).</span></h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p><i>Hérault.</i> Sur le petit Capet, nie le fait.—Il fut nommé pour -la partie diplomatique avec Barrère. Déclare que jamais il ne -s’est mêlé de negociations. Nie avoir jamais fait imprimer aucune -chose en diplomatie. Deforgues envoya Dubuisson.</p> - -<p><i>Hérault.</i> Je ne conçois rien à ce galimathias. Je me suis -opposé a l’envoi de Salavie. C’est un moyen employé par nos -ennemis. Envoyé dans le Bas-Rhin par le Comité, je travaillè -(<i>sic</i>) avec Berthelemy (<i>sic</i>) à la neutralité de la Suisse et j’ai sauvé -à la Republique un armée de soixante-mille hommes.—Jamais je -n’ai communiqué a Proly rien en politique, il n’y en avait pas. -Au surplus, il fallait me confronter avec Proly.—J’ai été trompé -comme j’a jaie st fois [J. Jay St. Foix] comme la Convention, -comme jam bon [this does not mean <i>ham</i>, but Jean-Bon St. -André], qui le voulait emmener secretaire, comme Colot. Comme -Marat, Proly a été porté en triomphe. La Convention, par un -decret solemnel, a reçu mes explications. Anacharsis me dit -vient (<i>sic</i>) dîner avec moi, dîner avec Dufourni, etc.... J’ai -laissé la veuve Chemineau, etc. L’huillier! c’est à l’instigation -de Clootz.</p> - -<p>J’ai connu l’abbé guillotiné en troie [that is, in Troyes] -(<i>sic</i>), dans mon exil il était chanoine et non refractaire. C’est -donc un plaisanterie. Il n’etait pas soumis au serment, il m’avait -assisté dans mon exil.</p> - -<p>Au 14 juillet, à la Bastille, j’ai eu deux hommes tués à mes -côtés. Maltraité par mes parents, j’ai voyage, j’ai été incarcéré -trois semaines en Sardaigne et je suis revenu.</p> - -<p><i>Camille.</i> Lors de sa dispute avec Saint-Just, celui-ce lui -dit qu’il le ferait périr,—j’ai denoncé Dumourier avant Marat; -d’Orleans, le premier, j’ai ouvert la Revolution et ma mort va la -fermer.—Marat s’est trompé sur Proly. Quel est l’homme qui<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_400"></a>[400]</span> -n’a pas eu son Dilon? Depuis le nᵒ 4 [that is, of the <i>Vieux -Cordelier</i>] je n’ai écris (<i>sic</i>) que pour me rétracter. J’ai -attaché le grelot à toutes les factions. On m’a encouragé! écrit -(<i>sic</i>) etc. demasque la faction Hébert, il est bon que quelqu’un -le fasse.</p> - -<p><i>Lacroix.</i> Sur la déclaration de Miajenski, rappelle qu’il l’a -confondu, que la Convention a été satisfaite, et qu’il n’a pas été -accusé pour cela. Il dit: je fus envoyé a Liége pour connaître -des reproches faits à la Tresorerie, et vice-versà. Nous étions -trois. Jamais je n’ai vu Dumourier en présence de Dumourier -(au lieu de Miacrinski?). J’ai dit a Miajenski, sa legion manquant -de tout, que je appuyerais devant mes collègues, mais qu’il -etait étonnant que sur le pays ennemi ou ne décrétât pas que les -troupes étrangerès fussent payées. Je n’ai ni bu, ni mangé avec -Dumourier. Vu pendant six à sept jours toujours ensemble. -Danton, Gossuin et moi nous avions visité toutes les caisses de la -Belgique pour examiner les faits.—Dumourier ne voulait point -prêter les mains au decrêt, je me levai et lui déclarai que s’il ne -signait pas à l’heure, nous le ferions garrotter, etc. Il signa -l’ordre à Ronsin.—La seconde fois nous nous rendîmes à Bruxelles, -Dumourier était en Hollande.—Tous mes collègues ont attesté que -je preposai de me laisser aller auprès de Dumourier l’observer et -le tuer mes collègues ne furent pas de cet avis.</p> - -<p>.. 1900 et 600 livres de linge acheté par Brune en présence -des collègues, pour la table. Il etait à bon marché. Il dut -être chargé sur les voitures que ramenaient en France les restitutions -des effets pillés par les généraux, c’était contenu dans une -malle à mon addresse. Je l’ai declaré alors au comité de Salut. -Alors je l’ai réclamée. Ne confondez pas la première voiture -d’argenterie qui fut pillé, elle etait expédiée par tous nos -collègues.</p> - -<p><i>Danton.</i> J’avais défié publiquement d’entrer en explication -sur l’imputation des 400,000. Il résulte du procès-verbal qu’il -n’y a à moi que mes chiffons et un corset molleton. <i>Le bas</i>, -sommé, m’a donné communication.</p> - -<p>Appelé aux Jacobins par mes collègues, je déclarais (<i>sic</i>) que -le renouvellement était contre-revolutionnaire: ce que portait (<i>sic</i>) -les pouvoirs des envoyés des sociétés populaires.—Billaud-Varennes -m’appuya et je fus chargé de faire la proposition le 11 à la<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_401"></a>[401]</span> -Convention.—Hébert, le lendemain, me dénonça dans sa feuille; et -voilà le principe de la calomnie.</p> - -<p>Je fus indigné, au 31 mai, de voir un officier qui disait: il -n’y a ni Marais, ni Montagne; qui distribuait de l’argent au -bataillon de Courbevoie; je ... témoin Panis, Legendre, Robespierre, -Pache, Robert-Lindet. Alors je montais (<i>sic</i>) à la tribune, -etc. ... que nous n’etions pas libres. Au Comité, devant Pache, -le 2 juin, j’ai improuvé la mesure maladroite de Hauriot. Nous -l’avions prévenu qu’en rentrant nous décréterions les 32, mais que -ce n’était pas assez pour la chose publique, qu’il fallait purger la -Convention, et a proposé 500,000 livres pour l’armée de Paris que -avait sauvé la patrie. Barère s’y opposa. C’est Barère qui a -proposé le décret d’accusation contre Hauriot; c’est moi qui ai -défendu Hauriot contre cela. Qu’on entende les témoins, la Convention -a été trompée.</p> - -<p>—J’ai appelé l’insurrection en demandant cinquante revolutionnaires -comme moi. La Convention m’appuya, l’avais dit trois -mois avant, il n’y a plus de paix avec les Girondins, ai-je la face -Hypocrite?</p> - -<p>Hanriot crut que j’etais opposé à l’insurrection et alors je lui -dis: vas toujours ton train, n’aie pas peur, nous voulons constater -que l’Assemblée est libre.</p> - -<p>—Je n’ai jamais bu ni mangé avec Mirande, et je proposai à mes -collègues de l’arrêter, il s’y opposerent.</p> - -<p>Je pris la main à Hanriot et lui dis: tiens bon.</p> - -<p><i>Hérault.</i> C’est moi qui ai découvert l’ordre signé au crayon -par Hauriot pour laisser passer la Convention, ainsi, etc.</p> - -<p><i>Philippeaux.</i> Arrivé de mon dépt j’ignorais les intrigues, je -fus trompé par Roland. Je me suis rétracté à temps.—Lorsque je -m’aperçus du piége tendu dans l’appel au peuple, je montai à la -tribune et j’abjurai et votai de suite comme la Montagne. J’ai -voté pour Marat (c’est faux, il n’a voté ni pour ni contre). Le -Comité ne répondant point à mes lettres, je suis venu ici. Le -Comité ne m’a point entendu. Alors, pour remplir mon devoir, -j’ai écrit à la Convention, et l’événement, sur Hébert, a prouvé, -etc. On a fait contre moi des adresses contre moi (<i>sic</i>) etc. On -a envoyé de chez moi trois commissaires pour connaître les faits et -Levasseur les a fait arrêter.</p> - -<p><i>Vesterman.</i> Lorsque Dumouriez etait en Belgique j’etais au<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_402"></a>[402]</span> -Hollande. Abandonné entre les ennemis, vivant de pillage, je -suis arrivé à Envers (<i>sic</i>) avec ma legion. Le regiment de cavalrie -fut attaqué. Je repoussai l’ennemi.</p> - -<p>Accusé de venir deux et trois fois apporter les dépêches de -Dumourier à Gensonné.</p> - -<p>L’armée manquait de souliers, je fus envoyé par Dumourier au -Conseil, et je les rapportai à l’armée.</p> - -<p>Dumourier lui montra la lettre de roi de Prusse pour son -secretaire, qu’il avait renvoyé, je courus après lui et l’arrêtai de -mon pouvoir. Le second voyage pour porter le pli des articles -arrêté (<i>sic</i>) entre les généraux.</p> - -<p>Il a encore été envoyé en otage à Mons, lors de l’evacuation.—Troisième -voyage pour amener Malus et d’Espagnac, et porta un -pacquet (<i>sic</i>) au président du comité diplomatique.—J’ai denoncé -au (<i>sic</i>) Jacobins, au Comité le fils naturel de Proly, et on me rit -au nez. Il engagea au déjeuné (<i>sic</i>) pour rétablien Dumourier -aux Jacobins. Pourquoi ne m’a-t-on pas appelé lors de la déposition -de Miajenski? J’etais ici, mandé à la barre. Dumourier -m’a toujours éloigné de lui. A protesté sur la capitulation -d’Anvers. Sur le fait de Lille.</p> - -<p>Avant d’arriver à Menhem Proly me denonca. Ici, on me -mis (<i>sic</i>) hors de la loi et un officier prussien me montra la feuille -de la Convention et m’engagea à rester, qu’on me payerait, et -chercha à m’effrayer en disant que les autres généraux avaient été -massacrés. Voir au comité militaire. Je fus à Lille avec ma -troupe. Je trouvai Mouton et vint (<i>sic</i>) prendre son ordre pour -venir à la barre.—J’ai prêté serment avant, à Douai. Le décret -du 4 mai dit qu’il n’y avait lieu à m’accuser. J’étais dénoncé aur -comités, je ne connais point Talma.</p> - -<p><i>Danton.</i> C’est Barère qui est patriote à present et Danton -aristocrate. La France ne croira pas cela longtemps.</p> - -<p><i>Danton, dans la chambre des accusés.</i>—Moi conspirateur? -Mon nom est accoté de toutes les institutions révolutionnaires: -levée, armée rév., comité rév., comité de salut public, tribunal -révolutionnaire, C’est moi qui me suis donné la mort, enfin, et je -suis un modéré!</p> - -</div> - -<p>[Topino-Lebrun left no notes of the following day, the -16 Germinal.]</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_403"></a>[403]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_XI">XI<br /> -<span class="smaller">REPORT OF THE FIRST COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY<br /> -TREATING OF THE GENERAL CONDITION OF THE REPUBLIC, AND READ BY BARRÈRE TO -THE CONVENTION ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1793</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>This report is the most important appendix not only to this book, -but to any description of the two days that expelled the Girondins. -It is here published for the first time, and, though of some length, -will well repay the reading for any student of the Revolution.</p> - -<p>I have dwelt sufficiently on its importance in the text, and I -can dismiss it here with a short introduction.</p> - -<p>It is the first great result of the Committee which Danton had -helped to create, and of which he was the soul. It is the first step -taken by this new organ of government towards that dictatorship -to exercise which it had been called into existence. The enormous -amount of detailed work necessary to produce it shows us the -number of agents which the Committee must have possessed, and -their activity, as well as the industry of the members themselves, -for it had been at work but eight weeks.</p> - -<p>Danton undoubtedly inspired the tone and direction of the -report, but the somewhat florid style is Barrère’s own. Dr. -Robinet thinks, however, that the last pages, from the section on -Public Instruction onwards, are in Danton’s manner, and M. -Boruard would even put it at the section on the Colonies, two -pages earlier. Even if this is the case, some sentences at least -were put in by Barrère, for they betray his inimitable verbiage, to -which Danton was a stranger.</p> - -<p>Of the important part the report played in the complicated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_404"></a>[404]</span> -history of the week May 26-June 3, 1793, enough has been said in -the text; it is only necessary to add here that no speech or memoir -contains such an indictment of the Girondin misgovernment as is -given indirectly by this list of ascertained facts in the condition -of France.</p> - -<p>The reading of the report is mentioned in the <i>Moniteur</i> of May -31, but, contrary to their custom, they did not print it on account -of its great length. It seems to have been read in the afternoon -from about two to four, just before Cambon’s motion was put to -the vote. I give the more important passages, about half the full -length of the document.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_405"></a>[405]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">CONVENTION NATIONALE</p> - -<p class="center">RAPPORT GÉNÉRAL<br /> -SUR<br /> -L’ÉTAT DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE</p> - -<p class="center"><i>Fait, au nom du Comité de Salut Public, dans la seance du<br /> -mercredi 29 mai, l’an second de la République</i>:</p> - -<p class="center"><i>Par Barrère</i>,</p> - -<p class="center"><i>Député du département des Hautes-Pyrénées</i></p> - -<p class="center"><i>Imprimé par ordre de la Convention Nationale</i></p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Citoyens</span>,—Chargés par les représentans du peuple de leur parler -aujourd’hui des grands intérêts qui les rassemblent, et des moyens que -nous avons employés depuis deux mois pour le salut de la patrie en -péril; nous réclamons d’abord de votre justice de remonter par la -pensée, à l’èpoque de notre nomination, et de vous rappeler en quel -état se trouvaient alors la République et toute les parties d’administration -nationale.</p> - -<p>Quoiqu’accablés par la tâche périlleuse et grande que vous nous avez -imposée, nous avons dû obéir. Votre confiance, notre zèle et l’amour -de notre pays ont dû nous tenir lieu de facultés.</p> - -<p>Au-dehors se présentait une guerre terrible à soutenir sur des frontières -d’une étendue immense et sur des côtes indéfendues. Audedans, -se propageaient des dissensions civiles, portant avec elles les deux -caractères les plus funestes, le fanatisme royal et religieux, secouru par -des perfidies multipliées dans l’intérieur, et par des intelligences combinées -audehors.</p> - -</div> - -<p>What follows is a general indictment of the results of -Girondin rule, with special and particular attacks on the -Ministry of War and on their fear of responsibility.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>On voyait dans toutes nos armées des besoins impérieux et sans -cesse renaissans; des secours nuls ou tardifs; des approvisionnemens<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_406"></a>[406]</span> -insuffisans ou de mauvaise qualité et des administrations dévorantes, -dont quelques-unes, n’ont d’autre but réel que d’agrandir la fortune de -beaucoup d’agioteurs et de quelques capitalistes. Dans nos ports des -travaux ralentis et une inertie coupable; partout des trahisons ourdies -et des coalitions préparées; des états-majors à refaire ou à épurer; des -armées à organiser ou à improviser; des fonctionnaires civils et militaires -à surveiller ou à remplacer; des forces à créer sur tous les points -menacés par les troubles; des armes à fabriquer; des canons à fondre; -la marine à créer; l’esprit public à remonter avec énergie; l’anarchie à -attaquer; la discipline à rétablir; des mouvemens contra-révolutionnaires -à comprimer et un cahos d’intérêts, de plaintes, de passions, -d’abus, de prétentions et de préjugés à débrouiller, au milieu d’une -correspondance journalière et centuplée par ces circonstances actuelles. -Quel vast génie ou quel courage inépuisable il eût fallu pour répondre -tout à coup à des circonstances aussi extraordinaires ou pour dominer -des évènemens aussi imprévus? Nous avons borné notre tâche à parcourir -d’abord toutes les parties du gouvernement provisoire, et à nous -frayer ensuite une route au milieu de cet assemblage énorme de forces -et de résistances, de bons et de mauvais principes.</p> - -<p>Le premier obstacle qui s’est présenté à nous, est venu du changement -dans le ministère de la guerre, que avait précédé notre établissement.</p> - -<p>Le second obstacle était dans le ministère de la marine négligé, -anéanti même, par un série de ministries royaux, et dont nous avons été -forcés de faire changer le chef et plusieurs adjoints.</p> - -<p>Là s’est rompue, pour nous, la chaîne des opérations de ces deux -départemens, les plus importans dans un temps de guerre de terre et de -mer; et nous nous sommes vus privés, tout à coup, de toutes les ressources -de l’expérience. Nous n’avons pu recueillir, dans l’agglomération -des affaires de cette partie de l’administration publique, que des états -inexacts ou des lumières incertaines.</p> - -<p>Un aperçu des délibérations du conseil exécutif nous a montré, d’un -côté, des travaux incohérens qui n’ont pu avoir aucune espèce de succès -à cause des évènemens qui les dominaient; de l’autre, des négligences -funestes et des fautes graves que les évènemens suivants ont mieux fait -sentir. Depuis les bouches de l’Escaut, ouvertes par un usurpation de -la puissance souveraine, jusqu’aux extrémités de la Méditerranée, qui -ont été le théâtre de nos revers, et de la versatilité ministérielle, nous -n’avons vu ni cette suite d’opérations qui assurent les succès, ne cette -prévoyance des mesures qui diminuent les revers. Point d’ensemble, -point de conceptions vastes, point de vues hardies, point de plan arrêté, -point d’énergie, et partout la terreur de la responsabilité, marchant en -avant du ministère, tandis qu’il s’agit de marcher fièrement à la liberté, -sans regarder en arrière.</p> - -<p>Au mois d’octobre, la résistance à l’ennemi avait donné des conceptions -et des forces au conseil exécutif.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_407"></a>[407]</span></p> - -<p>Les succès du mois de novembre ont amolli le conseil. Jemmappes -a été pour les ministres (<i>sic</i>) la Capoue qui a détruit son énergie et -atténué ses travaux.</p> - -<p>Le département de l’intérieur, machine trop lourde, trop compliquée -pour un homme, quand il serait plein de talens et de moyens d’exécution, -avait refroidi pendant longtemps l’esprit public et engourdi les -corps administratifs. Il était impossible que la main d’un seul homme -pût remuer cette machine énorme surchargée de details, d’une administration -immense, d’opérations mercantiles dont le succès est douteux, -dont le résultat exige de grands sacrifices, et dont le secret appelle la -défiance. La seule ressource que ce ministère disproportionné pouvait -trouver, était dans les administrateurs départementaires, dont la plupart, -insoucians sur les travaux qui leur sont confiés, négligent de -correspondre, ou dont la conduite exagérée et sans mesure leur faisait -méconnaître toute subordination.</p> - -<p>Le département de la guerre, dans lequel chaque ministre a porté ses -préjugés et ses assertions, ses routines et ses haînes; le ministère de la -guerre désorganisé sans cesse par la fréquente mutation de ses agens et -par la diversité de leurs principes ou de leurs opinions, présentait et -présent encore un chaos inextricable, des abus sans nombre, et une impuissance -réelle dans tout homme que ne serait pas né très actif dans -la manière d’ordonner et entreprenant sur tous les moyens de défense.</p> - -</div> - -<p>In what follows note the hand of Danton, almost his -phraseology in the second paragraph.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Le ministère des affaires étrangères, couvert d’obscurités politiques, -ne pouvant avoir au milieu des défiances produites par la révolution et -des mouvemens irréguliers de la guerre, ni fixité dans les opérations, ni -vues suivies, ni projets déterminés, ni secrets dans les plans, a saisi -seulement le fil de quelques affaires importantes, et redonne maintenant -de l’activité aux moyens nombreux dont l’intérêt de plusieurs gouvernemens -prépare le succès.</p> - -<p>C’est de l’audace dans les conceptions politiques, c’est de l’ensemble -dans les mesures, c’est de la promptitude dans les moyens d’exécution, -que dépend la diplomatie nouvelle d’un peuple qui naît à la liberté.</p> - -</div> - -<p>Again, a direct attack on the Girondins, especially in -the characteristic phrase, “the paralysis of honesty.”</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Le ministère de la marine enrayé longtemps dans les opérations par -une probité paralytique, et par des sous-ordres inexpérimentés ou suspects, -n’ayant donné ni protection au commerce, ni défense pour nos -côtes, ni moyens au succès de la course, ni activité aux grands armemens -dans nos ports, ni approvisionnemens suivis pour les flottes, reprend<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_408"></a>[408]</span> -sous un ministre nouveau son activité, nous promet une défense et une -marine....</p> - -</div> - -<p>Here again is a half-concession to the Girondins, which -was part of the policy I have spoken of in the text.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Le conseil exécutif en sent lui-même la nécessité: et nous lui devons -la justice de dire, que ne se dissimulant pas cette caducité politique, -amenée par les circonstances, par des dénonciations multipliées, et par -la presqu’impossibilité de tenir régulièrement le gouvernail au milieu -de la tempête; le conseil exécutif désire et sollicite le renouvellement -du ministère....</p> - -<p class="center">DE L’ETAT MILITAIRE.</p> - -<p>Pressés entre la nécessité de pourvoir sans délai aux besoins des -armées, et l’impossibilité d’approfondir en si peu de temps des plans -généraux, nous avons recherché d’abord des armes....</p> - -<p>Des arrêtés du comité ont ordonné l’envoi des commissaires pour -dénombrer subitement les armes et les canons qui se trouvaient dans -les fabriques et les manufactures nationales, et pour les faire transporter -aux armées et dans les départemens les plus dénués de ce genre de -secours. Saint-Etienne, Ruel, Mont-Cénis, Indret, Toulouse, Lyon, -Charleville, Sedan, Maubeuge, ont reçu des ordres pressants sur cet -objet....</p> - -<p>Divers arrêtés ont ordonné le transport de vieilles armes qui se -trouvent dans diverses fabriques ou arsenaux, pour les faire raccommoder -dans les diverses villes dont la population offrait des ouvriers, et surtout -dans les départemens limitrophes des pays révoltés....</p> - -<p>Les ministres et les assemblées nationales ont mis trop peu d’importance -à la manufacture de Saint-Etienne, depuis le commencement -de la révolution.</p> - -<p>Les ouvriers brûlaient du désir de travailler pour la république, -mais le prix de l’arme ayant toujours été fixé au-dessous des déboursés -du fabricant, ils ont travaillé pour les corps administratifs, dont la concurrence -a augmenté la valeur. Le fer et le salarie de l’ouvrier sont -augmentés de prix.</p> - -<p>Des commissaires du pouvoir exécutif viennent de requérir tous les -fabricans de porter à la commission de verification, toutes les armes qui -sont en leur pouvoir, pour être expédies pour Bayonne, Perpignan, et -Tours. Les livraisons se font chaque jour.</p> - -<p>Les commissaires s’occupent de redonner la plus grande activité à -la manufacture d’armes de Saint-Etienne, qui secondée par le patriotisme -des ouvriers et de la municipalité, portera la fabrication à quatre ou -cinq cents fusils ou pistolets par jour.</p> - -<p>Il y a à Tulle un grand nombre d’armes à réparer, le comité en a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_409"></a>[409]</span> -fait distribuer à plusieurs départemens méridionaux; le ministre de la -marine donne de l’activité à la manufacture de Tulle, pour armer nos -marins. Dans ce moment, le commissaire Bouillet, envoyé par le conseil -exécutif, est a Tulle, pour accélérer la fabrication des armes nécessaires -à la marine, et pour connaître l’état des vieilles armes qu’on a -entassés dans ce dépôt....</p> - -</div> - -<p>The following passages indicate the motives of what -was to be the Terror, a system based, of course, upon the -necessity for commissariat.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">VIVRES.</p> - -<p>Les vivres sont aussi nécessaires que les armes; on se plaint dans -quelques armées organisées trop lentement, ou improvisées trop à la -hâte, pour que tout ce qui leur était nécessaire fût préparé, et ces -plaintes sont justes; nous accélérons l’approvisionnement des armées, -autant qu’il est en nous, par le ministre et les administrations qui en -dépendent. La latitude des pouvoirs donnés à vos comités, peut suppléer -la faiblesse du ministère de la guerre l’insuffisance de ses agens, -et la malveillance ou la torpeur de ses régies. Il est cependant des -obstacles éprouvés par les régisseurs et par leurs agens, à cause des -craintes propagées sur le manque de subsistances, et le comité s’est -occupé de faire cesser ces obstacles.</p> - -<p>L’administration chargée de l’approvisionnement des places de -guerre a présenté au comité des états de situation rassurante sur l’approvisionnement -des places les plus menacées: il lui a montré les -dispositions générales prises pour les fournitures de subsistances dans -toutes les divisions. Il en résulte que les évènemens imprévus de la -Belgique, en ramenant subitement l’ennemi sur nos frontières, ont -contrarié des calculs et nous ont privé des approvisionnements faits -d’après un autre système; mais le comité presse les directeurs de -pourvoir aux approvisionnements, et avertit sans cesse le ministre des -autres besoins des armées, à mesure que ces besoins se démontrent -ou que les plaintes nous parviennent. Un changement dans cette -administration, dont vous nous avez renvoyé l’examen, mérite toute -notre sollicitude, et se trouve être la suite inévitable des changements -perpétuels dans le ministère de la guerre; changement qui -entraîne celui de ses principes et de ses moyens.<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_410"></a>[410]</span></p> - -<p>Le partie de l’habillement et de l’équipement, qui a coûté tant de -trésors à la nation, a été mal fournie, mal administrée, et pillée dans la -Belgique avec autant d’impudeur que de trahison.</p> - -<p>Les fournisseurs, plus avares que patriotes, ont distribué à toutes les -armées des étoffes de mauvaise qualité. Un force de prodigalité nationale -payait les habits à l’avarice agioteuse qui les fournissait, et le soldat, -au milieu des fatigues et des perils de la guerre, était sans habits ou en -portait qui n’étaient pas de long usage.</p> - -<p>Ces jours derniers il a défilé devant vous un détachement de braves -soldats du régiment ci-devant Conti, qui allait vers les départemens -révoltés. On n’aurait pas présenté au plus petit prince d’Allemagne, -ou au plus pauvre de l’Italie, des troupes aussi mal vêtues; elles ont -paru devant les représentans d’une nation qui dépense pour la guerre, -chaque mois, plus de millions que plusieurs rois de l’Europe n’ont de -revenu dans un an....</p> - -<p>L’armée des Ardennes, réunie à celle du Nord, se forme sous les -regards de commissaires actifs, et les recrues y abondent à un point -que votre comité a cru devoir les faire refluer vers l’armee du Nord.</p> - -</div> - -<p>The next allusion is interesting as showing us the -appreciation of what was to be the reinforcement of the -army of Sambre-et-Meuse.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>L’armée de la Moselle a pris des positions avantageuses. Réunie à -celle du Rhin, elles annoncent que Mayence pourra devenir le tombeau -des hordes prussiennes. L’esprit est bon dans cette armée, distinguée -par la discipline, et les recrues s’y encadrent tous les jours.</p> - -<p>On s’occupe à faire camper et exercer l’armée des Alpes, dont le -recrutement est entièrement effectué. On fortifie tous les points de -défense, et on augmente la garnison des places. Les recrues nombreuses -qui y sont arrivées ont fourni un excédant de vingt-un mille hommes; -vous avez disposé de huit mille contre les départemens révoltés. Les -treize mille restans renforceront l’armée d’Italie, diminuée pour servir -à la défense de la Corse, formeront une réserve ou renforceront l’armée -des Pyrénées orientales.</p> - -<p>Le département du Mont-Blanc s’est empressé d’organiser plusieurs -bataillons et de prouver ainsi son attachement à la République; ils -réclament des armes, et nous espérons qu’avec des moyens mis déjà en -activité ils seront bientôt armés.</p> - -<p>La révolte de Thonnes est appraisée et les coupables jugés. C’était -la mêche d’une mine préparée sous le Mont-Blanc, et dont l’explosion -était combinée avec la prochaine attaque des Piémontais et des -Autrichiens.</p> - -<p>L’armée d’Italie se prépare à défendre ce que la valeur et la liberté -ont conquis à Nice. Mais des agitateurs y ont causé de la fermentation,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_411"></a>[411]</span> -comme dans l’armée des Alpes; ils y tenaient des propos injurieux à la -Convention nationale; ils y parlaient de royauté, et se servaient du -moyen de la paye en assignats pour altérer le bon esprit des troupes; -des alarmes ont été jetées sur les subsistances, dont le comité s’occupe -dans ce moment.</p> - -<p>Le général de l’armée d’Italie a pris les moyens propres à découvrir -les agitateurs et à les faire conduire au tribunal extraordinaire.</p> - -<p>L’armée des Pyrénées a été la plus négligé et la plus mal pourvue -en armes et en munitions, et c’est contre les troupes les plus féroces et -les plus fanatiques qu’elles doivent défendre les plus belles contrées de -la République.</p> - -<p>Aussi nous sommes accablés tous les jours par des relations malheureuses -qui ne sont que le triste résultat de la négligence de deux -anciens ministres de la guerre qui n’ont jamais su penser qu’il existât -une armée des Pyrénées....</p> - -</div> - -<p>The whole of the above is an interesting example of the -detailed methods of the Committee, with its reiteration -against the Girondin management of the war. It continues -in much the same spirit.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Du côté de l’Océan, la trahison de quelque chef des Miquelets et la -lâcheté d’une partie du régiment vingtième ont livré un point de la -frontière. Une terreur panique produite par le mot de trahison et -par des malveillans semés dans les petits camps formés sur l’extrème -frontière, a désorganisé le peu de force qui y étaient arrivées, a découragé -ceux qui y accouraient et forcé d’abandonner Andaye et tout -le pays qui se trouve entre la rivière de Nivelle et la frontière pour ne -former qu’un seul camp à Bidarre.</p> - -<p>La discipline à rétablir, le courage à relever, étaient les premiers -besoins de cette armée.</p> - -<p>Nos commissaires se sont vus forcés d’établir provisoirement un -règlement sévère de discipline. Ils nous disent que l’ennemi abat -partout l’arbre de la liberté, fait les incursions sur les maisons des -patriotes dans la partie française abandonnée; mais les habitans des -campagnes ont le courage de ne pas obéir aux requisitions du général -espagnol.</p> - -<p>Il paraît qu’il n’est fort que de notre faiblesse, et que si des secours -d’armes et d’artillerie sont portés a nos frères, notre territoire sera -bientôt évacué. Le commandement de Bayonne est confié au patriote -Courpon, et la citadelle de Saint-Esprit est défendue par des républicains. -Vingt canons et quatre compagnies des canonniers de Paris y -ont été envoyés en poste, et doivent avoir secouru cette frontière le 14 -de ce mois; le camp de Bidarre se forme avec succès.</p> - -<p>La division de l’armée des Pyrénées en deux grands parties, nous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_412"></a>[412]</span> -donnera plus de force pour une défense active au besoin: la terre y -produit des bataillons d’hommes libres; nous leur devons des secours -abondans, car ils ont été oubliés jusqu’à présent. On eût dit, en voyant -l’état de ces frontières, que le complot était prêt, que la force devait -envahir le Nord, tandis que la perfidie et l’indéfense livreraient le Midi. -Mais l’intrépidité et l’enthousiasme des Méridionaux pour la liberté, -est un obstacle invincible au succès des négligences ministérielles, des -trahisons intérieures, et des succès que le perfide Pitt a promise à -l’Espagne. Le camp se forme devant Bayonne et il a repris du terrain -du côté d’Andaye; l’armée reprend l’attitude qui convient à des -phalanges républicaines, et l’artillerie commence à y arriver avec des -provisions.</p> - -<p>L’affaire de la Vendée n’a été envisagée trop longtemps que comme -une affaire de police, ou une querelle élevée dans un coin d’un département.</p> - -</div> - -<p>There follows a further indictment based upon a special -case.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>L’armée des côtes n’a jamais existé; l’état-major n’avait pas même -été formé; quelques chefs militaires avaient été envoyés avec de faibles -moyens et de simples requisitions. On avait donné des ordres pour -que des cadres y fussent transportés; ils ont été arrêtés dans leur -marche par la crainte ou l’impuissance momentanée que nous avait -donné la trahison de Dumouriez. Des recrues y ont été rassemblées, -sans y trouver ni cadres, ni armes, ni un nombre suffisant d’officiers -généraux....</p> - -<p>Voilà l’état où se trouvaient les armées au 10 mai, époque à laquelle -le comité a demandé inutilement la parole....</p> - -</div> - -<p>Then a summary, the detail of which is well worth -following.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">VOICI LE DERNIER ÉTAT.</p> - -<p>Il arrive des troupes à Bayonne ainsi que des canons. Le camp qui -était à Bidard entre Bayonne et Saint-Jean de Luz a été porté, depuis -vendredi, entre Saint-Jean de Luz et Andaye.</p> - -<p>L’armée des Pyrénées orientales qu’on espérait, au moyen des recrutemens, -mettre en état de contenir au moins l’Espagnol, a essuyé presque -consécutivement deux échecs qui compromettent la sûreté de cette -partie de la frontière. Cette défaite n’est due qu’à la gendarmerie -nationale; mais un exemple prompt et sévère mettra un terme à cette -lâcheté ou à cette trahison.</p> - -<p>Aux Alpes nous venons d’être menacés d’une attaque très prochaine -exécutée par des forces très considérables, surtout dans la partie du<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_413"></a>[413]</span> -Var, débouché par lequel l’ennemi peut menacer aussi Marseille et -Toulon. Le comité de salut public a dû prendre la seule mesure qui -était en son pouvoir; il a ordonné au général Kellerman, le seul qui -eût une connaissance suffisante des points de défense et de nos moyens -militaires dans cette partie, de s’y rendre avec la plus grande diligence, -afin de prévenir, s’il est possible, les malheurs que le moindre retard -pourrait amener. Le général de l’armée d’Italie a paru craindre que la -cour de Naples ne vienne renforcer la coalition dans le midi. Mais le -ministre des affaires étrangères vient de communiquer des dépêches qui -détruisent ces nouvelles.</p> - -<p>Kellerman s’est fait précéder par un courrier extraordinaire qui a -porté à ses lieutenans les ordres préparatoires des opérations auxquelles -l’ennemi peut le forcer. Ce général, investi de votre confiance et de -celle des troupes, ne pouvait être remplacé. On vous avait annoncé -d’abord qu’il se rendrait dans la Vendée; mais les avantages remportés -un instant sur les révoltés, et la certitude de la prochaine arrivée de -Biron dans les départemens révoltés, ont du faire changer la première -destination de Kellerman. L’armée d’Italie a des subsistences assurées -pour quelque temps. On a pris des mesures pour la mettre à l’abri de -la disette.</p> - -<p>Au Rhin, une action qui n’a servi qu’à la destruction des hommes, -sans avancer les affaires d’aucun parti, y laisse les choses à peu près -dans la même situation qu’auparavant, avec cette différence, que le -changement de général qui a été en partie forcé, peut influer sur nos -succès. Il est bon d’observer que nos armées dans cette partie se trouvent -avoir en tête des forces les plus manœuvrières, et commandées par -les généraux les plus accrédités de l’Europe.</p> - -<p>Nos généraux, au contraire, portés au commandement pour la -première fois, ne peuvent avoir la même habitude et les mêmes avantages -que ceux auxquels les grands mouvemens de guerre sont familiers. -Les approvisionnemens dans cette partie et les subsistances sont bien -assurés.</p> - -<p>Dans le Nord, notre situation est très alarmante, et la Convention -doit connaître tous ces maux; elle a besoin d’être instruite par le malheur, -et de sentir les tristes effets de ses divisions.</p> - -<p>Notre armée, repoussée entre Combrai et Bouchain, quittant son -camp de Famars pour prendre plus loin celui de Coefar, abandonnant -à leurs propres forces Condé et Valenciennes, perdant ses communications -avec Douay et Lille d’un côté, et de l’autre avec Maubeuge et le -Quesnoy, est exposée à de nouveaux revers, si la présence du général -Custine, qui a dû y arriver le 25, ne lui rend pas la discipline qui lui -manque et la confiance sans laquelle il n’est point de succès à obtenir -dans la guerre.</p> - -<p>Si les efforts de ce général ne sont pas promptement secondés par -l’union des représentans du peuple, la Convention doit s’attendre à<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_414"></a>[414]</span> -tomber dans une situation plus embarrassante qu’au moment où, pendant -la dernière campagne, les esclaves allemands entraient en Champagne, -et menaçaient Paris et la liberté. Alors d’heureux hasards, ou -plutôt cette destinée qui semble conduire la France, ont disparaître des -dangers aussi imminens; mais doit-on compter sur une nouvelle faveur -de l’aveugle fortune? ne devons-nous pas craindre une nouvelle invasion, -et pouvons-nous nous flatter que toutes nos villes imiteront le -généreux dévouement de celle de Maubeuge, qui nous écrit le 26 de ce -mois:—“Ici on bat la générale dans cet instant: on a envoyé une -partie de notre garnison dans la Vendée; nous restons; nous déjouerons -nos ennemis extérieurs et intérieurs, ou nous mourrons libres. La ville -sautera si nos murs abattus permettent à l’ennemi de souiller notre -enceinte.”</p> - -<p>Quant aux besoins de cette armée du Nord, peut-être croira-t-on -difficilement que, malgré toutes nos dépenses, la demande qui vient -d’être faite au comité, qui a été arrêtée par le commissaire général de -l’armée du Nord, et visée par les commissaires de la Convention, monte -à la somme de 49 millions.</p> - -<p>L’armée qui doit anéantir les révoltés s’organise; il arrive un grand -nombre de bataillons à Tours; les postes de la rive droite de la Loire -se renforcent, et l’on fait défiler des troupes en poste. Si les rebelles -menacent cette rive, ils sont hors d’état d’exécuter ce project; leurs -forces ce divisent, mais ils rentrent dans les pays couverts. Les principaux -chefs des révoltés sont subordonnés aux prêtres; c’est une véritable -croisade; mais les habitans des campagnes commencent à se lasser -de cette horrible guerre, et murmurent.</p> - -<p>D’un autre côté, on nous écrit qu’il est parti, depuis notre dernier -succès, un courier de Bruxelles à Londres, pour engager le cabinet de -Saint-James à accélérer un armament tendant à porter sur les côtes de -Bretagne des troupes, des armes, des munitions, et à vomir sur nos -rivages un corps considérable d’émigrés de Jersey et Guernsey.</p> - -<p>Le transfuge Condé a envoyé à Jersey tous les émigrés bretons pour -être déposés sur nos côtes et y seconder un des rejetons de la famille de -nos tyrans.</p> - -<p>On se plaignait presque partout des commissaires des guerres ce -corps essentiel des armées va être changé, amélioré sur de nouvelles -bases et épuré par des choix patriotiques.</p> - -<p>Quant à la suppression de la paie en numéraire, toutes les armées -de la République l’ont reçue sans peine; ils sacrifient à chaque instant -leur vie à la liberté, comment s’occuperaient-il d’intérêts pécuniaires? -mais aussi ils ont droit à plus de surveillance pour les approvisionemens -et pour les subsistances. Quelques compagnies de l’armée d’Italie -seulement ont montré de la résistance; mais les agitateurs seront -déjoués par la surveillance qui y a été établie, et par les soins de vos -commissaires.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_415"></a>[415]</span></p> - -<p>Dans le choix des officiers généraux, nous avons dû quelquefois -obéir aux défiances populaires et aux dénonciations individuelles; -mais c’est là un des maux attachés à la révolution, qui use beaucoup -d’hommes, qui en éloigne un plus grand nombre, et qui présente plus -d’accusations que de ressources. Sans doute après les odieuses trahisons -qui ont affligé et qui affligent encore la république et désorganisé deux -fois les armées, on peut, on doit même devenir défiant et soupçonneux; -mais la ligne qui sépare la défiance et la calomnie, est trop facile à dépasser; -et si la dénonciation juste est une action civique, l’accusation -intéressée est la honte de nos mœurs et la ressource de la haine....</p> - -<p>Le comité, pour ne rien négliger dans cette terrible partie de la -guerre, a interrogé des militaires instruits; il s’est environné de leur -expérience pour faire un plan de guerre auquel se rattacheraient des -plans de campagne pour chacune des armées. Jusqu’à présent la -guerre de la liberté a été faite sans plans, sans suite, sans prévoyance -même; il est plus que temps de tracer les limites dans lesquelles la -guerre sera soutenue, dans quelle partie elle sera défensive, dans quelle -autre elle sera offensive, assigner à chaque armée la portion de frontières -qu’elle a à défendre, les points des ennemis qu’elle doit attaquer ou -couvrir.</p> - -</div> - -<p>In what follows regarding the Navy, we see the attempt -of the Committee, which we know was foredoomed to -failure, but which was a fine one, to meet the English -Power. The “error,” as English critics have called it, of -rapidly putting in new officers was an unfortunate necessity.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">DE LA MARINE.</p> - -<p>Ici nous devons accuser ce système perfide de Bertrand et de ses -semblables, qui, depuis plusieurs années, semblait préparer, de concert -avec l’Angleterre, l’abaissement de la France, et assurer à nos plus -constans ennemis l’empire des mers.... C’est par la réunion des forces -navales, que nos ennemis out espéré d’attaquer plus sûrement notre -indépendance, et de nous dicter de lois. Quoique par cette coalition -l’on ait tenté aveuglement de faire passer la balance du pouvoir à une -nation maritime, déjà trop puissante pour l’intérêt du continent; ... -quoique, par la désorganisation passagère de notre marine, par le -dénuement de nos ports, par le ralentissement des travaux, on ait -espéré de changer la destinée de la république française, ne craignons -pas que l’on parvienne à faire rétrograder la plus belle des révolutions.</p> - -<p>La surveillance constante du comité, le zèle du ministre, et le -dévouement de l’armée navale qui se forme, feront oublier tant de -trahisons ou de négligences, mais les moyens ne peuvent être que lents.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_416"></a>[416]</span></p> - -<p>Des expéditions hardies, et confiées à des hommes courageux sont -préparées; les plaintes du commerce ont été enfin entendues d’après -le dernier rapport du ministre, le cabotage va être protégé dans l’Océan -par 34 canonnières, 12 corvettes, 18 lougres, cutters ou avisos, et dans -la Méditerranée, par 18 corvettes, ou cannonières et 5 avisos, indépendamment -des frégates dont il est inutile de faire connaître le -nombre et les stations, sans trahir les intérêts de la défense de la -république....</p> - -<p>Il existe beaucoup d’officiers capables; l’abaissement des vains préjugés -qui séparaient l’armée commerciale de l’armée navale, nous assure -des ressources, mais il faut les surveiller et punir sévèrement la désobéissance -ou la malversation; avant de choisir les officiers, examen et -impartialité; après le choix, confiance entière, mais responsabilité impérieuse. -Le secret accompagnera nos opérations, si les inquiétudes du -commerçant ou les soupçons du zèle patriotique ne viennent pas les -altérer ou les contrarier; les corps civils ne doivent pas s’immiscer dans -le secret des opérations navales, ou bien nos ennemis le sauront bientôt, -et nous vaincrons sans nous laisser sortir de nos ports.</p> - -<p>Le comité s’occupe des lois répressives que la discipline navale -réclame avec plus d’intérêt que jamais. Une grande force s’organise -dans les ports de la Méditerranée, qui par notre position, doit être le -canal de navigation du commerce français....</p> - -<p>On s’occupe des moyens les plus propres à retirer les colonies de -l’état malheureux où elles se trouvent, depuis qu’une cour perfide -voulait faire la contre-révolution en France, par les malheurs de -l’Amérique; et si, à côté de nous, des Français veulent se rappeler -qu’ils descendant de Guillaume, tous les calculs de la politique insulaire -pourront être dérangés.</p> - -<p>Le comité ne peut vous offrir aucun résultat précis et détaillé dans -ce moment; il serait même impolitique de la publier. Mais tout se -prépare, et quoique les forces de la république soient très inférieures à -celles des ennemis coalisés, le patriotisme les dirigera de manière à -rappeler le courage des filibustiers, et les exploits des Bart et des Dugay-Trouin....</p> - -</div> - -<p>In foreign affairs we have the Dantonesque idea of -pitting the Powers against one another, which, unfortunately -for France, fanatics who were in power later abandoned. -The remark on the impolitic nature of the decree -of the 19th of December should be specially noted: it -comes direct from Danton.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_417"></a>[417]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES.</p> - -<p>... Le ministère anglais est forcé, malgré son influence et son -orgueil avare, de voir Dantzick passer au pouvoir de la Prusse, sans -réclamation; de voir la Pologne, se partager sans sa participation; et -de se compromettre vis-à-vis la morale et l’esprit public de la nation -anglaise. Aussi l’intrigant Pitt, qui ne peut se dissimuler que le ministre -qui fait la guerre, traite rarement de la paix, surtout chez une nation -éclairée et trompée sur cette guerre par l’astuce profonde de son gouvernement, -ne cesse d’invoquer sans cesse auprès de la ligne, la cause -générale des cours....</p> - -<p>Le comité a cherché à resserrer le lien qui attache déjà, par les relations -commerciales, le peuple suisse et le peuple français; et l’ambassadeur que -la Suisse a reçu suit constamment le vœu témoigné par la Convention -nationale, de s’allier avec les gouvernemens justes et les peuples libres.</p> - -<p>Nous apprenons que les peuples neutres et amis reçoivent avec -reconnaissance le décret du 15 avril, qui eut servi plus utilement la liberté, -s’il eut été d’une date plus reculée, et si le décret impolitique du 19 -décembre n’eût pas donné un nouveau prétexte à la perfidie des cours -étrangères.</p> - -<p>Ce décret par lequel vous aviez déclaré que la France ne souffrirait -jamais qu’aucune puissance semélât de sa constitution et de son gouvernement, -et qu’à son tour, elle ne s’immiscerait en rien sur les autres -gouvernemens; ce décret a augmenté subitement le nombre de nos -partisans dans la Suisse; et le témoignage d’un peuple simple et libre -a son prix auprès des républicains.</p> - -<p>Des négociations d’alliance ne sont plus des chimères pour la France -libre. Il est des puissances qui ont senti que l’élévation ou la ruine -d’une nation intéressent toutes les autres et que celles même qui sont -le plus éloignées du théâtre de la guerre, sont souvent les victimes -de leur modération ou de leur indifférence. Il est des alliés pour -leur propre sûreté, peuvent soutenir nos intérêts, avec autant de -chaleur que de bonne foi. Il est d’autres alliances que la politique -doit vous assurer, et d’autres qui seront dues en grande partie à votre -état républicain; votre commerce ne peut que s’en féliciter.</p> - -<p>L’Italie voit avec intérêt le signe de la République arboré dans ses -villes, si j’excepte les villes gouvernées encore par un prêtre et par la -maison d’Autriche....</p> - -<p>Nous apprenons que la Russie a fait faire à la Porte la demande -officielle du passage d’une flotte, menaçant de regarder le refus qu’on -pourrait lui en faire comme une déclaration de guerre. La réponse a -été dilatoire et sera négative; les usurpations de la Russie trouveront -enfin des bornes. C’est à la politique européenne à aider le maître des -Dardanelles à les poser....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_418"></a>[418]</span></p> - -<p>Une suite de coalisation faite contre la France, avait jeté des obstacles -à l’arrivée des chebecs à Alger. On voulait encore vous aliéner cette -puissance, amie de la République; mais nous recevons la nouvelle que le -dey a reçu, avec le plus vif intérêt, les deux chebecs que la République -lui a renvoyés, et qu’il a témoigné les dispositions les plus favorables à -la France....</p> - -</div> - -<p>There follows the French criticism of the Alien Bill.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Un bill infâme, qui insulte à l’humanité et aux droits des nations, -a été promulgué par le gouvernement anglais, et traduit en espagnol à -Madrid et dans les villes hanséatiques, par les intrigues de l’ambassadeur -anglais. Ce bill, dont la haine pour la convention a dicté les clauses -horribles contre les Français, vous portera sans doute à user du droit de -représailles. Le comité vous fera un rapport sur cet objet, ainsi que -sur les diverses mesures à prendre contre la gouvernement anglais. -Des agens nombreux sont disséminés dans l’Europe, pour connaître les -complots de nos ennemis au dedans et au dehors, et pour s’assurer des -véritables amis de la république.</p> - -<p>Il résulte enfin, de toutes nos relations, que Dumouriez et ses aides-de-camp, -chassés du Stoutgard, n’ont pas reçu un meilleur accueil à -Vursbourg, par ordre de l’électeur, quoique évêque. Ainsi, les traîtres -ne trouvent pas d’asyle même chez les despotes à qui ils se sacrifient.</p> - -</div> - -<p>Matters concerning the Interior are comparatively vague, -for here the Committee wished to compromise with the -Gironde; but they are strong against civil war.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">DE L’INTÉRIEUR.</p> - -<p>... Quant aux approvisionnemens des armées et de la marine, les -commissaires éprouvent des obstacles, en ne pouvant, d’après le dernier -décret, acheter que dans les marchés.</p> - -<p>Le comité s’est occupé ensuite de sonder la plaie et de connaître la -source de toutes les agitations qui tourmentent la république.</p> - -<p>Ici des vérités doivent nous être déclarées; car, vous êtes sur le -bord d’un abyme profond, et la Convention Nationale, au milieu de ses -divisions, a oublié qu’elle marchait entre deux écueils, et qu’elle était -conduite par l’aveugle anarchie.</p> - -<p>D’un côté, l’exécrable plan de la guerre civile, secondé par l’Anglais, -et sans doute dirigée de Londres, de Rome et par des agens correspondans -à Paris, étendait ses ramifications sur toute la France, et principalement -dans les pays qui étaient, depuis la révolution, infestés de fanatisme, -ou qui avaient été le théâtre des troubles fanatiques et des complots -contre-révolutionnaires.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_419"></a>[419]</span></p> - -<p>D’un autre côté, une alarme générale s’est répandue parmi les propriétaires -d’un territoire de vingt-sept mil de lieues quarrées, et ces -craintes ont eu pour base des motions exagérées, des journaux feuillantisés -et des propos sauguinaires; le mécontentement né de nos -discussions personnelles a altéré la confiance, mais vous êtes nécessaires: -les aristocrates, redoutant les passions des patriotes, ont excité -les hommes énergiques contre les modérés auxquels ils se rattachent -sourdement; ils ont préparé des mouvemens contraires....</p> - -<p>Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Rouen, prenez garde, la liberté vous -observe sur votre marche dans la révolution; elle ne vous croira jamais -contraire à ses vues; mais craignez d’être stationnaires dans le mouvement -de l’opinion publique; écrasez avec nous les révoltés, les anarchistes -et les brigands; mais aussi craignez le modérantisme et les -intrigues de l’aristocratie qui veut vous effrayer sur les propriétés et sur -le commerce, pour vous redonner des nobles, des prêtres et un roi....</p> - -<p>Au moment où le comité a été formé, presque partout les administrations -trop faibles ou trop au dessous des circonstances se ressentaient -de l’influence meurtrière des passions particulières qui y correspondaient...</p> - -<p>A Lyon, l’aristocratie a un foyer plus profond qu’on ne peut le -penser; elle est secondée par l’égoïsme et l’indifférence....</p> - -<p>Mais les campagnes et les villes de department de Rhône et Loire, -surtout Villefranche, présente un autre esprit, et là surtout paraissent -ces signes heureux, là sont entendues ces acclamations énergiques qui -caractérisent le patriotisme.</p> - -<p>A Marseille où tout annonce l’ardeur républicaine, à Marseille où -l’on voit presque à chaque pas un arbre de la liberté ou une inscription -civique, à Marseille où le pain, égal pour tout et de mauvaise qualité, -se vend sept sols la livre, cette calamité est supportée sans murmurer, -où l’on entend des plaintes contre les traîtres, les égoïstes, les intrigans; -où les seuls malheurs dont on soit afflige sont ceux qui frappent la -République entière, Marseille a éprouvé des convulsions violentes; mais -si la répression de quelques excès de la démagogie a fait craindre à de -bons citoyens que le modérantisme ne prévalût, le républicanisme n’en -triomphera pas moins des passions individuelles. Croyons que cette -grande cité ne dégénérera pas de sa renommée.</p> - -<p>Nous avons à gémir sur des excès commis à Avignon et à Aix; ce -qui s’est passé d’irrégulier à Toulon, relativement aux officiers de la -marine, vous sera rapporté quand le comité aura fait le travail de cette -partie.</p> - -<p>Le meilleur esprit règne dans ce moment à Perpignan; la vieille -antipathie nationale contre l’Espagnol, y réchauffé l’esprit républicain -que le département des Pyrénées orientales avait déjà montré avec tant -d’énergie le 21 Juin 1791.</p> - -<p>Bayonne se rattache aux bons principes. Les trahisons lui ont donné<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_420"></a>[420]</span> -de l’énergie; mais si cette place est dans ce moment menacée de près -par l’ennemi, le zèle des républicains méridionaux la défendra contre -les ennemis du dedans et du dehors.</p> - -<p>Bordeaux ne cesse de fournir à la liberté et a ses armées des trésors -et des soldats; elle va défendre en même temps les Pyrénées et les -Deux-Sèvres.</p> - -<p>Les intentions manifestées à Nantes ne se ressentent pas assez de -l’enthousiasme civique qui doit animer dans ce moment tous les citoyens. -Ses moyens auraient pu être plus efficaces; il y a du mécontentement -et des craintes sur les effets des divisions intestines.</p> - -<p>A Orléans, l’esprit public s’améliore, depuis que l’aristocratie a été -frappée par la loi révolutionnaire; mais cette ville a le droit d’obtenir -que les procédures faites par les commissaires soient bientôt jugées, les -coupables punis et les bons citoyens rassurés.</p> - -<p>Dans le département de l’Allier, une correspondance interceptée a -fait découvrir des traînes contre la liberté, elles étaient ourdies par des -prêtres déportés, de concert avec leurs agens à Moulins. Les corps administratifs, -qui vivent dans la plus heureuse harmonie, ont mis en lieu -de sûreté les ci-devant que leur conduite avait rendus suspects et les y -font garder avec soin et humanité, jusqu’à ce que la République n’ait plus -rien à craindre de ses ennemis intérieurs et de ces enfans dénaturés. Le -peuple a partout applaudi à cette énergie de ses magistrats, et il les a -secourus, parce que le peuple veut franchement la liberté.</p> - -<p>A Roanne, le modérantisme est réduit en système, et dans la crise -où nous sommes, cette apathie politique est le plus grand fléau de la -République, qui ne peut s’établir que par le développement de toute -l’énergie nationale.</p> - -<p>A Tain, dans le département de la Drôme, des patriotes, que -n’étaient qu’aisés dans leur fortune (le patriotisme se trouve rarement -avec la fortune), se sont cotisés, et, de concert avec le Maire, ont fait, -sans y être contraints par la loi, mais par amour pour la patrie, une -cotisation, dont le produit a été employé à fournir du pain à un prix -modéré, pour les citoyens peu fortunés. C’est ainsi que dans les provinces -méridionales, les mœurs et l’humanité font plus que les lois et le -cœur des riches dans les grandes cités....</p> - -<p>A Tours, l’administration d’Indre et Loire, apprenant que les ennemis -étaient à Loudun, et marchaient à Chinon, a pris la résolution, par un -mouvement civique et spontané, de se transporter toute entière au -milieu des dangers qui les menaçaient, et décidée à s’ensevelir sous les -ruines de la ville, plutôt que de se rendre. Une commission y est restée. -Loudun a demeuré sans défense. Quelques aristocrates en ont été -heureusement chassés.</p> - -<p>Poitiers, trop influencé par des fanatiques et par des hommes de -l’ancien régime, peut donner des espérances aux révoltés, et déjà l’administration -nous a fait craindre le résultat du mauvais esprit d’une<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_421"></a>[421]</span> -partie de ses habitans, malgré l’énergie connue des patriotes qu’elle -renferme.</p> - -<p>Paris qu’on accuse sans cesse, qu’on agite presque toujours, tantôt -par des crimes, tantôt par des intrigues, tantôt par des passions personnelles, -tantôt par des intérêts secrets et étrangers, et plus souvent encore -par l’action prolongée ou l’exaltation des passions révolutionnaires; -Paris, réceptacle de tant d’étrangers, de tant de conspirateurs, doit -attirer vos regards.</p> - -</div> - -<p>The following passage on the Commune of Paris is -noteworthy for its non-committal character, in keeping with -the attempt to get rid of the Gironde, if possible, without -an insurrection.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Vous devez contenir le conseil général de la commune de Paris dans -les limites que l’unité et l’indivisibilité de la République exigent et que -la loi lui prescrit. C’est à vous qu’il appartient seul de dominer toutes -les ambitions politiques, de détruire toutes les usurpations législatives; -c’est à vous de répondre à la France du dépôt de pouvoir qui vous a été -religieusement confié.</p> - -<p>Vous devez aviser aux movemens inégaux et anarchiques que des -intrigans font passer dans plusieurs sections peuplées de bons citoyens, -et aux mouvemens aristocratiques qu’on pourrait cependant leur communiquer.</p> - -<p>Vous devez surveiller également le moderantisme qui paralyse tout -et prépare la perte de la liberté, et les excès le la démagogie dont les -émigrés et les ambitieux, déguisés parmi nous, tiennent le secret et le -prix journalier.</p> - -<p>L’esprit des habitans de Paris est bon, malgré les vices de l’égoïsme, -de l’avarice et de l’apathie d’un certain nombre de ses habitans. L’amour -de la liberté, qu’on a voulu tant de fois y neutraliser, sort victorieux de -toutes les épreuves; et nous pensons que Paris n’appartiendra jamais -qu’à la liberté; Paris qui à détruit le trône, ne souffrira pas qu’aucune -autorité usurpe le pouvoir national, qui est la propriété de tous, et qui -est le véritable lieu de tous les départemens.</p> - -<p>Malgré toutes les intrigues par lesquelles on a cherché à empêcher -Paris de prononcer son patriotisme en marchant contre les révoltés, -chaque section a fourni ou s’occupe de fournir son contingent pour former -douze ou quatorze bataillons de mille hommes....</p> - -</div> - -<p>I quote certain portions which show the fear of the -Committee, so often justified, with regard to foreign intrigue.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_422"></a>[422]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">FINANCES.</p> - -<p>Il a agioté le numéraire pour avilir l’assignat; il a fait hausser les -changes, par ses opérations à la bourse.</p> - -<p class="center">DISSENTIONS CIVILES.</p> - -<p>Il a alimenté le fanatisme de la Vendée; il a fourni des hommes, -des armes et des munitions.<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p> - -<p class="center">ROYALISME.</p> - -<p>C’est l’anglais, qui a combiné les regrets et ravivé les espérances, -par l’excès du républicanisme qu’il a fomenté, par les motions des lois -agraires, dont il cherchait ensuite à faire imputer les projets à des -patriotes connus....</p> - -<p class="center">GÉNÉRAUX.</p> - -<p>Celui qui avait acheté Arnold en Amérique, a acheté Dumouriez en -Europe, et il a dû traiter de même les militaires qui n’aiment pas la -république....</p> - -<p class="center">DE L’ORGANISATION SOCIALE.</p> - -<p>L’anglais a semé l’effroi dans l’âme des propriétaires par des motions -sur les partages des terres, et dans le cœur des commerçans par le pillage -des magasins....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_423"></a>[423]</span></p> - -<p>L’anglais a imaginé de la bloquer, de l’affamer, de l’incendier dans -ses ports, dans ses édifices publics; de détruire son industrie; il armé -tour à tour l’aristocrate contre le patriote, et le patriote contre l’aristocrate; -enfin, le peuple contre le peuple, espérant que le spectacle de -nos troubles ôtera au peuple anglais le courage de détruire chez -lui le despotisme royal.</p> - -<p class="center">PERTE DE PARIS.</p> - -<p>C’est au cœur que les assassins frappent; c’est sur les capitales que -les conquérans dirigent leurs coups. On ne pouvait perdre Paris par -les armés; on a voulu perdre Paris par les départemens; on y a semé -dès terreurs pour le ruiner par la fuite des propriétaires et des riches; -on a semé des idées de suprématie, pour séparer, pour isoler les départemens -de Paris.</p> - -</div> - -<p>The danger of civil war and vigorous methods for -meeting it are the subject of the passages that follow.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">DIVISION DU TERRITOIRE.</p> - -<p>L’anglais enfin a espéré diviser la France pour la morceler ou la -ruiner. Dans son délire, il a espéré de voir une monarchie impuissante -s’établir dans le nord, et des républiques misérables et divisées se former -dans le midi.</p> - -<p>J’ai dévoilé le gouvernement britannique; il n’est plus à craindre.</p> - -<p>Dans un très grand nombre de départemens on a procédé à la -réclusion des personnes notoirement suspectes d’incivisme et soupçonnées -d’entretenir des intelligences avec les émigrés et les contre-révolutionnaires. -On en accuse généralement les prêtres et les moines, -les émigrés rentrés impunément sur notre territoire, et les correspondants -qui les soutenaient de leurs fortunes et de leurs espérances.</p> - -<p>On a dû prendre des mesures sévères, alors que tous les aristocrates -correspondaient à la Vendée, et que des lettres interceptées annonçaient -un rassemblement à Nantes.</p> - -<p>Des arrestations nombreuses ont dû être la suite de ces méfiances, -de ces trahisons disséminées dans toute la France; l’autorité, dans les -temps de révolution, a plus d’yeux et de bras que d’entrailles; mais le -législateur doit à tous les citoyens cette justice exacte qui vient régulariser -les premiers mouvemens et faire statuer sur la liberté individuelle -avec les précautions que les circonstances peuvent admettre. -Vous devez abattre également toutes les aristocraties et toutes les -tyrannies; vous devez approuver vos commissaires s’ils ont bien fait,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_424"></a>[424]</span> -les blâmer et les punir s’ils ont violé les droits des citoyens. Le comité -pense que le comité de législation et de sûreté générale doivent proposer -incessamment une loi qui règle le mode de jugement de la -légitimité de ces arrestations, et qui renvoie aux tribunaux les -coupables ou laissât en réclusion ceux qui ne sont que notoirement -suspects.</p> - -<p>Le département de l’Ain voit l’esprit public se rétablir parmises -habitans.</p> - -<p>La conspiration qui a éclaté dans l’Ouest semblait se montrer dans -les départemens de l’Ardèche, du Gard, de la Haute Loire et du Cantal; -mais les administrateurs et vos commissaires sont parvenus à les réprimer. -Ces troubles de la Lozère ont un caractère plus fort; mais le -patriotisme de ce département et de ses voisins y mettra bientôt un -terme.</p> - -<p>Les tribunaux ont sévi contre les coupables; nous avions craint que -vos commissaires n’eussent dépassé leurs pouvoirs dans le département -de l’Ardèche, et nous les aurions déféré à votre sévère justice pour -donner l’exemple de la punition de ceux qu’on affecte d’appeler des -proconsuls, pour empêcher le bien qu’ils peuvent faire ou en empoisonner -les résultats; mais un décret avait déjà mis hors de la loi -les coupables complices de Defaillant.</p> - -<p>La trahison de Dumouriez que tout annonce avoir eu des branches -très étendus, a été un trait de lumière; elle a frappé es administrations -et les citoyens d’un coup électrique. Tous nos moyens ont -centuplé par cet évènement destiné à les paralyser; mais de tous les -maux préparés insensiblement dans les départemens frontières comme -dans le centre, comme au milieu de nous le plus grand, le plus effrayant -par ses progrès, est la marche imprévue des contre-révolutionnaires -nobiliares, sacerdotaux et émigrés qui, du fond de la Vendée et du -Morbihan remontent la Loire, menacent nos cités de l’intérieur, et -emploient à la fois, des moyens de terreur et de persuasion....</p> - -<p>Les révoltés ont plusieurs corps de rassemblement. Le principe -qui s’était porté a Thouars, était, suivant les uns, de quinze mille -suivant la dernière relation envoyée par un de nos commissaires, il -était de vingt à vingt-cinq mille hommes armés, partie de piques, -partie de fusils; ils traînent avec eux, treize pièces de canon, selon -les uns, et d’après le dernier succès de Thouars, trente pièces -d’artillerie.</p> - -<p>Ils sont commandés par des ci-devant nobles et accompagnés par -des prêtres; toutes leurs femmes leur servent d’espions; ils se battent -pour des fiefs et des prières. Les agriculteurs fanatiques combattent -avec fureur et ne pillent pas; ils composent la moitié de la troupe.</p> - -<p>Un quart est composé de gardes-chasses, d’échappés des galères et -de faux sauniers. Ils pillent, dévastent, égorgent, et sont bien dignes -de leurs chefs.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_425"></a>[425]</span></p> - -<p>L’autre quart est formé d’hommes pusillanimes ou indifférens, -que la violence force de marcher, mais qui, à la première défaite des -brigands, se retireraient, et forment, pour ainsi dire, la propriété du -premier occupant. C’est à la liberté de s’en emparer par des succès.</p> - -<p>Il n’y a que les émigrés, les ci-devant, et les prêtres qui voudraient -mettre de l’ordre dans les rassemblemens, et de la tactique dans cette -guerre. Ils paient, les rebelles deux tiers en numéraire.</p> - -<p>Les chefs connus sont les ci-devant de Leseur, Laroche-Jacquelin, -Beauchamp, Langrenière, Delbecq, Baudré-de-Brochin, Debouillé-Loret, -un abbé appelé Larivière. Domengé est colonel-général de la cavalerie; -Demenens et Delbecq commandent l’armée catholique-royale.</p> - -<p>Le comité a pourvu journellement par des arrêtés pressans, à ce que -cette guerre intestine fût efficacement comprimée....</p> - -<p>Déjà l’armée s’organise à Tours; une commission centrale est -établie à Saumur; déjà des troupes de ligne ont dépassé Paris pour s’y -rendre, et le renfort considérable que le comité avait requis, est en -route pour s’y rendre. Les voitures des riches, les équipages du luxe, -auront du moins servi une fois à la défense de la patrie et de la liberté. -Une armée est dirigée en poste sur les rives de la Loire. C’est ainsi -qu’un des plus fameux guerrieurs du nord alla écraser en 1757 les -autrichiens à la bataille de Liffa ou Leuten, avec une armée arrivée en -poste sur le champ de bataille....</p> - -<p>Le comité prépare un rapport sur les agens périodiques de l’opinion -publique, et sur les arrêtés violateurs de la liberté de la presse.</p> - -<p>Tel est le tableau de l’intérieur de la république, d’après les -rapports et la correspondance des commissaires et des corps administratifs. -Nous devons le terminer par une réflexion sur les commissaires, -dont on cherche trop à effrayer les citoyens, et même plusieurs -membres de la convention....</p> - -</div> - -<p>The influence of Cambon is apparent in what follows.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">DES CONTRIBUTIONS PUBLIQUES.</p> - -<p>Quant aux contributions, rien ne prouve mieux le désir de voir -fonder la République, et de voir renaître l’ordre social le paiement des -impositions, au milieu des ruines et de débris de l’ancien gouvernement; -s’il y a de l’arriéré, ce n’est que par les fautes des administrations qui -n’ont pas encore terminé la confection des rôles; quelques-unes ont -arrêté tout envoi de fonds. Mais un moyen de salut public, appartient -à cette partie de l’administration, c’est de vous occuper sans relâche, -des lois concernant les contributions publiques, de l’accélération de la -vente des biens d’émigrés, et des maisons ci-devant royales, objets qui -semblent encore attendre leurs anciens et coupables possesseurs; et -des moyens de retirer de la circulation, une certaine masse d’assignats.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_426"></a>[426]</span> -Vous devez cette loi au peuple, qui a vu s’augmenter par une progression -effrayante et ruineuse, le prix des subsistances; vous le devez -à tous les créanciers de la République et à tous ceux qu’elle salarie, -afin de rétablir la balance rompu trop rapidement, par la masse énorme -de cette monnaie. La portion du peuple qui mérite avant toutes les -autres l’attention de ses représentants, est celle qui souffre tous les -jours au surhaussement du prix des denrées.</p> - -<p>Les contributions indirectes, perçues au milieu des mouvemens de -la révolution, et des défiances semées sur son succès, par des mécontens -et des ennemis publics, alimentent abondamment le trésor national. -Déjà dans les trois derniers mois de Janvier, Février et Mars, la perception -des impôts indirects excède de plusieurs millions l’estimation -qui en a été faite. Le total des trois mois, se porte a 52,182,468 livres -en y comprenant 5,400,000 livres, de l’adjudication des bois. Que -serace dans un temps de paix et de prospérité? Quelle confiance la -République doit avoir de ses forces et de ses moyens?</p> - -<p>Nous avons vu avec regret, parmi les produits de l’imposition -indirecte, des droits qui devraient être inconnus à des peuples libres, -des droits de bâtardise et de déshérence, et que les sauvages de -l’Amérique repousseraient.</p> - -</div> - -<p>From henceforward Danton’s hand is apparent throughout -the report. Some matters on the Constitution and on -Public Construction, which have little to do with the insurrection -of June 2nd, have been omitted, but the Dantonian -policy of framing a constitution which should reconcile -enemies is printed in full.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">DES COLONIES.</p> - -<p>Nous ne disons encore rien des colonies, quoique nous ayons reçu -des mémoires et des vues sur cet objet important et malheureux, -d’où dépend la prospérité publique, et l’agrandissement de la marine -française. Peut-être eût-il mieux valu de ne pas plus parler dans -les assemblées nationales, des colonies que de la religion, jusqu’à -ce que la révolution du continent eût été à son terme. Perfectionner -dans ces contrées lointaines le commissariat civil, adoucir les effets -du régime militaire, détruire insensiblement le préjugé des couleurs, -améliorer par des vues sages et des moyens progressifs le sort de -l’espèce humaine dans ces climats avares, etait peut-être la mesure -la plus convenable; mais la révolution a fait des progrès terribles sous -ce soleil brûlant. Saint-Domingue est aussi malheureux que les îles -des vents sont redevenues fidèles, et ses malheurs ne paraissent pas -rès de leur terme.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_427"></a>[427]</span></p> - -<p>On examinera un jour s’il est des moyens de rattacher les colonies -à la France, par leur propre intérêt, c’est-à-dire, par la franchise -absolue de leur commerce avec nous, et une disposition générale des -droits perçus sur le commerce étranger, dans ces mêmes colonies. De -pareilles lois qui nous défendraient mieux que des escadres, demandent -d’être méditées.</p> - -<p>Cette partie de l’intérêt national, doit être traitée séparément et -avec une forte sagesse; le comité est chargé de préparer en attendant -ce rapport, des mesures propres à diminuer les maux que cette belle -colonie souffre encore.</p> - -<p class="center">DE LA FORCE PUBLIQUE DE L’INTÉRIEUR.</p> - -<p>Elle se ressent partout de l’anarchie que règne. Là, elle délibère; -ici, elle agit au gré des passions. Disséminée dans toutes les sections -de l’empire, elle semble avoir une versatilité de principes et d’actions, -qui peut effrayer la liberté. Dans une ville, les citoyens riches et les -égoïstes, se font remplacer; défendre ses foyers, semble être encore -une corvée plutôt qu’un honneur, une charge plutôt qu’un droit. Dans -une autre cité, le service public frappe des artisans peu aisés ou des -ouvriers, qui ont besoin du repos de la nuit, pour le travail qui -alimente leur famille, il est plus que temps d’effacer ces lignes de -démarcation intolérable dans un régime libre. La nature seule a -décrit des différences; elle est dans les âges; les jeunes citoyens -depuis seize ans jusqu’à 25, sont les premiers que la patrie appelle; -moins occupés et plus disponibles, c’est à eux de voler aux premiers -dangers. Cette première force est-elle insuffisante (car il ne faut pas -penser à la défection) l’autre âge plus fort et plus sage, présente à la -société ses moyens, c’est l’âge de 25 à 35; la troisième classe sera de -35 à 45; la dernière réquisition doit frapper tout ce qui peut porter -les armes. Alors, la société appelle à son secours, tous ceux qui partagent -la souveraineté; une exception favorable se présente pour les -pères nourrissant leur famille du produit de leur travail. Une -exception contraire doit frapper les célibataires et les hommes veufs -sans enfans.</p> - -<p>C’est à la législation et à la morale à flétrir ceux qui ne paient cette -dette ni à la nature ni à la République.</p> - -<p>C’est ainsi qu’il convient aux Français, d’organiser le droit de -réquisition. Cet exemple est sorti des besoins de la liberté, dans les -terres américaines. La réquisition est l’appel de la patrie aux -citoyens; cet appel peut être fait par les généraux, quand la loi -le leur a confié momentanément, et dans les cas de guerre; cet appel -peut être fait par le pouvoir civil dans toutes les autorités constituées, -et encore plus par les assemblées nationales, qui sont à la fois pouvoir -civil, législatif et national.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_428"></a>[428]</span></p> - -<p>Le comité a pensé qu’il devait présenter un mode uniforme, de -requérir la force publique dans toutes les parties de la République, et -de la part de toutes les autorités, afin que chaque fonctionnaire et -chaque citoyen, connaisse l’étendue de son pouvoir ou de son obligation....</p> - -<p>D’ailleurs, on trouverait plusieurs avantages à borner ainsi la constitution -aux articles nécessaires.</p> - -<p>(1ᵒ) Une plus grande espérance qu’elle sera acceptée par le peuple.</p> - -<p>(2ᵒ) Une plus grande espérance encore que les citoyens ne demanderont -point si promptement, une réforme de la constitution.</p> - -<p>(3ᵒ) On détruirait par cette seule résolution, même avant que la -constitution fût faite, une partie des espérances de nos ennemis, parce -qu’alors, ils commenceraient à croire que la Convention donnera une -constitution à la France, ce que jusqu’à présent ils ne croient pas.</p> - -<p>En effet, il est difficile de ce tromper dans des articles généraux -importants, sur ce qui convient véritablement à la nation française, et -l’on n’a pas à craindre ces difficultés, cette presqu’ impossibilité d’exécution -qui, si on se livre aux détails, pourraient faire désirer la réforme -d’une constitution, d’ailleurs bien combinée.</p> - -<p>On pourrait donc proposer de borner la constitution à ces articles -essentiels, dans le nombre desquels on sent que doit être compris le -mode de réformer la constitution, lorsqu’elle cessera de paraître, à la -majorité des citoyens, suffisante pour le maintien de leurs droits; et si -l’assemblée adoptait cet avis, elle chargerait quatre ou cinq de ses -membres, adjoints au comité de salut public de lui présenter un plan -de constitution, borné à ces seuls articles, et combiné de manière que -ces articles puissent être soumis immédiatement à la discussion.</p> - -<p>Le travail de ce comité ne prendrait qu’une semaine, et l’assemblée -pourrait suivre ses discussions sur la constitution, car rien ne serait -plus facile que de placer dans ce plan, les points déjà arrêtés par la -Convention.</p> - -<p>Ce travail même serait utile, quand même l’assemblée voudrait se -livrer ensuite à plus de details:</p> - -<p>(1ᵒ) Parce qu’il en résulterait un meilleur ordre de discussions;</p> - -<p>(2ᵒ) Parce qu’on aurait toujours alors, un moyen d’accélérer le -travail, selon que des circonstances impérieuses l’exigeraient. C’est -d’après cette idée simple que nous vous proposerons de décréter que la -Convention charge une commission, composée de cinq de ses membres, -adjoints au comité de salut public, de lui présenter dans le plus court -délai, un plan de constitution, réduit aux seuls article qu’il importe de -rendre irrévocables par les assemblées législatives, pour assurer à la -République son unité, son indivisibilité et sa liberté, et au peuple -l’exercice de tous ses droits.</p> - -<p>Reprenons donc avec constance le travail de la constitution, et discutons-en -le petit nombre d’articles vraiment constitutionals, avec cette<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_429"></a>[429]</span> -sagesse qui n’exclut pas l’énergie, et avec ce talent qui ne flétrisse pas -les défiances.</p> - -<p>Songez que le dernier article de la constitution sera le commencement -du traité de paix avec les puissances. Il leur tarde de savoir -avec qui elles peuvent traiter, quelle que soit la forme de notre -gouvernement....</p> - -</div> - -<p>There follows a strong attack upon the Federal idea, -showing the Committee to be definitely anti-Girondin in -its sociology.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Mais cette inscription sera-t-elle donc toujours mensongère? verra-t-on -sans cesse, dans le palais de l’unité, les fureurs de la discorde, et -44 mille petites républiques y agitant leurs dissensions par des représentans?...</p> - -<p>Il faut qu’à votre voix, tous les Français se prononcent, que -l’égoïste et l’avare soient flétris par l’opinion, et punis dans leurs -richesses. Ne vous y méprenez pas, il n’y a plus de gloire et de -bonheur pour vous, que dans le succès de la liberté, dans le rétablissement -de l’ordre, et dans l’affermissement des propriétés.</p> - -<p>Voilà la base de toutes les sociétés politiques, et le législateur -qui la méconnaîtra, sera en horreur à ses contemporains et à la -postérité.</p> - -<p>Il sera aussi exécré le législateur qui aura méconnu les droits du -peuple, et qui n’aura pas écouté la plainte des malheureux.</p> - -<p>Si vous perdez cette occasion d’établir la république, vous êtes tous -également flétris, et pas un de vous n’échappera aux tyrans victorieux, -quelle que soit la nuance de votre opinion ou le principe de vos actions. -Le glaive exterminateur frappera les appelans au peuple, et les votans -pour la mort du tyran; et c’est la seule égalité que vous aurez fondée. -Vos noms ne passeront à la postérité que comme ceux des rebelles et -des coupables: vous aurez reculé le perfectionnement des sociétés -humaines; vous aurez perdu les droits des peuples, vous aurez fait -périr 300 mille hommes, et dilapidé des trésors que la liberté avait -déposés dans vos mains pour son affermissement; vous aurez rétrograder -la raison publique; vous serez complice de la tyrannie des rois -et de la barbarie de l’Europe, et l’on dira de vous; la convention de -France pouvait donner la liberté à l’Europe, mais par ses dissensions, -elle riva les fers du peuple, et servit le despotisme par ses haines....</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> C. W. Oman, “History of England,” p. 581.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Taine, “La Révolution,” preface.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Victor Hugo, “Quatre-vingt-treize.” Illustrated edition of 1877. -Paris, pp. 136-150.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> <i>E.g.</i> he says the “gentry” of France should imitate the gentry of -England. But to do this it is necessary to own the houses of the -peasantry; and even then the system does not always suit the Celtic -temperament, they say.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> For example, the island of Serque.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Bonaparte may have had a noble ancestry. But so had more than -one true bourgeois whose family had had neither the means nor the desire -to insist upon the privileged rank in the past.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> For the sake of clearness I do not mention the large class who had -purchased fiefs, all technically noble, many practically bourgeois.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> Lyons was, of course, a frontier town of the empire, but locally it is -the centre of its own country the “Lyonnais.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> All biographers agree. The first publication of the extract from the -civil register was obtained by Bougeart in August 1860. It was furnished -to him by M. Ludot, the mayor at the time. There is a ridiculous error in -the <i>Journal de la Montagne</i>, vol. ii. No. 142, “né à <i>Orchie</i> sur Aube.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> The date is given in the extract mentioned in the preceding note.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> See the action of the relatives in <a href="#APPENDIX_VI">No. VI.</a> of the Appendix.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> Bougeart, p. 12. A Danton, who was presumably the son of this -brother, was an inspector of the University under the second Empire.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_V">Appendix No. V.</a>; also <i>Théâtre de l’Ancien Collège de Troyes</i>, -Babeau, published by Dufour-Bouquet, Troyes, 1881.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> See list of his library, <a href="#APPENDIX_VIII">Appendix VIII.</a>, and his interview with -Thomas Payne, at the beginning of <a href="#CHAPTER_VII">Chapter VII</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> Speech of August 13, 1793. Printed in <i>Moniteur</i> of August 15.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> M. Béon.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> <i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>, p. 29.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> See “Notes of Courtois de l’Aube” in Clarétie’s “Desmoulins.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> <i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>, p. 30.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> An excellent reading is afforded by the <i>Avocat aux Conseils du Roi</i> of -M. Bos (Machal & Billaud, Paris, 1881), quoted more than once in this -work.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> Since 1728 membership of this body had been purchasable and -hereditary; a striking example of how wrongly society was moving.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_VI">Appendix VI.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> M. Bos, quoted above.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> Ibid., p. 520.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_V">Appendix V.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_II">Appendix II.</a> on Danton’s lodgings in Paris.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> See Robinet, <i>Danton vie Privée</i>, p. 284.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_VI">Appendix VI.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> By nature his nose was small. His was one of those faces rarely seen, -and always associated with energy and with leadership, whose great foreheads -overhang a face that would be small, were it not redeemed by the -square jaw and the mouth. Thus Arnault, “une caricature de Socrate.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> I refer to the English reformer who, on taking ship at Bristol, cast -his perruque into the water, crying, “I have done with such baubles,” and -sailed bald to the New World.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_VIII">Appendix VIII.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_IX">Appendix IX.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> From the <i>Almanack Royal</i> of 1788. Dr. Robinet, whose opportunities -of information are unique, tells us that he first moved into the Rue -des Fossés St. Germains, and later into the Cour du Commerce, some time -in 1790. The statement as to the first direction is unaccompanied by any -authority, but Dr. Robinet possesses a letter with this address on it; now -here the definite information of an official list seems to me of the greatest -weight.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> See Appendices <a href="#APPENDIX_II">II.</a> and <a href="#APPENDIX_VII">VII.</a> Some rooms look on the Rue des Cordeliers, -some on the Cour du Commerce.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> De Barentin. See <a href="#CHAPTER_II">preceding chapter</a> and <a href="#APPENDIX_V">Appendix V.</a> He became -Danton’s client just before the decree that summoned the States-General.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> Sécretaire du Sceau.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_V">Appendix V.</a>, Rousselin. The anecdote is little esteemed by -Aulard, but is admitted to be of value by other biographers. Aulard relies -for his opinion upon the undoubted errors in the matter of date. But -Rousselin may have been right in the main, though (writing many years -after) mistaken in the matter of a month or so.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> E. Champion, <i>La France en 1789.</i> <i>Esprit des Cahiers</i> in <i>La Révolution</i> -(<i>Hist. Générale</i>, viii.).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> Ibid.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> Aulard, who quotes Chassin, <i>Les Elections de Paris</i>, vol. ii. p. 478. -M. Aulard tells us that M. Chassin saw the document himself before the -war.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> Less than six hundred.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> <a href="#APPENDIX_V">Appendix V.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> This description is taken from a contemporary water-colour sketch -which I have seen in the collection of Dr. Robinet.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_I">Appendix I.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> See the discussion of the somewhat meagre authorities in Robinet, -<i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>, pp. 37-40.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> <i>Documents authentiques pour servir à l’Histoire de la Révolution Française -Danton</i>, par Alfred Bougeart. Brussels, 1861 (La Croix, Van Meenen -& Cie.).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> Aulard, who quotes Charavay, <i>Assemblée electorale de Paris</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> Chassin, <i>Les Elections et les Cahiers de Paris</i>, iii. 580-581, on which -this whole scene is based.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> Aulard, <i>Revue de la Révolution Française</i>, February 14, 1893.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> See the figures given in the petition against Danton’s arrest, <a href="#Page_108">p. 108</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> This decree was passed by the Cordeliers on Tuesday, July 21, 1789. -It is not so unreasonable as it might seem, for but two days afterwards -(July 23rd) the informal municipal body recognises the necessity of new -city elections.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> Signed 21st September; promulgated 3rd November.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> An excellent example is on p. 45 of <i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> Their names were Peyrilhe, De Blois, De Granville, Dupré, Croharé. -They can be found, with all the decrees touching this business, in <i>Danton, -Homme d’État</i> (Robinet, 1889), p. 248. Printed, like all the Cordeliers’ -decrees, by <i>Momoro</i> in the Rue de la Harpe, and signed, “d’Anton.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> It may be remembered that Bougeart (p. 69) claims the presidency -for Danton at the very beginning of ’89. The error of this has been -pointed out. On the other hand, Aulard says he was not President till -October. This is another error. There is at least one earlier document, -that of September, quoted on the preceding page.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> They had sat for a while at the Evéché; on the Island of the Cité, -while the Manège was being prepared.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> <i>Rev. de Paris</i>, xxiii. p. 20.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> November 11th and 12th.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> 22nd of December.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> 12th November and 14th of December.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> 31 against 20 (Aulard, from <i>Journal de la Cour et de la Ville</i>, p. 518).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> <i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>, pp. 256, &c. Signed, “d’Anton.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> Danton, his friend Legendre, Testulat, Sableé, and Guintin. Several -authorities have placed Danton’s election in September 1789 instead of -January 1790, an error due (probably) to following Godard’s list, which -was published in 1790, but bore the title, “Members of the Commune -elected since September 1789.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> Marat’s presses were hidden in a cellar of the Cordeliers now situated -under the house of the concierge of the Clinique.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> January 19th.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> The Rue des Fossés was (and is, under its new name) remarkably -straight for an old street. Cannon could be used.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> Their names were Ozanne and Damien; the same Damien, I believe, -who committed the blunder of September 13, 1791. See <a href="#Page_150">p. 150</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> Article 9 of the decree of October 8 and 9, 1790.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> “Notables-adjoints,” to the number of seven in each district. Danton -himself was elected on to such a body in May or June 1790, and served for -a few months.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> That is, till his election as substitute to the Procureur in December -1791.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> January 25, 28; February 4, 16; March 3, 5, 13, 19; June 15, 19, 23. -Aulard, <i>Rev. Française</i>, February 14, 1893, pp. 142, 143.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> It is this warrant which has probably misled one biographer as to the -date of the “Affaire Marat.” (<i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>, p. 67: “En <i>mars</i> -survint l’affaire Marat.”)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> That is, of course, the inclusion of Paris into the general scheme of -December 1789—a scheme that enfranchised the peasants, but created an -oligarchy in the towns. See above, pp. <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, and <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> He received 12,550 votes, the great bulk of the limited suffrage. -Forty-nine odd votes were cast for Danton, but he was obviously not a -candidate (Aulard).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> <i>Ami du Peuple</i>, No. 192.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> <i>Révolutions de France et Brabant</i>, tom. x. p. 171.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> There is a misprint (a very rare thing with this careful historian) in -footnote No. 3, p. 231, of M. Aulard’s article on Danton in the <i>Rev. Française</i> -for March 14, 1893. For “November” we should read “September,” -for we know that the voting was over on September 16. See Robiquet, -<i>Personnel Municipal</i>, p. 373, and the evidence on all sides that a new poll -was ordered on September 17 in his Section.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> This big building in the island next Notre Dame disappeared in the -restorations of Viollet le Duc. It was often used in the revolutionary -period for public meetings, and even the Assembly sat there for a few -days after entering Paris in October, and while the Riding-School was -being prepared for it.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> <i>Moniteur</i>, Old Series, No. 316 (1790).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> M. Aulard says “somewhere between the 10th and the 15th,” and -“nous n’avons pas la date precise.” He has probably overlooked <i>L’Ami du -Peuple</i>, No. 290, “Le 14 de ce mois Danton a été nommé à la place du Sieur -Villette.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> Aulard. The other biographers all assume that he did not resign.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> <i>Orateur du Peuple</i>, vol. iii. No. 24.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> Ibid., vol. vi. No. 27.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> The letter will be found in M. Etienne Charavay’s <i>Assemblée Electorale</i>, -p. 437.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> I quote from M. Aulard, <i>Rev. Française</i>, March 14, 1893.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> Note that Lafayette in his Memoirs (vol. iii. p. 64) talks of Danton -“at the head of his battalion.” I doubt an error on the part of a soldier -whose business it was to know his own command.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> <i>e.g.</i> that of the quarter of the Carmelites (ibid.).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> <i>Révolutions de France et Brabant</i>, No. 74.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> See his Collected Works, vol. xii. pp. 264, 265.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> M. Aulard points out an error in Condorcet’s own note (xii. p. 267), -where it is mentioned as the 12th of July; but the <i>Bouche de Fer</i> of the 10th -gives us the above date over these two speeches.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> He wrote a funny little letter (among other things) to the <i>Républicain</i> -of July 16, describing a “mechanical king,” “who is practically eternal.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> See <i>Société des Jacobins</i>, vol. ii. p. 541.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> <i>Moniteur</i>, July 16, 1791.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> <i>Ami du Peuple</i>, June 22, 1791.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> <i>Révolutions de France et de Brabant</i>, No. 82.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. It indicates, as will be seen -later in the chapter, the very number that finally formed the garrison of -the palace—a point not hitherto noticed, and well worth remembering, -for it shows how Lafayette’s accusations are half the truth. He had -approached Danton, and he had told him many of his plans. Danton had -not acceded, but he used the knowledge.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> <i>Révolutions de France et de Brabant</i>, No. 82.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> <a href="#APPENDIX_II">Appendix II.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> On June 24.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> I follow Aulard in this as to the general scheme, and largely as to -authorities also.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> Aulard is my authority for the fact that the actual text of this second -petition disappeared in 1871, when the Hotel de Ville was burnt by the -Commune, but that Berchez saw it before that event, and carefully drew -up a list of the principal names. Danton is not among them.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> The <i>Courrier Français</i> of July 22 asks if “the man in holland trousers -and a grey waistcoat was Danton,” but says nothing more.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> See the letter published in the <i>Rev. Française</i>, April 1893, p. 325.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> <i>Orateur du Peuple</i>, viii. No. 16. Not over-trustworthy.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> Possibly later. Beugnot seems to speak as though Danton was still -in Troyes on at least as late a date as the 6th of August (<i>Mémoires</i>, i. pp. -249-250).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> Since writing the above I notice that M. Aulard in the same article -quotes a remark of Danton’s in the Electoral Assembly of September 10th. -This is taken from the <i>procès verbal</i> of the Assembly, and M. Charavay -communicated it to M. Aulard.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> His election was not declared till the 7th, but was known on the 6th.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> January 20, 1792.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> I see in that phrase all Danton’s attitude upon the war.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> There was a minority of seven.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> Perhaps as early as the evening of the 28th.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> This account is translated from the <i>Moniteur</i>, August 3, 1792.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> <i>Journal des Débats</i>, 183.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> I take this document from Robinet, <i>Danton, Homme d’État</i>, pp. 109, -112; but neither he nor Aulard (who quotes it) gives the authority. The -circular is quoted often under the date of August 19; it was issued on -that Sunday, but was drawn up and dated on the Saturday to which I -have assigned it.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> Aulard, who quotes from the <i>Moniteur</i>, xii. 445.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> The scene can be reconstructed from his testimony at the trial of the -Girondins and from his speech at the Jacobins on the 5th of November.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> I take all this from Aulard’s article in the <i>Révolution Française</i> of -June 14, 1893.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> The votes of the 30th, 31st, and 2nd.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> The word “illegally” is just, for the constitution of the Commune -and all its acts were legally dependent on the Assembly. On the other -hand, the Commune had given this committee right to add to its numbers, -but such men as Marat, who was not a member of the Commune, were -surely not intended.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> First <i>La Poissonnière</i>, then the <i>Postes</i> and the <i>Luxembourg</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> It is possible that this sentence, including the preceding phrase, “le -tocsin qui va sonner,” &c., are the only part of the speech that has been -literally reported. The <i>Logotachygraphe</i> was not founded till January, and -while the <i>Moniteur</i> and the <i>Journal des Débats</i> give much the same version, -the latter calls it a “summary.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> “Appel à l’impartiale posterité.” Madame Roland had the great -historical gift of intuition, that is, she could minutely describe events -which never took place. I attach no kind of importance to the passage -immediately preceding. If Danton and Pétion were alone, as she describes -them, her picture is the picture of a novelist. The phrase quoted above -may be authentic—there were witnesses.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> <i>Moniteur</i>, January 25, 1793. Speech of January 21st.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> Speech of January 21, 1793.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> The accusations against Danton in this matter are given and criticised -in <a href="#APPENDIX_IV">Appendix IV.</a>, where the reasons are also given for omitting any mention -of Marat’s circular in the text.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> For the figures and very interesting details as to Egalité’s election see -<i>Révolution Française</i> August 14, 1893, second note, page 129.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> More than 700 and less than 1000 died. The common exaggeration -is Peltier’s 12,000.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> As a fact, his successor, Garat, was not elected till the 9th of October, -and did not begin to act till the 12th. Danton seems to have remained at -the Ministry till the evening of the 11th.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> October 23.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> <i>Michelet</i>, 1st edition, vol. iv. pp. 392-394.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> October 10 and 11.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> He made a speech on the 6th of November demanding (of course) the -trial of the King, but not with violence. He left for Belgium with Delacroix -on the 1st of December.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> This Dannon was a friend of Danton’s. He began, but did not complete, -a collection of his speeches, &c., and an inquiry into his accounts. -He was a member for Pas de Calais. It is not easy to get his name -accurately spelt. I follow the spelling of a list of the Convention published -in 1794. Dannon voted for banishment.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> I must not omit to mention one phrase which is far more characteristic -of him—that spoken after Lepelletier’s assassination: “It would be -well for us if we could die like that.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> The proofs of the connection with Talleyrand are based only on inference. -They will be found discussed in Robinet’s <i>Danton Emigré</i>, pp. 12-16 -and pp. 270, &c. As for Priestley’s correspondence, it was sympathetic -and deep, and continued in spite of the massacres of September. There -is a draft of a Constitution in the French archives which some believe to -be Priestley’s, but I am confident it is not in his handwriting.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> <i>Moniteur</i>, March 9, 1793.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> <i>Ibid.</i> March 10, 1793.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> See <i>Patriote Français</i>, No. 1308.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> See <i>Moniteur</i>, March 13, 1793.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> Paine’s ignorance of French was such that his speech on Louis’s -exile was translated for him.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> La Roche du Maine.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> Levasseur tells us that Delmas spoke first, and that his remarks took -the form of a definite motion for the appearance of the Committees to -account for their action. Legendre is mentioned here because he alone -is agreed upon by all the eye-witnesses (and by the <i>Moniteur</i>) as being the -principal defender of Danton. We must not underestimate his courage; -it was he who with a very small force shut the club of the Jacobins on the -night of the 9th Thermidor, and so turned the flank of the Robespierrian -faction.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> “Quand les restes de la faction ... ne seront plus ... vous -n’aurez plus d’exemples à donner ... ils ne restera que le peuple et -vous, et le gouvernement dont vous êtes le centre inviolable.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> “Mauvais citoyen, tu as conspiré; faux ami, tu disais, il y a deux jours, -du mal de Desmoulins que tu as perdu; méchant homme, tu as comparé -l’opinion publique à une femme de mauvaise vie, tu as dit que l’honneur -était ridicule ... si Fabre est innocent, si D’Orléans, si Dumouriez -furent innocents tu l’est sans doute. J’en ai trop dit—tu repondras à la -justice.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> Robespierre’s notes for St. Just’s report were published by M. France -in 1841 among the “Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> “La Convention Nationale après avoir entendu les rapports des -Comités de Sureté générale et du Salut Public, décrète d’accusation -Camille Desmoulins, Hérault, Danton, Phillippeaux Lacroix ... en conséquence -elle declare leur mise en jugement.” These were the last words -of St. Just’s speech, and formed his substantive motion.</p> - -<p>“Ce décret est adopté à l’unanimité et au milieu des plus vifs applaudissements.”—<i>Moniteur</i>, -April 2, 1794 (13th Germinal, year II.).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> Couthon was a cripple. Once (later) in the Convention it was called -out to him “Triumvir,” and he glanced at his legs and said, “How could -I be a triumvir?” The logical connection between good legs and triumvirates -was more apparent to himself than to those whom he caused to be -guillotined.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> We have the fragments of this “No. VII.,” which was not published. -See M. Clarétie’s <i>C. Desmoulins</i>, p. 274 of Mrs. Cashel Hoey’s translation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> Danton would have been thirty-five in October. Desmoulins had -been thirty-four in March—<i>not</i> thirty-three, as he said at the trial. I -give this on the authority of M. Clarétie, who in his book quotes the birth-certificate, -which he himself had seen (March 2, 1760).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> March 10, 1793. Exception has been taken to the whole sentiment -by Dr. Robinet, but great, or rather unique, as is his authority, I cannot -believe that an appeal—especially an exclamatory appeal of this nature—was -foreign to his impetuous and merciful temper.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> Wallon, <i>Tribunal Révolutionnaire</i>, vol. iii. p. 156.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> It is known that Fleuriot and Fouquier were alone when the jury -were “chosen by lot.” This appeared at the trial of Fouquier. For the -notes of Lebrun, see <a href="#APPENDIX_X">Appendix X.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> Wallon, <i>Tribunal Révolutionnaire</i>, vol. iii. p. 155.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX_X">Appendix X.</a> The speeches which I have written here are -reconstructed from these notes, and I must beg the reader to check the -consecutive sentences of the text by reference to the disjointed notes -printed in the Appendix.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> See <a href="#Page_199">p. 199</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> Wallon, <i>Tribunal Révolutionnaire</i>, iii. 169, quotes <i>Archives</i>, W. 342, -<i>Dossier</i> 641, 1st Part, No. 34.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> Fouquier had written a letter to his distant relative Desmoulins, -begging for some employment, on August 20, 1792, just after the success -of Danton’s party, in which Desmoulins had of course shared. It is by no -means dignified and almost servile. See Clarétie, <i>Desmoulins</i>, English -edition, p. 318.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">[158]</a> This is M. Wallon’s opinion, who gives both versions, and from whom -I take so much of this description. See <i>Tribunal Révolutionnaire</i>, iii. 177.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="label">[159]</a> All this appears in the trial of Fouquier.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="label">[160]</a> They are given in Clarétie’s <i>Desmoulins</i> in the Appendix.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="label">[161]</a> See the list of the prisoner’s effects in Clarétie’s <i>Desmoulins</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="label">[162]</a> This gate may be seen to-day just to the right of the great staircase -in the court of the Palais de Justice. It has an iron grating before it.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="label">[163]</a> The original of this I take from Clarétie, who quotes P. A. Lecomte, -<i>Memorial sur la Révolution Française</i>.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Lorsqu’arrivés au bords du Phlégéton</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Camille Desmoulins, D’Eglantine et Danton,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Payèrent pour passer ce fleuve redoutable</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Le nautonnier Charon (citoyen équitable)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A nos trois passagers voulait remettre en mains</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’excédant de la taxe imposée aux humains.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">‘Garde,’ lui dit Danton, ‘la somme toute entière;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Je paye pour Couthon, St. Just et Robespierre.’”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="label">[164]</a> It was Madame Gély who told this to Despoi’s grandfather. Clarétie -has mentioned it. But Michelet must have heard from the family about -this same priest (Kerénavant le Breton), for according to Madame Gély it -was he who married Danton for the second time.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="label">[165]</a> Ce qu’il y a de certain d’après le résultat donné par la commission des subsistances -militaires, c’est que les armées sont approvisionnées jusque vers le -premier octobre; l’armée d’Italie, la plus mal approvisionnée, a des subsistances -pour quelques mois, et l’on a déjà préparé pour elle d’autres approvisionnements.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="label">[166]</a> Des traîtres se sont mêlés dans les rangs des patriotes et dans les convois de -l’artillerie qui allaient combattre les révoltés; le comité en a fait arrêter la -marche, et le comité de surveillance retient les principaux auteurs de ce nouveau -complot. Malgré tant de surveillance, quelques soldats français, indignes de ce -nom, ont trahi leur devoir et sont allés grossir la horde des rebelles. Partout les -obstacles se multiplient; partout les administrations veulent régler les mouvemens -des troupes et les commissaires veulent faire les fonctions de généraux, des -communes arrêtent à leur gré des armes qui ont une autre destination, et c’est -ainsi que toutes les forces s’atténuent et que les brigands ont des succès.</p> - -<p>Mais du moins les rives qui correspondent aux perfides de George III. sont -garanties. Les trois divisions commandées par le général Canclaux, qui occupent -les ports intermédiaires entre les Sables et Nantes, entretiennent la communication -entre ces deux villes, et contiennent les brigands à une certaine distance des -côtes.</p> - -<p>La communication par terre, entre Nantes et Angers, est libre, on travaille à -rétablir la libre navigation de la Loire entre ces deux villes. Quelques bateaux -armés de canons sont préparés, et suffiront pour cette protection.</p> - -<p>Déjà une victoire signalée vient de raviver toutes les espérances de la patrie. -A Saint-Mexent, l’artillerie et les approvisionnemens des révoltés sont le prix de -la première victoire signalée que les patriotes viennent de remporter.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_430"></a>[430]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX</h2> - -</div> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst">Agriculture, depression of, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Amelinau case, Danton’s opinion in, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Antoinette, Marie, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Marie_Antoinette">Marie Antoinette</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Arcis-sur-Aube, Danton born at, in 1759, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">position of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect on Danton’s politics, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">visited by Danton in 1791, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">again in August 1792, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">last retirement of Danton to, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Army, condition of, at Valmy, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s first mission to, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">second mission, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">third, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">position of on Sambre in June 1793, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of “Sambre et Meuse,” <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attitude towards Robespierre, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Arnault, witness of Danton’s death, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Arrest of D’Eglantine, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Hébert, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Desmoulins and Danton, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Artisans, loss of influence of Church on, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">their disfranchisement, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">causes of their discontent, the guild, the octroi, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">character of before Revolution, numbers, influence of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Assembly, National, <i>see</i> “<a href="#States_General">States General</a>.”</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bailly, of the professional class, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">opposition of Cordeliers to, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected mayor of Paris, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">resignation of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Barbarian invasions of ninth century, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Barentin">Barentin, de, intimacy with Danton, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Barrère, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his action on first committee with Danton, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Report against Robespierre, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bastille, fall of, <a href="#Page_73">73-74</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of this, <a href="#Page_78">78-80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Battles, of Valmy, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Jemappes, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Neerwinden, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Turcoing, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Fleurus, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Belgium, Danton proposes annexation of, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Bourgeoisie">Bourgeoisie or middle class, effect of Revolution on, definition of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">produces most of the revolutionaries, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Brienne">Brienne, de, client of Danton’s, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brissot, draws up petition of Jacobins, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacked by Desmoulins, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Brunswick">Brunswick, Duke of, his manifesto, <a href="#Page_161">161-166</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his hesitation, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burning at stake in United States, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">by Parliament of Strasbourg in 1789, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Cahiers, their nature, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">that of Cordeliers destroyed, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Carnot, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in first Committee of Public Safety, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Robespierre’s attack on, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Centralisation, of pre-revolutionary France, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">quality of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">before Revolution, examples of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">pre-revolutionary fails to raise revenue, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">used as a practical engine of reform, rapid raising of armies, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charlemagne, marks the end of settled Roman order, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Imperial tradition of in France, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charleroy, stronghold of Coburg, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">captured, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charpentier, his Café des Écoles, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his daughter marries Danton, Mlle., <i>see</i> “<a href="#Wife">Wife</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Châtelet, impossibility of reforming it, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">nature of, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">issue warrant against Marat, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_431"></a>[431]</span>against Danton, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Church, its loss of power in villages during eighteenth century, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">loss of influence over citizens, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">not main cause of egalitarian feeling in France, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">intention of making Danton a priest in, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Cice">Cicé, de, Danton as orator of municipal deputation demands resignation of, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Civil constitution of clergy, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Clergy">Clergy</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Class system, vigour of, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Classes, social, five principal, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Clergy">Clergy, Danton’s defence of, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">civil constitution of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its vast importance, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its details, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">passes the Assembly, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Louis ratifies, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Coburg, his position on Sambre, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">is defeated at Fleurus, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Collot">Collot d’Herbois, attacked by Danton in Jacobins, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">beaten by Danton in election for Substitute Procureur, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Committee of Public Safety, first, proposed by Isnard, Danton elected, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">determines overthrow of Girondins, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton resigns from, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Robespierre elected on, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">powerful force in winter of 1793, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">determination to continue Terror in spite of Danton, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">abandons Robespierre, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Commune">Commune (before August 1792, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Municipality">Municipality</a>”), insurrectionary of, August 1792, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">increases in power, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Marat joins its “Comité de Surveillance,” <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its quarrel with Gironde, <a href="#Page_216">216-228</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">opposes committee in winter of 1793, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacked by Danton, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">captured by Robespierre, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attempts to save him and fails, <a href="#Page_310">310-314</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Condorcet, of the professional class, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">example of balance of two French tendencies, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">demands Republic, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Conseils du Roi, Old Court of Appeals, nature of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton enters at Bar of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Contrat social, written just after Danton’s birth, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Convention">Convention, elections of Paris to, Danton elected to, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its parties, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its appearance on first meeting, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">declares Republic, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">debate on king’s death in, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">votes arrest of Girondins, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Legendre defends Danton in, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">St. Just attacks Danton in, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">subservience to Robespierre, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">outlaws him, <a href="#Page_307">307-310</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Cordeliers">Cordeliers, district of, social character, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">position of Convent Hall in, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">meets after elections, importance of this, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">petitions against Danton’s arrest, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">merged in section of Théâtre Français, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cordeliers, club of, contrasted with Jacobins, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">their numbers and character, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">opposition to new municipality, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">determine on independent use of their guard, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attack municipality again, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">create <i>Mandat Imperatif</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">manifesto to march on Versailles, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">oppose Lafayette’s discipline in National Guard, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">oath of their deputies, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">victory of club over municipality, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">campaign against restriction of suffrage, <a href="#Page_110">110-113</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton leaves them for Jacobins, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Republican declaration of, on king’s flight, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">petition of, on king’s flight, not signed by Danton, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cordelier, Vieux, published by Desmoulins to protest against Terror, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Court, relations of nobles to, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">form party to influence king at Versailles, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">last stand in the Tuilleries, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Courts of Law, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Couthon, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">proposes law on worship of God, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">supports Robespierre in committee, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_432"></a>[432]</span>Dannon, his name mistaken for Danton’s, Le Gallois’s misprint, Michelet’s error based on this, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Danton, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">very typical of nation, his attitude towards Paris, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his rise during the war, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">preliminary summary of his career, <a href="#Page_35">35-39</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">forerunner of Napoleon, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">retirement and death, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">born at Arcis-sur-Aube, 1759, age compared with contemporaries, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of birthplace on his politics, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his father Procureur at Arcis, <a href="#Page_42">42-43</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">family of, house of, social position of father, death of father, fortune of, his mother and aunts, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">to be made a priest, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">educated by Oratorians, their influence, destined for Bar, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">character as boy, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">coronation of Louis XVI. seen by, <a href="#Page_46">46-47</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his stepfather Recordain, apprenticed to Vinot, solicitor in Paris, called to Bar at Rheims, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">practice in lower courts, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at bar of Conseils du Roi, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his Latin oration, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his opinion in Montbarey case, Du Barentin his client, and De Brienne, his income at Bar, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">frequents Charpentier’s Café des Écoles, marriage, dowry of wife, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">physical appearance, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">energy, style of oratory, knowledge of English and Italian, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reading, pre-revolutionary politics, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">private life, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">goes to live in Cour du Commerce, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Barentin’s offer of post to, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his relation to masonic lodges, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">summary of his condition on outbreak of Revolution, <a href="#Page_56">56-67</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Primary of his District convened, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">not president of District during elections, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at Palais Royal, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">possibly present at fall of Bastille, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">action night after, clashes with Lafayette, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in Club of Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">as President of Cordeliers attacks Municipality, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">creates <i>Mandat Imperatif</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">placards manifesto for march on Versailles, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">nature of action supporting <i>Mandat Imperatif</i>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his success, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected to municipality, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">defends Marat, <a href="#Page_101">101-107</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">discovers error in warrant against Marat, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">appeals to assembly, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">false effect of his attitude, <a href="#Page_104">104-105</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">sworn in to municipality, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">with Legendre, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">goes in deputation to Louis XVI., <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">warrant for arrest of, issued by Châtelet, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">district in his favour, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his proposition for grand jury, appeal to Assembly, decision in his favour, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his policy at close of 1790, <a href="#Page_123">123-125</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">rejected at municipal elections of 1790, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">moderation during affair of Nancy, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">rejected as candidate for Notables, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">orator of city deputation (November 1790), <a href="#Page_128">128-131</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected head of his battalion, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected to administration of city (1791), <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">letter to De la Rochefoucald, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">appears in Jacobins, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacks Collot d’Herbois in Jacobins, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">speech on death of Mirabeau, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">action on April 18, 1791, Desmoulins’ testimony untrustworthy, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attitude during Louis XVI.’s flight, <a href="#Page_140">140-141</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacks Lafayette at Jacobins on king’s flight, <a href="#Page_143">143-145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reads Jacobin petition on Champ de Mars, absence from Cordeliers’ manifestation there, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Lafayette orders arrest of (August 4, 1791), <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his flight to England, <a href="#Page_148">148-149</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his return, sent by his section to electoral college, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attempted arrest of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected substitute to Procureur of Paris (November 1791), <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his chances of a prosperous municipal career, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">opposes war policy, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">speech at Jacobins describing himself, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">justice of his opposition to war, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">retained on committee of insurrection (July-August, 1792), <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">goes to Arcis to see his mother, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">leads insurrection of August 10, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his position after 10th of August, Minister of Justice, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_433"></a>[433]</span>his determination to form a strong government after fall of monarchy, only practical man in executive in August, 1792, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">addresses Assembly as Minister of Justice, his circular to tribunals, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">defence of himself in the circular, his power over cabinet, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">he and Dumouriez see chance of repelling invasion, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his interview with Roland and ministers on news of invasion reported by Fabre d’Eglantine, <a href="#Page_180">180-181</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his political attitude just before massacres, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">he orders domiciliary visits and collection of arms, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his speech, the volunteers, its success, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">why he did not interfere during massacres, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">anecdote of him during massacres, his future comment on, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected to Convention by Paris, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his false position in the Mountain, accused of planning massacres, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his appearance on first meeting of Convention, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">resigns Ministry of Justice, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">repudiates Marat, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his diplomacy secures Prussian retreat after Valmy, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his attitude towards Dumouriez, partial reconciliation with Gironde, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">anecdote of theatre and Madame Roland, of meeting with Marat, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his reticence after Jemappes, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">speech on Catholicism opposing Cambon, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attempt to reconcile Girondins in meeting at Sceaux, Guadet’s opposition, <a href="#Page_198">198-199</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">starts on his first mission to army, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">debates on Louis XVI.’s death, misprint of Danton for Dannon, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">what he really did in the debate, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">unusual violence, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">caused by his wife’s illness, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">intimacy with Priestley, Talleyrand, his diplomacy spoiled by his own violence on king’s death, demands annexation of Belgium, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">second mission to army in Belgium, change of his politics on his return, despairs of reconciling Girondins and Paris, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">accounted for by death of his wife, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his military policy and appeal to Paris, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">creates Revolutionary Tribunal, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">violently attacked for his intimacy with Dumouriez, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">supports Isnard’s proposal of Great Committee, is named on it, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Mirabeau, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">summary of Danton’s position in Committee, as it changes, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his practical policy impossible with Girondins, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">difficulty of following his action in April and May, 1793, speech on acquittal of Marat, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">curious action half in favour of Girondins, proposes committee of twelve through Barrère, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">but prevents formation of special guard, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton, through the Committee, overthrows the Gironde, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his phrase with regard to Girondins, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his difficulty in controlling forces after June 2, 1793, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">begins to lose his power, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">still retains enough power at end of June to produce Constitution, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">and to persuade Convention to his policy, his second marriage, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reasons for it, he loses power still more in July, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">puts his name reluctantly to St. Just’s report attacking fallen Girondins, he resigns his place on Committee, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his brilliancy whilst standing alone, great speeches in August, on army, on strengthening government, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his despair and illness, Garat’s interview with him, Desmoulins, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">retires to his home at Arcis, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his rest at Arcis, its effects, <a href="#Page_237">237-240</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">regret for execution of Girondins, returns to the Convention, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his new politics against the Terror, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his defence of religious liberty and attack on Commune, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Robespierre defends him in Jacobins, Desmoulins helps him, publication of “Vieux Cordelier,” <a href="#Page_244">244-245</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his first check, D’Eglantine arrested, he knows his attempt has failed, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">still speaks in Convention, last interview with Robespierre, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Panis comes to warn him, he is arrested, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_434"></a>[434]</span>his trial and death, <a href="#Page_249">249-281</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">taken to the Luxembourg with Desmoulins, meets Paine, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">policy of his defence, of Committee, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Legendre defends Danton in Convention, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">St. Just’s report and vote against Danton, <a href="#Page_254">254-255</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his remarks in the prison, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">trial begins, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">fear of an armed attempt to save him, his reply to the judges, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">charges against Danton, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Westermann’s replies, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s speech in his own defence, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">collusion of judge and prosecutor, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Renault’s defence, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">judge and prosecutor appeal to Convention, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">St. Just’s second speech to Convention against Danton, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Billaud-Varennes, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">taken back to Conciergerie, condemned, his action in prison, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">passage to guillotine, <a href="#Page_273">273-279</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">passes David, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">passes house of Duplay and Robespierre’s window, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">he rallies Fabre d’Eglantine, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">rhymes sold in Paris same night, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his execution, <a href="#Page_279">279-281</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effects of his death, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">contrasted with Robespierre, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Danton, Madame, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Wife">Wife</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">David, artist, portrait of Danton (<a href="#frontispiece"><i>frontispiece</i></a>);</li> -<li class="isub1">animosity against Danton, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">sketches the condemned, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">false promise to Robespierre, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">De Barentin, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Barentin">Barentin</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">De Brienne, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Brienne">Brienne</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">De Cicé, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Cice">Cicé</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">D’Eglantine, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Fabre">Fabre</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">De Séchelles, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Herault">Hérault</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Decree of Dec. 1788, elections, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Desmoulins, Camille, house in Cour du Commerce, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">brings news of Necker’s dismissal, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">member of Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">testimony as to Danton’s action on April 18, 1791, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton sleeps in his flat before insurrection of Aug. 10, 1792, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Histoire des Brissottins,” allied to Robespierre, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">publishes “Vieux Cordelier,” <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">arrested, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his answer to his judges, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his examination in court, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">tears up his written defence, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his frenzy going to guillotine, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Districts, Paris divided into sixty, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">District of Cordeliers, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Cordeliers">Cordeliers</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Duke of Brunswick, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Brunswick">Brunswick</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Dumouriez, outflanked before Valmy, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">fears to attack, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his political motives, his work with Danton after Valmy, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">incident in theatre with Danton, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">treason of, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton attacked for friendship with, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Education, French, effect of, due to Jesuits, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of on Robespierre and Desmoulins, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Danton, <a href="#Page_44">44-47</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Egalité elected for Paris, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Eglantine, d’, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Fabre">Fabre</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Elections to, States General decreed, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">to first municipality, elected by Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of priests and bishops, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">to Legislative, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Paris to Convention, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Danton, Bailly, &c., <i>see</i> under their names.</li> - -<li class="indx">England, Danton’s flight to, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">English constitution, flexibility of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its vices described by Marat, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">English language, Danton’s acquaintance with, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">English society, homogeneity of in eighteenth century contrasted with the Continent, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst" id="Fabre">Fabre d’Eglantine, poet, member of Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">escorts officers of Châtelet through mob, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reports Danton’s interview with other ministers, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">arrested, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">trial of with Danton, <a href="#Page_249">249-272</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his luxury in prison, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his illness and despair on way to guillotine, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Maltese orange,” <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">rhymes on him and Danton, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_435"></a>[435]</span>Fear, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Great_fear">Great</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Feudalism, founded in troubles of ninth century, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">fall of, in July, August, 1789, <a href="#Page_83">83-85</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Feuillants, club of, represents Lafayette’s supporters in Legislative, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Flanders, regiment of, arrives to strengthen court in 1789, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fleurus, battle of, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fouquier-Tinville, public prosecutor, his action in Danton’s trial, <a href="#Page_267">267-271</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">France, centralisation of, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">egalitarianism in, is not due to Roman law or Church, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">material state of, prior to Revolution, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">before Revolution, character of centralisation in, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">imperial tradition in, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">origins of social constitution in, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">specially suited to growth of Roman law, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Paris the bond of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">re-made by the Revolution, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of Rousseau upon, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">united by monarchy, led by Paris as the king’s town, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Français, Théâtre, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Section">Section</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Franchise">Franchise, loss of, by artisans, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">French, character of, in pursuing political theories, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">courts of law, nature in Ancien Régime, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">education, effect of Jesuit influence on, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">education, effect of on Robespierre and Desmoulins, Danton’s speech on, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">peasantry, owners of land before Revolution, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">peasantry, effect of Revolution on, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">peasantry, condition before Revolution, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">village community, decay of, in eighteenth century, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">loss of Church in, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">nobility, origin of, as a definite class in ninth century, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">French Revolution, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Revolution">Revolution</a>.”</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Garat, his interview with Danton, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Garran Coulon, Danton’s return from England on election of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Girondins, represent the professional class, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">declare war, <a href="#Page_15">15-18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">opposition to Danton from the beginning of the Convention, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">momentary reconciliation with, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">failure of, meeting at Sceaux, Guadet rejects him, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">outbreak of quarrel with Paris, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">expulsion of, <a href="#Page_216">216-228</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">description of their character, excess of idealism, unworkable with Danton’s practical policy, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">their misgovernment, opposition of Paris, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">bad news from Vendée weakens them in May 1793, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Isnard’s menace to Paris, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">firmness during attack, Lanjuinais’ proposal to “break the Commune,” <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">vote of the twenty-nine arrests, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">confusion of their fall to be explained by great Committee, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s phrase concerning, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Vergniaud and Guadet attacked in St. Just’s report, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s pity for, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gobel, schismatic Bishop of Paris, trial under Robespierre, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Great_fear">Great fear, peasants’ rising destroys feudality, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Guadet, Girondin, rejects Danton at Sceaux, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">St. Just’s report on, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Guard, National, <i>see</i> “<a href="#National_Guard">National Guard</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Guard, Swiss, their defence of the Tuilleries, <a href="#Page_166">166-169</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">demand for vengeance against, by Parisians, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">special, proposed for the Convention, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">weak demand for, by Girondins, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hébert, member of the Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">with Commune against Committee in winter, 1793, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s opposition to his religious persecution, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his arrest and execution, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Henriot, illegally given command of the city forces by the Commune, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at head of attack of Convention, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">note sent to, by Committee on Danton’s trial, to prevent a rescue, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attempt to save Robespierre, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Herault">Hérault de Séchelles, present at taking of Bastille, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_436"></a>[436]</span>added to Committee, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">expelled from Committee, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">trial of, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Herbois, d’, Collot, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Collot">Collot</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Herman">Herman, judge at Danton’s trial, <a href="#Page_260">260-271</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Income, of Danton at Bar, estimated, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Institution, the, importance of, to France, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">provided by the Committee, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Insurrection, of July 14, 1789, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of August 10, 1792, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of June 2, 1793, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attempted to save Robespierre, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Invasions, siege of Verdun by Brunswick, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Beaurepaire’s suicide, capitulation of Verdun, ferment in Paris, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">causes massacre of September, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Valmy, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Jemappes, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">defeat of Neerwinden, 1793, allies cross the Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees, take Valenciennes, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Turcoing, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">battle of Fleurus, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Isnard, Girondin, proposes Committee of Public Safety, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his threat to destroy Paris, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jacobins, character of, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s speech in, on death of Mirabeau, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton attacks Lafayette in, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">moderate petition of, to Assembly on king’s flight, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">read by Danton in Champs de Mars, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">joined by radicals in Legislative, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">debate on war, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Robespierre reads his last speech in, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Legendre closes, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jemappes, battle of, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Judge, in Danton’s trial, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Herman">Herman</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Just, St., <i>see</i> “<a href="#St_Just">St. Just</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Justice, Ministry of, Danton put into, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his circular from, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kersaint, associated with Danton at period of the flight of the king, present at interview of Danton with other ministers in August, 1793, he believes that Brunswick will reach Paris, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">King, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Louis">Louis</a>.”</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lafayette, a seceding noble, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">first clash with Danton, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">opposition of Cordeliers to, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">follows the mob to Versailles, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his discipline of National Guard opposed by Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">sends National Guard to arrest Marat, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacked by Danton on flight of the king, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his accusation of Danton’s venality, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his massacre of the Champs de Mars, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">again attacked by Danton, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">threatens civil war, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Law, Roman, twelfth century, renaissance of, study of, rise of the universities, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">—— Courts in France, Conseils du Roi, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lawyers, action of, in preventing reform, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">become conservative as a body, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Legendre, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">a member of the Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">defends Danton before the Convention, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">shuts the Jacobins, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Legislative">Legislative, elections to, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reconciliation with monarchy, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">parties in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Lafayette’s letter to, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">receives the Royal Family, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">quarrels with Commune just before massacres, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s great speech in, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">close of, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Louis">Louis XVI., age of, compared with Danton, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his coronation seen by Danton, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his attitude to Assembly, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">brought back to Paris from Versailles by mob, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his attitude after this, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">thanks presented to, by Danton, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">accepts Civil Constitution of clergy, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">lost by death of Mirabeau, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his attempt to go to St. Cloud, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of his flight, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">depends on success of August 10 to receive allies, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">takes refuge in Parliament, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his secret payments, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">execution of, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of, on America, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Mandat Imperatif, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_437"></a>[437]</span>—— head of National Guard, his death, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Manifesto of Brunswick, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Brunswick">Brunswick</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Manor or village community alone survives ninth century, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its survival and power, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Manorial relations, their decay, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Manuel, Danton’s chief in municipality of 1791, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marat, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">incident of, <a href="#Page_97">97-104</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">warrant for arrest of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">National Guard sent to arrest, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">importance of issues involved, Lafayette’s action, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">defended by Danton at Bar of Assembly, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his escape, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elected to “Comité de Surveillance” before massacres, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">puts Roland on his list of proscribed, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his appearance in the Convention, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">accused by Girondins, acquitted, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">stabbed by Charlotte Corday, growth of Terror, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Marie_Antoinette">Marie Antoinette, age of compared with Danton, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">forms a court party against the Parliament, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">power over Louis after Mirabeau’s death, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her determination to hold the Tuilleries, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">she alone realises the fall of the monarchy, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of her death on Danton, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her shocking trial and its influence on Danton, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marseillais, their march on Paris, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marseillaise, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Massacres">Massacres of September, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">precipitated by Montmorin’s acquittal, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">refusal of National Guard to interfere, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton keeps Ministers at their posts just before, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the Comité de Surveillance joined by Marat, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">begin at the Carmes, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">causes of Danton’s neutrality during, <a href="#Page_185">185-187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">close of the massacres, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of on politics, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Medieval Reform, continuity of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">failure of after fifteenth century, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Middle class, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Bourgeoisie">Bourgeoisie</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Mirabeau, age of compared with Danton, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">calls August 4 “an orgy,” <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his reasons for supporting the “Civil Constitution of the clergy,” <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s sympathy with, and speech on death of, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Danton, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Monarchy, French, causes Paris to become head of towns, realises national unity, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">character of just before Revolution, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">clogged by local survivals, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">election of Hugh Capet, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">examples of pre-revolutionary centralisation in, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">gradually ceases to be national, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">origins of its action, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reaches power through local institutions, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">why it could not reform, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s attitude towards in crisis of the king’s flight, <a href="#Page_140">140-145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the fall of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">importance of, evident after fall, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Montmorin, evidence of Danton’s venality quoted by Lafayette in Memoirs, really a receipt for Danton’s reimbursement, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">—— Lucien de, acquittal of, hurries on massacres of September, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mountain, party of Paris in the Convention, Danton’s false position in, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">appearance of members of, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacked by Robespierre, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Municipal, system of France, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Revolution, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Municipality">Municipality, of Paris, first insurrectionary, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its weakness, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reconstitution of, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">quarrel with Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_93">93-97</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110-113</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton elected to, <a href="#Page_105">105-106</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Bailly elected mayor of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">petitions against ministers, <a href="#Page_129">129-131</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">insurrectionary Commune plot against, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">dissolved by insurrectionary Commune, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">(after Aug. 10, 1792, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Commune">Commune</a>”).</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Nancy, affair of, Danton’s moderate action, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nationality, differentiation of, in ninth century, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="National_Guard">National Guard, formed, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Lafayette’s plan of, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_438"></a>[438]</span>Danton elected head of his battalion, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">clash with people, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">divided on April 18, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">fire on people in Champ de Mars, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">divided on Aug. 10, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Santerre put at head of by Danton, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">refuse to interfere with massacres, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Henriot succeeds Boulanger at head of, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attack Convention, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">do not rise for Robespierre, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Necker, position of, in 1789, his dismissal, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nobles, origin of, as a definite class in France in ninth century, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">great numbers of, definition, relation to court, place in Revolution, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">poverty of, did not at first oppose reform, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">why they could not rule France, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Notables, Danton rejected as candidate for, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Octroi, effect on artisans, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Oratorians, educated principal revolutionaries, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Osselin, his courage after Montmorin’s acquittal, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Paine, named in Committee with Danton, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">meets Danton in prison, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Panis, warns Danton before his arrest, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Paris, the bond of France, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">cause of headship, effect of Revolution on, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">head of urban system because seat of monarchy, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">makes Danton’s career, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">first elections in, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">solidarity of, in early Revolution, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">provisional government during attack on Bastille, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">organises National Guard, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">model of municipal movement in France, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">restriction of suffrage in, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">restrained by Assembly, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Bailly elected mayor of, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of municipal system on, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">petitions for dismissal of ministers, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of king’s flight on, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Pétion, elected mayor of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">anger at first disasters of war, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of Brunswick’s manifesto on, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">ferment on news of invasion, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">clamours against arrested monarchists, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton will not oppose, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">anarchy in, during massacres, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elections to the Convention in, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">eulogy of by Danton, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">anger against Girondins, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">conflict of, with Girondins, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Isnard’s threats against, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">used by Committee to expel the Gironde, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">refuses to rise for Robespierre, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Parliament of Paris, nature of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Parliaments (representative), <i>see</i> “<a href="#States_General">States General</a>,” “<a href="#Legislative">Legislative</a>,” “<a href="#Convention">Convention</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Peasantry, French, condition of, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">ownership of land by, before the Revolution, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of Revolution on, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pétion, elected mayor of Paris, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">unable to interfere with the massacres, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">gets some hold on the city at their close, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attempt of Danton to get him elected for Paris, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">named on Committee with Danton, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Petition, of municipality against ministers, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Jacobins on king’s flight, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> - -<li class="indx">Pitt, his reforms, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Priestley, Danton’s relations with, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Procureur, definition of the office in the old regime, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Paris, during Revolution, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton elected substitute to, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Professional class, its character, numbers, constitution, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Recordain, stepfather of Danton, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Reform, mediæval, continuity of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">action of lawyers in preventing failure of, after fifteenth century, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Pitt’s attempt at, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">impossibility on Continent, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">impossible to French monarchy, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its rapidity helped by centralisation, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Religious liberty, Danton’s speech in favour of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_439"></a>[439]</span>Republic, not originated by Danton, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">demanded by Condorcet, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">declared by Convention, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Revolution">Revolution, French, nature of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">necessity for, on Continent, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its violence, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">questions raised by, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">material causes of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">main causes not economic, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">classes it dealt with, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">it revives religion in villages, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect on peasantry, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">on artisans, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">on Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">on professionals and nobles, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">theory of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of Rousseau on, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">place of Paris in, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">summary of politics at outset of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its task, the re-creation of France, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">two periods of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">transformation of, in 1790, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">summary of its results, <a href="#Page_314">314-318</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Revolutionary Tribunal, created by Danton, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Marat acquitted by, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Hébert tried by, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton tried by, <a href="#Page_249">249-272</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">enslaved by Robespierre, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Robespierre, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">age of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">effect of education on, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">joins Committee of Public Safety, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his position in winter of 1793, clash with Danton, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">last interview with Danton, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">speaks against Danton in Convention, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">demonstration of condemned before his house, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his aims, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his misreading of Rousseau, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">causes of his ascendency, <a href="#Page_288">288-290</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">abandons Danton’s diplomacy, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">heads feast of Supreme Being, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">proposes virtual abolition of trials, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">destroys independence of Convention, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">attacks Mountain, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">abandoned by Committee, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">causes of his fall, <a href="#Page_302">302-304</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his last speech, <a href="#Page_306">306-307</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">outlawed by Convention, <a href="#Page_309">309-310</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his last rally and execution, <a href="#Page_310">310-314</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Roland, a professional, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s power over, in August 1792, interview with, in garden of ministry, <a href="#Page_180">180-181</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">calls on Santerre to stop the massacres, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">prosecuted, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">—— Madame, her hatred for Danton, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">she rejects his overtures to Girondins, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Roman Law, its fundamental ideas of ownership and sovereignty, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">suited to France, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">not main cause of egalitarian feeling in France, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rome, transformation of her system in ninth century, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the origin of French urban system, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rousseau, his effect on France, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his genius and deficiencies, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his faith the source of his power, essentially a reactionary, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Robespierre’s view of his system, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rousselin, our authority for Danton’s boyhood, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst" id="St_Just">Saint Just, age of, compared with Danton, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">joins great Committee, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">report on Girondins, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">speech against Danton, <a href="#Page_254">254-255</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">second speech against Danton, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">proposal for bringing prisoners to Paris, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">with army on Sambre, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">fails to warn Robespierre, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">outlawed with Robespierre, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">joins Robespierre at Hotel de Ville, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">St. Priest, his dismissal demanded by Paris, <a href="#Page_128">128-131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Santerre, a Bourgeois, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in the attack on Tuilleries, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">fails to call out National Guard during massacres, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Section">Sections, replace districts of Paris, forty-eight in number, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton demands force to be raised from, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">convened by Robespierrians in Thermidor, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Section du Théâtre Français, replaces Cordeliers, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">battalion of, Danton elected commander, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">of Mauconseil begins agitation against ministry, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">begin insurrection of August 1792, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">September, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Massacres">Massacres of</a>.”</li> - -<li class="indx">Social divisions, five principal, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_440"></a>[440]</span>Stake, burning at, in United States, by Parliament of Strasbourg in 1789, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="States_General">States General (or National Assembly), term Assembly first used, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elections to, in Paris, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">reaction against, in early 1789, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">success of, after fall of Bastille, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">night of August 4 in, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">queen forms party against, political attitude of Louis towards, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">plotted against, by court, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">come to Paris, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">appealed to, in Marat incident, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">action to restrain Paris, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">establish Civil Constitution of clergy, <a href="#Page_120">120-123</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">debate on petition of Paris, <a href="#Page_130">130-132</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">indecision of, on king’s flight, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Suffrage, <i>see</i> “<a href="#Franchise">Franchise</a>.”</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Talleyrand, Danton meets, at municipality, writes letter to Louis, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">connected with Danton’s diplomacy, opposes Chauvelin in London, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Taxes, failure of, before Revolution, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Thermidor, attempted insurrection to save Robespierre in, <a href="#Page_310">310-314</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Tour du Pin, La, dismissal demanded, <a href="#Page_128">128-131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Towns, nuclei of France, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">condition of small, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Turcoing, battle of, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Vergniaud, orator of Girondins, understands Danton, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">present at incident in theatre, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his simile in king’s trial, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">explanation of his vote, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his oratory, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">prosecuted by Convention, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">St. Just’s report against, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Danton’s regret for, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Versailles, Cordeliers’ manifesto for march on, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">king brought back to Paris from, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Village community, French, decay of, loss of religion in, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Vinot, solicitor in Paris, Danton apprenticed to, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst" id="Wife">Wife, of Danton, <i>first</i> (Charpentier) married, his devotion to her, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her illness and its effect on Danton, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her death, its effect on Danton, he exhumes her body, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>second</i> (Gély) married, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Young, Arthur, his comments on pre-revolutionary France, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> - -</ul> - -<p class="titlepage">THE END</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTON ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a 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