Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3)
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John Morley >> Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3)
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The position of sections and interests which ended in the Revolution of
Thermidor, is one of the most extraordinarily intricate and entangled in
the history of faction. It would take a volume to follow out all the
peripeteias of the drama. Here we can only enumerate in a few sentences
the parties to the contest and the conditions of the game. The reader
will easily discern the difficulty in Robespierre's way of making an
effective combination. First, there were the two Committees. Of these
the one, the General Security, was thoroughly hostile to Robespierre;
its members, as we have said, were wild and hardy spirits, with no
political conception, and with a great contempt for fine phrases and
philosophical principles. They knew Robespierre's hatred for them, and
they heartily returned it. They were the steadfast centre of the
changing schemes which ended in his downfall. The Committee of Public
Safety was divided. Carnot hated Saint Just, and Collot d'Herbois hated
Robespierre, and Billaud had a sombre distrust of Robespierre's
counsels. Shortly speaking, the object of the Billaudists was to retain
their power, and their power was always menaced from two quarters, the
Convention and Paris. If they let Robespierre have his own way against
his enemies, would they not be at his mercy whenever he chose to devise
a popular insurrection against them? Yet if they withstood Robespierre,
they could only do so through the agency of the Convention, and to fall
back upon the Convention would be to give that body an express
invitation to resume the power that had, in the pressure of the crisis a
year before, been delegated to the Committee, and periodically renewed
afterwards. The dilemma of Billaud seemed desperate, and events
afterwards proved that it was so.
If we turn to the Convention, we find the position equally distracting.
They, too, feared another insurrection and a second decimation. If the
Right helped Robespierre to destroy the Fouches and Vadiers, he would be
stronger than ever; and what security had they against a repetition of
the violence of the Thirty-first of May? If the Dantonists joined in
destroying Robespierre, they would be helping the Right, and what
security had they against a Girondin reaction? On the other hand, the
Centre might fairly hope, just what Billaud feared, that if the
Committee came to the Convention to crush Robespierre, that would end in
a combination strong enough to enable the Convention to crush the
Committees.
Much depended on military success. The victories of the generals were
the great strength of the Committee. For so long it would be difficult
to turn opinion against a triumphant administration. 'At the first
defeat,' Robespierre had said to Barere, 'I await you.' But the defeat
did not come. The plotting went on with incessant activity; on one hand,
Robespierre, aided by Saint Just and Couthon, strengthening himself at
the Jacobin Club, and through that among the sections; on the other, the
Mountain and the Committee of General Security trying to win over the
Right, more contemptuously christened the Marsh or the Belly, of the
Convention. The Committee of Public Safety was not yet fully decided how
to act.
At the end of the first week of Thermidor, Robespierre could endure the
tension no longer. He had tried to fortify his nerves for the struggle
by riding, but with so little success that he was lifted off his horse
fainting. He endeavoured to steady himself by diligent pistol-practice.
But nothing gave him initiative and the sinews of action. Saint Just
urged him to raise Paris. Some bold men proposed to carry off the
members of the Committee bodily from their midnight deliberations.
Robespierre declined, and fell back on what he took to be his greatest
strength and most unfailing resource; he prepared a speech. On the
Eighth of Thermidor he delivered it to the Convention, amid intense
excitement both within its walls and without. All Paris knew that they
were now on the eve of one more of the famous Days; the revolution of
Thermidor had begun.
The speech of the Eighth Thermidor has seemed to men of all parties
since a masterpiece of tactical ineptitude. If Robespierre had been a
statesman instead of a phrasemonger, he had a clear course. He ought to
have taken the line of argument that Danton would have taken. That is to
say, he ought to have identified himself fully with the interests and
security of the Convention; to have accepted the growing resolution to
close the Terror; to have boldly pressed the abolition of the Committee
of General Security, and the removal from the Committee of Public Safety
of Billaud, Collot, Barere; to have proposed to send about fifty persons
to Cayenne for life; and to have urged a policy of peace with the
foreign powers. This was the substantial wisdom and real interest of the
position. The task was difficult, because his hearers had the best
possible reasons for knowing that the author of the Law of Prairial was
a Terrorist on principle. And in truth we know that Robespierre had no
definite intention of erecting clemency into a rule. He had not mental
strength enough to throw off the profound apprehension, which the
incessant alarms of the last five years had engendered in him; and the
only device, that he could imagine for maintaining the republic against
traitors, was to stimulate the rigour of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
If, however, Robespierre lacked the grasp which might have made him the
representative of a broad and stable policy, it was at least his
interest to persuade the men of the Plain that he entertained no designs
against them. And this is what in his own mind he intended. But to do it
effectively, it was clearly best to tell his hearers, in so many words,
whom he really wished them to strike. That would have relieved the
majority, and banished the suspicion which had been busily fomented by
his enemies, that he had in his pocket a long list of their names, for
proscription. But Robespierre, having for the first time in his life
ventured on aggressive action without the support of a definite party,
faltered. He dared not to designate his enemies face to face and by
name. Instead of that, he talked vaguely of conspirators against the
republic, and calumniators of himself. There was not a single bold,
definite, unmistakable sentence in the speech from first to last. The
men of the Plain were insecure and doubtful; they had no certainty that
among conspirators and calumniators he did not include too many of
themselves. People are not so readily seized by grand phrases, when
their heads are at stake. The sitting was long, and marked by changing
currents and reverses. When they broke up, all was left uncertain.
Robespierre had suffered a check. Billaud felt that he could no longer
hesitate in joining the combination against his colleague. Each party
was aware that the next day must seal the fate of one or other of them.
There is a legend that in the evening Robespierre walked in the Champs
Elysees with his betrothed, accompanied as usual by his faithful dog,
Brount. They admired the purple of the sunset, and talked of the
prospect of a glorious to-morrow. But this is apocryphal. The evening
was passed in no lover's saunterings, but amid the storm and uproar of
the Club. He went to the Jacobins to read over again his speech of the
day. 'It is my testament of death,' he said, amid the passionate
protestations of his devoted followers. He had been talking for the last
three years of his willingness to drink the hemlock, and to offer his
breast to the poniards of tyrants. That was a fashion of the speech of
the time, and in earlier days it had been more than a fashion of speech,
for Brunswick would have given them short shrift. But now, when he
talked of his last testament, Robespierre did not intend it to be so if
he could prevent it. When he went to rest that night, he had a tolerably
calm hope that he should win the next day's battle in the Convention,
when he was aware that Saint Just would attack the Committees openly and
directly. If he would have allowed his band to invade the Pavillon de
Flore, and carry off or slay the Committees who sat up through the
night, the battle would have been won when he awoke. His friends are
justified in saying that his strong respect for legality was the cause
of his ruin.
Men in all ages have had a superstitious fondness for connecting awful
events in their lives with portents and signs among the outer elements.
It was noticed that the heat during the terrible days of Thermidor was
more intense than had been known within the memory of man. The
thermometer never fell below sixty-five degrees in the coolest part of
the night, and in the daytime men and women and beasts of burden fell
down dead in the streets. By five o'clock in the morning of the Ninth
Thermidor, the galleries of the Convention were filled by a boisterous
and excited throng. At ten o'clock the proceedings began as usual with
the reading of correspondence from the departments and from the armies.
Robespierre, who had been escorted from his lodgings by the usual body
of admirers, instead of taking his ordinary seat, remained standing by
the side of the tribune. It is a familiar fact that moments of appalling
suspense are precisely those in which we are most ready involuntarily to
note a trifle; everybody observed that Robespierre wore the coat of
violet-blue silk and the white nankeens in which a few weeks previously
he had done honour to the Supreme Being.
The galleries seemed as enthusiastic as ever. The men of the Plain and
the Marsh had lost the abject mien with which they usually cowered
before Robespierre's glance; they wore a courageous air of judicial
reserve. The leaders of the Mountain wandered restlessly to and fro
among the corridors. At noon Tallien saw that Saint Just had ascended
the tribune. Instantly he rushed down into the chamber, knowing that
the battle had now begun in fierce earnest. Saint Just had not got
through two sentences, before Tallien interrupted him. He began to
insist with energy that there should be an end to the equivocal phrases
with which Paris had been too long alarmed by the Triumvirate. Billaud,
fearing to be outdone in the attack, hastily forced his way to the
tribune, broke into what Tallien was saying, and proceeded dexterously
to discredit Robespierre's allies without at once assailing Robespierre
himself. Le Bas ran in a fury to stop him; Collot d'Herbois, the
president, declared Le Bas out of order; the hall rang with cries of 'To
prison! To the Abbey!' and Le Bas was driven from the tribune. This was
the beginning of the tempest. Robespierre's enemies knew that they were
fighting for their lives, and this inspired them with a strong and
resolute power that is always impressive in popular assemblies. He still
thought himself secure. Billaud pursued his accusations. Robespierre, at
last, unable to control himself, scaled the tribune. There suddenly
burst forth from Tallien and his partisans vehement shouts of 'Down with
the tyrant! down with the tyrant!' The galleries were swept by a wild
frenzy of vague agitation; the president's bell poured loud incessant
clanging into the tumult; the men of the Plain held themselves firm and
silent; in the tribune raged ferocious groups, Tallien menacing
Robespierre with a dagger, Billaud roaring out proposals to arrest this
person and that Robespierre gesticulating, threatening, yelling,
shrieking. His enemies knew that if he were once allowed to get a
hearing, his authority might even yet overawe the waverers. A
penetrative word or a heroic gesture might lose them the day. The
majority of the chamber still hesitated. They called for Barere, in
whose adroit faculty for discovering the winning side they had the
confidence of long experience. Robespierre, recovering some of his calm,
and perceiving now that he had really to deal with a serious revolt,
again asked to be heard before Barere. But the cries for Barere were
louder than ever. Barere spoke, in a sense hostile to Robespierre, but
warily and without naming him.
Then there was a momentary lull. The Plain was uncertain. The battle
might even now turn either way. Robespierre made another attempt to
speak, but Tallien with intrepid fury broke out into a torrent of louder
and more vehement invective. Robespierre's shrill voice was heard in
disjected snatches, amidst the violent tones of Tallien, the yells of
the president calling Robespierre to order, the murderous clanging of
the bell. Then came that supreme hour of the struggle, whose tale has
been so often told, when Robespierre turned from his old allies of the
Mountain, and succeeded in shrieking out an appeal to the probity and
virtue of the Right and the Plain. To his horror, even these despised
men, after a slight movement, remained mute. Then his cheeks blanched,
and the sweat ran down his face. But anger and scornful impatience
swiftly came back and restored him. _President of assassins_, he cried
out to Thuriot, _for the last time I ask to be heard. Thou canst not
speak_, called one, _the blood of Danton chokes thee_. He flung himself
down the steps of the tribune, and rushed towards the benches of the
Right. _Come no further_, cried another, _Vergniaud and Condorcet sat
here_. He regained the tribune, but his speech was gone. He was reduced
to the dregs of an impotent and gasping voiceless gesticulation, like
the strife of one in a nightmare.
The day was lost. The tension of a passionate and violent struggle
prolonged for many hours always at length exasperates onlookers with
something of the brute ferocity of the actors. The physical strain stirs
the tiger in the blood; they conceive a cruel hatred against weakness,
just as the heated throng of a Roman amphitheatre turned up their thumbs
for the instant despatch of the unfortunate swordsman who had been too
ready to lower his arms. The Right, the Plain, even the galleries,
despised the man who had succumbed. If Robespierre had possessed the
physical strength of Mirabeau or Danton, the Ninth Thermidor would have
been another of his victories. He was crushed by the relentless ferocity
and endurance of his antagonists. A decree for his arrest was resolved
upon by acclamation. He cast a glance at the galleries, as marvelling
that they should remain passive in face of an outrage on his person.
They were mute. The ushers advanced with hesitation to do their duty,
and not without trembling carried him away, along with Couthon and
Saint Just. The brother, for whom he had made honourable sacrifices in
days that seemed to be divided from the present by an abyss of
centuries, insisted with fine heroism on sharing his fate, and Augustin
Robespierre and Le Bas were led off to the prisons along with their
leader and idol.
It was now a little after four o'clock. The Convention, with the
self-possession that so often amazes us in its proceedings, went on with
formal business for another hour. At five they broke up. For life, as
the poets tell, is a daily stage-play; men declaim their high heroic
parts, then doff the buskin or the sock, wash away the paint from their
cheeks, and gravely sit down to meat. The Conventionals, as they ate
their dinners, were unconscious, apparently, that the great crisis of
the drama was still to come. The next twelve hours were to witness the
climax. Robespierre had been crushed by the Convention; it remained to
be seen whether the Convention would not now be crushed by the Commune
of Paris.
Robespierre was first conducted to the prisons of the Luxembourg. The
gaoler, on some plea of informality, refused to receive him. The
terrible prisoner was next taken to the Mairie, where he remained among
joyful friends from eight in the evening until eleven. Meanwhile the old
insurrectionary methods of the nights of June and of August in '92, of
May and of June in '93, were again followed. The beating of the _rappel_
and the _generale_ was heard in all the sections; the tocsin sounded its
dreadful note, reminding all who should hear it that insurrection is
the most sacred and the most indispensable of duties. Hanriot, the
commandant of the forces, had been arrested in the evening, but he was
speedily released by the agents of the Commune. The Council issued
manifestoes and decrees from the Common Hall every moment. The barriers
were closed. Cannon were posted opposite the doors of the hall of the
Convention. The quays were thronged. Emissaries sped to and fro between
the Jacobin Club and the Common Hall, and between these two centres and
each of the forty-eight sections. It is one of the inscrutable mysteries
of this delirious night, that Hanriot did not at once use the force at
his command to break up the Convention. There is no obvious reason why
he should not have done so. The members of the Convention had
re-assembled after their dinner, towards seven o'clock. The hall which
had resounded with the shrieks and yells of the furious gladiators of
the factions all day, now lent a lugubrious echo to gloomy reports which
one member after another delivered from the shadow of the tribune.
Towards nine o'clock the members of the two dread Committees came in
panic to seek shelter among their colleagues, 'as dejected in their
peril,' says an eyewitness, 'as they had been cruel and insolent in the
hour of their supremacy.' When they heard that Hanriot had been
released, and that guns were at their door, all gave themselves up for
lost and made ready for death. News came that Robespierre had broken his
arrest and gone to the Common Hall. Robespierre, after urgent and
repeated solicitations, had been at length persuaded about an hour
before midnight to leave the Mairie and join his partisans of the
Commune. This was an act of revolt against the Convention, for the
Mairie was a legal place of detention, and so long as he was there, he
was within the law. The Convention with heroic intrepidity declared both
Hanriot and Robespierre beyond the pale of the law. This prompt measure
was its salvation. Twelve members were instantly named to carry the
decree to all the sections. With the scarf of office round their waists,
and a sabre in hand, they sallied forth. Mounting horses, and escorted
by attendants with flaring torches, they scoured Paris, calling all good
citizens to the succour of the Convention, haranguing crowds at the
street corners with power and authority, and striking the imaginations
of men. At midnight heavy rain began to fall.
The leaders of the Commune meanwhile, in full confidence that victory
was sure, contented themselves with incessant issue of paper decrees, to
each of which the Convention replied by a counter-decree. Those who have
studied the situation most minutely, are of opinion that even so late as
one o'clock in the morning, the Commune might have made a successful
defence, although it had lost the opportunity, which it had certainly
possessed up to ten o'clock, of destroying the Convention. But on this
occasion the genius of insurrection slumbered. And there was a genuine
division of opinion in the eastern quarters of Paris, the result of a
grim distrust of the man who had helped to slay Hebert and Chaumette. At
a word this distrust began to declare itself. The opinion of the
sections became more and more distracted. One armed group cried, _Down
with the Convention!_ Another armed group cried, _The Convention for
ever, and down with the Commune!_ The two great faubourgs were all
astir, and three battalions were ready to march. Emissaries from the
Convention actually succeeded in persuading them--such the dementia of
the night--that Robespierre was a royalist agent, and that the Commune
were about to deliver the little Lewis from his prison in the Temple.
One body of communist partisans after another was detached from its
allegiance. The deluge of rain emptied the Place de Greve, and when
companies came up from the sections in obedience to orders from Hanriot
and the Commune, the silence made them suspect a trap, and they withdrew
towards the great metropolitan church or elsewhere.
Barras, whom the Convention had charged with its military defence,
gathered together some six thousand men. With the right instinct of a
man who had studied the history of Paris since the July of 1789, he
foresaw the advantage of being the first to make the attack. He arranged
his forces into two divisions. One of them marched along the quays to
take the Common Hall in front; the other along the Rue Saint Honore to
take it in flank. Inside the Common Hall the staircases and corridors
were alive with bustling messengers, and those mysterious busybodies who
are always found lingering without a purpose on the skirts of great
historic scenes. Robespierre and the other chiefs were in a small room,
preparing manifestoes and signing decrees. They were curiously unaware
of the movements of the Convention. An aggressive attack by the party of
authority upon the party of insurrection was unknown in the tradition of
revolt. They had an easy assurance that at daybreak their forces would
be prepared once more to tramp along the familiar road westwards. It was
now half-past two. Robespierre had just signed the first two letters of
his name to a document before him, when he was startled by cries and
uproar in the Place below. In a few instants he lay stretched on the
ground, his jaw shattered by a pistol-shot. His brother had either
fallen or had leaped out of the window. Couthon was hurled over a
staircase, and lay for dead. Saint Just was a prisoner.
Whether Robespierre was shot by an officer of the Conventional force, or
attempted to blow out his own brains, we shall never know, any more than
we shall ever be quite assured how Rousseau, his spiritual master, came
to an end. The wounded man was carried, a ghastly sight, first to the
Committee of Public Safety, and then to the Conciergerie, where he lay
in silent stupefaction through the heat of the summer day. As he was an
outlaw, the only legal preliminary before execution was to identify
him. At five in the afternoon, he was raised into the cart Couthon and
the younger Robespierre lay, confused wrecks of men, at the bottom of
it. Hanriot and Saint Just, bruised, begrimed, and foul, completed the
band. One who walks from the Palace of Justice, over the bridge, along
the Rue Saint Honore, into the Rue Royale, and so to the Luxor column,
retraces the _via dolorosa_ of the Revolution on the afternoon of the
Tenth of Thermidor.
* * * * *
The end of the intricate manoeuvres known as the Revolution of
Thermidor was the recovery of authority by the Convention. The
insurrections, known as the days of the Twelfth Germinal, First
Prairial, and Thirteenth Vendemiaire, all ended in the victory of the
Convention over the revolutionary forces of Paris. The Committees, on
the other hand, had beaten Robespierre, but they had ruined themselves.
Very gradually the movement towards order, which had begun in the mind
of Danton, and had gone on in the cloudy purposes of Robespierre, became
definite. But it was in the interest of very different ideas from those
of either Danton or of Robespierre. A White Terror succeeded the Red
Terror. Not at once, however; it was not until nine months after the
death of Robespierre, that the reaction was strong enough to smite his
colleagues of the two Committees. The surviving Girondins had come back
to their seats in the Convention: the Dantonians had not forgiven the
execution of their chief. These two parties were bent on vengeance. In
April, 1795, a decree was passed banishing Billaud de Varennes, Collot
d'Herbois, and Barere. In the following month the leaders of the
Committee of General Security were thrown into prison. The revolution
had passed into new currents. We cannot see any reasons for thinking
that those currents would have led to any happier results if Robespierre
had won the battle. Tallien, Fouche, Barras, and the rest may have been
thoroughly bad men. But then what qualities had Robespierre for building
up a state? He had neither strength of practical character, nor firm
breadth of political judgment, nor a sound social doctrine. When we
compare him,--I do not say with Frederick of Prussia, with Jefferson,
with Washington,--but with the group of able men who made the closing
year of the Convention honourable and of good service to France, we have
a measure of Robespierre's profound and pitiable incompetence.
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